MONDAY/TUESDAY

*Crying Man.
*baby/rug.
vacuum rug, pull out sanded gesso bits with tweezers.
mount rug for hanging.
Touch up corner ding on F.
touch up edges on encaustic/polish
clean glass on drawings.
Photograph new.
sign new.
labels for all backs.
check all hanging wires.
Wrap all.
edge protectors.
Load trailer.
Consignment sheet.
Clean brushes.

In progress, another late night...

Dawn.

Pre-show(s) insomnia..... (click to enlarge)

... the artist is Larry Guidici, a great guy I did time with (at an ad agency, making slave wages) early in my career.

(warning...sad) falling baby dream at twisk dreambase.

Close your eyes
by Kristen Hersh

You can't make it
You can't cry
You can't make it home tonight

It's to far to walk
To your goddamn van
It's too hard to come by your hand

Drunk on nothing
Drunk all night
Mad at nothing
Close your eyes

You could run on iron lungs
It would not keep you clean
Run on iron lungs
It would not keep you sons of bitches clean

You think that they don't shatter you
You think that till they go
You think that they don't comfort you
Now go home

You can walk in moonlight
You can dance inside
You can dance in moonlight
Close your eyes

Stop, you ruined all my memories
You ruined all my memories
I wanna catch the falling babies
I'm falling into you
My hair's in your face
Eyes on your eyes
Hands on my back
I can't leave
I can't leave

A guy's asking questions about me
My hands are full of straw
I'm sliding really fast
My hands are full of snow
I don't understand.....
I don't understand puzzles
I can't breathe
Close your eyes

Source: AlwaysOnTheRun.net

Considering titles.....

Main Entry:	dirty
Part of Speech:	adjective 1
Definition:	unclean
Synonyms:	bedraggled, black, contaminated, cruddy*, crummy, defiled, disarrayed, dishabille, disheveled, dreggy, dungy, dusty, filthy, foul, fouled, greasy, grimy, grubby, grungy*, icky*, lousy, messy, mucky*, muddy, mung*, murky, nasty, pigpen*, polluted, raunchy, scummy*, scuzzy*, skank, slatternly, slimy, sloppy, slovenly, smudged, smutty, sooty, spattered, spotted, squalid, stained, straggly, sullied, undusted, unhygienic, unkempt, unlaundered, unsanitary, unsightly, unswept, untidy, unwashed, yucky*
Antonyms:	clean, hygienic, immaculate, sanitary, sparkling, spotless, sterile, unsoiled, washed

Main Entry:	contamination
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	adulteration
Synonyms:	contagion, corruption, decay, defilement, dirtying, disease, epidemic, filth, foulness, impurity, infection, pestilence, plague, poisoning, pollution, rottenness, spoliation, taint
Antonyms:	decontamination

Main Entry:	blight
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	disease
Synonyms:	bane, canker, contamination, corruption, curse, decay, dump, evil, eyesore, fungus, infestation, mildew, pest, pestilence, pollution, rot, scourge, sight, withering, woe
Antonyms:	boon, bounty, health

Main Entry:	contagion
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	infection
Synonyms:	bane, contamination, corruption, illness, miasma, pestilence, plague, poison, pollution, taint, transmission, venom, virus

Main Entry:	damage
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	injury
Synonyms:	accident, adulteration, adversity, affliction, bane, blemish, blow, breakage, bruise, casualty, catastrophe, contamination, corruption, debasement, depreciation, deprivation, destruction, deterioration, detriment, devastation, disservice, disturbance, evil, hardship, harm, hurt, illness, impairment, infliction, knockout, marring, mischief, mishap, mutilation, outrage, pollution, ravage, reverse, ruin, ruining, spoilage, stroke, suffering, waste, wound, wreckage, wrecking
Antonyms:	improvement, repair, service

Main Entry:	arrival
Part of Speech:	noun 1
Definition:	landing
Synonyms:	accession, advent, alighting, appearance, approach, arriving, debarkation, disembarkation, dismounting, entrance, happening, homecoming, influx, ingress, landing, meeting, occurrence, return
Antonyms:	departure, exit

Source: Thesaurus.com

Also, tache (fr: stain), or defloration

falling - Falling or rapidly descending: Fear of a loss of control or of something material.

baby - A new event, happening, beginning for the subject of the dream. Can mean a baby if the dream is about a pregnant person or someone wanting to have one. Wish fulfillment. Fills one's sense of lacking or incompleteness.

