Life is good. Life is SO good I can’t stand it!!! Yesterday I discovered Judy Wise is teaching cold wax online!!
Handsprings! Backflips! Dance break. Shake it out, just SHAKE IT OUT!
Ahhhh…much better now. I really need to cut back on the sugar.
Why all the enthusiasm? Well, let me explain. I love oil and cold wax. Love it love it LOVE IT! I did some pieces with it last year.
This one is Dunes. If I remember right it’s 2×3 feet. I sold it last October during the studio tour. You can see more of my cold wax pieces here.
Everything I did with cold wax came from being self taught, from piecing bits and more bits of internet information together. Flying by the seat of my pants. But I’ve taken a couple of classes from Judy in the past, Plaster Workshop and Hot Wax. I adore her. So when I heard she was offering this class, my all time wish list of if I could take ANY painting class this would be IT class, I signed up, just like that. And then, because the class is beginning RIGHT NOW, I ran to the lumberyard and had them cut a sheet of quarter inch birch plywood into eight 2×2 feet panels. And I bought some sticks of pine to support them.
Then I came home, batted my eyes just right and asked Mr. Spouse to lug out the chop saw. I certainly know how to use the chop saw but Mr. Spouse, in a fit of manliness, decided he would chop the pine.
So I let him.
And then I put on my Arty Life construction hat and began building cradled panels.
First I laid everything out one panel at a time. Then I squirted wood glue on the sticks, one at a time. Set the panel on top, lined everything up and shot ’em with the nail gun.
That’s when I realized men take everything about their tools seriously. Check out the name on that sucker. RIGID. I dunno, it just seems so in your face, so yo, babe check me out.
And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
Change of subject.
Arty Life is getting a makeover soon. How much of one I’m not sure, I’ve just got these Bigger! Better! ideas roiling around in my head. Now all I have to do is figure out how to implement them. Photography! App reviews! Stuff!!! I think I’ll be rolling them out in early February. Stay tuned.
And if you haven’t seen it yet, I’ve begun photographing my horses every morning. A daily photo journal of the ponies and moi. You can check it out here.
Until next week, my sweetums. And, as always, LOVE to hear your comments. Because you are my best beloveds EV-AH!!!
I called my friend Harriet once, around the time FirstBorn was thirteen. Maybe fourteen. Whatever…he was feeling his soon-to-be manly oats and was a total, absolute pain in the ass.
I wanted to kill him.
Oh, indeed I did. But first I needed to find out if a jury of my peers, i.e, mothers of teens, would put me away for life or give me a high five and send me to a spa. Prison was out, horizontal stripes make my ass look fat. But a spa? I could handle that.
So I called Harriet and asked if it was against the law if I did away with my son. Figured her kid, a few years older than mine, was still alive. I wanted to know if it was by choice or grand design.
She told me it was perfectly alright to kill him, as long as I ATE him. She said it with conviction, without any hesitation, so I knew it must be true.
But there wasn’t enough Maalox in the world to pull that one off.
I’m kind of glad I stuck it out with FirstBorn. He turned out okay. Pretty good, actually. And now when he calls and tells me what’s going on with Princess GrandDaughter, I find myself laughing and wheezing and enjoying myself immensely.
Because grandchildren are the best payback.
And now that we’ve established that, I’m going to put on my Arty Life hat and tell you to gather ’round. Because I don’t want to shout, not on the interwebs, not where everyone can hear me. Because they might not understand when I say artists must kill their children.
No no no…don’t jump to any conclusions and call me as your defense witness. The children I’m talking about the ones that bleed paint. Or clay. The ones you’ve put your heart and soul in and then one day you look at them and think you suck. Or maybe just I can do better than this.
The number one lesson I teach my students is nothing you do is precious. You need to be free to experiment and push beyond your comfort zone in order to find your creative boundaries. And once you find them you need to push past them too.
It’s incredibly liberating to create without attachment to the outcome.
This was an assignment from Judy Wise and Stephanie Lee’s Plaster Workshop. I carved a portrait of a young girl into a plaster covered board and then painted it. There was nothing wrong with it, I’m sure someone would’ve bought it some day. But to me it was an assignment. I didn’t feel my artist voice. So after letting her hang around the studio for a couple of months, I whipped out some joint compound and had my way with her.
