My blogs often start out with the manageable lamentation
that I have a bunch of projects in the works.
It seems that I have too much going on to accomplish it all. What helps me manage is to stand back and look
at the big picture. I find if keep I moving
forward, a little bit on each project each week, my responsibilities don’t feel
so overwhelming. This was one of those
weeks! I stepped back into working on a
weaving project I started a while back, which was to work on the background for
a birch piece set next to a summer lake.
I’ve made similar pieces, and this composition is especially calming for
me. I pulled the piece off the studio wall
and started crocheting some of the foreground land mass to build the piece away
from the wall.
I’ll plant the birch
trees there. Then I spent some time
needle felting the effects of the gentle summer breeze on the water to create
the perceived notion of waves. I’m
hoping that the piece should be finished and ready to travel to summer art
fairs by this time next week.
I spent some time this week moving ‘My Roots’ forward as
well. I’m creating this for an
exhibition in November, although I’ll travel with this piece to summer art
fairs. I have decided that if it finds a
new home this summer, it wasn’t meant to be part of the exhibit.
My goal was to finish making the turnips that
will nicely fill in the green hole still in the piece I shared last week. I worked on these as the boys did their
taekwondo, and the early-stage turnips are usually mistaken for potatoes or
some other roots. As the delicate purples
and greens are added the turnips take on their identity. I can tell they’re exited to join their other
root relatives on the weaving.
April marked my return to the costume studio at Bloomington High
School South. If you haven’t heard, and
I can’t imagine that many of you haven’t, I’m currently creating the chorus
costumes for a performance of Pippin this fall in a vintage circus motif. I’ve been collecting all sorts of treasures
from various places, both local and on my travels, to fit my color scheme for
the performance. I focus on reclaimed
and recycled clothing and materials for the costumes. Some parents have dropped off materials, but I
regularly visit the Recycle Center (especially the Materials for the Arts program), My Sister’s Closet, and the Bloomington Thrift Shop. I even found some useful costume things at
the Re-Store in town! On my spring break
visit to Michigan I brought home a big haul from a store called the Cat’s Meow.
One of the first new costumes I have laid out for the
incoming freshmen includes a peplum I cut from a dress I found at the Cat’s
Meow. The purple skirt was formerly a
purple dress, and what will be the black and white skirt was formerly a bed skirt. I’ll trim the costume with Christmas ribbons
and chords made from t-shirts, cut as a continuous strips to make the
cordage.
I am generating lots of projects for my sewing faeries!
While the costumes are my day job, I’ve been moving forward
on pulling things together for my workshop in Virginia in June. I took advantage of the beautiful weather
from last week to bring my wide belt sander on the veranda.
I converted the slats of wooden blinds into
batons or pick-up sticks as the boys spent some quality time outside playing
with bubbles. They also decided they
needed to try some stained glass work, so they spent a couple of hours on that project. So yes, I happened to have copper tape and a
soldering iron, and yes we have a bunch of beach glass, shells and funky found
objects that they could fuse together.
Doesn’t every mom have those things?
Family life has been about as busy as usual, with the
biggest news focused on Jacob. He had
some extra practices this week before his big Hip Hop Connexion performance on
Friday night.
It was terrific! The Jaywalkerz did a fabulous job, as usual,
and brought the house down with their performance amid a dozen other skilled performance
groups.
On the pie front, I had been
scratching days on my calendar to maintain some hope. Jim hasn’t been 100% and I wasn’t sure I was
going to get a pie this week. But good
news! I woke this morning to the smell
of blueberry pie baking, and tonight night was a pie night! Hooray!
Until next week,
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment