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Asheville streetscape graffiti

There’s new work coming from me next week.  Meanwhile I’ll just share photos from Asheville because I’ve started getting them somewhat organized but still don’t have them into a muvee to share…there are so many.  Key word in that sentence is "started." 

I’m not feeling terribly rushed but there are things I’d like to do that haven’t moved up into the 3 a day todo list I’m allowing.  Well, it’s more than 3, but a friend noted that more than 3 on must do is a crazymaker.  So I’m giving myself 3 things a day that I want to complete and the rest is on a list to fit in when there’s time.  And of course there’s always those things that pop up unexpectedly.

For instance.  I came home from retreat to several letters from my Credit Union, each tallying an overdraft.  No fun.  I have been a member for 30 years and they just changed to a new improved system.  Yeah.  Ok.  Now in the old unimproved system, my account was fixed to pay overdrafts from a savings account.  Which is still in existence and had more than enough for those overdrafts.  Further research (i.e., balancing my checkbook.  ugh) showed that there was a $600+ deposit that had been charged as a deduction.  Well, gee, no wonder there were overdrafts!  So that was an hour or so on the phone with a request to please get back to me and let me know they fixed it all.  They didn’t.  But lo and behold, not 1 but 2 $600+ deposits eventually got put into my account numbers.  =]  This morning I took a minute to send them a letter of concern over all this and to tell them it would be nice if they would reclaim the one deposit that was theirs (and to please be careful that they didn’t over withdraw).  Those kinds of little pop-up items.

Today I am carving out space for more studio time (after I go have lunch and watch The Secret with Padi) for new work for ArtOMatic, the wild and woolly anarchic art show where anyone who wants to show can.  Every other year or so, usually in the fall but this time in the spring because they couldn’t get a space last fall, they round up a deal with a property that is vacant.  Artists move in for the month.  Everything you could possibly think of.  If you can’t find something you like, then you don’t like anything.  Really.  Everything under the sun.  Including theater, music, poetry, performance happenings, installations and the full spectrum of art.  It is usually the installations with things that look like guts that catch the eye and appreciation of the local art "critics."  Meanwhile, the rest of us get to see what others in the area are doing.  Not so good for networking in the past, but I keep hoping.  Never sold anything personally, but I know folks who have, and I keep hoping.  I can push my own envelope a bit for my display at this show and find I guess I’m not an edgy artist.  Even giving myself permission to be edgy, so far not much new has come up.  But you never know, sometimes the manifestation takes a bit longer to make it through the material stuff and for all I know, long after the show is over the work will show up.  And I’ll let it.

Morning pages also brought along an outline for an actual business plan for art.  Yes I know I’ve played with this before, but not lately.  What I was trying to do this morning was just list the categories.  Which I don’t know that I HAVE done before (I was using a different kind of business plan, trying to be more organic before).  And looking at all these categories it becomes clear to me that I DO need to make a plan if it’s all going to get done.  And with my recent recommitment to making it making art, I want it all to get done.  Here are the off-the-top-of-my-head categories: displays (and display products); representation (current shops and galleries, identifying potentials and contacting them and follow up and delivery as needed, and updating as needed); shows (currently on calendar, might be on calendar, which ones are worth it, making slides for those that still haven’t gone to jpegs); studio time (retail:  reular lines; play:  bright colors, raku, water colors; experimentation:  large stand alone; whatever else comes up); ordering studio (storage, glazes, books, inspirational collections of stuff, drying, clay, tools, etc); administration (emails, business cards, flyers, lists – so bad with lists, tracking product – so bad with tracking what’s where), blogging (networking, support group, keeping up with what’s going on out there). 

Off to try to catch up reading Finding Water.  The A Student is on hiatus.  Not feeling inclined.  But some of this is about persistence and so I’ll read anyways.

thought for the day:  What does one do with grief?  Poetry can enter into the severed places in life that explanations and reason do not touch.  The open nature of the blank page allows you to experiment with releasing that hurt.  Poems of grief can offer a diamond-like truth, an insight-surprise that is sheer gift.  "hard won" is often the nature of these poems.  Yet they neither exhaust me nor outgrow their usefulness; rather, they continue to teach generously over time  Sometimes I come in contact with an essential joy behind the pain.  Writing poems that reveal this unexpected light feels like receiving grace.  and very often such poems seem to write themselves. John Fox, The Leaf Shape Remains, from The Spirit of Writing edited by Mark Robert Waldman

[this is about some recent very real anger that has come up over a long gone friendship that I thought I was long over and had well processed.  Some days it feels like an emotional ambush.  So I’m watching it and watching what I say so I don’t give it any more power than it already has taken.  Emotions are so, um, fascinating! – chasing down the shadow truth of the emotion, searching for the "essential joy."]