I just finished a phone conversation with my grandma Betty. She and my grandpa live in eastern montana, next door to my mother. (Here’s a photo of them dancing at my cousin’s wedding.)
My grandma was telling me about the conflicts arising around my grandpa’s relentless singing. He sings through long car trips, at family get togethers, at work in his yard. He sings loud gospel numbers, with lots of feeling. Now he is singing in restaurants, standing and singing to the people munching fries and spooning pie into their mouths. It drives my mother crazy. I have no idea what it is like to care for your aging parents. My mom gives a lot of herself and has her patience tried in ways I can’t possibly see from this great distance. What I do see, however, is that there is something profoundly brave and joyful, something delightfully inappropriate and unexpected about a 95 year old man rising slowly from his diner chair to serenade a restaurant full of strangers. I love it that my grandpa just can’t stop himself from singing!
jarring possibilities
I’m working on a small quilts series of things in jars. I was initially thinking canned goods: pickles, beets, pears..., but I’ve quickly run out of typical can-ables (no relation to cannibals) and am tapping my thought box for more. I’ve got sprouting avocado seed, bathing beauty, bolts and screws, and lightening bugs thus far. Any other ideas for jarring possibilities?
1 thing I love about camping...
If you look closely at the ground you can see the thousands of tiny wood shavings my daughter produced over our 4 day camping trip. There were no phone calls to make to friends, no planned activities, no texts to send or receive, no shows to watch. The girl had a knife and an endless supply of wood. She whittled a sword, a serving spoon, 2 paddles for floating on the river, 20 some pairs of chopsticks, and a spatula. She also infected the rest of us with whittling fever.
We are not so different, you and I
My husband jokingly called this a potato bird. Interestingly, that name quite appropriately embodies the idea that tickled my cortex into making this quilt. I recently read a short National Geographic article on gene mapping. We humans share a whopping 24% of our genes with the wine grape. The chicken shares 65% of our human genetic make up. I can only imagine that this little Goldfinch and the Yukon Gold potatoes nestled beneath it, have quite a lot in common.
What is going on inside that head of yours?
I grew purple cabbages for the first time this year. I often found myself locked in concentration, staring at their shiny developing heads, and wondering...
nude photography
Her firm subtle curves, her impeccably smooth skin, her impressive longevity with holding the pose, all made this eggplant a joy to work with. She grew in my backyard this summer. You can’t tell from the photograph, but she is over 7 inches long. What a beauty!
battling dust bunnies and personal demons
After a summer of teaching, camping, and do-it-yourself remodeling projects my studio has become a ransacked, dusty, venture-there-if-you-dare area. Although they were somewhat afraid for me, my family returned to school today and left me to work amongst the precariously stacked boxes of classroom projects, the heaps of thread and fabric, and piles of unfiled paperwork.
I have two pieces I need to complete by mid september, so today I forced myself to ignore the mess, clear a spot in the chaos and work. I did it. I ironed, snipped and stitched for nearly 5 solid hours today, my inner boss constantly harassing my inner grunt laborer, “Get back at it! Stop starring at that clutter of old VCR tapes. You can deal with them later!”
When my boss wasn’t yelling at me today I got some time to think, and I came away asking myself: why did I let my studio get like this? When making art is such a hugely satisfying aspect of my life, why neglect the space where I make it? I didn’t come up with any answers but just asking the question seems worthwhile as does breaking out the broom to battle some dust bunnies.