Drying plastic sheets for Nuno-Felting.
I'm super off track with the blogging. I am in deep self-care mode at the moment. I suspect I will live to procrastinate many more things, the painting, the writing, the endless crafty endeavors. Work is the answer. More work, more making, more sketching, more seeing, more doing, less thinking, less talking, less weighing, more breathing. I got invited to join a group of artists meeting to discuss art and the process of making art and the reality of being an artist. Initially I felt that it was what I wanted. I even thought the invitation had come to me in a sort of divine way. I went to one Salon style gathering and there were many very interesting people there but I felt ill at ease. I feel suspicious at the very idea of the thing. Is this normal? Is it just me? It takes a lot for me to get out into a group of people and I generally reserve the energy it takes to do this for clients and family gatherings but off I went. I even shared my work, I read a piece from this blog as an experiment. People were supportive but I felt hollow afterwards as I tend to. I am suspicious of this need to seek attention for things I have made. I connect it to bowel movements from childhood. My mother would applaud my stinky efforts. It mattered and it felt good to me and to her, both our jobs done. I don't want to talk about making art much in the same way I don't want to talk about my sex life or my bowel movements in public. Yes, I have sex and I really enjoy it, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about sex, I dream about it, I miss traffic signals thinking about it. I don't want to talk about it though. It's private. People do not want to listen to me talking about my sex life. I think making art is the same thing. I want to do it, not talk about doing it with people who have their own methods and manias, fetishes even, sexual and artistic. I enjoy the intimacy of art making and I believe the creative process is a solitary one and I am okay with that. I am superstitious. Whatever creative gift I have been given (as I write this I am stunned that I even thought that, a gift from who/where) I need to protect and explore for myself alone. I can't speak about something that has no form, wrong words could dissolve the gossamer waves of whatever it is that might ooze out of me given half a chance. So I will continue to plan and make and if you run into me, let's not discuss art or sex or shit or blood. All those things are implied. Let's agree to discuss the discussable, the dog, the swans returning from Russia, the new buds swelling in the unusually warm weather and how grateful we all are to still be at this beautiful party.
