"Weapon"

I discovered my yardstick collection in my garage this weekend.  Local businesses used to advertise on these handy measuring tools.  I like that the businesses were often selling paint, and as an artist, paint is good.  I'm especially pleased that I have a yardstick from Morse Graphics and one from Fredericksburg where my great grandpa lived.

A giant praying mantis climbed onto my window screen while I was staring out into space thinking about all the other things I'd rather write about than "weapon".  Did you know the females often kill their male partners during sex?  I suppose violence exists in a lot of species, and doesn't even require weapons.

It's a little ironic that I have a yardstick collection because Mom used them as a weapon.  The yardstick broke once when she smacked it on the back of my bare legs.  I laughed.  She went from mad to really mad.  Things went downhill from there, but I had a sudden realization that she couldn't keep hitting me anymore.  Sometimes the lesson learned isn't the lesson intended.  On the other hand, I don't display my yardsticks in the house.  I'll keep them in the garage.

I've spent a lot of effort lately in cleaning out the garage and rewiring it.  In some ways, I think this is a waste of time since I don't spend much time in the garage anyway.  At the same time, it annoys me that I couldn't use the garage because it was crowded with too much stuff, dirt, and cobwebs.  It becomes symbolic for other things in my life, a large, unnecessary, rotting appendage.  Bro3 re-sided it, so at least it isn't rotting anymore.  Mostly, I'm just working off excess energy and getting some exercise.

I took a class in stained glass when I was managing a fine arts program at the local civic center.  Making something intentional creates a lot of unintentional wasted glass.  I used it to pretty up my garage windows.  Reglazing these windows is still on my to do list for the garage.  It was far more important to get rid of every unnecessary nail, screw, and hook that the man who lived at the house before me put in every few inches on every rafter and stud.  I ended up with a heavy pile of rusting iron and bashed my hands and arms pretty badly in the process.  A friend accused me of "domestic violence", pointing out that it doesn't always take 2 people for violence to happen in the home.

I don't regret these scrapes and bruises.  I've had this garage for years, and for years I had to put things where that disorganized man had left me a mismatched shelf or hook.  I ripped out the shelves on one wall and replaced them with orderly shelves that actually make sense and let me store long pieces of lumber.  I'm tired of settling for what is instead of what I want it to be.

The point of all this is that whatever you do, it's better to strive to improve the world than to just rot with the garage or take out your aggression on someone else.  Look for the beauty.  Create it.  Share it.

"Jagged"

I had breakfast with a friend this morning.  I told her the word for the week was "jagged" and she talked about the candle holder I gave her some years ago which is now in her china cabinet.  I was scratching my head about this, trying to remember it while she wondered aloud about how I can consider myself strictly 2D when I make so many 3D things.

"Yeah, but the candle holder is just four 2D sides that I stuck together."  She gave me one of those endearing, exasperated looks and rattled off a bunch of other examples of 3D stuff I've made.  Okay, maybe she's got a point, especially since I've been obsessively making Sculpey flowers lately, and I did make the deer hide drum in the photo behind the candle holder.  (Skinned, butchered, cooked, and ate that deer for that matter.)

I don't take any of my 3D stuff very seriously, and I guess that's the point.  I started doing stained glass because I hired someone to teach stained glass classes when I was Arts Administration Director for Wickliffe Civic Center (WICCI).  Mom and I thought that might be fun, so we signed up together.  While breathing lead fumes and burning my fingers on "real" projects, I ended up making a lot of jagged shards of pretty glass.  Since I didn't want them to go to waste, voilà, candle holder.

But I don't think of myself as very good at these kinds of things.  It's just the stuff I do in between "real" paintings, often things I do obsessively like Sculpey flowers.  More shards of stained glass live next to the Sculpey in the closet.  I wonder what else might be in there?  Loops for making pot holders for sure, and a bead loom...

(...time out to rummage through closets... candle making, leather crafts, embroidery, yarn, beads... a lot of rivets, fabric, buttons...)

Okay, okay, maybe I do make some 3D things?  But I stick to my original premise that I approach these things in a 2D way -- which must be untrue since now I'm looking at some metal circles that might improve my Sculpey atom and some glass beads I could string on fishing line...

On top of all that, now I also have a big pile of stuff on my floor that seems to distress my puppy.  I suppose she knows a new pile of stuff means more obsessive craft projects and less petting and cuddling, but I think my brother might get a new leather wallet unless he's wants to stick with his latest duct tape creation.  Maybe I should take a time out and get some new duct tape in snazzy patterns?

Sometimes non-artists seem interested in how artists think.  I can't speak for all of us, but I think a lot of us follow some variation of the above?  My friend makes a comment, and now I have piles of weekend projects with which to amuse myself.  Maybe I said something that inspires a pile on her floor too?  Maybe just my laughing at her when she talked about shelving her creative aspirations?

See, we can't turn it off.  Creativity is a part of us.  Sometimes a messy part with periodic disappointments and misdirections and changes of plans, but we will keep creating, whatever the medium.  And that's good.  Mess up your own house this weekend!

P.S. I found out that you can resuscitate crumbly Fimo clay with a little vegetable oil + found out it turns black if you forget it in the oven.