Looks like buttercream icing, doesn’t it? But it’s not, I assure you it was death-in-a-can for the poor dear. But her passing gave rise to this…
One of my all time favorite pieces. Something from the sweet creative spot.
The title? Portrait of a Young Girl, Revisited. Of course.
Thirty years ago today, on a sunny Saturday in upstate NY, the first Saturday without rain in six weeks… Mr. Boyfriend became Mr. Spouse. Poof…Just. Like. That. Said, “I do”, gave me a ring, signed some papers and hitched his star to mine.
And vice versa.
The next day we hopped in the Rabbit and headed out to northern California. Back to Mr. Spouse’s job. Back to the place I went to school.
A few days later, somewhere in Colorado, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. A big one. Driving cross country in Volkswagen packed with everything I owned (except the dogs who would fly out later), looking for all the world like the 80’s version of the Joads, was NOT my idea of a honeymoon.
It was only the thought of my maid of honor slapping me silly that kept me heading west.
I’m glad I did.
Thirty years. Like any long term relationship there’s been up and downs. Growing pains. Growing together. Over the years we’ve lost four parents, one brother, several friends and too many dogs and cats. We’ve birthed two children, one who’s gone on to have his own. We’ve been through the terrible twos, the teen years and hormonal hell on both ends.
We’ve been through Little League. And Iraq.
Basketball. And Berkeley.
Remodeled houses, three of ’em. Built another from the ground up. And stayed together through construction madness. Which was nothing, really…
Because we’ve built a life together. Layers and layers and textures of life.
This one’s for you, Mr. Spouse. Happy Anniversary!
Mr. Spouse likes to play in mud. Big boy mud. Concrete. He has his own mixer. Actually, it’s his second one, the first having gone belly up a few years back. Because he used it that much. Seriously. One concrete marvel after another.
But until this weekend he never got to realize his big dream…countertops.
It was the one thing he was adamant about when he offered to build the new studio. I agreed, as long as he understood it’s a working art studio. His countertops will not be precious. They will be used. Most likely abused.
He was okay with that.
First he built the forms on the base cabinets. The lower section is my office area. Computer, scanner, printer, stare out the window at the squirrels office area.
Saturday morning we got up bright and early. Too early for me since I’d only gone to bed a few hours before.
My job was to mix the color into the dry cement. I don’t remember how many buckets I mixed. I do remember grasping the stir stick in both hands and feeling like a witch hovering over her cauldron. My lower back remembers it too.
I had black concrete dust in all my pores. On my clothes. Under my clothes. But not in my lungs because I wore a mask. Which in the end was the only part of my face that remained clean.
The first plops buckets of wet concrete hit the forms.
First layer gets troweled.
Then covered with a sheet of steel mesh before layer number 2. The edge is reinforced with rebar. You’ll have to trust me on this.
Lots of troweling. Lots of waiting. This is Mr. Bobby, our concrete friend, with his handy-dandy concrete vibrator. This excited the concrete and allowed Mr. Bobby to have his way with it. ‘Nuf said about that.
By late afternoon it was looking good. Starting to firm up. Forms were popped. Edges repaired. More troweling. Mr. Bobby and Mr. Spouse were both adamant that I NOT scribe into the oh so tempting, oh so succulent, oh so WILLING countertops in process.
So I decided I had better things to do. I headed down to the old studio to photograph art. I’m setting up an e-commerce site and need better photos.
Sunday Update
Show and tell!
Yee-haw and Yowser! Doin’ the happy studio dance, oh yes I am! Because Mr. Spouse is a handy man indeed. The weekend construction man super hero!
And in a couple of days we’ll be coming up on our 30th anniversary. The traditional gift for 30 years is pearls. The modern gift, diamonds. In our family it’s looking like concrete. And that’s okay with me!
That sweet little innocent face put TEN YEARS on me in a matter of three seconds. Turned my hair white. Sent my heart leaping from my chest in fear only a mother can know. Only a mother who KNOWS that the end has come.
She was around the age you see up there, outside in the backyard playing with her brother. I was in the kitchen making lunch. Or dinner. I don’t remember exactly what.
