The Artist

Do you think of yourself as an artist?

I think about this question frequently. Today was not an art day for me. I did legal work for most of the day, with a break to go orchestrate an early Chinese New Year lesson and celebration in Caroline's classroom. This afternoon, as I was sitting at my computer trying to make sense of a hefty document in front of me, I glanced at my design wall (which is next to my computer area) and felt a pulse of frustration at not being able to work on my current piece.

But then it occurred to me that I'm very glad I don't have to worry about making art to make money. From my friends who do art for their livings, I hear a great deal about the stress of having to produce sale-able work, figuring out what people will buy, assessing the right price for pieces... topics like that. And I remember all too well that once I started teaching classes on making artist books, the joy of making books got lost in the business of making class samples, breaking things down into teachable steps, figuring out how to make reasonably- priced editions of books...all that same business stuff. I actually do like the legal work I do, quite a bit. It's intellectually very challenging and sometimes even fun. And I make very good money for someone who is able to sit at home and work in a bathrobe and fuzzy socks when I feel like it.

I'm glad that my art isn't my livelihood. But do I wish I had more time to work on it? You bet. And I can't help feel that I'm not a "real artist."

It's not that I think that putting a price on pieces and selling them is a necessary requirement to being an artist. So what DOES make an artist? A commitment to the creative process, I'd say, for one thing. A willingness to explore an idea through creative expression, also. But what else? Does it have something to do with how much time you spend on art? You're an artist if you do it frequently, and a dabbler if you don't? Are you an artist if your work isn't good? (or does that mean you're just a bad artist?)

I know several people who have very strong self-perceptions as artists. They're not the least bit equivocal or shy about calling themselves artists; in fact, they're quite assertive about it. I've noticed that this is true with some people regardless of their level of productivity, talent, or originality. And I know others who have more artistic talent in one fingernail clipping than others will see in their lifetimes, and they're embarrassed to call themselves artists.

I guess to me, "artist" has some value judgment in it. It's the difference between saying "quilter" and "quilt artist." A quilter makes quilts, regardless of how good they are...but when I hear someone call themselves a "quilt artist," I expect something good.

So I'm not entirely comfortable calling myself an artist, although I do so more than I used to. But the twinge I feel inside when I do makes me think about this stuff.

The Music Meme

When Melody emailed me and said "You've been memed" I knew it meant I'd been asked to answer a bunch of questions, but I wondered what the heck "meme" meant. On her blog, Melody fretted about being older than some other bloggers out there...but heck, she knew what a "meme" was! Ah well, what I lack in youth I make up for in curiosity and persistence. I googled it and found this definition: "A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. "

I guess it's a sort of a bloggish chain letter. (Um, Melody, can I expect to get a flood of dollar bills in the mail too, as well as good luck for the rest of my life?) It reminds me vaguely of seventh grade, when my friend Junko and I spent an inordinate amount of time writing each other lists of questions and then answering them for each other and passing the letters to each other between classes.

1. Total amount of music files on your computer? Hah. I've been fiddling with Itunes for a while and just got an Ipod. My computer tells me that I have 2 gigabytes of music on my computer. Does this make me stylish and cool?! I do love being able to download selected songs for 99 cents each.

2. The last CD you bought was: The Gypsy Kings, Cantos de Amor. Great background music. And I just downloaded "Daughters" by John Mayer.

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? Kenny Loggins, singing "Alive and Kicking". Kenny Loggins is major nostalgia for me--in college my roommate and I saw him in concert whenever we could...and, coincidentally, on the night Roger and I got married, he was performing at the site of our wedding (a winery that also had night-time concerts.) So, we got tickets for the whole wedding party and went that evening to the concert. I bought his newest CD because I've just always liked the guy, but I have to admit that this is really the only good song on the CD.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:
This is hard for me to do with individual songs, so I'll do general CDs. "Fields of Gold" by Sting. "One All" by Neil Finn. "Mirrorball" and "Afterglow" by Sarah McLachlan. Anything by The Gypsy Kings.

