Here’s Farmer Brown, back after an “exclusive three year tour of Europe, Scandinavia and the subcontinent”. (Obligatory Blues Brothers reference.)

Actually, I don’t really know where it’s been, other than off touring with Quilt National ’11. It left two or three years ago. Yesterday evening it landed back on my doorstep, borne by an exhausted FedEx driver. I was amused to see that the folks at the Dairy Barn had preserved all of my original packaging, including the pool noodle (priceless extruded polyethylene!) and giant plastic leaf/garbage bag (more costly polymers!). They are meticulous people.

My husband has always had a sentimental connection to this piece. It’s something I usually don’t relate to, at least about my own work. I see it differently, I guess, as the culmination of a drive or a set of processes which I either executed successfully or I didn’t. For now, this particular “culmination” will hang in the dining room, providing a backdrop to the Lego bricks which festoon the table and the dirty socks which eternally litter the floor. Then I’ll roll it up and put it in the Closet of Banishment. I could have put it up for sale, but sentimentality triumphed over economics. In fifteen or twenty years I’ll ask my son whether he wants it.

One chapter closes and another begins.

I’m not a big fan of accumulating UFOs (UnFinished Objects), but I seem to have a pile of them right now. Several more ideas for the Domestic Mayhem series, sketches for a new series, a partially stitched portrait, and an experiment in distorted geometry. The latter is particularly annoying because the stitching quality isn’t as I’d like. Maybe I should send it out to the garage to become an oil changing rag, or transform it into a sort of grotesque shopping bag.

I spent a month over the summer designing and starting a new piece for this fall’s IQA auction, only to realize that I couldn’t complete it according to my standards in the time allotted. I then did a panicked survey of the UFO collection and found one that was mostly complete and might be suitable; I’ll post about it another time. I noodled away at it until last weekend then shipped it off, just short of deadline.

All told, I spent about three months on this process and none on the work I’d originally planned. Since I’d given my word, I couldn’t very well back out of it. I’m not sure how other artists manage the business of donations. I don’t know if they don’t have youngish children, don’t do their own home renovations, or are simply more efficient. However, I may, regretfully, have to step away in the future. We’ll see. It’s probably a bit premature to make sweeping statements.

I need to design a new piece, a more personal piece, and I’ll be interested in hearing others’ ideas. More on that in a minute. I’ve been on a sort of mad painting frenzy, redoing the master bedroom and the exterior of the house. The latter is a painstaking process, since the last paint job was of very poor quality. There are drips and runs, peeling areas, overspray, you name it. Oh, and wasps. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of reaching up to remove a rain gutter cover and discovering a wasp nest the size of one’s fist right at eye level, covered with annoyed little buzzers. That was the day that I discovered that I can levitate.

I think I gave one of the neighbors a bit of worry. One evening I went out on a date with my husband and, since I have very low alcohol tolerance, came home utterly lit after just one margarita. That was when I had the brilliant notion of removing the wasp nest. Why not? It was nightfall, cool out, and the wasps had probably all returned to their nest. I think my husband had gone in another room or something; otherwise he surely would have stopped me.

Up the ladder I went in my little black dress, drunkenly emoting to the wasps. “I’m very sorry,” I told them, “but I’m going to have to kill you. It’s nothing personal.” I sort of dimly heard a neighbor’s sliding screen door open, but it didn’t register. It was taking all of my concentration to balance on the ladder with the can of wasp spray. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated, “but I’m going to have to kill you. I hope this will be quick and it won’t hurt much. I just can’t paint with wasps buzzing me.” I let loose with a vast toxic stream of wasp spray that cascaded over the rain gutter, then I lurched down the ladder. The neighbor’s screen door opened and closed again. I can only imagine what the person was thinking.

As for the bedroom, this summer I suddenly realized that the business of being a Woman of a Certain Age is upon me. I know this is a first world sort of problem, the sort of issue people living in mud huts would love to have. However, I really don’t want to be a Woman of a Certain Age without ever having had a proper bedroom. A bedroom with matching furniture that my husband and I selected, as opposed to a motley pile of crumbling junk, some of which I’ve had since childhood and never liked to begin with. A bedroom with a real bed with a real headboard, not a mattress and box springs thrown on a metal frame with wheels, a frame which lurches around like a roller coaster when someone gets up to use the restroom. Did I mention the headboard? Yes. A headboard, not a disgusting grease spot on the wall behind the pillows.

I admit that I have a fairly wide tacky streak, that I enjoy things like flamingos made of old car tires and taking my dog outside at night so he can watch rats scurry across the power lines. However, even I have my limits. I don’t want to reach my fifties, sixties or seventies sleeping on a sagging mattress with a grease spot behind my head. I just don’t. And if I don’t take action, some of these things won’t change.

Accordingly, this summer I began muttering about headboards and beds. Should I design my own or look for plans? What of the dresser and nightstands? Should I go price maple? Practice making mortises on scrap wood?

