Wow. It's like I'm purposely collecting a mountain of To Do's.

Three or four opportunities are sitting in my inbox right now, things which are no brainers.

The mom sitch is still at code yellow, though orange alert seems inevitable. I am well aware that I need to not ignore my life in the process of making phone calls and getting advice. I should probably start an anonymous blog about the whole mom thing rather than spill my guts here.

Which brings me to my day today:

• Insomnia. Probably due to expecting....
• Early morning phone call with mom's doctor.
• Coffee.
• YOGA!!!!! (20 in a row days, I'm on a streak.)
• Walked Fang before the rain started again
• Took Fang to vet for routine "senior panel." No he wasn't a guest speaker- $273 worth of tests and thyroid meds. He was such a great guy today. Mr. Mellow.
• Correspondence. By the way, anyone out there teaching Photoshop or Illustrator? I've been asked to teach a class next fall and am looking for some interesting projects to assign.
• Spent a little time on FB in a thread discussing Abstract Art in the 21st century. Good to know it's still a relevant topic since just last week I decided my pools and flowers were abstract, and not representational. Hah. Solved that issue.
• Fixed lunch. Not that it was broken.
• Started one of my inbox proposals.
• Continued work on 3 paintings.
• Mulled over titles for solo show.
• Connected dots.
• Checked in with blog.

This is a deadline week.

I don't think I should log in again until I can check some BIG things off the to-do list. My mantra for this week: Art office work is the result of art studio work.

Stuck.

1. Describe the work you intend to pursue during the grant period.

For starters, I'll just tell you why that sentence stops me in my tracks. The grant period takes place in the future, approximately 7-10 months from now. With all due respect to artists who have a crystal clear vision of what their work will be about in advance, I do not. My work is responsive to the present and right now I'm working myself into a lather trying to even think about how to craft a paragraph that is descriptive of work I have not yet created in lieu of the fact that I am just now evaluating work I painted THIS year and on top of that, I have thrown myself the biggest wrench in the system ever by a) drastically changing scale and b) gadzooks- using imagery from real life. Even if I weren't at a crossroads in the studio, this question always feel like a ripe opp for some heavy BS and I'm so anti-bs right now.

2. What are the goals of the project?

This is actually a little easier. Although I can not yet articulate the work I intend to pursue, the visuals are registering in at about 95%, meaning I can roughly visualize the final project installed and ready for viewing. I know then, that it will have to do with some personal things, some technical things and successfully blending the two. Goals are things to aim for.

3. How will pursuing this work advance your artistic practice?

That's an easy one.

4. What are your motivations and methods?

Not terribly difficult, but still hearkens back to question #1 and #2.

5. Would you prefer we scrapped all this paperwork and set up an appointment for a mind- meld?

Most def.

Nose to grindstone.

Back in Chicago, Hello Nasty was my running mate. One of my favorite lines was it's like lotto you gotta be in it to win it. (Putting Shame in Your Game.)

I slacked off for a bit in the application department. I needed a break from paperwork, plus- and not to jinx myself, but I was spurred on by Tracy's comment last week and got a residency app in the mail, just under deadline, (I think). I'm back in the app and opp saddle because it's like lotto, you gotta be in it to win it.

Sometimes I pretend my blog is more private than it really is, but I haven't had a drink in 5 years and I'm really happy about that today.

A lot on my mind after one week.

In no particular order....
Thanks to SB at TCOP, I came across this post by Joanne Materra. My thoughts exactly. I understand the need for undergrads to possibly have recco letters, because one, I believe letter-writing skills are important and it helps younger artists make connections. Recently, for a grant app and for job searches, I've had to ask people for letters or ask if they'll be a reference at which point they might be asked to write a letter. At the other end, someone asked me to endorse them by writing a letter to be posted on linkedin. I did, because it seemed like the generous thing to do and I had no real reason not to, but then after reading Sharon's request for recco letters as an art project, I was having trouble discerning the linkedin request, which to my knowledge was NOT an art project, from the art project of requesting letters. In the end, it's going to look the same. Linkedin person will accumulate a plethora of supportive letters and let's face it, there are not enough words in the dictionary to make enthusiastic letters of ref sound sincere without sounding ridiculous, so I imagine at some point, it will be repetitive and humorous, as I imagine Sharon's project will soon point out. Or not. I could be way off.

When writing a letter of rec for a student, I believe there is an honest attempt at getting the blatant point across using language we all know and love, but the bottom line is, will this student handle criticism, are they self-motivated and would you hedge your bets on whether they will contribute to the greater whole? The end. YES, NO, MAYBE. But in the grant world, by the looks of my resume, statement and jpegs, you should be able to discern my level of commitment. my ability to follow through on things, my seriousness as an artist and to some degree, my part in contributing to the greater whole. Or just ask me point blank.