5. What 3 people are you going to pass this baton to and why?
Julie at High Fiber Content , because anyone who celebrates Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day is my kind of woman;
Pam at PaMdora's Box because I love her whimsical quilts (and I know she'll contemplate the questions while doing yoga); and
Deborah at Deborah's Journal because I enjoy her blog a lot!

Fabric Shop hopping

Isn't it fascinating how fabric stores have their own personalities?

I guess it's a combination of personalities of the store owner and the other people who work there, and the way the store is decorated, and the types of fabric in the store.

Today, my buddies Gerrie, Rita, Janet, Pat and I popped into a fabric store that I'd not known about. (What? A fabric store in a 60 mile radius of my home that I didn't know about? I have no idea how that one snuck by me.) It had its own charm...it is in an old house, and you go from room to room across pleasantly creaky floorboards. But aside from that, the place didn't thrill me. Half of the rooms had scrapbooking supplies, which hold no interest for me. The fabric mix was not particularly to my taste. It reminded me somewhat of another area store that features country and traditional fabrics. That shop doesn't do anything for me, but to my good friend Jenny (whose favorite quilter is Debbie Mumm) it's her ideal shop.

Interestingly, today two of us in the group were specifically looking for purple fabric and we both noted a serious lack of purples. Funny how some stores just lack one color. My local shop, a wonderful place with a great assortment of fabric (considering that it's pretty tiny) has a serious lack of pink/fuschia/magenta.

Another area store which is no longer in business used to have every notion known to the sewing world, and almost every book, and a decent overall selection of fabric consistently had the worst quilts on its walls. Every one was ugly or poorly designed (in terms of fabric choices) or just dull. It used to amaze me, how much nice fabric they had and yet how unattractive their sample quilts were. It was a functional store, but not at all inspiring.

Years ago, I worked in two different fabric stores. Each definitely reflected the personality, taste, and organizational style of the woman who owned it. To this day, I can't encounter a store with messed up fabric bolts without straightening a few as I peruse the fabric. It makes me cringe to see shops where fabric is permitted to trail on the floor where shoppers might step on it.

I feel very lucky that there are some great stores in my area: Fabrications in Healdsburg, Quilted Angel in Petaluma, Pumpkinseed Quilts in San Rafael, New Pieces in Berkeley, Thimble Creek in Walnut Creek, Carolea's in Sunnyvale. I don't lack for good fabric shopping, that's for sure.

MY Birthday Celebration

Here's what I did on MY birthday! Coming two days after Caroline's birthday, my birthday feels a bit anti-climactic. I'm usually happy to do as little as possible. This year, I'd been jealously guarding the day so I could stay home and do what ever I wanted.

I did get the day off to a great start. While I was still in my bathrobe and sipping my coffee, my sister came by bringing donuts, a gorgeous packet of marbled fabric -- she's discovered Equilter.com -- and the first season of The Gilmore Girls on DVD which I've never seen but have been wanting to watch. Then, just after Laura left, my friend Jenny came by with a happy bouquet of yellow tulips...And I just managed to get dressed when the doorbell rang and it was Elaine, who stayed for a lovely visit over tea, and left with a huge batch of rubber stamps to sell to the book guild in northern California.

Then I decided to indulge my impulse and make a new project, for no reason other than I wanted to for fun. My friend Noriko recently gave me a book by Keiko Goke, one of my all-time favorite quilters. (Noriko has been helping me look for a copy of Keiko Goke's book called Quilt Wonderland...if any of you know where I can get one, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know.) She found a recent Keiko Goke book and presented it to me as a birthday gift. And I'd been wanting to play with this chopped curve idea...so I pulled out some colorful batiks and went to town. I got a top made and although I don't know when I'll get the chance to quilt it, I had a happy time making it and it was a lovely way to spend the afternoon.

Last night, I enjoyed a wonderful dinner made by Roger...poached salmon, asparagus, and baked potatoes, followed by a slice of cheesecake (with candles, of course) for dessert. And Caroline gave me a hand massage, which she knows I love.

