Five Months as a Hermit

 The hotel closed in March. Then it re-opened in July, but has yet to reinstate my department, so I'm kinda in limbo. The only schedule I have is to wake up and drink coffee and do my tumblr post. On Tuesday I do laundry and shop for groceries. Other than that, I don't get out of the house much. I haven't had a haircut since the first week of March. I'm in that awkward stage where my hair is both too long and too short to be manageable. I forget to shave because I have nowhere to go and no one to see, and then my face gets itchy and reminds me that I really don't want to grow a beard. I have days where I'm highly motivated and accomplish a lot, and days where I have trouble convincing myself to do anything.

I love it. It's not sustainable, but I do. After nearly seventeen years of being nocturnal, and the scheduling pressures associated with that, these unstructured days are delightful. Plus I've managed to get some of those around the house projects done that I would never have had time for otherwise.

My best friend is in the same position. He worked with me overnights, as did his wife. She's gone back to work. He's at home. He's bored. He's already finished painting the house, and he's been reading and writing. But there are a lot of pictures of him in his bathrobe on Facebook. He's also been sending naked selfies to to me and the man-spouse for his own amusement. He suggested that I should paint one of them. I said, "Oh like I have time.... Oh, wait! I do."
He said, "Yeah, but it will still take you ten years to get it done." I took that as a challenge, but I still haven't finished the portrait of him I started two decades ago. 

As for me, I have 

• replaced the floor in the shed, which I needed to do because I stupidly decided to use chipboard for the floor when we built the thing seven years ago.
• built a box (treasure chest) for the man-spouse, inspired by the one my dad built for me back in 1969. It turned out really nice, but I'm already thinking about what I would have done differently.
• replaced all the shelving in the utility room. I thought this was going to be a big job, but it only took three hours. I should have done it ages ago.
• washed, waxed, and detailed my car.
• finished the bathroom lavatory cabinet that's been half done since 2008. It looks nice. I'm proud of it.
• built a fire pit to replace the crumbling chimenea. I've been using it to get rid of the old shed floor.
• changed the arrangement of the studio. Nine years ago the man-spouse and I changed the studio from having the framing table run along the north wall to being  massive table in the middle of the room. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I hated it immediately because it created a lot of space limitations. Now it's back up against the wall, and the drafting table is on an island in the middle, and I couldn't be happier.
• started an Etsy store at the encouragement of my friend Charla, who's been having a lot of fun with her camera lately.
• built a Googie styled coffee mug shelf to put in said Etsy store.
• rebuilt the cabinets in the studio, which had been sagging (a work in progress)
• painted the studio a pretty yellow (also a work in progress.)
• listened to several audio books on Overdrive. I expected to get more reading done, but I've only read three actual physical books. I also thought I'd write a lot more, but I've only finished one blog post (not counting this one.)

The last time I was at the hotel, I ran into my friend Melody, who instructed me to get a lot of artwork done while we are on hiatus. I got some done (like "A Straight Line," below.) I expected to do more.

The plan is to finish all the paintings and drawings that have already been started before I start something new. (One down, nine to go.) The reality is that I couldn't resist, and I have four new canvases sketched out. But now I'm back to one of my old frustrations.

I accidentally came across the blog of a painter by the name of Aaron Lifferth. According to the title of his blog, he had the ambitious goal of doing a painting a day. He didn't accomplish that goal, but he did finish an awful lot of paintings, mostly miniatures, in a short amount of time. They're wonderful. I'm inspired. I can't do a painting a day, but I have a stack of paper perfect for 4x6 pen & ink drawings (136 of them!), as well as a few 5x5 and 5x7 mini canvases for paintings, which individually wouldn't take long to do. I want to do this. The problem?

I have nine unfinished projects. Plus the four new ones. Most of them large, all of them time consuming, and all of them likely to occupy my thoughts and energy until I've forgotten about my current inspiration.

I know how this works. It happens every time I go to an art show and see artworks that spark my imagination. I'm full of inspiration until I come home to the same unfinished projects that were there before, and it just dies.

But my life and my environment has changed a lot lately. At the moment I have all the time in the world, and all the space I need to work. Maybe, just maybe, that's the fertile ground I need for my inspiration to grow. We'll see.