The fun part was that I spread out on the floor in the living room and worked, and I'm not cleaning it up until I'm finished.

√ Images, sized and selected

( ) ID list

√ Cover letter

√ Budget

( ) Updated statement. Almost dammit, almost.

√ Résumé

I don't know what to say. Quicken was whupping my ass. I had statements to reconcile, categories to clean up, accounts to merge. I am no Luddite, but sometimes pen and paper seem so much more efficient.

Tomorrow it goes in an envelope.

I did NOT work at a desk today. I worked on the floor and it went much better- faster, smoother, and I had much more concentration. This is very good to know. Desks and office chairs, pfft. I have discovered the secret to streamlined productivity and it starts with an IKEA coffee table and the IKEA Alseda stool.

No, I'm even slower than molasses, but we're getting somewhere.

Seriously. It's been 6 days so far. Granted, I have fed and walked the dog, bathed, practiced basic hygiene, taken care of some other pressing matters, and even managed to leave the house for some things, but overall, I have been working on the application for 6 days. Is there a grant out there which will cover the time it takes to apply for a grant? A Paypal donation button hanging out in cyberspace, something, anything that provides immediate gratification for this type of work? There are probably boilerplate examples out there, but even if I wanted to have a nonchalant non-interest in the process, I'd end up tweaking it until it wasn't boilerplate anymore, so what would be the point?

The breakthrough news though is this. I banged out, literally, tap tap tap tap, an updated statemtn about the new work, not bothering to spellcheck or figre out thether the snestebes were acutally speleld wrie or made esne I knew what i was siting,but since i'm a 4 finger tuper, indecl tand kmiddle finerhn,mon both hand, somethings if y keys are nont in the right pace, it looks something like this. Better cutally since I was going slightly slower.

Then after I got the ideas in place, I spell-checked and added some punctuation. Total flow. I still need to figure out some wording and sentence structure. Some it it would only makes sense to me. For instance, I've misused a few words, but they're placeholders until I can get back in there and overall I was pleased at how the ideas presented themselves somewhat effortlessly.

***

I leave for Nashville on Wednesday for a long weekend. My goal is to have it in the mail BEFORE I go.

A vat of molasses I tell you.

I'll spare the details, but while working on a grant app which requires detail financial stuff, I had to re-enter and re-reconcile 4 months and 4 accounts worth of statements. And I know they had previously been entered and reconciled because after a statement is reconciled, I make an "R" on the statement, and not just any "R." No, I make an "R" that looks the the "S" on Superman's cape.

So I'm going just a little nuts from being on the computer for all sorts of things. My office is in the corner of my studio, so I've been able to sneak away a bit and work on a painting, but for all practical purposes, I'm in office mode for a while or at least until the winds of fate shift.

Please, Let Me Sleep And Hey, Look At This New Painting

Please, Let Me Sleep
I should be uploading some hi-res images for someone to look at, but I'm so frigging tired that I'll have to do in the morning, plus I misplaced the titles of two of the paintings which happen to be in storage, so I'll have to wait until tomorrow in order to check the titles anyway. Movers adage, "Touch only once." I also need to take better photos of a couple of them.

This is what I get for slacking off on my office work and not being so anal about documenting every single thing right after I make it. It's also what I get for procrastinating on titles and pretending I can live in general chaos while I focus only on painting.

I bought Aperture® a couple of years ago and although it has proved excellent for quickly resizing multiple images, it crashes every other minute, sometimes seconds and no, I am not lying or exaggerating; therefore, I do not trust it to be THE database for all my images. I wish I could, but until I have a few hours to kill with tech support, I have another really crappy database system in place. It's called, Folders with Tiff Files And The File Names Are Sometimes Too Long to Store All the Info, So It Too, is Imperfect. Functional, yes, but barely. Expedient, no.

Since I paid good money for Aperture, I intend on one day leaning how to be a power user, along with forcing it to not crash, but in the meanwhile, I'm curious what software or system others use to track inventory. Please share.

And Hey, Look At This New Painting


I'm stumped. It's a freak of studio nature and I don't know what else to do with it. I'm mesmerized by how it doesn't remotely look like anything I've ever done. It just somehow appeared like this. I swear. It's like it followed me home or something. Normally, I would call this an in-between stage and continue to muck around, but I'm letting it ferment in the studio until I have a solid good reason but overloading it. I KNOW it needs more, so the odds of me leaving it like this are 100:1. For one, the flower thing is bugging me how it just landed on the post thing. Two, I can't believe I painted a flower thing. Three, it's like, waaaaaay too representational for me considering it started out as some sort of geometric scaffolding holding up nothing. Four, it looks like wallpaper for a nostalgic greenhouse. A for Awkward.

A post in which I'll use the word 'truly' and 'verily' and hope no one will notice I'm redundant.

Truly, nay, verily, I'm in amazement.

