8 Things I Learned in February

Daffodils bloom in February here in Central California.

I began writing this post on February 5, and was quite happily surprised that I learned the first 3 things on this list so soon in the month. I think we all learn things constantly; writing them down helps us realize it is happening.

  1. Young Miner’s Lettuce tastes good. I’d heard this most of my life, but didn’t get the “young” part, and would pick it when it was in flower. Then, it tastes bitter. “Young” means newly sprouted, pre-flower stage.
  2. There is a new podcast on the World Wide Web called Women’s Work. Tsh (yeah, I know. . . it is pronounced “Tish”. . . whatsamatter with her parents?) Oxenreider interviews women who work in interesting businesses. I discovered the vowelless Tsh when she was interviewed on What Should I Read Next, and I liked her book choices. 
  3. Did you know there is an International Correspondence Writing Month? Yeppers. It is February, and in the spirit of creative, cute and trendy, it is called “InCoWriMo”; I learned of this from Pencils.com. They, the pencil people, said to write them a letter and they would send something in return. (Prolly just a coupon for a slight discount on a product if you spend an enormous amount first. . . yep, I am cynical.) InCWriMo actually has a website, and it is simple and beautiful, the way I hope my own will become.
  4. There is a thingamajig that goes on the end of a special camera lens that allows one to insert a slide and then photograph it to convert it to a digital file. In the olden days, art was photographed onto slide film, and it was tricky business to get the light right and the image square. Now, when we want to see pictures of our old work, we hold up a little slide to the light and squint, unless we have a friend with a thingamajig on her camera. But, this teaches us that our slide photography was dismal and horrible and didn’t show off our work. Is this why we didn’t get our work accepted into juried shows? (Notice I am hiding behind the royal “we”?)
  5. For some reason, Guatemala keeps appearing in my life. A few months ago, I proofread a book called Rooftop Reflections for a friend about his home-building trips in Guatemala; a few weeks ago, 2 friends went to Guatemala on a mission trip; recently, my niece announced her engagement to a fine man from Guatemala. Yesterday I met a man who is married to a woman from Guatemala.What does all this mean? (This one is more of an observation; learning will come later, if at all.)
  6. The word “anthropogenic”: it means environmentally despoiled by humans. Can’t say that I’ll use it much in conversation, but it is always good to increase one’s vocabulary.
  7. Cows rarely have twins. Did you know that? I didn’t. Ewes are more likely to have twins.
  8. Ever seen the classic portrait oil painting called Pinkie (painted in 1793 by Thomas Lawrence, hanging in  the Huntington Museum)? Did you know Pinkie had TB and died a year later at age 12? New info to me.

More Blogging Thoughts

Chloe, colored pencil, private collection, chosen for this post because she is the opposite of a middle-aged blogger

I googled “middle-aged bloggers” and found several. One site posted an invitation for middle-aged bloggers to comment and put their site links in the comments, so I clicked through and read some of them. They are sort of boring. Lots of talk about why they started blogging, talk about their grandchildren, their new lives with their husbands gone, new grandchildren, new phases of life with new retirement, and clothing and hair color. Lots and lots of talk about staying young, dressing well, finding your style, whether or not to color your hair, staying positive. . . boring.

Scared me. Am I that boring? Why do they have so many subscribers and comments when they are boring? Why do I not when I am so witty, original, clever and entertaining? (Oh, and humble about my bloggery skills too. . .)

Life’s not fair. (My dad used to ask the rhetorical question, “Who said life has to be fair?” I once said this to a friend, and she replied, “I don’t know; was it Benjamin Franklin?”)

Several acquaintances and a few friends have expressed a desire to blog, and then nothing happens. They think I am “a-MAY-zing” for blogging so often, so consistently, so long. Well, they already have jobs; this is part of mine.

Because I am producing things that no one needs in a county where art is a definite luxury, because I am not on Facebook or Twitter or any of those instant and constant connected things, because I work in isolation and do not have a public studio, because there are only a small handful of galleries around here (and all are non-profit and run by volunteers who are not motivated by sales), because I choose to focus on Tulare County, I MUST do something public. Blogging is that something, and it suits me. 

Many bloggers are now producing podcasts. I won’t say “never”, but I will say “probably never”. This is a trend, and I am too busy painting, drawing, teaching, figuring out various methods of marketing, doing shows and open studios and demonstrations and workshops, and of course, blogging.

I’ve got to keep being me, because all the other roles are already taken. I have too much to say, too much to show, too much to explain, too many thoughts about being a full time, self-employed artist in a poor, uneducated, rural county.

After all that, you deserve a treat. How about a nice cup of tea?