Did I imagine a fleeting expression of alarm on my husband’s face? He stated, in his usual diplomatic fashion, that he had no doubt that I could design or build whatever I pleased, and that it would be wonderful. However, perhaps we should at least go out and look at beds in stores to see what was out there and get some ideas. His evil scheme worked: a day or two later we’d ordered new furniture, a sort of Mission Style meets Shinto affair, much nicer than anything I would have designed or built. Bless the man.

Of course, once there’s new furniture, one has to think about other aspects of the room. Light fixtures, for example. I found the perfect table lamp for the room! It’s a blue dragonfly lamp executed in stained glass, made by Tiffany. Unfortunately, it’s in the Chrysler Museum of Art. I’ve found a number of other fixtures I like almost as well; they’re in the $50,000 range. Perhaps the business of lamps will require more thought. It would be good to find lamps which can actually, you know, be purchased or made. Something a little nicer than suspending flashlights from the ceiling with a piece of yarn, but not soaring into the five figure range.

I also want new art for over the bed. Originally I was thinking in terms of a giant wood carving. Now I’m thinking of making a new piece of fiber art, to be mounted on a stretcher frame. Something lush, lyrical and romantic. A piece evocative of Pre-Raphaelite art, Art Nouveau, or the golden age of illustration. However, not the type of thing one would see painted on the side of a 70s panel van or in a children’s nursery. We are adults. We don’t need to be eyed by dragons or teddy bears or have Humpty Dumpty leering at us as we get dressed in the morning. Of course, other than that, I have no idea of the subject matter. This is completely the reverse of the way I usually work. Maybe I should just jam some glow-in-the-dark plastic stars over the bed and call it done. After all, I still have a third of a house exterior to paint. I should focus on that and get it done before the weather turns nasty.

(With summer photos randomly inserted to make the text extra difficult to read)

In one week, the boy will be back to school. I will miss him, worry about him, and the regular routine of art, exercise, home repair, and after-school activity will resume. I hope it’s been a good summer for him. His presence was a blessing to me.

Shot at Legoland in glamorous Carlsbad, CA

Academy of Sciences, San Francisco

Each summer, I vow that things will be different. Perhaps everyone does. I’ll produce new, high quality works at breakneck speed. I’ll spend quality time with my kid, take him on a wide variety of day trips, and help him stay up to speed for the next school year. I absolutely will not let the joint descend into a state of squalor worthy of the city dump. I won’t lose my temper or say bad words. I won’t transform into a caricature of a Tennessee Williams character, the woman who swans around the house in a dowdy slip with support hose rolled down around her ankles while sucking down whiskey sours.

Zip line at the Adventure Playground, Berkeley, CA

A view of Alcatraz

Well, I achieved one of those goals. I spent time with the boy, although I’ve let up on the math and spelling practice during the past couple of weeks. Oh, and I didn’t drink any whiskey sours. I actually don’t care for whiskey, and I have a thing about drinking alcohol in front of kids.

Ants painted to look like people at the gawdawful Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum on Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco

It was the summer of listening to my son and building with Legos. It has come to me that one of the most important things we can do as parents is to facilitate our kids finding direction and developing into whoever they’re going to be. Maybe, probably, that won’t be the same as who we are. Maybe we could care less about fishing or magic or baseball, but it behooves us to try to make a smorgasbord available if we can. Try to listen up, act interested, invest in new experiences. Maybe somewhere out there is the experience that will spark an interest. Maybe it won’t be anything we personally care about, and that is fine. We can still be supportive. We can show interest and encourage.

My kid darned near getting killed at Belmont Park, San Diego

It was also the summer of pondering, as I became poignantly conscious of the death of other relationships, and thought about the causes. My theory has long been that I am the common factor in all of my failed relationships, most of which are with family members, so there must be something wrong with me or with something I’m doing. If I wish to be charitable to myself, it could be as simple as being someone who unconsciously seeks out or tolerates a certain type of relationship.

At the Exploratorium in San Francisco

Fort Point, San Francisco

So I sat with the boy, trying to comfort myself by nurturing him while I mourned the loss of something which had turned out to be a fantasy. I’m a big believer in gathering data, you see. Sometimes a person can grow up with a distorted notion of reality, say if there’s been profound mental illness or dysfunction in the family.

Golden Gate Bridge

Legoland Hotel, Carlsbad, CA

At some point, though, one realizes there’s a disconnect between what people are saying and what they’re doing. The two things don’t match. So one gathers data. One looks at the data over a period of years, even. One may realize that one’s model of reality was wrong and that one needs to create a new model. A healthy, more realistic model.

Meerkats at the San Francisco Zoo

I will state this minor yet not-so-minor thing in case it will help someone else: I recently went through six to eight months of artist’s block related to this issue. I still fight it now and then. I can thank Julia Cameron and her book, The Artist’s Way, for helping me to climb out of it. In it, she has a number of extremely helpful weekly exercises. I did them for about two weeks and found them very annoying, so I quit doing them. However, the journalling helped, so I thank her for that. It helped me get to the core of what was blocking me.

A model posing for her public at the San Diego Zoo

There are people out there who are broken in some fundamental fashion. Sleepwalking through life, angry, closed off, abusive, toxic, judging, unable to feel joy for others. Sometimes we’re related to them. Sometimes we’re even related to a whole batch of them. It’s hard to realize that and it’s hard to move away from it. There’s no joy in it. Even when the consequences are the same – I won’t be notified when my father becomes ill, or I won’t ever see photos of my early childhood – it feels different when consciously making a choice as opposed to simply having it happen.