So...It was a very happy birthday and THIS birthday girl didn't melt down at the end of the day! Today, my good quilting buddies Rita, Janet, Pat, and Gerrie are taking me out to lunch in Sebastopol and we'll do some adventurous exploring. ..so the birthday fun continues!

Birthday Recap

We survived the birthday weekend. Only one meltdown, tonight just before bedtime...which, as every parent who has hosted a birthday party for a child knows, is inevitable. Excitement, friends, lots of sugar, presents... it's overwhelming and eventually leads to tears.

But everyone had fun, even Roger and me. We got to the hotel at around 4pm...gee, wonder why the hotel folks stuck us way back in a corner? We assigned the girls their "half" of the suite, and received instructions to a) keep the door shut between us as much as possible; b) not listen to them (which pretty much guaranteed that we were going to listen, at least some of the time) and c) pretend that they weren't there and we didn't know them.

I'd have been hurt, if Caroline hadn't asked me just the other day if I would go to college with her, live in her dorm room with her, but not embarrass her by kissing her goodbye in front of her friends.

They immediately set to playing complicated games with their Breyer horses. Interestingly, they play a long, ongoing game ("It just goes on and on, Mom," Caroline explained to me once, "You know, like that soap opera you like to watch?") about the white horses and the black horses shunning each other and feuding and making life difficult for the dappled grey horses who try to be friends with both groups. Fascinating, yes? In their play, they argue over who gets to be the dappled grey horses, obviously the good peacemaker horses. Given that Caroline is Chinese, and Lani is half Japanese, I can't help wonder if their awareness of their skin color has led in some fashion to this game.

While they were playing, Caroline (in the role of a black horse) was describing a white horse as "stupid." But she knows that it's not nice to call someone "stupid" so, in her role playing she said, she spelled it out, very emphatically. "Those white horses are S-T-U-P-E-D!" If I hadn't been pretending they weren't there, I would have chuckled.

The present opening was fun...Caroline got horse related gifts and gave horse-related gifts back.





Here's Sarah, Caroline (aka The Birthday Girl) and Lani look at "Hold Your Horses," Lani's gift to Caroline. (It's a very funny look at life as a horse-lover.)

Roger took them to the pool for a while, which they loved. Me, I got to sit quietly and look at the February Martha Stewart Living magazine and read my wonderful English novel, The Married Man (a truly delightful and witty book). All too soon, they were back dripping and clamoring for food. So, per TBG's request, we ordered pizza from a place that delivered and they ate by themselves while Roger and I ate our dinner in the other room and watched "Shall We Dance" with Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. Very cute.

Another funny moment...As I served their dinner, I asked "Do you girls mind eating without Roger and me?" "No!" they shouted in unison. "Parents just want to talk about dull stuff," said Sarah. "And we don't get to talk about horses the whole time if parents are here," chimed in Caroline. "And they always tell you to put your feet down," added Lani, rolling her eyes. All of those are true, in our house, but the last amused me because I do say that to Caroline all the time, with a weird flash back to my childhood when my mom said that constantly to me.

Chocolate cake (with a horse head drawn on it, by Caroline) and soda, eaten in pajamas...the perfect birthday slumber party treat.

This may be a bad mommy thing, but seeing as how a) it was a birthday and b) it was a hotel, I let them jump on the beds. That was a big thrill for all.


Three little monkeys jumping on the bed...Wait! How'd daddy get in there?

Sunday brought more horse-play (in the four legged sense of the word), more swimming, more jumping. By the time we left the hotel at about 12:30, they were clearly exhausted. We stopped for lunch on the way home, at a very fun diner. ("It's my favorite restaurant in the WHOLE WORLD!" Sarah said, delighted, as we pulled into the parking lot.) They all brought their Breyer horses in with them, and Caroline set hers on the table. The waitress, breezing by to drop menus with us, said jokingly "No horses allowed in the restaurant!" Caroline snatched her horse, looking mortified and then was so embarrassed that she began to cry. (Yep, overtired.) The waitress was then horrified at Caroline's reaction, which you'd think would have entitled the girls to free ice cream. Which in fact came with the kids' lunches anyway.