But I’ll never forget the SCREAM.
High C. Higher than that. A stratosphere piercing wail capable of bringing down passing aircraft. I. Am. NOT. Exaggerating. Not at all. A cry so awful, so dramatic it could only mean one thing. Three things. Blood. Broken bones. Death.
I saw it in my mind’s eye. AWFUL THINGS!!! Arterial spewing. Jagged bone jutting through muscle, flesh and princess tights. Lifeless children (except the screamer) tangled in the swings.
I dropped what I was doing. Raced out the backdoor. Took in the sight before me in a nanosecond. Two children, both alive. The screamer upright, standing next to the swing. Looking for all the world like she was posing for Edvard Munch. Her brother standing nearby begging her to stop.
No blood. No broken bones. No fallen aircraft, monsters or rabid dogs.
Just. A. Spider. A little, bitty spider. A spider that wasn’t even there anymore, most likely incinerated by her hot flaming piercing FREAKIN’ scream.
I fell to my knees, hugged her tightly, kissed her sweaty little cheeks. And then when things settled down I told both children that screams like that were only for the most dire emergencies. For blood. Broken bones. Severed body parts. And that Mommy most likely would not survive another one.
Well, I gave them the kid version. But they knew what I meant.
We all survived. They grew up.
The screamer graduated with honors from one of the world’s top universities.
And moved back home because there aren’t any jobs.
I was sitting on the sofa an hour or so ago. Exhausted to the point of vegetation. It was late. Probably 10. Quite dark when she took one of the dogs out in the back yard. Not a fancy civilized back yard, just a fenced in area to keep the coyotes out. And the bears. And mountain lions.
I was sitting here thinking I was going to skip writing a post tonight. I was too tired. I was okay with that decision and was settling in even deeper on the sofa…we have very comfortable furniture, a little ragged but comfy… I was almost drifting off when I heard THE SCREAM.
AGAIN.
The same scream. Except this time she’s an adult. And we live in the country. Wild animals. Hungry animals. And dogs so small, they’re no protection, just appetizers.
Oh. Dear. God.
I tossed the laptop aside, ran to the door, fully prepared to fight off a bear, wrestle a dog or my daughter from the jaws of a lion. We reached the door at the same time. Me from the safety of the living room, daughter from the wilderness. The dog was with her. I saw no blood, broken bones, gaping wounds.
WHAT??? What what what what WHAT?????
It took a few seconds for her to settle down, to explain what happened. And when she did, she sounded like she had a world class wedgie and a few hits of helium. But I was able to piece it together. Mothers can do that, you know.
We have to.
And if she ever sees another moth and screams like that again, well, I’m not about to lose any more decades over creepy crawly flying things, if you know what I mean.
Holy crap! Today was Memorial Day in the US…and you know what that means…Shopping! Barbecues! White shoes until Labor Day! Flags! Flags! More flags and bunting!!! Because people died and we have to show our respect, right?
Banks closed. Stores open.
WTF??? Well gather ’round, girls an’ boys, ’cause Arty Life has a story to tell you.
Once Thrice upon a time my son was in Iraq.
He was not there for the scenery.
I can say, without a doubt, that I spent all three of his deployments AND the time in between deployments AND the four years after he got out when they could still call him back…I spent all that time dwelling in the various stages of bat-shit crazyland.
That’s right…BAT-SHIT CRAAAAAAAAAZY LAND!
It ain’t easy being a warrior mom. In fact it sucks.
Because war sucks.
On his 21st birthday, FirstBorn told me he felt like he was 40. Said his hair was coming in gray. Well hell, he did some growing up in a way that most of us will NEVER know. But in the end we were lucky. He came home.
But not all of his friends did.
I stopped painting back then, started writing. Writing when life was one-step-at-a-time-make-it-through-another-day-fragile. When every car coming up the lane was cause to stop and hold my breath until it passed our drive.
When I didn’t know if I would ever see my son again.
I wrote. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.
I wrote my heart. And I kept it close. Shared parts of it with one or two friends.
They read it and gently suggested I ‘talk’ to someone.
Someone who wouldn’t have a clue. Who wouldn’t understand. Who didn’t know what it was like to have people shooting at their kid. Don’t think so.
