Lovely sunset the other night.
I finally made it to Asheville to meet up with my surgeon again. Yesterday the neighbor and her sister who kindly took me there in November volunteered to do it again. With great relief the surgery on my lung will happen a week from tomorrow. My doctor and amazing friend will accompany me the day before so I can get tests done at the hospital. then she will spend the night with me there to get me into surgery for pre op very early on Thursday.
After surgery is over, my doctor will go home and I stay for probably five days of recovery there in the hospital. My son will come down to bring me home from the hospital and stay several days while I recover further. The doctor was clear that I should not be by myself for several days after I return home. My neighbor will come and feed the cats while I am away. It was such a wise choice to move here where neighbors are so caring.
The time has been filled with working on more of my dead leaves.
These were the last of the Eucalyptus leaves kept near my dye pot.
And one of the leaves from a neighbor’s tree that blew in near the front door.
Now my paint box could use another good wipe down, but I can’t bear to waste colors I use so often.
And then while listening to audio books written by Elizabeth George (pure English mystery/thrillers) I worked on a couple of pages in the Gathering Book. All inspired by the basket makers of Tasmania getting ready to have an annual meet up. I decided to draw a bunch of handmade paint brushes of which some were surprise gifts from thoughtful Kent who used to send Lee postcards with hand drawn cartoon characters he made up to amuse him.
I never quite got the point of using these brushes, but many people have made them and then made marks on paper/cloth. It all rather looks the same unless one of them takes the marks further…like detailed drawings among the marks or cutting them all into bits to piece together in cloth or paper quilts. I think it was a fad of sorts to get students freed up to do something, anything, to loosen up. Now making brushes from Nature seems to be a built-in part of workshops in self expression.
Over Christmas I gave away my very large book of the workshop techniques I taught for many years. What I noticed while going through the book for the last time was that there were no “products” among the pages. Only small samples of the effects of the techniques on cloth and or paper. No step by step instructions on how to “make something”. The only reason I shared these samples was to see if there was something about them that spoke to a student looking for a way to express an idea/thought that needed to be realized. These techniques could help give them a way of saying something. Like my own art work, each of these techniques had a story to tell about why it was there and not so much about how it got there. And I am well aware that these stories will be lost in the seductions of “how can I make that?”
I no longer expect to see work where someone gathered soils from a place where something important happened to them and then being turned into a medium to express that happening or memory. There will likely not be much work where a fume-soaked wadding for cleaning guns and purchased at most hardware stores is used to blur images into faded memories or things “lost”. Secrets probably are no longer written on papers easily cut and spun into strings to hold what we want held or woven into vessels and windows of boxes holding even more memories. None of those things fall into the idea of producing things to market in one way or another. But, oh my god, I was so lucky to be around when my stories resonated and became someone else’s in the learning and making.
Here is a good story. Two days ago the young man who installed the blinds in this house came back because I was thinking about using wooden shutters on the lower half of two windows that look out on houses not thirty feet away. He and I pick out the right color wood tone and then stand back and think. I said, “You know this is the only wood shutter there will be in this large space. I am keeping the three windows clear of any obstructions to the view of the Japanese garden out back. this will look odd.” He agreed and told me that he does not fit window treatments into many houses that seem to have planned on how they will look with furnishings and artwork. Implying correctly that I obviously had these things in mind. So then he says, “If the problem is that you don’t like looking out the lower half of these windows and being reminded there is a house so close, then how about this!” And he pulled the shades on each side of the house all the way down. We both agreed it not only was the least expensive idea but the best solution!
So here is the art part of that story. He was staring at a lino-cut that I made of a crow and its nest. He asked where I got it. I said I made it from carving and inking a large linoleum block, then printing it off. He said he had the same one and when I doubted it, he had his wife send a picture and told me where he bought it. Seems he was at a gallery in a town south of here in Georgia and found it there and bought it. Then I remembered I was part of an exhibit there with my large four foot square paintings. I forgot that there was also some original smaller hand pulled prints. He remembered some of the other work and I showed him the large blackbird/gate mixed media piece that I kept and hung in my bedroom to wake up to each morning. He said, “Ah yes! I remember standing in front of this one for some time.” Needless to say I was pleased or “chuffed” as we might say and he was excited to go home and tell his wife he met the artist of a piece they have both kept in their bedroom for several years.
They are predicting snow Friday and Saturday. I am doubtful because most of these predictions seem to be designed to give elderly men something to worry about and concern their wives. Then they can sit about enjoying her soups and cookies that these predictions bring about in fear of not having enough food to get through two days.
I will stay in sunny windows with the cats.
Obviously I have not had a blog in some time, but I wanted to wait til I knew what was coming next in regards to surgery.
Now we know. It may be a while before I get back to it.
Til later…because I have 2,500 more steps to get to my goal of 8,000 today. Chair yoga was good but not many steps there this morning.
Bye…