So, we're home, we're tired, but we've had fun. Caroline hit her bed early and conked out, and Roger and I will not be far behind.

A Gala Weekend

This is what we'll be doing on Saturday. Sort of.

Saturday, January 29 is Caroline's 9th birthday. And to celebrate, we're stealing a page from the party book of our friends Eric and Diane, and we're taking Caroline and two of her friends for a slumber party at a hotel with an indoor pool.

Okay, it's not the Ritz...it's an Embassy Suites Hotel which, from Caroline's point of view, represents the height of elegance. It has an indoor pool, a glass elevator, tv, and a breakfast buffet where she can pick whatever she wants. Can a hotel BE more glamorous?!

So, we'll head down in the afternoon (so Caroline can celebrate her birthday with the ponies at the pony school for her riding lesson), and the girls will probably spend a great deal of time swimming. I did some research on fun places to go for birthday dinner, only to find that what Caroline wants to do is have pizza delivered to the room so she, Lani and Sarah can eat pizza in their hotel room sitting on the floor. There is, of course, birthday cake for dessert.

Roger and I figure we'll watch them swim, and maybe even join them a bit, who knows. I'll probably just stroll around the pool in my bathing suit and high heels, as pictured above.

The vision, frustrated...

I came to a realization today. Here's a common process for me: I have an idea that really excites me, with a pretty clear vision of what I want to do and where I want to go with a piece. I crave the time to get started, and am excited when I finally am able to jump in. I start, and work happily for a while until I'm well into the piece. It starts looking what I envisioned, roughly... but not quite.

Frequently, at this point, life interrupts. The day ends, family needs beckon, "real" work rears its ugly and demanding head, and I have to stop to attend to things. My piece sits, mid-progress, on the design wall. It's enough like what I want to do that it's encouraging me, but it's also UNlike my vision enough that it's vaguely frustrating.

Here's the place where, very easily, I can stall the project. My discipline is variable enough that at times I push on, and I'm happy with the end product...at other times, I'm, well, just stalled. No interest in continuing, the excitement that got me started has waned, and the thing looks plain stupid and uninteresting up there.

There are times when I need to mull things over. A solution isn't immediately apparent, but letting the piece percolate in my mind will eventually give rise to the decision about what to do next. But, at other times, I just lose connection to the piece and don't have much interest in going further.

Sometimes, the basic fact of a deadline for a challenge or specific deadline is what pushes me forward to finish it. And I'm always pleased that I did push forward to do the work to finish it. This middle stage is where things look worst...the piece is well enough defined to vaguely satifsy that initial creative impulse, but it's far enough away so that it's not good.

So, here's my revelation. I either have to use challenges or other external deadlines to push me to finish things, or I have to impose the discipline on myself to just keep working on the piece until it's done. I think it's been too easy for me to let myself stall on a project that I liked at the outset, and I have to pay attention and not let myself do that.

This doesn't sound like a major revelation, does it? It sounds like common sense. I know. You're thinking, "well, DUH." Well, today I started a piece I've been thinking about for months. I spent several happy hours working on it, so that it's at a place where it's beginning to look like what I envision. But I had to stop for family life--and I know that it's going to be a few days, at least, before I have a chunk of time to work on it again. I can already feel the excitement starting to fade.

I'm not sure if the solution is to NOT put it on my wall, so I'm happily surprised when I put it up again in a few days...Or if I should leave it up with the idea that it'll keep me thinking about how to achieve the look I want. For now, it's up. And maybe I can steal a few hours tonight to keep moving forward.

Maybe this blog will keep me honest!

Rereading

Do you reread novels you've already read?

I do, occasionally. I have some books on my shelves that I keep for comfort reading...I pull them out when I'm sick with the flu or I'm in between books and in need of something that will make me feel good. They include mysteries by Mary Stewart (like "Airs Above the Ground" and "This Rough Magic") and , and sweet English stories set in Cornwall by Rosamunde Pilcher. (I'm going to get to Cornwall some day. That's for sure.)

