Plans gone awry…

First, I have to say Happy Birthday to my now 17 year old daughter who has her driver’s license and can’t wait to find places to drive.  She decided she has to drive to the High School tomorrow because her rather large woodworking project is ready to be brought home.  Timing…  Good job Brianna!

I sat down at the computer this morning, after getting her off with the driving instructor who would take her for her test, and my plan was to catch up on some contracts and proposals that needed some attention, and start preparation for tagging and photographing items for the guild sale this weekend.  Silly me, what was I thinking…

It all started when I happened to look ahead on my Google Calendar, all the way to tomorrow.  I noticed that I was suppose to deliver my piece for the Visual Art Center Blank Canvas auction, and I completely panicked.  The piece isn’t even made yet.  Then I looked at the original sheet with the dates, and the piece isn’t due until November 20th.  Big relief!  🙂

Then I found an ad for an exhibit in Texas, an international juried art competition, but the application had to be sent out today.  🙁  So I started looking through the artwork I have committed to specific exhibits to see what pieces would be available for submission.  I came upon the outstanding entry form for the New Jersey Focus for the Art Center of Northern New Jersey exhibit, and looked at the dates and nearly had a heart attack when I read that all accepted work was due today.  🙁  I never heard from them, so my assumption was they didn’t get my application?  I called them.  In fact my work had been accepted, and it was due today, and by the way, I never picked up my piece last week from the International Juried Show…   Hmmm…..  Well, I did apparently screw up there.  I failed to mark on my trusty calendar that I had to actually pick the work up when the show was over, you may recall, that was the piece where I won the Merit award.  (In my defense, I rarely exhibit in a show that doesn’t involve shipping a piece and prepaying the return shipping, so it isn’t something I pay attention to, the piece just shows up on my doorstep. ) OK, so I just had to gather the work that had to be brought to the Art Center for the next show, and pick up my poor orphaned piece I had left behind.  I don’t usually make mistakes like that.

I went to my files to see what pieces had in fact been accepted.  🙂 And I nearly had another heart attack when I realized that one of the pieces had been woven, but it had never been mounted on a frame. 🙁  I didn’t even have the frame.  It was a big piece, 28 x 24″  and I just stood frozen in my studio for a good couple of minutes.  Then I sprung into action.  First I searched my stick barrel in the studio, every weaver has one.  Lease Sticks, Temples, wood slats for warping, dowels, yardsticks, all things long and wood-like reside in the barrel in the corner.  And there, like a gift from heaven, were two 28″ stretcher bars, and two 24″ ones.  🙂  This is my lucky day!

Big SisterBig Sister DetailI put them together, and built a padded cover, and then covered that with silk.  I mounted the artwork, a piece I wove a few months ago, a larger version of the original Big Sister, and carefully pinned it stretched on the frame.  Then I hand sewed it to the silk, all the way around.  The whole process took about 4 hours, and I was finally able to head out to the art center around 2:30.  This was not what I was planning to do today.  And I found out the artist’s reception is Sunday when the show opens, right in the middle of the guild sale, and no where near the guild sale.  I hate calendar collisions.

I managed to get back from Bergen County around 4pm, which left me about 40 minutes to process images, burn a CD, fill out the paperwork, make out the check, place everything in an envelope and get it to the post office before it closed today for the exhibit at University of Texas at Tyler, which is what started this whole escapade today.  I did make it to the post office with five minutes to spare.

So nothing I had planned to do today got done, except putting in the proposals for Siever’s for next year.  But that’s life in the fast lane, we all went out tonight for all you can eat Sushi for my daughter’s birthday.  I am going to finish up this blog tonight and curl up in bed and read.  I’m in the middle of two good reads, one on my iPod, and the other on my night stand.  One is an Elizabeth Berg novel, about a woman who contracted polio in the 1950’s and was pregnant, and managed to give birth to her daughter while in an iron lung. She went on to raise her daughter by herself, in spite of being completely paralyzed.  Like I said, it is a good read.  The other book is by Brett Lott, called Jewel, about a family from Mississippi whose last child has what we now call Down’s syndrome, but back then, the term was Mongolian idiot.  Both books are from the same time period, and both take place in Mississippi, and I am always appalled reading about how we treated each other and how racism and prejudice were everyday occurrences.  We have come so far and yet, not far enough…

I finally got hold of some of the images my husband shot at the musical Once on this Island, performed last weekend at County College of Morris.  The show takes place in the French Antilles, in the 1950’s.  The story is a folk tale, of an orphan after a horrific storm, who was kept alive by the gods, and how she grew up among the peasants and the indigenous peoples of the island, but falls in love with one of the French Grande Hommes, after she rescues him from a car crash.

