Category: Thoughts

Things I’m learning in Artworld.

Writing, Editing, Publishing, Chapter One

Today’s blog post contains an experiment. If you receive these posts in email, and read the email on your iPhone or iPad, and if the pictures in the post don’t show for you, tap here janabotkin.net. Then PLEASE let me know what happens, because this is a mystery I would like to solve.

Books

Writing, editing, and publishing are skills I have learned and practiced through the years. It began with The Cabins of Mineral King, under the guidance of my cabin neighbor, Jane Coughran. Many years passed before I took on The Cabins of Wilsonia. During those years of 1998-2011, everything about the publishing process changed.

This time I did all the book design myself, which is called “formatting”. I had to buy a laptop, a scanner, Photoshop, and InDesign, and learn to use them all. I hired an editor, hired a publishing consultant, recruited several proofreaders, and found a printer. It took four years.

That process taught me skills that I used for other books, some mine, some other people’s: Trail of Promises, The Visalia Electric Railroad, Mineral King Wildflowers, Adventures in Boy Scouting, Oil Town Teacher, six coloring books, and currently, White Plague: When TB was Called Consumption (the working title).

Who Cares?

You might care, especially if you or someone you know has written or plans to write a book. Let this serve as a short tutorial (or perhaps a warning).

Writing the book is only one tiny little piece of the process.

Tomorrow, I will begin The List.

Things Artists Have to Figure Out

I recently agreed to submit 5 pieces to an upcoming show in the Exeter Courthouse Gallery, now called CACHE. (Can’t remember what it stands for). The show is called “Locals Only”, and although I have never lived in Exeter, my studio was there for 9 years, so I qualify as a local.

This means I have to figure out what to submit. There are many things to take into consideration:

Who will the audience be?
Shall I submit oil, pencil, or both?
Do I have any new oil paintings that I haven’t already shown at this gallery?
Are they scanned or photographed, titled, and varnished?
Do I have any new pencil pieces?
How many are new? Oops, that means unframed.
Do I have any frames and mats that will fit the new pencil pieces?
Shall I unframe older pieces that haven’t sold and use those frames and mats for the new pieces?
What shall I say about these pieces for the QR code that will allow a viewer to learn about them?
Can I make the voice recording work?
How will I sound like a knowledgeable confident artist rather than a silly newbie?
How does one send a voice recording?
How many of my current obsession (orange groves with foothills and the Sierra) is too many in the same show?
What shall I title these pieces that all look similar? (Did Monet or Van Gogh or whoever it was just say “Haystack # Forty-eleven” or “Water Lilies # umpty-umpt”?)

These are drying in the sun; sure hope nothing natural befalls them. I’d better move them inside.

An artist could need a nap after all these difficult decisions.

art business

Various and Sundry Calendar Thoughts

Matilija Poppies, 5×7″, NFS*

What does “sundry” mean? Various, miscellaneous, separate, diverse. Its use is redundant in the title of this post, but a longer title seems to please the search engines. Maybe I should use all four words. . . but maybe I should just get on with it here.

I took a calendar to a friend in a convalescent hospital, along with a wrapped book. She received the book, but the unscrupulous front desk did not deliver the calendar. When I called to ask about it, my inquiry was met with surly and suspicious defensiveness. Ugh. My friend was scheduled for release last week, so I saved the final calendar for her return home.
A customer in North Carolina ordered a calendar, and it was never received. First Class Large Envelopes don’t have tracking through the USPS.
Since the calendars are sold out, I looked into reordering. The smallest quantity is 10 calendars, which would cost me $23 each. Nope. I told the North Carolina customer that I’d send her a refund check.
Something told me to verify the North Carolina address before sending the check. Sure enough, she had given me the wrong one, and she told me to forget the refund.
If the calendar makes its way back to me, I will mail to her at the right address.
The List of Calendar Ideas now contains nine different suggestions. Maybe I can design for nine years ahead.

*NFS means Not For Sale

Waiting Around, Chapter Three

While waiting around to get permission to begin painting at the new Catholic church in Visalia, I hung out in the yard a little bit, between rainstorms.

Pippin and Tucker wondered why I was jerking their salad out of the ground. (Humans call it “pulling weeds”.)

Trail Guy and I talked about this old bird bath. Cowboy Bert made it for me out of 2 discs and a pipe, added an auger-tip to the top, and I did a tile mosaic. Because of the auger tip, it continually rusted until all the tiles fell off. Then I just moved it to our Someday pile.

Trail Guy thought we could figure out how to turn it into a bird feeder, and I said yes, we can, by flipping it over so the auger tip goes into the ground and the base becomes the top. I wanted to sand it some and then cover it with several coats of Rustoleum.