There are times that I decide to reread a book because I just loved it so much and it has more to give me. All time favorites, such as Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies, are in that category. I can also re-read Anne Rivers Siddons novels because the writing is so comfortable and enjoyable and rich.

Well, I think I have a new author to add to my "re-read" list: Elizabeth Berg. Have you read any of her novels? Her most recent is "The Art of Mending," a lovely and beautifully written story of three siblings coming to terms with the death of their father and the realization that they had different experiences of their parents in the same family. The narrator is a quilt artist, by the way, and there are some wonderful passages about her feeling about her work her love of fabric, her studio, like this one:

"Sometimes a dinner guest will ask to see my studio -- it's almost always a woman, although occasionally a man will want to see -- and whenever they do, they stand still in appreciative wonder (the men with their hands in their pockets) and usually say just one word: Wow. It doesn't matter if they like to sew or not, they just appreciate seeing a room so completely stocked, so richly reflective of a person's passion. It's similar to the way a lot of people love hardware stores. Whether you know what the things are or not, they're all there. "

Anyway. I love her writing. All of her stories had an intimacy to them, as if you're talking to your best friend who is very articulate. And her plots tend to capture seemingly small things that, in the context of relationships and families, are huge. I highly recommend her.

Me, I'm going to sit for a bit and re-read "The Art of Mending."

The Final Pointless Sisters' Blocks!

The Pointless Sisters met today and revealed our final blocks....Drum roll, please.... (As always, click on a picture to see a larger version.)


Here are the arches, in blue and burgundy.

Houses, in red and black...

Pears, in purple and gold...

Intersecting lines, in turquoise and orange...

Arrows, in black and white...

Spirals, in red and purple...

Squares, in black and white (these are for me!)

Fish, in burgundy and gold...

Curves, in turquoise and bright pink...

Raindrop, in pink and blue...

Trianges, in blue and purple...

Numbers, in turquoise and lime green...

Hats, in rust and turquoise...

Split leaves, in brown and gold...

Ellipses, in rust and blue...

Butterflies, in blue and yellow...

Vases, in lime green and purple...

And, last but not least, stars in blue and yellow. Aren't they all great?!

Monday, Monday

How is it that I start every Monday anticipating a relaxing quiet day after a busy weekend, AND I plan to get all sorts of things done? And neither happens...I seem to skitter around, getting some things done (but of course not all the things on my overly-ambitious list). My dream these days is to sit and watch a movie all the way through, without interruption. Not a big thing to ask, eh? I think I'm going to have to stay up until midnight to do it, though.

Anyway. Today was another of those Mondays. I did get a bit of quiet time to sip my coffee after Roger and Caroline left for school, and I watched Simply Quilts. Ironically, in light of the ongoing cross-blog discussion over "To Challenge or Not to Challenge," the episode featured three quilters who had been challenged by Alex Anderson to make quilt blocks out of the same five red fabrics. It was interesting to see what each quilter did with the same fabrics, and then another quilter put them all together in what struck me as a rather bizarre construction. But it was a fun show to watch for 30 minutes.

Then, I got my last blocks made, with over 24 hours to spare! Sheesh! Plenty of time! I'm looking forward to our Pointless Sisters luncheon tomorrow, when we reveal and exchange our blocks. I'm sure it will be a very fun day.

Then I was off on errands...Dropped in on my friend Jenny to give her a quilt I'd machine quilted for her (an auction item for her daughters' school...a quickie quilting project for me). After a quick visit with her (complete with entertainment: a 3 year old, a year-old puppy and a six-week old kitten, all tumbling together on the floor), I headed off to do a bit of shopping. Then a quick trip to the library for a new stack of books, a visit to my sister's to deliver the mail I'd collected for her while she was out of town...where I detoured to help her put together a cute hutch type item from Ikea. From there, it was time to pick Caroline from school, and then we went to the health club we just joined a week ago.

