night skating

waiting until after midnight, waiting for the furnace to kick on so the sound would cover my movements, the muttering mechanicals breathing warmed air throughout the house, everyone deep into their dreams but me.

Thick socks over thin, jeans and sweater pulled on over pajamas, I sat in a chair in the kitchen and pushed my feet into my skates and laced them tight, tight, my high heels, in just enough time to ease the back door open, slip out and close it before the furnace sighed and stilled.

the ground was covered with brittle brown grass, frozen hard and unforgiving of the misstep. I picked my way carefully down across the yard to the edge of the lake where the ice had trapped little pockects of air that you wanted to avoid stepping on and cutting with the sound like ripping silk.

keeping the blades flat and taking the first steps out onto the black ice..right foot left foot ..tock. tock, tock  then leaning and letting the glide take me further away from the house into deeper silence and darkness  then setting the toeteeth and pushing off. Another long glide before settling into the rhythm and picking up speed, steadying, shifting and lifting the right foot up and back, leaning in and forward, shoulders down, head up..flying into the night on that burning, bad, but anchored, ankle.

Picking up speed in a wide arc I fly off into the darkness for  a while but soon catch a careless toe and go sprawling. Heated up and winded, I lie on my back and look into the overcast blackness unable to find any stars, my eyes smarting with the cold. The ice speaks underneath me then, through me, a thrummimg groan, booming low and pinging high at the same time. letting me know it's gathering strength under me as unseen snowflakes land on my burning cheeks and melt instantly the water running into my hair.

flashbacking

"Healer" 22"x'22"  2003

I was tinkering with my laptop this morning and some of the newer versions of programs I have been forced into in the move to Windows 7 when I stumbled across a bunch of files from back in the day.


When I first started learning HTML for the purpose of building and maintaining my own website I didn't pay a lot of attention to organizing the files properly. Files are named cryptically and are scattered all over the place. 


this B&W image caught and soothed my over stimulated eye this morning.

Both built on common cotton bandanas, this is a companion piece to "Parking Magik" which was created for a black and white challenge and is part of the Del Thomas Contemporary Quilt Collection . Once upon a time I was enthralled by commercial cotton prints and beading with no notions of dyeing fabric.

luxury

When I got up this morning I discovered that the Head Chef had turned his kitchen fairy loose in the night and my one big chore for today had been handled for me. Molte grazie amore mio .

I took the great luxury of starting the basting on this piece with only one or two changes along the way. As the stitches replace the horde of pins it begins to feel like cloth again and not a clanking torture device determined to slash me full of holes. I am happy with the layout now  but the colors are feeling very fruity so the next layers will be all about moderating the first go round of color choices. Looking at it closely, not in a fugue state with eyes all crossed and crazy, I know there is going to be arguments about the stitching...what thread? how loud?  all those variables.

eye candy friday!

So this one is shaping up to be about 30"x30" and the individual elements worked themselves out to be scaled the same as the four previous, smaller pieces. This is only the first layer of course and I'm seeing one or two things I want to change before I start basting.

And speaking of grand scale eye candy, check out the amazing works of   I Wayan Sudarsana Yansen.. here and here where you can get an idea of how big his work is.


Recently I was fussing with myself about wanting to make cloth look like paint and here is an artist who has made paint look like cloth at it's most glorious - in motion on the wind or in water or maybe worn by a dancer.

more than just a dream

While I was looking for something else, I found the last piece of that gridded slinky stuff- a blend of silk and rayon maybe, and quickly put it to work as the next step in the series. After a few hours of auditioning bits and pieces, I put it down on the floor to take a picture and looked around for my black scissors to throw down for scale. Something else materialized in seconds. Sweetie is more of a doer than a dreamer, and yes, we are both on diets.

grand rêves

I've decided to stop causing myself any additional stress so far as how and where my art and chosen medium are taking me. For now, I just want to go along for the ride. "Broader Strokes" has come off  the design wall and has been disassembled - the pieces will be put to good use in the next project. more on that tomorrow. The materials for finishing and mounting these four have been ordered.

mending with color

The  corner of this tablecloth had a spray of rust stains. Now garden islands are poking through melting snow.

Right now I have no plans to use this technique in a piece but let me think on it some.

If you are shopping online for the holidays, the last day to mail first class for Christmas arrival in the US is next Tuesday, but I'm calling it Monday, 12/19. ..the store inventory is current! Run Wild!

Last year the lobby of our local post office looked like the deck of the Titanic as the last boats were being swung out....

paying close attention

Seth just reminded me "Some things are true whether you believe in them or not"

Judy Martin's dots

Thank so much for the tutorial Judy!

Of course I chose inappropriate cloth, drew the wonky roundness by hand, did not baste and had no silk thread..still I like it. Where Judy's dots are almost holy in their precision, mine will be crawling off the blanket in their own organic way. Remember my notion of islands?  This technique could work for that idea. let's see.

broader strokes

I've decided to stop bitching about it and see how I can go about using fabric more like paint. There will be  a lot of false starts with stitch so I've basted this one loosely so the end wont have little blood stains all over it.

Most of yesterday was given over to finally getting my hearing tested and confirming what I suspected - that I am hearing less than half of what is said and have worked out a complex of methods to work around the loss. I really didn't realize how much I was depending on visual cues in face to face conversations.

The phone is another big issue. My job entails listening to incident reports over the phone and I depend a great deal on the fact that nothing much new and strange happens on a daily basis...repetition and anticipation, sort of human predicative spelling. I have reports typed out before people even finish dictating them. How many stupid ass ways can one slip and fall or burn oneself in a commercial kitchen anyway?

The doctor couldn't say if the tinnitus was a separate issue from the hearing loss but it certainly compounds the problem. I really miss stone cold silence. My range of hearing is narrow and odd and hearing aids are called for as soon as possible to prevent further loss/damage. They may or may not help the tinnitus. When it's at it's lowest level, I can pretend it's only cicadas partying hearty on midsummer's eve. At it's worst, a jet's engines revving up just before take off...only it never does. A new element cropped up the other day -- a mercifully short low toned hum, not unlike the reverberations of a really big bell ..it came creeping in my left ear like a fat fuzzy brown caterpillar, and then thankfully slunk away. Sometimes it's hard to hear my own thoughts.

rainy day festivities

It was raining on and off all day..humid and too warm for December. Then the power was off for  a spell in mid afternoon. Some folks know what to do with days like this.










The light was too poor to continue.