However, Trail Guy was eager to get those birds situated, so the painting will have to wait. He also did some sort of man-powertool-stuff so the pipe won’t fill up with water.

While Pippin and Tucker participated in our outdoor activities, Jackson took a nap indoors in the sunshine. He is more sedentary and introverted than Brother Pippin and Uncle Tuck.

I also spent a fair amount of time on the phone with Apple, cleaned out some cupboards, knit, read, did the yearend bookkeeping, polished the headlights on Fernando (that is my car), worked on the book about TB which is a long story that began here, here, and here. Someday, when we finish the project, I will tell you the whole story. Of course if this waiting time continues and I run out of other topics for posting, I may tell you before the project is finished.

Thus we conclude Chapter Three of While I Was Waiting.

Waiting Around, Chapter Two

While waiting around for permission to begin painting two murals in Visalia, I remembered that I needed to finish a small painting. When it rains, it is dark and cold in the painting workshop. So, I haven’t painted in about a month. Good grief, will I remember how??

Do you remember this little painting? It needs work.

Instead of painting in the cold painting workshop, I carried everything outside.

It is too wet to scan and too wet to photograph properly, but you can definitely see that it is improved from the first photo.

What a fine place to paint. I remembered what to do with oil paints, no problemo.

Thus we conclude today’s chapter of What I Did While Waiting Around.

A List With Links To Six Great Blogs

The past week has been full of random and varied posts, no particular theme. So, I will keep going on this while I wait for my next mural job to become a reality.

Today’s is a gift to you: a list with links to some of my favorite blogs. I don’t subscribe (because who needs more email?) but I just keep the list on the top menu bar of my internet window and check from time to time.

I didn’t include anything political or faith-based. None of these uses offensive language; a few have ads, which are easy to scroll past. All write with completely original voices, humor, and wisdom.

Marianne Willburn is a gardener and writer with a great way with words, along with subtle funny remarks that you might not even notice. Because she is on the east coast, many of her plants are unfamiliar or unsuited to Central California. She is very personable and has responded both to emails and comments from me. Since she grew up in the foothills of northern California, and we are very close in age, she feels like a friend I haven’t yet met.
1000 awesome things is written by Neil Pasricha. In order to cope when his life crumbled, he committed to finding something good in life for 1000 days. He has written a few books since; the only one I have read is called The Happiness Equation. These “awesome things” will often make you smile with recognition.
The Frugal Girl is actually a grown woman, not a girl, in her 40s who has returned to school to become a nurse. She is delightfully honest and surprisingly optimistic, with a simple approach to almost everything. I want to hang out with her too.
Raptitude is new to me. I don’t remember how I found it, and I don’t have a solid sense of who is writing it yet. But so far, I’ve found the short articles to be thought-provoking.
Tim Cotton Writes is by a retired policeman in Maine with a great sense of humor, an excellent way with words, and a superb interviewee on, of course, Mike Rowe’s podcast. He has two books, neither one of which is available through the library so I have one on order at Thriftbooks, which I try to use instead of that big place whenever possible.
Deborah Makarios—Old Fashioned Fruitcake is my newest find. I chased her down based on a comment on an article by the aforementioned Marianne Willburn. She lives in New Zealand and has a terrific sense of reality and humor. I think this one will be a keeper!

I hope you find something here that rings your bell.

And finally, here is a cartoon I stole from the interwebs to share with you. It was too good to not share.