The health club thing is a new adventure for us as a family. But Roger and I sorely need exercise and we figure it's good to get Caroline in the routine while she's young. One of the best features about the club (and one that balances off the fact that it's 15 minutes away) is the wonderful swimming pools...Three! A kiddie pool, a large general pool for swimming, messing around, aqua aerobics classes etc, and a large lap pool. So, we know that in the summer we'll be there a lot, and Caroline will always want to go to swim. Today, she did her homework in the "Kids' Club" child care room while I worked out on cardio machines, then we both swam and then relaxed in the jacuzzi. A very nice afternoon, although we both wanted to go straight to bed when we got home!

Here's my house block. I was aiming for something simple, sort of "essence of house" without being a cute picture of a house. I adapted a logo I found on the internet and stitched it. As a block alone it's not that interesting, but among the other blocks I think it will look good and be something different.

This was, for some reason, the hardest block for me...an arch in burgundy and blue. I tried all sorts of arches -- eyebrows, window frames, doorways, even a brick-type arch. I finally settled on this Japanese style one, again thinking of having something different among all the other arches.

Down to the last few blocks. Here's my red and purple spiral. I think this will look even better cropped down to the finished size, so that the edges are cut off.

A teardrop, in blue and fuschia. I had gotten this subtly blended fabric a few weeks ago at Pumpkinseed Quilts, not knowing what I'd use it for...but it's perfect for this. It comes in all sort of colorways. See, it was GOOD that I bought it in all different colors! Just goes to show that it's good to buy fabric when you love it, even when you don't know what you're going to use it for at the time of purchase.

The assigned shape here was a split leaf, in rusty-brown and yellow. I fiddled with this block for ages, too.

Art supplies

Another Sunday where my goal was to get certain things done (just 2 more Pointless Sister blocks!) ... and I haven't even started them yet.

But I've been busy. Cleaned the bedroom. Washed, folded, and put away 3 loads of laundry. Went out to the garage to get something, and got sidetracked with rubber stamps.

Yes, that's right. Rubber stamps. I've collected rubber stamps since I was in college, which was (ahem) over 20 years ago. My first stamp was a bolt of fabric! But I became more and more obsessed with stamps, which led me to paper arts and book making, which led me to making and selling and exhibiting artist books, which led me to teach book arts... Somewhere in there, the process of making books to be class samples, to be student tools, and working on books to make money took all the fun out of it for me. I slid back into fabric and haven't looked back.

And meanwhile, all my stamps are out in the garage, unused but not unloved. I've tried to weed out more and more of them to sell them. I hate to think of them not being used, but let's face it, I'm not going to use most of them again. I'd rather they were in the hands of avid stampers who'll appreciate them. I've sold some on Ebay ... and although that was actually pretty lucrative, the listing and keeping track and mailing out was hugely time consuming.

So, my friend Elaine is going to take a batch up to her (and my former) book arts guild, to see if they'll sell up there. That way, I'll get a bit of money for them, they'll get great stamps for cheap, and I'll know that people who'll use them have them. That's the idea, anyway. I spent about 90 minutes sorting stamps, into "sell" and "keep." I have a hard time parting with things that conjure up my past so vividly...where I was when I bought it, who I was with, what I made with it, the studio in my New Hampshire apartment where I made all those books and did so much stamping... I'm getting ruthless about parting with them, but still, there are quite a few I must keep.

Freedom to Stop

Today was Quilt Guild day, and a very good meeting too. Once a month, we have a guest speaker, and today's guest was Cara Gulati. She's a quilter from Marin County who has made some colorful 3-D effect quilts with great success. And she gave a delightful presentation, touring us through her progress as an art quilter.

Seeing the quilts was great fun, as it always is. And, for part of the time, I was one of the "quilt holders" so I got to see them up close and marvel over the clever quilting patterns. (Cara noted that she quilts on a Juki, like me!)

But here's the most important thing I came away with: it's okay not to finish a project.

Now, I know this. In my brain, I know that I can do whatever I want, and if I don't want to finish something, I don't need to. But in some corner of my mind, there's the 11 year old, hearing my mother scold me that I have to finish what I start. So, for each unfinished project I have, there's a bit of guilt floating around my brain.

C'mon, I'm a grown-up. I don't need someone to tell me that it's okay to stop doing something.... At least I didn't think I needed that. It's even what I'd say to anyone else: If you've gotten what you want to get out of a project, then that's it, you're done. No need to go further, if you don't want to. But, on some level, somewhere deep inside, I don't wholly feel that.

But how amazing it is to have someone tell you something OUTLOUD that you already know. (This reminds me vaguely of my experience in therapy! ) I was surprised at the "lightbulb: ON" feeling I had when Cara said, about various projects she held up, "I made this top and I didn't want to go any further, so it's done." What a simple concept, eh? Cara even added that she'd have thrown them or given them away, but they're useful in her lecture.

I thought of the stuff I have hanging around in the closet, mostly projects I started in workshops that I took to learn a particular technique. I've been ambivalent about them...I had a great time working on them, I liked working on a new technique, but I don't have any interest in working on those pieces. (In most cases, they're someone else's design or pattern.) But I've kept them, thinking I SHOULD finish them up.

Well, now I'm done with that. I learned what I wanted to learn from the process and it's okay to let them go. They're served their purpose. I'm done, and I'm free!

Here are the most recent of my Pointless Sister blocks. I was having a heck of a time coming up with a non-trite butterfly, then settled on this close-up of a butterfly wing. I love it, and want to explore this in a bigger format.

A hat, with the specified terra cotta and turquoise. This was a good exercise for me in using color to create light and shadow, and using stitching to blend. I'm happy with how this turned out, especially since it doesn't look like a "cute" straw hat.

An ellipse, in blue and burnt orange. (I didn't think I had any "burnt orange" fabric--this is as close as I could come in my stash. But here's that close-up view again, which I like. Another idea to explore. It'd be fun to do a close-up series.

Finding Myself, Losing Myself

Given that my friend and all-around inspirational person Melody and I have discovered that we have so much in common that we must be long-lost sisters, it comes as no surprise to me that the very topic on my mind for blogging this morning is the one she has posted about today, too. It's the little matter of finding one's own voice in art, and how easily it is to get distracted from the work required to do so.

I'm guilty of this, to be sure. I do not have confidence in myself as an artist, especially in the art quilt arena. I mean, I'm not making art to sell, I'm not trained as an artist, I do this for my own joy and satisfaction and sanity. I don't have a clear, specific direction in mind. I don't have any vision of what I want to create. I don't have any specific concept I want to communicate through art. I only know that working with fabric and color makes me happy, and that the process of creating feeds me in a way that is absolutely essential to my well-being. I'm exploring, playing, learning...and I'm getting a glimmer of a feeling that I'm on the way to finding my style. But it's just a glimmer.

So, it's easy for me to find myself agreeing to participate in projects. A guild challenge? Sure, that'd be fun. A few more workshops? Sure, those would be fun. But what's more, they provide me more opportunities to learn new techniques, work with different images and styles, and they force me to be creative in a way I might not otherwise make time to do on my own. So, there's good there... but suddenly, I have a host of projects to finish and deadlines to meet that get in the way of my exploring the artistic whims that strike me.

I'm quite torn about whether these things help, or hinder. Actually, I think they do both. There isn't any reason that the circumstance of a challenge can't be used to explore an idea or theme or technique that I want to explore for my own purposes. That's my internal rule, in fact: I'll only participate in a challenge or "externally imposed" project if it allows me to follow something I want to do anyway.

And I find that having to come up with ideas and images for a challenge project (as with these Pointless Sister blocks I'm finishing) lead me to areas I want to explore further, for myself. For example, I've been stuck on this one block...a butterfly, in blue and yellow. Ug, I thought, how trite. But as I struggled to come up with something that I wanted to make, and that would express something about me or my vision, I came up with a block I love. The project pushed me to find something I wouldn't have found, otherwise. And I'm planning on turning it into a larger piece, to work it further.