OnceOTIsland4OnceOTIsland2OnceOTIsland1I wanted to share the photos, because I helped with the costumes, providing some of the actual garments from my vast stash of amazing clothing.  The god of water, Agwé, wore my peacock vest, actually all four of the gods wore capes of some sort, so my peacock vest was perfect to give the illusion of sparkling waves as he turned and moved around the stage.  In one scene, he covers the orphan Ti Moune, who has been taken by the god of death, (on Agwé’s right in the first two photos), with a wave of water.

I copied a dress with some handpainted silk fabric from Thailand for Erzulie the goddess of love.  OnceOTIsland5The costumer added a cape, and the actress looked like a pink froth of love!  She moved and swirled, and it was all quite effective.  On her right was the goddess of the earth, Asaka, and I put one of my sari skirts on her, and reworked the cape from a costume from another venue.

OnceOTIsland3And of course, there was my son, who played the grandfather of all the french inhabitants of the island, Armand, who came in the time of Napoleon, and in spite of having a lovely wife, to his right, he slept with all the peasants.  My son loved the role…  I designed the look for Armand, and I provided the white lace dress for his “wife”, and the peasant to his left, has on one of my silk broomstick skirts.

After the show, we carried out a carload of garments and fabric, and I’m still cleaning everything.  I was glad to have had the opportunity to help with the costumes, I actually enjoy it, and the challenge of making up something from nothing, and it only has to look good from the audience, and not up close, and it only has to make it through a weekend of shows!  The complete opposite of how I actually work!

I’m going to try again tomorrow to work off some of my to do list.  Wish me luck…

All my children and roller coaster rides…

What a week!

EricFirst, my children are of the ages when roller coaster rides seem like canoe trips on a lake…  My son, who wore camouflage  his entire third grade year, has finally signed on the dotted line and joined the military.  He leaves for basic training for the Army National Guard on January 4th.  I’ve been asked by a number of friends, how do I feel about this?  Honestly, no one knows where life is going to take them, he parties hard for a 19 year old, and his motivation for anything involving work is pretty low.  I adore being around him and his friends, who seem to be living in my basement on a full time basis now, eating me out of house and home.  He is entertaining, kind, interesting, and I know I’ll really miss him when he grows up and goes out on his own, but I don’t see that happening without the structure of something like the military.  So, I’m OK with this decision, and pretty proud, he did this all on his own, gathered all the paperwork, medical records, and he is pretty excited about the future, for the first time in his life.

layoutIsland_DressMeanwhile, he has a roll in the musical Once on this Island, at the community college where he attends, and happily volunteered me to help the frazzled costumer, who has to come up with island/Carribbean costumes for 40 cast members.  My stash proved to be quite useful, where do I find these things?, and my first assignment was to copy a Hawaiian wrap dress out of a vintage handscreened handwoven silk from Thailand.  That was a fun 3 hour diversion.

I attended the rehearsal again last night, and now have a suitcase full of alterations to do today on top of finishing up my article for SS&D.  Shades of 27 dresses

ShelfThen there is my daughter.  My lovely adorable interesting and very capable pink haired daughter.  She is still in HS, and in between her honors physics and calculus classes, she has a class in Woodworking, Cabinet and Machine woods to be exact.  She loves the class, the only female, and fortunately it is her first period class and makes her mornings actually bearable.  This is the age of complete connectedness to your children, for better or for worse, and though it isn’t really permitted, the kids text blindly under the desk on a regular basis, so I know what goes on at school way more than I should!  Usually I get texts like, “Mom, the Yankee Candle order forms and money are due today.  I forgot, can you bring them over to the HS right away?”  But yesterday morning I got a text that just said, “Finished”.  Attached was a picture of her latest project in cabinet woods, a gorgeous oak shelving unit.  I know she will want to put it in her room, but I think I’ll fight her on this one.  It is beautiful!  I want it for me…

Later on in the day, I got a text that said, “I’m inspired… do you have any of that clear plastic fabric?”  This is always problematic, because when my daughter gets an idea, she runs with it, and doesn’t stop until it’s done.  Which means taking over my studio for an indeterminate amount of time.  She ended up making a tote bag, (inspired by my tote bag adventures) out of duct tape, saved candy wrappers (who saves their candy wrappers?) and clear plastic vinyl sheeting (which I did have in my studio).  She needed a small tote for her Japanese books for the Japanese class she is taking at the community college.  I’ll send along a photo when I can.

