I love sharing

  These past few weeks I’ve had opportunity to talk about my art with several college classes.  After each of these experiences I am a silk kite with no tether, soaring, twirling, grinning (not typical kite behavior, but still), feeling generally very high.  
I know this is the human condition.  We all love getting attention, but there is something else there too.  I am  invigorated by the realization that others are excited by the same things that thrill me.  That moment of unity, when a stranger conveys their own enthusiasm about something I am obviously over the moon about, (writing words with my sewing machine perhaps, or melting polyester fabric with a hair dryer) is as charged and vibrant for me as speeding down a ski run or making the peek on a hike. 

me and my dolly

Yesterday evening I was on a panel of four artists asked to speak about our careers in an “Art Survival Skills” course.  I brought this admittedly odd deer figure (freshly completed work) as a bit of show and tell.  
The panelist were Robert Canaga, gallery owner and Eugene arts community icon; David Funk, co-owner of a local marketing agency Bell + Funk (which I did just google and  liked what I saw); Jon Cruson, who was making art and selling it before I was born; and me, with my deer dolly of course.  I was clearly the inexperienced one of the bunch.  Yes I was humbled, intimidated, awed, and invigorated.  These three artists with their wildly different dispositions and divergent art career paths, were remarkably similar in a few important ways.  They each conveyed their absolute determination to be artists, they each revealed a general willingness to embrace unconventional opportunities, and they were productive people (drawing, painting, experimenting, generating art).  I can get behind all that.  Look out world, I’m goin’ in, with or without the deer dolly!

my punch card

It is an odd feeling recognizing that the entirety of my work day is captured in the above photograph.  Granted, it wasn’t a pedal to the metal sort of day.  There was sunshine:  I walked in it, sat and sewed and spoke with friends in it,  dallied at the mailbox, chatted with the neighbor.  But still, I sewed diligently and this is the little plot of textured surface I created.  
I used to get Ranger Rick magazine as a kid.  The back cover always had a selection of extreme close up photographs which readers were encouraged to guess at.  What plant or animal are you looking at?  Go ahead, make a guess.

I just hung work

At Territorial Vineyards tasting room on 3rd and Adams.  It will be there through the month of March.  Bring your honey, bring a pal, have a glass of wine, have a look around.

nervous me

I give my artist talk at LCC in one hour.  You think I’d jump at the chance to talk about myself for a full 90 minutes, but really, I’ve been a bundle of nerves about it all morning.  Last night I dreamt I decided to wear a monkey suit for the presentation.  I couldn’t find the tail so I was in the process of hooking a black umbrella to my rear end when Josh woke me up.  Hopefully things will play out better than that possible scenario.