But yes, it's so easy to lose sight of why doing this is important to ME. I love the frienship and community and commraderie of quilting...but I've ventured this far because I'm yearning to create original work that only I can make.

I had an interesting experience a while ago. Through my guild, I met a woman whose art work just bowls me over. She's not a traditional quilter...doesn't even call her pieces quilts, even. But she does interesting things with fabric collage, and I arranged to have some one-on-one workshop time with her to find out more about her process. As we talked, she honed in on one photograph that I'd taken some years ago, and that happened to be among the pictures I had when I was showing her the sort of idea I wanted to work on. It wasn't at all anything I want to work with, and I went in another direction and worked on a piece I like a lot. But now, every time I see her, she says something like "I really want to see you do that other picture..." SHE has this vision of where SHE wants me to go, but I don't want to go there.

So... here is my promise to myself: I'll work on work that fills and enriches me, and helps me grow. I won't sign onto projects unless I truly believe that they'll help me go in the direction *I* want to go. I'll pay close attention to moving myself forward as an artist and to doing work that expresses my own vision. I'll make time to work on MY work, for me.

Peace and Quiet?

It's been a strangely restful 24 hours.

The explanation? Caroline has had a sleep-over playdate at her friend Lani's house. I dropped her off at 2pm yesterday, and Roger picked her up about an hour ago.

It's very disconcerting to have a whole 24 hours without Caroline in the house. She's done the occasional sleep-over (two, to be exact, and for each of those she left just before dinner and returned at around 10 am). Roger and I keep looking at each other with a vague sense of not knowing what to do with ourselves. It was so QUIET without the constant chatter about ponies and cats and Power Rangers and gymnastics and coloring and...well, you get the idea.

So, trying to take advantage of our strange, free time, Roger and I did what any self-respecting couple would do...we went car shopping. I kid you not. (Have you ever tried to do that with a child in tow? It's not fun at the best of times, and take a kid along and it's miserable...although Caroline has given us a reason to escape overbearing salespeople. Anyway, we're starting to think it's time to replace my beloved Mazda MPV. It's been the perfect car...not a van (I refuse to drive a vehicle with sliding doors. I REFUSE), more like an SUV with van-ish interior. So, we looked at Ford Explorers, Nisson Pathfinders, Toyota Pilots, even a weird Cadillac SUV type thing that seemed like a station wagon on steroids. It was our first outing and we just mainly looked at styles and seating and such. It reminded me of how unpleasant car shopping is. Funny, I like shopping, and I like cars...but the two things together are just icky.

Then, we rewarded ourselves with dinner at our favorite local restaurant, Zin. We indulged in a bottle of "Liar's Dice" zin (a great wine from Murphy-Goode) and an appetizer of the restaurant's famous fried green beans. We shared an amazing salad of beets and orange slices and frisee lettuce in a meyer lemon vinaigrette, and then I had a lamb dish with olives and little gnocci and broccolini on the side...very yummy. We ended up chatting with the people seated next to us, who were in Healdsburg for the weekend wine tasting and escaping from their apparently frantic lives in SF. They were amusing, and exclaimed about the wine in the sort of language that one only reads on wine labels. And yes, it sounds even more pretentious out loud and heard from the next table.

Segue to Monday morning, where I would have slept in but for an early conference call with lawyers on the east coast. I hung up with a list of 3 new assignments...good income, bad for play time. Oh well, it all keeps me in fabric.

And, after getting time to do one massive legal project today, I made a few more blocks. And Caroline reappeared, happy and tired and bursting with tales of her adventure at Lani's house. Lani is a friend from pony camp, so they both adore horses and can enact scenes with the Bryer horses for hours on end. Lani has two new kittens, a fact about which Caroline is very envious, AND they got to go ice skating and to a candy shop where they were permitted to share a foot-long gummy worm. Could any girl's 24 hours be any better?!