Minimalist Quilt

The Horrors:

It's hard for you to know if you should call it quits today or launch a major initiative. Unfortunately, your words cannot tell the whole story. Lovable Venus is still hanging out with feisty Mars in your 3rd House of Communication, tempting you to embellish your tale, but it's smarter to cut it short to make it more believable. You may be pushed up against the wall with no way over it. Don't be glib; covering up the truth won't make this day any easier.

Looks like 'major initiative' is the drill.  I admit I am an embellisher, but more with stuff than tales.  No walls, not to worry about me getting pushed.  Besides there is that low center of gravity I deal with.

I finally broke down and joined up with this, and perhaps broke through my procrastination

and got my little moleskin AND my tee shirt ready to go.  I've tucked it in my box heading for Florida and signed on to have my book assigned a place for eventual online viewing.  I am anxious to get going on it in spite of the inability to do anything too 3-D-  no problemo, it will keep me thinkin' to stay on the straight and narrow.

The Robert Genn newsletter came today too and that made it a triple synchronicity incident.  Here it is:

If your work depresses you, and depresses you more as you go, you need to get happy. Count your blessings. Count your winnings. Take a few minutes to fly the flag of optimism. I don't know about you, but I often feel I'm getting drunk on a painting. It's better to be a happy drunk than a mean one. 

We also have the tendency to get too serious. Besides asking "What could be?" you need to ask "How can I play here?" "Play," said Martin Buber, "is the exultation of the possible."

Take chances. Fooling around includes making boo-boos. In most media you can pretty well always cover up your boo-boos. In this way, ours is a unique sport.

Creativity, invention and exploration all stem from the same root. Not every member of the community puts forth these shoots. The business of invention is the act of trying this and that. The making of art needs to be a dynamic, evolving event, of joyfully trying this and that. To keep both yourself and your viewers interested, it has to be.

Back when my son was young he was a master teller of tales, which I prefer as terminology rather than calling him a liar.  Oh, the tales were endless and convoluted and they went on and on as he dug himself in deeper and deeper.  We would finally halt the process and try to make him see the error of his ways, the dead end of his own embellishing.  He was a tough case, and would argue his 'formulations' long past loosing the argument and his credibility.  We would try to discuss the fabrication, and his last word was always, "But Mommmmm, WHATIF_____________..."?  and that sentence would end with the most amazing out of the air suppositions you could imagine, the best being, "what If My Hair Turned Green?"  which became our family mantra for his stories.

The thing is, he had no filters and the imagination was running, and that was a Good Thing!  We wanted to foster it, but also needed to direct it.  Now, when I am in the studio I try to be that kid and let the WHATIFS roll. The lesson here being that you can learn a lot about your materials and your thought processes and your motivations if you employ your own whatifs.  If you let your mind flow in free associations, like my son was able to do at a very young age, you can come up with some amazing ideas.  Not all will be keepers, but you have to give them a chance to sort of percolate and bubble up..  Orville and Wilbur knew all about whatifs.  You have to let your mind wander into that zone where you stop thinking and let intuition take over. It's only when you get in that zone, when you can remove your own filters and inner critics and the voice of your mother that you can access the possibilities of your mind.  So let free associations happen, see those fortuitous juxtapositions and forget that plaids don't work with stripes, because it's only when you don't KNOW all those rules that you can break them.

In Other News, I finally also sat down and opened a gmail account for studio email, about time to get that separated out, eh?  So now I can also be reached at ganymedestudio*at*gmail*dot*com.  Well, I can be reached there if I can remember the fifteenth password I typed in!

This week is sort of 'Old Home Week' here in the Convalescent Condo.  TY is getting better  and attending his PT sessions.  Allw as well until he fell on the wet garage floor during the 3 day downpour and his Good leg went crunch.  A few more icebags and another few days off of it and a few more days of depression...  I went into Boston on Wednesday and met a wonderful old friend from my high school days.  She was just blasting through town on her way back to London so I corralled her long enough for a lunch.  Unfortunately it was the worst weather I have seen all summer, driving cold rain and wind, so we were confined to a mall.  Actually this was fine, because it eliminated the parking problem (I again threw money at the problem and spent 45 minutes cruising the garage to find a little place to stash the car!)  It was so good to see her again and so weird that I felt like I saw her a just a few weeks ago, not thirty years ago!  We spent our few hours fondling Dries van Noten in Barney's and discovering we still like the same stuff.  I guess an old friend is the best kind, the Gold Ones.

Then today I had my annual shared birthday fiesta with a friend from college.  We met at a Cheesecake Factory because she loves the cheesecake!  It sure looked good, but I was quite apalled when she took three bites and had them wrap it up to take home.  I'm tellin' ya, if that huge hunk of cheesecake was set in front of me I would work at it until there wasn't a single schmeer of chocolate left on the plate!  She won't even eat it in the car on the way home!  Unbelievable.  Her last words were that it would be dessert for TWO dinners!

I am such a friggin flyin flippin pig.


(That is a facimile of the pig I have tied to my ceiling- I have to climb on the stool to catch him by his flapping wing to switch his buttons. I would have hung him lower except then his circle was too s large and he kept whacking me in the head ever swoop around.)