So this was more than a roller coaster week, aside from my children.  Back at the end of September, I applied to three exhibitions, where I thought my work might be appropriate.  They were all running during the same time frame, so it was quite a juggling act to see which of my artpieces I would send for which exhibition applications.  Once the applications are sent, it is a nail biting waiting game.  You’d think by now I’d be use to this.  I don’t think you ever get use to the waiting game, and ultimately the rejections that come with them.  Two of the notifications were suppose to be released on October 15th.  October 15th came and went, and nothing.  One of the applications was done online through Juried Art Services, so the notification would be online as well.  Either a green checkmark, or a red X.  Very personal.  I checked the website about every half hour for about 5 days straight.  Suddenly, there it was, two big red X’s.  And the accompanying note, if you actually clicked on the X’s read, “Thank you for your submission. We regret to inform you that your work was not chosen for this year’s exhibition.”  🙁

OK, so there were still two more applications out there, and I kept checking my snail mail, with eager anticipation, until the next notification popped up in my email box.  I hadn’t actually expected to hear from this exhibit quite this soon.  “Thank you for your submission.  It was a very difficult decision- making process as we received many applications. We are sorry to inform you that your work was not selected this year.”  🙁

OK, so there was still one more.  I was only out about $100 in entrance fees, and I had just won an award at an exhibit a couple weeks ago, so the roller coaster feeling of being high and then crashing down to the ground and rethinking your entire body of work, is all in a days work.

Then came the final notification, suddenly, in my inbox, a week overdue.

“Congratulations!  Thank you for your submission to the George Segal Gallery for Art Connections 6. This year over 175 artists submitted work for review with a total of over 750images to be juried. The quality of the work was outstanding, which made the selection process very challenging. The juror chose 182 works from 118 artists. You are one of those artists!”  🙂

This exhibit is actually at the new gallery that is part of Montclair State University, where I got my art degree in 1977.  So I sort of feel a little thrill at finally being able to come back and say to no one in particular, see what I did with your degree?  Like I said, this week has been a roller coaster ride.

fusingstashI did manage to make up that tote bag I started last week, I didn’t actually start it, more like laid a pile of the table of stuff that sort of related, and waited to see where it would take me.  I got the handwoven fabric laid out pretty quickly, but the companion complementary fabric just wasn’t working.  I rooted around in my stash a bit more, and found some raw silk I had used for sampling some fabric paints and stencils.  So I dug out my fabric paints and stencils and painted the rest.  I chose to do a more complex binding, which involved yarn and bias strips, and it took way longer than I could ever sell the tote bag for, I really find it hard to do inexpensive and simple, but I had a blast, and love the results.  I used one of my silk sari’s from India for the lining, and it made for a totepleasant day being one with my sewing detailmachine while the world rained chaos around me.  🙂

I’m Home!

Actually, I’ve been home for a couple of days, but I got in really late Tuesday night, and I hit the ground running Wednesday morning, with very little sleep.  Could it have been the caffeine I consumed to keep me awake for the four hour drive Tuesday night?  Duh…

Anyway, I spent Wednesday morning with my 16 year old daughter at the local county college, where she was taking advantage of a HS challenge program and signing up for a class in Japanese.  Her five text books cost $125.  She was very excited to think of herself as a college student.  Of course she still has two more years of HS…  But it is a great opportunity and she will get college credit for the course.

I spent the rest of Wednesday unpacking, doing the laundry, actually working in the yard for an hour, which felt wonderful.  I haven’t spent any time, either working on or enjoying my lovely gardens this summer, and playing in the dirt after such a grueling six weeks of conferences was healing.  My husband, bless him, has done an amazing job keeping up the gardens which I assure you is NOT a one person job.  There is a ton of weeding that needs to be done, to be sure, but he has kept the worst of the weeds at bay, and installed a ton of downlights around the ponds, which glow like fairy pools in the late evening.  I’m looking forward to the fall, which is usually glorious in NJ.

Last night, my husband and I bought tickets, right before I left, for Noises Off, at the NJ Shakespeare Theatre which is housed in a gorgeous building at Drew University in Madison, NJ.  We bought the tickets based on the Newspaper review, which was stellar, and we laughed through the entire performance.  I adore British farces, lots of door slamming, flawless timing, as only a Shakespeare Company can do, and we enjoyed the show so much, we bought additional tickets for Twelfth Night, and The Grapes of Wrath, which close out the 2009 season.  In addition, we just received the season tickets for the Papermill Playhouse.  So much live theatre to see!