Tiger, San Diego Zoo

There are people who control by withholding interest or approval, who will deny your very point of view. It’s the tip of the iceberg as far as what had been going on for decades, in terms of rude, untrustworthy, sometimes abusive behavior, but that was part of what was holding me back artistically. I’d gradually learned to quit saying anything at all, lest it be used as a weapon to hurt me. The participation in Quilt National, winning an award, a cherished book appearance, the very work I did. I started doubting the validity of my work, and had a harder and harder time working at all. Each time something good happened, I would make a mental note to say nothing about it. Double that if it was something bad, because people would rejoice in it.

The boy at Fort Point

These things happen. I will never understand why I wasn’t worthy of their love and respect, although I suspect that simply existing was sufficient. I’m not sure how one comes to terms with such fundamental rejection. However, based on what I’ve seen from friends who’ve experienced a great loss, there’s solace in turning outward. In nurturing one’s child, in quiet conversation with one’s husband, in taking interest in others and rejoicing in their successes. It seems like a good thing to practice.

An ancient Mayan lidded jaguar vessel at the de Young Museum, San Francisco

Bless the boy for his company this summer.

When I’m visiting a show or a museum, I’ll sometimes hear disparaging comments about the work. “I wouldn’t give two cents for that,” one woman sneered at a piece I found rather clever. An artist in a prestigious show characterized another person’s work as a “gimmick”, even though she wasn’t quite sure her own piece had been hung right side up. (Seriously. She had to go stare at it for awhile before calling a staff member over to flip it.)

Well, we’re all human here. I do the same thing, although I go to some effort to keep a filter between my mouth and my brain. Inside, though, my critic-mind is merrily commenting away. I see a lot of work and think “That’s crap” or “You’re boring me” or “Seriously? People used to paint that kind of thing on the sides of vans.”

The thing I try to remind myself of, though, is that we’re all on different paths. The people learning a new medium, who dip their toes in by trying someone else’s technique. The people whose experience of art is enhanced by translating a master work to a different medium. The veteran artists who attended RISD and have established themes and personal styles. The latecomers who are struggling to sing and express their souls after years of having their needs take a back seat to everyone else’s.

We often don’t know, really. We can simply react to what we’re seeing – perhaps appropriate in the case of illustration or graphic design – but if we don’t know about the creator, we may not see a piece with clear eyes. Perhaps it’s best to try to retain a sense of compassion, even when we think something is gawdawful. While we may not find a particular artwork compelling, on some level it’s wonderful that the person created. Maybe that was an immensely courageous act, and showing a series of badly rendered drawings which reek of cigarette smoke is a high point in this person’s life. Let’s applaud that, even if we aren’t moved by the work. Compassion.

With that notion in the back of my mind, I recently viewed a show, Menagerie, at the Mingei in San Diego. Menagerie was comprised of renderings of animals from the permanent collection. I wandered through, some things catching my eye and some not.

Sitting firmly in the “not” category was this collection of animals. I walked by them rather dismissively, thinking “meh, a bunch of animal blobs”, then forced myself to look again. Perhaps the museum had a good reason for adding them to the collection. Perhaps I’d learn something if I studied them.

There was a card with the collection:

Sonabai Rajawar
Animals, c 1985
India
Clay and Paint

Sonabai Rajawar lived in forced isolation for 15 years in a remote village in central India, unable to see or be seen by anyone other than her husband and child. Through the necessity of expressing her own vision in the face of this adversity, Sonabai created toys for her son and sculptures for her home, imagining a world full of color and light. Using available materials, she created whimsical animal sculptures exclusively from her own vivid imagination.

And there it was: I was hooked. I wanted to learn more about this woman, but I could already imagine her. Married to an abusive loon of some sort, I guessed, someone hideously controlling who kept her locked up until he saw the dollar signs emanating from her work. Or maybe he died first, then she gained freedom. I would have gone nuts in such circumstances, had my spirit totally crushed, but she came up with a coping mechanism, a means of expressing the beauty and goodness inside. Unbelievably admirable.

“She dug clay mud from around her well,” one of the museum staff told me, “she made the paints herself, from things she had on hand.” Imagine that, grubbing around in the dirt and grinding up spices and seeds for pigments, perhaps, in order to make toys for one’s child. Quite literally creating something out of nothing. Evidently she visited the U.S. near the end of her life, when the Mingei mounted an exhibit of her work. She was amazed and delighted to discover the existence of ready-made tempera paints in a rainbow of hues.

And I, in my hubris and with my access to the endless array of supplies we have in the west, was initially dismissive of her work.

I will close with a picture of something that is literally, but not metaphorically, a piece of crap:

That’s right. This charming little dog was made from dung. As with Sonabai Rajawar, that may have been the only material this artist could access, yet the creative spirit burned so brightly. It’s something I’ll try to bear in mind the next time I look at someone’s work and am tempted to dismiss it as crap.