Back to work....

So it is great being back in the studio after 3 days of being a (fairly) regular person: two days of company, then one day with my sweetie at a 3rd of July celebration in Garner, NC. It was like a scene from a 1950's movie. Near as I could tell, we were the only ones breaking the "no alcohol" rule by smuggling in a bottle of wine. It was at a park, in a big field, with kiddie rides at one end, a bandshell with a live band doing OLD standards (we're talkin' Gershwin), and thousands of families with watermelon, potato salad, etc.... kids doing cartwheels and teenage girls swing dancing with each other. At the other end of the field were booths with fried candy bars, or BBQ, manned by boyscouts or the Miss Garner Scholarship fund volunteers. It was surreal. There were a few scary evangelistic tee shirts, and the homogeneity was sometimes unsettling (I usually spend this holiday with my friends Jim & Scott, and had to call them 'cause I missed them so much), but in general, a pleasant experience. No one was obnoxious in any way.... no one encroached on your space, or played their CD player in competition with the music, the kids were reined in when they were being anything but appropriately exuberant. Great fireworks topped off the evening, followed by everyone politely taking their turn during the mass exit.

Yesterday, the 4th, we both had work to do, but, in honor of the holiday, we did it together on the back deck, Kevin reading, and me adding to my mailing list. I am not OC in any normal way, I mean, I don't wash or clean compulsively, or count or check things, but when it comes to actually working on an art project, or surfing the web to add to my mailing list, it is very hard for me to stop, even if I am in pain. After my trip to Miami in a few weeks, I am gearing up to do a big mailing. I ordered my CD mailers today and just got my cards in the mail Monday.


I am excited, because I am finally realizing a goal I have had for a long time: instead of sending full packets (resume, slides, reviews, catalogs, etc.), I am just sending a CD, along with a printed card to entice them to LOOK at the CD. Because the cost is so much less than a regular packet, I can send out more. So today, I obsessively continued surfing the web and adding curators and galleries and collectors to my mailing list, until I forced myself away from the computer at 2 p.m. to start painting. Then, after dinner, I started up with the computer again, another 4 hours... this site leads you to that one, etc. (I usually find at least one big score, today it was an international list of all the museums with textile collections by country, with a designation for type of collection.) Then I dig up the site and get contact info... if it is not there, I google or email the museum to get the contact name. Then I subscribe to about 10 art news services that tell me when the curators change posts, which is often. I have so many hours into my mailing list that I should start selling them, like Caroll Michaels.

Artists: The City of New York has a Percent-for-Art Program registry, you don't have to be a resident, and it is one of the easiest applications that you will ever execute. No excuse not to do it, really...