Tea Time, colored pencil, private collection (or did I lose this? Is it in my file somewhere?)

 

ArtSpeak versus Reality

Weeds or wildflowers? Depends on one’s perspective, just as Artspeak can sound like wisdom or baloney.

“Artspeak” is a word I made up for all the stuffy pretentious insider terms used by professional artists. Some of the words are useful, because every profession has its own vocabulary. But for some reason, the way some artists talk just gets up my nose.

One of an artist’s more dreaded tasks is writing an Artist’s Statement. If it was allowed, mine would say “I saw it, liked it, photographed it, and painted it BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT MIGHT SELL!”. Instead, an artist is expected to be articulate, and even fluent in answering questions such as:

What informs the color in your work?

Is the subversion of closure an important element in your work?

What are the paradoxes in your work?

What are the paradoxes in the practice of painting?

How do your cultural roots inform your practice?

I think artists are expected to say things like this:

I’m constructing a framework which functions as a kind of syntactical grid of shifting equivalences.

Imagine the possibility that painting might take root and find a place to press forward into fertile new terrain

Instead, this is more my style of questions and answers:

1. What do you want people to see in your work? reality and the beauty of Tulare County

2. What is a distinguishing characteristic of your art? it looks real

3. Based on your conversations, what do people find delightful or surprising about your art? the level of reality.

That’s me, keeping things real, just an ordinary realist from a real rural place of realistic folks.

Blog Thoughts

Before I finished working on this blog post, I accidentally hit the Publish button instead of Preview. I immediately took it back down, but those of you who subscribe received the earlier version via email. Oops. Here is the real post.

April 15 will be the tenth anniversary of this blog. That is TEN YEARS of writing five days a week about the business of being a Central California artist.

As far as I can discover, NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS. More accurately, no one I know or have encountered on the World Wide Web has posted five days a week for ten years.

Lots of people start blogs. Lots of people quit blogging.

Many started their blogs with daily posts; as life sped up, bloggery wisdom changed. Five days a week used to be seen as the best method; now posting less often, perhaps once a week, is considered better..

I ignored the advice, because I have too much to say and blogging is just plain fun.

More grow-your-blog advice was to read and comment on other blogs. I did this, and in the process, I made 2 good blogger friends that I stay in touch with, along with some nice virtual acquaintances. This increased my readership by two.

Other bloggery wisdom advised doing guest posts on other people’s blogs; I did that a few times, and while it was fun, it increased my non-art-producing work without increasing my readership.

Another piece of advice is to “monetize” one’s blog. (Since when did “monetize” become a word?) What this weird word means is to sell ad space on one’s blog and to talk about products and books that one uses and likes, in hopes of getting people to click on the links and buy the products. This method is called using “affiliate links”. Feels pushy and sellsy and a little trashy to me. By “trashy”, I mean it clutters up the site and distracts the reader, inviting them to leave the page.

Not my style, although I have tinkered around with this too. Never earned more than about 15¢.

My readership is low, few readers comment, blogs are considered old-fashioned (gimme a break!!), I don’t have many subscribers, it costs money, and it takes time. Why do I continue to blog? 

BECAUSE IT IS FUN, I LOVE TO DO IT, AND IT IS NOW A DEEPLY INGRAINED HABIT!

Besides, I know most of my readers in real life; we have real friendships and real interaction, not just “virtual” stuff, where people “hang out on social media”. Authenticity is one of my core values in life. I need realism in art, in friendships and in life.

Thank you for reading. Here, have a nice picture as a thank you for listening.

P.S. If you enjoy my blog and know other people who might like reading about earning a living as an artist in a poor uneducated rural area, people who are interested in Tulare County, people who love Mineral King, people who like realism in art and life, then send them the link to my blog.

There. That’s about as sellsy and pushy as I care to be. A bit too sellsy, but I guess it never hurts to ask.

 

11 Things I Learned in January

Happy Birthday, Robin!!

Some of these things are new, and some got relearned. 