Eight Things Learned in December

Do you know those little squares of scribbles that can be scanned to take you to a website? They are called QR Codes. Do you know that QR means “quick response”? Simple name for weird techie magic.
Central Valley Holocaust Memorial in Bakersfield now has a wall made of 6 million buttons. Read about it here. A friend’s mother-in-law learned about the project and began collecting buttons. The idea is that upcoming generations don’t know about the holocaust, and the number 6,000,000 is just incomprehensible without a visual aid. This photo was taken by my friend of her mother-in-law. (Hi Carol and Fran!)
Instead of simply burying my kitchen waste, I learned a new way of composting. This one uses a vertically buried 8-10″ diameter PVC pipe (about 1 foot tall), randomly drilled with holes. After an undetermined length of time, you end up with worm castings, which are considered gold for the garden. Time will tell.
I experienced inflation in a live and shocking encounter. An 18-pack of eggs was $5.00 in the summer in Visalia, California, while it was still $2.50 in Salem, Oregon. In December, it was $6.78 at Winco in Visalia. And Trail Guy paid $9.99 for a package of 3 romaine lettuce hearts in Three Rivers. Holy guacamole!
Acta is the name of the yearbook for Exeter Union High School. A friend sent me the photo from the 1957 version to ask if I knew where it was taken. I told him it was Vandever, the peak on the right side of Farewell Gap. But it was bothering me, because something was off. When I showed Trail Guy, we both saw it: the photo was flipped horizontally! When I flipped it over, it became the right version. It puzzles me how I was able to recognize it despite the backward orientation.
I puzzled through why so many of my friends don’t read my blog, coming up with the following reasons, all guesses on my part and many overlapping: too busy, non-techie, overloaded with too many other things on their little machines, accustomed to more exciting things, annoyed that the photos don’t show up on their phones, already hear enough from me in person, not interested in art, not interested in Mineral King, they forget I have a blog, don’t know what a blog is, or find it to be boring. I am touched when people actually read it. THANK YOU!
Some friends in Texas have a house in escrow on about 4 acres of land, in something called an “ag extension“. This means they have to do some paperwork about raising “meat animals”, actually raise some of those animals, and then they get their property taxes greatly reduced. So interesting. . . I cannot picture these friends raising anything except children (currently have 4 while planning for numbers 5 and 6), nor can I understand why Texas has such a program. If it were me, I’d raise chickens for the eggs and never be able to kill a single living creature except for some bugs (which I would not eat).
The day before Christmas Eve (sometimes called Christmas Eve Eve) is called Christmas Adam. This makes me smile every time I think about it.

What did you learn in December?

More Truths (Some Borrowed)

At the end of 2021, I posted a list that I called Ten Truths of Life. Since then, I have gathered of a few more, and borrowed a few from Reader Anne, who is both wiser and older (by EXACTLY 5 years I think – we are birthday twins).

You are getting older, and so am I. It is easier to accept it than to pretend it isn’t happening. Go ahead and get injections, peels, colors, eyelashes, etc., but it won’t change the truth.
Old age makes you more of who are you; it would behoove you to work at being a better person right this very minute (yes, You, Cranky-Pants!)
Life is too short to dry dishes or iron jeans or listen to excuses or read poorly written books.
A question: Why is Standard Time called “standard”, when we are only allowed to enjoy it for 4-1/2 months of the year? That is definitely NOT standard. This is the truth: getting our clocks changed jerks us around and it is NOT pleasant. In general, city folks prefer Daylight Savings Time and rural folks prefer Standard Time.
The truth is always best. Lies just make things harder (and you have to remember what you said so you can tell more lies to keep your story consistent).
Truth is often confused with opinion, so pay attention both to what you are saying and what you are hearing, in order to discern the difference.
The bigger a company is, the more difficult it is to deal with. Think banks, phone companies, electric companies, mega-churches, home improvement stores. . . those giant outfits don’t allow you to talk to real people who can make decisions based on your real problems. (“Your call is very important to us” –NO IT ISN’T SO STOP LYING! “We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls”–NO YOU AREN’T, BECAUSE YOUR ROBOT SAYS THAT EVERY TIME I CALL!) Stay local, deal with manageably sized places whenever possible, and your life will be easier.
Everything is easier said than done. Exception: often it is easier to show than to tell when explaining how to do something.
The only pattern to covid is that there is no pattern—not in contagion, symptoms, length, lethality, avoidance, treatment, incubation period—nothing. Get used to it because it is here to stay.
Change is inevitable; sometimes it involves loss and other times it involves added complications. If we accept it gracefully rather than fight it, life will be smoother for all involved. So when your favorite jeans are no longer available, find another style or brand. When your familiar computer functions get “upgraded”, learn the new methods quickly or just dump that function. When your favorite employees at a favorite store leave, get to know the new people. When a plant dies in your yard, plant a new one. When you lose a cat, get another. Better yet, get 2 more, or even a whole litter of kittens. (Pippin is just fine, thanks for your concern. So are Tuck the Dripper and Jackson the Biter.)

Primarily Speaking

The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. I paint with 2 versions of each of these three colors plus white.

Some say white is the absence of color, some say it is the sum of all color, some claim it is not a color. Doesn’t matter – it is impossible to mix colors without it.

The primaries keep appearing in my life. Early in my painting career, I took half a semester of painting at College of the Sequoias. We were given the assignment to copy one of the old masters. I chose Vermeer, and later realized the primaries figured in large in the painting.

I liked painting this so much that I painted another one.

Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11x14" — Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11×14″

Our next assignment was a still life, and I brought these items. Still life paintings usually consist of things like a vase, a lemon, a rose, and maybe a skull. No thanks.