So today, I looked at my poor neglected house, and decided that I needed to spend the day, really cleaning it, which meant all sorts of detours, including cleaning out the snake cage.  Don’t ask.  I worked straight through the day, and only managed to clean one floor.  That’s what happens when you leave for a few weeks, the house gets dirty without you.  I’ll continue it tomorrow, but tomorrow, being the end of the month, is paperwork day.  I have a huge stack, all the accounts and bills have to be addressed, and that will be my priority tomorrow.

Since Project Runway starts in half an hour, I thought I’d post the photos of the jackets from my class at the Felter’s Fling.  They were amazing.  I had five students, and they were working like crazy right up to the end, there are still a lot of pins in the jackets, along with tailor’s tacks, and errant threads.  But everyone was really thrilled, they learned so much, and I heard from more than one student that, “they enjoyed this so much they might even start sewing!”

lisa_frontlisa_backbonnie_lisabonnie_frontbonnie_backdawna_jacketgisela_frontkris_frontkris_back

Sunday the First

I can’t believe it is March already.  Unfortunately, it feels like January.  At least in the north east.  We have a snow storm on the way, up to 12″, depending on what forecast you listen to.  This is making me very nervous.  I know what Newark airport is like the day after a snow storm, and I am flying to California on Tuesday.  If I miss my connection in Houston, I am most likely going to miss the start of the conference and my class.  But my brain is famous for running amok with just a little bit of information.  It makes me really good at what I do, but miserable to live with…  🙂

So, I am in overtime drive here, trying to calm my frayed nerves, remembering this is all out of my control, and that what will be will be, and that it always works out.  Weavers are really flexible, and know how to get out of difficult tangled messes!

The show last night was a lot of fun.  We attended the musical Footloose at a local private school, this is the show where I altered 33 dresses for the production.  Back in early February I was asked to so some alterations and dressmaking, and I did have a lot of fun with it, but now that I’ve seen the show I have an interesting perspective here.  The dance scene is the final scene in Footloose.  Most of the dresses I altered were for that scene.  The scene was maybe two-three minutes long, tops.  The entire ensemble was on stage, so many of the dresses were in the back row, and couldn’t even be seen.  I have to wonder if all the work I did was really necessary for two minutes of time on stage.  That’s the funny thing with costuming.  Always weighing, how long will this actually be seen, versus the cost of the alteration and will it even be noticed.  I was sort of sad the cast wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to inspect all my hard work!  But of course, it wasn’t about me and the alterations.  The girls looked great, colorful, and much more current than some of the original dated dresses.  The show was fun, and I enjoyed watching the kids sing their hearts out.

Today I spent updating my laptop in preparation for the trip, that meant 13 Windows updates, and virus definitions updates, and 329 emails off the server, and moving over all the updated presentations, and realizing I didn’t have Photoshop Elements 6 in the laptop, only version 4, I had to install that as well.  I also backed up my Palm organizer, and other critical things along with the access codes to my blog.

This afternoon I had a real treat, I headed over to the local County College, the one where my son is a theatre major.  They were having a retrospective weekend of their 40 years in the arts, and Friday night we attended an overview of the entire fine and performing art department, theatre, gallery exhibits, dance, and some beautiful music.  This afternoon was a two hour Dance retrospective, some really terrific original modern dances, some award winning, and all of it current, thoughtful, colorful, and even humorous.  It was a wonderfully spent $15.   I think if I had unlimited funds and nothing else to do with my life, I’d attend the theatre daily, all sorts of things, living in the NYC area, we have access to so much it can be overwhelming.  Montclair State University has a fabulous new performing arts theatre, it is 7 miles from my house, and I could attend some event weekly and not break the bank.  And there is some fresh new original work being seen at some of these colleges and universities. So little time, so much to see…

Well, there is nothing to do now but ride out the storm, pack tomorrow, and hope I get out of Dodge on Tuesday!  My intent is to blog while I am on the road.  Since I haven’t done it before, and we are trying to locate my travel camera which mysteriously disappeared off my desk (could either of my two teenagers have anything to do with its disappearance?), I can’t guarantee there will be posts from sunny southern California, but I’m going to try.  Speaking of ‘sunny’, Continental sent me my trip notes, and it isnt’ so warm there, in the high 50’s and low 60’s.  I think I need to change what I was planning to bring for clothing…