Random Encounter

I have a little routine for my weekends, which for me is usually Sunday and Monday nights.  After getting home Sunday morning, I try to stay up all day, doing basically nothing and having no plan except to go to bed at a time when I can sleep most of the night.  That way, I'm up early on Monday, and I can tackle the weekend's big projects, like the yard work, and hopefully get something done in the studio.  This weekend's task was to finally do the spring cleaning in the studio, which involves dragging everything out onto the patio and mopping the floor, and spraying for bugs.  And the weather was perfect, which helped a lot.
  Tuesdays are spent doing housework and running errands. I got my hair cut.  I went to the grocery store...

...and that's where it happened.

After picking up the last item (frozen peas,) I ran into Kelly Killough, another artist who does a lot of the same shows that I do.  We talked about the Edmond show, and about how sales were for us and our neighbors.  My next booth neighbor this year was Shirley Gibbons, who was doing the show for the 32nd time, and she had the best sales she's ever had.  Across the street, James Coplin won 1st prize and was also selling a lot, and my other next booth neighbor was selling his copper wall hangings hand over fist. Kelly said his neighbors had also done really well, and he himself had done pretty decently.  I, on the other hand, did not do well at all.  This was my 25th year at the Edmond show, and this year's sales were the worst ever.  I told Kelly that that is what made the cancellation of Kathy's Paseo show more painful.

Oh, but no!  The show hasn't been cancelled, Kelly tells me.  Seems that, though the family feud still goes on, the legal part has been settled, permits are acquired, and booths are filling.  And Kelly had the phone number for the man in charge.

I'm stunned by this news, and I don't know quite what to do with it.  I'm pleased that the show is back on, but it's in two weeks.  I'm already prepared to go, inventory-wise, but can I get the time off from work? And do I really want to put out the money and effort? I need a second and third opinion.
    After I had gotten home and put the groceries away, I texted the man spouse for his opinion.  He had recently made a very hurtful comment about my art (he called it a hobby -- which is not wrong, exactly, but it just galls me to think he could be right,) but he still has a stake in how I spend my time and money.  Plus he knows me better than anybody, so I don't have to over-explain how I fell about this.  When he was able to call back, he was supportive, and he understood what I meant when I said that what I was feeling in that moment was pissed off.  He said that even if I don't get in the show, I at least deserve an explanation about why no one contacted me.
    The next input I needed was from the boss man.  I texted Garris, saying that something had happened and I needed his opinion. He called back quickly, and when I told him what was up, he was so incredibly supportive and enthusiastic.  He said that if it was at all possible, I should "absolutely" do the show.  (He used the word 'absolutely' a lot in that phone call.  He's only been to see my work one time, but he talks like he's my biggest fan.) He also assured me that it wouldn't be a problem for me to take the time off, since we have the staff right now to cover my shifts, and the hotel won't be busy that weekend anyway.
   Well, that was what I needed.

I called Mr Clark.  He answered the phone immediately, and was pleased that I had managed to get in touch with him.  I complained about not being contacted.  He explained the painful journey he and his family had been on, and how he had gained charge of the show.  The reason he hadn't gotten in touch with me was that the other faction in the family feud had the mailing list, and all he had was a map with artists names penciled in, but only six phone numbers.  He managed to Google a lot of them. Also, it's only been eight days since he got the go ahead from the powers that be.
  He told me about some changes made to the show, like reserved parking for artists and a place for the artists to retreat to when they needed a break.  He asked about my needs, which got me a (hopefully) better spot.  I think I'm going to like this guy.

So, in a matter of less than two hours, I went from having no plans to having big plans.  All because of a random encounter at grocery store.  Now I just need some people who like my work enough to take it home with them.

*want*

Lesson learned: be very clear about what you want, and don't assume the other person already has the information they need to help you.

I found out that Tim, who prints my photos, got his new gicleé machine last fall, so I took an order to him, just meaning to replace some of the pictures that I had sold at last spring's shows.  Since his old machine had broken down last spring, he had amassed quite a bit of backlog, so he couldn't get to mine for a while (Robin, his #1, had said she hoped that I didn't need them before Christmas.  I assured her not.)  After Christmas, I checked with them periodically to see if he'd gotten to mine yet.
    A few weeks ago, Robin told me he had questions.  Among other things, one of the pics was not stored on his computer, and he wasn't sure what I wanted to do about that.  But by that time, I was running short on time, and I decided that I would just place the order for my five new pics, and one older one that had sold out last year.