In less than 2 weeks, I've had 1 good studio visit with a collector, 1 superfantastic studio visit with a bunch of superfantastic collectors, 1 sale, 1 mind-fuck, 2 inquiries, one workshop offer, 1 show, 1 class offer, 1 show cancellation, and 1 commission. On top of that, I've got a great group of students in my drawing class. The mind-fuck and the cancelled show, I could have done without, but other than that, I've experienced a rather pleasant course of events. I would call this "flow." Of course, right now, right this minute, I should be putting together a list for someone in hopes of another sale, but I was so damn excited after hearing the commission came through, I just had express my gratitude for being able to wake up, have coffee and work as an artist. Possibly in that order. I know that may sound a little blithe, but I am truly in awe of the timing. Plus, after working small all year, it will be fun to work large again knowing it will leave the studio immediately!

That took forever.

I finally, finally, finally completed my application for the civic arts RFQ. The process now requires that you use a site called Café. www.callforentry.org instead of wasting paper and cds. Kudos for that.

It was slightly time-consuming, but I'm on a MacBook and I type with three fingers. Man, though, it is done!!!!!!

I have at least one more obligatory fellowship app to do, but DL is not until March 6th.

I now have to build my ebay empire and tend to hawking my valuables and ephemera.

Also, my inner geek has download this widget in order to a) help me concentrate and b) cheer me self up. It's a dashboard timer I've set to alert every 15 minutes. The cool thing is I've set it to play a song from my iTunes library. So, 4 times every hour, I listen to "I Can See Clearly Now," by Johnny Nash. I started working on the computer at 9am this morning.

Behind the Scenes.

Things I do:

I teach.
I've been teaching consistently since 2001. At first I taught 3 classes a semester, then I went down to 2, then 1 or 2 depending on budget cuts and enrollment. Not to whine, but I was making a round-trip trek of 140 miles to teach a couple of classes at a college I really liked, and the distance and traffic got to be a bit much. Once in the rain it took me 4 hours to get there. I had planned ahead and was only an hour late. My students were still there. All of them, even the ne'er-do-wells. Pretty amazing. I had a really bad car wreck on the way home one day and decided I couldn't take the commute any more.

I paint.
Not much to say about this that I probably haven't already said, and yet, I'm sure there's stuff I've never said about painting. That's why I like painting. There's still so much to say.

I make stuff.
Not really hobbies, but it stems from when I was a kid making crafts with my mom. Decoupage was huge. Purses, plaques, etc. You name. we shellacked it. My dad had asthma, so eventually the fumes got to be too much and we stopped. I knit. I do wood burning, aka pyrography, and leather-tooling. Every so often I am motivated to sew something. Furniture rehabbing- some people take in stray dogs, I pick up chairs I see on the street. Sometimes desk and tables, but always chairs, benches and stools. Occasionally I am reminded of my DIY roots and I make an effort to market my crafts and cultural wares independently. I finally opened up an Etsy account last night. It's not under my name. I wanted it to be separate from my studio practice. It's not up and running yet, but if you think of a really dry but functional name, you could probably find my page. When I get finished pimping it, I'll post it.

I apply myself.
I like to keep things in motion. I apply for at least one grant every year. I think I'm on my 3rd year applying for The California Community Foundation Grant. It's there. I apply.

I also apply for public arts projects when I can envision my art fitting in with the proposal. Being an abstract artist and a non-designer makes this a little more challenging, but I still apply. A lot of grants want to know how your art will engage a diverse community. I think my art engages a diverse community, but I'll hand it to representational art for getting the point across in less time and more directly. Still, I apply because I believe that abstract art can communicate.

I brainstorm.
I do this a lot. Probably too much. In Chicago, an artist friend pulled me into a easy money gig. We sat in a high-rise building in Chicago and thought of product names for a couple of hours. I like to think. I took Latin. I like inventing things. I do this in my studio, but no one pays me and I don't have a view of Lake Michigan.

I'm not sure the relevance of today's post. I'm angsting about money. CAA is in a month and my heart's not into applying for teaching jobs all over the country. I'm getting ready to go to a workshop on how to generate a strong application for Los Angeles Civic Arts Program. Last time I attended a grant app workshop, I learned absolutely nothing new, but since public art is something I'd like to consider, I'm opening to the possibility it will contain useful information as opposed to tips on how to write an artist statement or how to shoot your work. At which point I will make the little motion of a gun to my head if the workshop leaders deem that relevant information worth driving downtown for. When I get back, I'll work on my cv and make an effort to look for teaching jobs all over the country, just so I can get depressed and wallow in self-pity. I'll upload stuff to etsy, finish a couple of apps and commit to working on a drawing/painting and reading another chapter of The Gift before before bed.

Lost was a little lame last night The whole, Flash! We're in the future, Flash! We're in the past, Flash! We're in the future, Flash! We're in the past, got old pretty quickly.