  1. If you have an indoor/outdoor cat, don’t get too attached. Nature is just out your door, and it is brutal and wild. Bye-bye, Samson, the bitey Bengal boy. Still, we think it is better to let a cat be a cat instead of trapping it inside.
  2. If you don’t have a cell phone, it is harder to order from Amazon. They want you to sign in, receive a call and then sign in a second time with a code that comes through the phone. This doesn’t work when you are at your mom’s house, wanting to order something for her. Still, I think it is better to not have a cell phone.
  3. The Blackwing Colors colored pencil set of 12 can be used to obtain almost as many colors (via layering) as either Polychromos or Prismacolor sets of 120 colors. Score another point for simplicity!
  4. There is a very fine upholstery and wood-working shop in downtown Visalia called Quality Upholstering. I’d heard of them because they have been there 40 years!! They do great work with quick turnaround, and are a pleasure to deal with. 
  5. Lifesource Water Systems is The Answer To Bad Water from your household tap. Why did we wait so long to deal with the excessive chlorine?? Don and Shelley Lovelace have the franchise in Fresno and they are a pleasure and a delight to work with.
  6. I am more vain than I thought. A stranger referred to me as a “blonde”. My hair is brown, but the gray in it was deceptive to the stranger. I thought this would never enter my mind, but I have been considering hiding the gray.
  7. The History Chicks is an excellent way to learn some history. This is a podcast with 2 women telling the stories of various women, just talking as women do. Eavesdrop and learn (and they DON’T CUSS!)
  8. I learned how to make a secret book safe – it was harder than I expected. You can see the instructions here: Little Vintage Cottage. 
  9. As a bonus to #8, I learned how to make ModPodge. What is this? It is 1 cup white glue with 1/3 cup water, sold as a specialty craft product, but not at the local hardware store. (We used it in the 1970s to decoupage cut up posters onto grape trays; this was an important decorating skill.)
  10. There is a little battery pack charger thing. . . a friend jump-started my car from this little dealie, which put the stereo in a coma and temporarily disabled the automatic locking system (or maybe that was the dead battery). But, it was so compact and handy! (My amazing mechanic, since 1983, Mark at Foreign Auto Works in Visalia got everything repaired and I got a new battery.)
  11. The definition of middle-aged is 45-65, according to The Google. Who cares? A friend my age (58) and I had quite a discussion about it. She insisted we were old, and I was certain we are still middle-aged. Again, who cares? It was an interesting discussion, and caused me to think about the differences in our lives that give us differing views. She is a grandmother, has no living parents, lives in a college town in a wealthy area, to name a few; I am not a parent nor a grandparent, have a mom who is doing quite well (thank you for your concern), and live in the 3rd poorest and 13th least educated county in the state. Those things all influence one’s perspective.

11 Things I Learned in December

Oak Grove Bridge IXX, oil on canvas, SOLD
  1. By the Book is a fun podcast by two women friends who pick a self-help book, read it, follow it for 2 weeks, and report about it in 2 episodes. They either do or do not recommend the book to their listeners. Then they tell what the next book will be. WARNING: They cuss a lot!!
  2. Did you know a crown on a tooth costs $1232. I learned this in December. Ow.
  3. I’ve been wearing contacts for 42 years and just learned that the reason for 2 pair of lenses is to rotate them. I thought the 2nd pair was to be stored in case of loss. 
  4. I pretend that my advanced drawing students have to bully me into teaching oil painting, but in December I realized how very enjoyable these workshops are for everyone, including me.
  5. My website looks out of date. Do I care? Do you? Finding a webdesigner who is responsive, careful, doesn’t want to change platforms, knows how to install and operate a shopping cart, can preserve my almost 10 years of blogging, and who can teach me how to maintain my site is a very daunting task. I’ve had two very wonderful designers, and each one quit for the sake of their children. Here I go again.
  6. Not everyone can listen to and feel music. While being heavily involved in a Christmas musical, this came as a new piece of information to me. I thought anyone could learn music by listening, and just know without being told exactly when to start after hearing the introduction. I learned that this just isn’t so.
  7. After a year without a cell phone, I know now that I truly don’t need a cell phone. 
  8. I read over 100 books this year. I learned that by keeping the list on my GoodReads account that I don’t feel the need to put the best ones on my blog. Does anyone care?
  9. People don’t notice earrings. Many times I deliberately wore a mismatched pair just to test my theory, and no one noticed.
  10. Blue is out of style in home decorating. I bought denim to recover the armchair because there were no other navy-type blue fabrics. None!
  11. Wax-based colored pencils by Blackwing are stronger than the ones made by Prismacolor. Too bad they only come in 12 colors.

Did you learn anything in December? Want to share? Comment or email me. . .

Interesting Place in Three Rivers

The Perfect Gift Boutique is an annual event held by the Kaweah Artisans at the Arts Center in Three Rivers. This is an old building, vaguely Craftsman in style, somewhat shabby, and in its third life – it has been a home, the Womans Club (Yes, that is the way a national club for women spells its name) and now an arts center with many uses. 

Nikki the weaver and I usually set up on the stage. The back wall is actually made of sliding panels that open onto the back yard, so that the viewers of a play can sit in the back, outside.