Source: The Dream Dictionary at NewAgeDirectory.com

My compulsive hands dictate that I should be working on the embroidery.
My heart wants to be working on the large paintings.
My head reminds me that I have two shows going up in the next few weeks, and I need to prep older pieces and finish up what is going into the shows.

One of the pieces that was going to be in the Artspace exhibition sold, and I want to replace it with a new piece that will be a great introduction to the rest of the work in the exhibition, as well as fleshing out the theme somewhat. The Artspace show opens next Friday.

The gesso/sanding cycle of the carpet continues: we are on layer 14 or 15, and the painting will begin today. It is one of the more difficult things I have ever attempted to do: not laborious in the way that hair embroidery is, but arduous, like trying to scrub a floor that has not been cleaned in 30 years, but needs to be pristine enough to eat off of. You try Mr. Clean, you try bleach, etc., and each one brings it closer, but does not get you all the way "there".

Works in Progress.

This piece is being done in gouache, a medium I have never really worked in before:

and this one is oil glazes on black, and it is difficult to photograph:

Forcing my Will (this time, on a carpet)

I remember being an undergrad, taking Intermediate or Advanced Drawing, and Charles Eldred used to write these notes to us, and put them in our portfolios at midterm and at the end of the semester. They were always written on a small piece of paper, but he would begin writing about an idea, and often he would overflow onto the back of the page, then write along the outside edge in the margins, etc. I have saved a few of them, and there is one that I have referred back to many times over the years, because I have still not learned the lesson:

“You must begin to relax your insistence...", it reads. "Stop trying to achieve everything in your drawing through sheer willpower.” He did a little drawing of a pipe in the margins, and wrote “Ceci n’est pas un pipe.” next to it, for emphasis.

Over the years, I have tried to “relax my insistance”. Mostly, I have failed miserably… I have learned to accept the fact that obsessiveness is my modus operandi. But I was thinking of Eldred’s words today, while I was attempting to gesso a dirty carpet.

Certainly, I have seen many paintings on textured surfaces with rough edges, but I have a vision in my brain of a pristine surface in contrast to the dirty carpet… so today, it is me against the rug, for however long it might take to force my will upon it.

Oops. Too large. Erase.

I got carried away with the preparatory drawing for the following piece, because all I really needed were about 10 lines to transfer the image to my board (click to enlarge):
I love this blue, I had it specially mixed at Lowe's, in a flat finish, because it reminds me of the blues that are painted behind the Virgin Mary in the altars in Italy, often with little gold stars surrounding her.

No "Sherrybaby" tonight, but I found my images. Now I can't sleep... gotta make art.

We spent the weekend in Atlanta, to catch Kevin's cousin's wife's harpsichord concert at Oglethorpe University. She played a series of duets from Rembrandt's time with Oglethorpe's "harpsichordist in residence" to complement the exhibition of etchings in the gallery. (My undergraduate mentor was nuts about Rembrandt, and to this day, I call upon cross hatching lessons gleaned from studying his reproductions). It was quick trip, but I managed to get to Little Five Points, my favorite part of the city and stomping grounds from grad school years (vintage clothing stores out the wazoo!). After the cultural deprivation of the past few months, it was hard to keep from spending all day there. I took my husband for his first visit to the Junkman's Daughter, and he was suitably dazzled.

Luckily, he drove the whole way, so I got lots of embroidery done: my outline is almost finished:
Today was a blustery, frustrating day.... the 25 mph winds seemed to blow me off-kilter:

•wireless in the house did not work till 5 pm, thwarting research
•spilled coffee in my car
•think I ruined my dryer by doing experiments for a piece I am working on
•had to go pick up taxes from accountant, then stand in line at the post office to mail them
•did NOT go to the gym because there were too many errands to run, and I needed studio time
•tore my studio apart looking for some old images that I still have not found, hoping that they are not somewhere back in FL

Did manage to put down a golden yellow/orange glaze on the crying man, and I am liking the effect.

I will spend the rest of the evening trying to locate my images, then embroider while I watch Sherrybaby, courtesy of Netflix.

Look, the chair had this disgusting green upholstery underneath the red.
Put down 2 glazes on this Crying Man, pulled from the stacks in my studio. He is on the easel, so the paintbrushes are being warmed up while I prep to start painting a big piece on the wall.
.... and the outlines for the embroidery, which I will be working on this weekend.