Still doing office work, but there is a new watercolor to view..

Well, the inauguration was this morning and wow! By the time I awoke and was onto coffee, the parade was just starting. I never watch TV during the day. No morning news, nothing.  Never, unless I'm sick. It took a few moments to relax into the history making of it all without wanting to make chicken soup and crawl under a blanket as a reflex. Fortunately it was sunny here and I have a ton of work to do, so after the hoopla, I was back in the studio, but only to work on computer stuff. Still uploading images for some upcoming grants opps out here and a few props I promised myself I'd do, just because. Am also considering the etsy thing, but I can only do so much in one day.

I did however upload another work to Smaller Works, so in times of lean posting, I may just link over there. 

***

I'm doing fairly well on some 2009 goals: 4 openings in 2 consecutive weekends is a record for me. January has a few more good things, like the art fairs and then Feb. is the CAA conference which is just a bit pricey for me this year, but it looks so interesting. I'd rather be working in the studio and figuring out my next move, but maybe it's time to be social for a spell. 

Perhaps I will discover more time in 2009.

Twoth (2009)

I am SO behind on things, but I'm also trying to have balance, which is why I cut out of the studio after accomplishing a task. I met a buyer while I was in Nashville and we got in a nice little chat about recycled products and the green economy. I was eyeballing the English Retread purses when she approached me, and after cooing over those bags, I told her about my Used Rubber bag which still looks brand new after 10 years. One thing led to another and as we were exchanging numbers I pulled out one of my homemade memo pads, which immediately caught her eye (she's a buyer) and led us into another discussion which ended with her recommending a site for me to check out, called supermarkethq.com. Like Etsy, but curated. Hopefully I'll get in. It's very design-oriented and I am anti-design-oriented, but who knows, maybe my anti-design will be considered design this year. This would be for my multiples and odds and ends stuff. I put that package together today. I make it sound like a huge deal- scanning the work, taking the pics, writing the bio, etc; It's not, but for some reason, I always have a Eureka! moment in the middle of doing something, which leads to either to an improvement or an offshoot idea, which I am compelled to implement on the spot. The printer also ran out of ink. I finally finished up that task and the offshoot brainstorming ideas that came with it, and called it a day. I am well aware I over-used and possibly mis-used 'which' in the above paragraph. My apologies to the grammar cops.

I'm behind on posting the new old stock of smaller works over at the smaller works site and I still have 4 paintings living in the studio without titles, not to mention that I've got to get rolling on those works again. I don't diversify easily.

So, I cut out of the studio after accomplishing one task, in order to make Matt a Red Velvet birthday cake. I'm still 5 days late. To be fair, his birthday was on Xmas day and I was in Nashville. It's my first RV cake and although I would rather have made it vegan, it's not my birthday, so I'm following my friend, Martha's recipe, and going full-on dairy.

I've left out the part about trying to troubleshoot a brand new answering machine from 2000 miles away.

Why yes, I was on the computer all day niggling at my website

Revamping my website is what I do when I'm restless. I've been waiting with baited breath about a small grant I applied for, which means I should apply for more stuff and be proactive instead of sitting on my ass waiting for the postman to bring me news. Sitting on my ass and waiting also refers to standing on my feet and painting. As much as I would love to wait for checks to roll in, I still need to hustle.

Back to work

Brief video coffee break on Skype, followed by testing iChat for possible multi-chat. I officially prefer Skpye for audio clarity and ease of menu navigation. I almost got in a virtual fisticuffs with a friend who is seriously lacking in social skills- over an error message I was receiving on iChat, so I disengaged before I needed to apologize for anything. I don't deal well with mean people, know-it-alls, and condescending arrogant cads. I mean seriously, who does? ( I guess that wasn't very nice of me to refer to my friend as a mean person, but I'm pretty sure they'd consider the rest of the description a complement.) Anyway, enough of the hurt feelings.

I'm working on a project proposal for LAX and my ADD kicks in while working on the computer. It's an easy app- I already wrote the proposal, and the tedious part seems to be just putting all the elements together and burning a disk. Silly, because it's not that tedious.

Next up is developing a small portfolio specifically for a corporate client and then after that I get to reward myself by putting together some ideas for a solo show.

Life is good, I just need to remain focused.

Stuff:

Why these things take me so long, I do not know. I finally finished 2 apps. They're sitting next to me waiting to be mailed. Since I am on a roll, it would behoove me to burn a couple more disks, handcraft another impeccable cover letter and knock out my as-yet-determined quota for keeping things flowing.

But that is not the case. The Culver City Artwalk is today and I feel obligated to leave my compound and look at other people's art for a change. Still, I may shoot for getting one more app out the door on the way to the Artwalk, but probably not because it's time for my afternoon espresso now.