To simplify things (I thought), the new pics all had file names with the title and the width of the picture:  i.e. "Land Line 10"wide."  That way, he could just look at the title and set the measurements in the computer and press print.  Those were the instructions I gave Robin, and those are the instructions she wrote down.  And that's where the trouble began.

Now, the old pics were not designated thusly.  When I placed the original order for "Skyline Signature," I was standing there with Tim at the computer as he followed my verbal instructions and typed in 15"x whatever", and I assumed that the old measurements were still in his computer.  They probably were.  But the old pic order got conflated with the new pic instructions and...

Tim says to Robin, "Is this really the size he wants?"

Robin says to Tim, "Yeah, that's what he said."

So Tim prints the picture according to the title on the file, which says "Ratio 1.25 32x40."

Twice.

That title actually had nothing to do with the gicleé prints.  When the photo was originally taken, my intent was to paint this picture, and 32x40 was to be the size of the painting.  Then my friend Loggan made the astute observation that I would never get around to it, and then I discovered Tim,and well, the rest is history.

I got the call today that the pictures were ready.  When I came in, there was "Skyline Signature," two of them, the size of a full sheet of matboard.  Omigosh, they were beautiful.  It wasn't what I meant to order, and he is reprinting in the size I need, but I want the big ones so bad.

But here's the problem.  Gicleé is a relatively expensive printing process, which makes the prints expensive for the art consumer to buy.  When I got home, I figured out that the retail price on these would be $470 unframed!  Do I actually have a market for that? And I'm down one show this year, since the Kathy's Market On The Paseo show had to be cancelled for this year.  The Pride show is not a moneyed show, and the only other show coming up that I've been involved with is the Pancakes and Booze show in September.  It's not practical to spend the money on them this year.

But I want them.

I want them so bad.

The other prints were mostly fine (although, when I got home I realized that I hadn't specified the 1" borders, which is going to cause some framing problems -- again, don't assume someone will remember something you told them two years ago,) so I packed them up to take home, still wistfully looking at the giant ones.  I told Tim, "Don't destroy these, because I know I'm going to talk myself into getting them."  I don't know when, but it's going to happen.

Probably. 

Ambivalence

I finally finished this commissioned piece, which should have been done a long time ago -- and not just because the couple had been trying to get me to do it for a couple of years.  The gentleman finally got my attention while I was doing the Paseo show, and expressed some urgency. 
   
I have an ambivalent relationship with commissions.  On the one hand, it's really nice to know that someone likes my work well enough to hire me to do it, and, of course,  the (almost) guaranteed sale is nice as well.  BUT, on the other hand, it's work that I have to do, and that one fact just gets into my head.
    I'm what I've heard called a "frustrated perfectionist," which the man-spouse thinks of as a procrastinator with an excuse.  Essentially it means that if I know I can't do something perfectly, I won't do it at all.  In the case of commissioned work, that translates to, if I can't get a significant amount of work done, or if I'm at all worried that my frame of mind or lack of sleep, etc., will screw it up somehow, I put off working on it till I can be sure of the results.  Which means delays.
    The other problem is that I get stressed out about details.  This is, after all, somebody's [insert subject matter here.]  They're going to notice if it's wrong.  So, I will spend hours trying to get the details right in that shadow around the front door, and I'm impressed with myself when I've completed a square inch.
    The third problem is just my weird schedule combined with my bad time management skills.  And you can pile not getting enough sleep on top of that. 

The problem with NOT working on commissions is that I don't work on anything else either.  Because I'm not getting that thing done that I have to do, I'm sort of punishing myself by not doing the things I want to do.  So nothing gets done.  Jeez I'm pathetic.

I finished the piece late this afternoon, and I sent a photo in the text to the client.  She was very happy, but I had to explain that I couldn't get it to her right away because a co-worker had called in sick, and I had to take a long nap before work.  She said that that was fine.  I'm glad she likes it.