The rock work is extensive, resourceful (using river rock) and interesting. I’ve heard that it is a little scary upstairs, but I love those double-hung windows and shingle siding. This is at the very top of the triangular back yard.

The balcony overlooks the back yard; I wonder if it was ever used in plays there.

This is looking up from the stage into the back yard audience area. 

The interior is where we, the Kaweah Artisans, spend our time. It is an open space where about 5-6 folks can set up their wares. This is the view that Nikki and I have of the room from our perch on the stage.

Could you people hold it down? I had a rough night and need my sleep.

Things I Learned in November

  1. The fall time change is so much easier than the spring one, but it still makes me tired to have my internal chronometer jerked around.
  2. There are more ways to measure the success of a show than by the $ I earn. Reconnecting with old friends, meeting other artisans, talking to people who might become drawing students–all very rewarding. (I already knew this but it was reinforced in November.)
  3. I found a new podcast that really holds my attention. Its tagline is “for the curious mind with a short attention span”. It is by Mike Rowe, the “Dirty Jobs” guy with a fabulous voice. My favorite episode so far is “It is good to be the king”, which he published in July of 2017.
  4. In reading The Pencil Perfect by Caroline Weaver of C. W. Pencil Enterprise, I am learning all sorts of history about pencils. Did you know that Henry David Thoreau’s family had a pencil manufacturing business? 
  5. Did you know it takes 7 yards of upholstery fabric to cover an armchair? I learned this; next I hope to learn how to choose and buy fabric without actually going to town.
  6. By being an organ donor, one life can save eight lives. Remember, souls go to heaven; organs don’t. (My friend is waiting for a pair of new lungs.)
  7. Almost no one gets married in churches anymore. Almost every wedding, reunion, and public event has an audio system and a DJ that is deafening. I keep earplugs with me, but when I forget, it is stunning to me that no one else seems to mind the noise level. Are people not supposed to converse? Is this because so many people just communicate by texting that it doesn’t matter? 

Poultry Paintings

The poultry paintings are inching along. They might be a little bit too hard for me, so I am taking my time. Productive procrastination is a good way to get through some difficult tasks. I take breaks to rehab frames, blog, touch up old paintings, answer emails, make a new schedule for drawing lessons, sweep, or water plants. All those things need to be done. I’m the boss of me. There is no deadline on the poultry paintings. They aren’t commissions. I have a commission to work on but it is a secret, and the recipient of the project might be a reader of this blog. So, poultry paintings in increments are what you get to see.

Have I convinced myself that it is okay to procrastinate yet?

This is the latest iteration of the rooster named Dinnerbone and the flock, with the appropriate and clever name of “Flock”. (And the rooster painting title is “Dinnerbone”, because I am creative that way.)

Samson discovered my friend’s car, which is named Hot Wheels. She is clever that way. (My car is named Fernando – thank you for being interested in such important personal details.)

8 Things I Learned in September

Still biting us after a year, although he is much larger now, Samson the Bengal wanna-be.

These are life things I learned mostly in September, although a few may have spilled over from late August.

  1. An Americano is espresso with hot water added. I can’t tell the difference between that and a cup of black coffee. My nephew is employed by Starbucks and informs me that Americanos suck. Not sure why this is his assessment.
  2. A dog will eventually eat food it doesn’t like rather than starve; a cat will become anorectic. Samson actually ate some dry food for the first time in the past couple of months, so maybe his tastes are changing; he is a year old now.
  3. Some people never do figure out where they fit in personality profile tests; I may be one of them. Just finished reading Anne Bogel’s Reading People, which is an overview of different personality typing tests; it was helpful, even if my main conclusion is that I don’t know who I am. I’ll keep learning. . .
  4. No matter how much I use InDesign and Photoshop Elements, they just keep confounding me. Adobe and Apple have been compared to a couple after a bad divorce; I come down on the side of Apple every time.
  5. If bread doesn’t rise very well, it will take longer to bake; conversely, if it rises very well, it will get done much sooner than expected.
  6. A battery powered drill can also be called an “impact wrench”–say what? Must be man talk.
  7. Crystal Pepsi is a thing. It tastes good. I almost never drink soda of any kind, and a friend gave me one of these to try. I have no idea if it tastes like real Pepsi or not. Because I don’t drink soda, the sugar and caffeine really packed a wallop!
  8. Drawing lesson for me: when shading by layering with pencils, with a heavy hand, you’ll get your darkest blacks by beginning with the blackest pencils; with a lighter hand, you’ll get your darkest blacks by ending with the blackest pencils. Maybe. Haven’t cemented this yet, even after years and years of drawing and teaching drawing.