Lisa Call

It’s been a while since I posted my weekly goals. I’ve felt disconnected from my artwork since my show opened on friday.

The solo show consumed the majority of my free time and most of the last month has been spent on the business side of my artwork. I feel stuck in that groove and the past few days I’ve been doing more business things than art things.

Since my show opened on friday I’ve completed the following:

• Formatted the 14 images that will appear in my catalog and delivered them to the graphic artist. I learned how to crop out backgrounds in photoshop with vector paths - very exciting stuff!
• Attended my monthly Material Evolution artist critique group meeting.
• Updated my website with new exhibit information.
• Fixed most of the html bugs in my website.
• Added images from my solo show to my website.
• Ordered slides from www.iprintfromhome.com.
• Entered Crafts National 40.
• Located 6-8 juried shows I might want to enter the next few months, organized the papers for them and got the dates on my calendar.
• Organized my office (again - why do I keep having to do this?)
• Designed and printed thank you notes with an image of one of my quilts on them.
• Wrote thank you notes to people that helped with my solo show and some of the people that attended the opening.
• Add a more links to my contemporary art quilt lens. An ongoing project.
• Mailed my quilt for the 3rd International Miniature Textile Exhibit (more info coming soon).

Well actually that doesn’t sound too bad because in the last 4 days I have also designed and pieced Structures #57 and I have Structures #58 up on my design wall ready to be pieced. They are simple quilts but I really like the direction I’m going.

Although even with all that I am feeling fairly scattered. Probably the anticipated let down after a big event.

Time to get focused and organized. So these are my goals to be completed by Sunday March 5th:

• Finish piecing Structures #58.
• Make significant progress quilting Structures #34.
• Finalize the text for the show catalog.
• Select the order for the images in the show catalog.
• Get my taxes to my accountant.
• Respond to the last month’s worth of blog comments (sorry for any delay in answering questions you might have asked!)
• I’ve joined an artists’ salon, another awesome idea from Alyson Stanfield. Although I attended one of these salons with Alyson in person it never hurts to review the material and redo the exercises. We started a few weeks ago and I’m already weeks.
• Get back to drawing. I haven’t had time for any of this the past month and I really am missing it!
• Reinstall the spell checker plugin I was using for this blog - sorry if there are any major boo-boos!
• Send a reminder to a few of the local arts critics about my solo show in hopes of getting a review (a long shot but if I don’t try it definitely won’t happen).
• Eat a lot of chocolate. Preferably really good dark chocolate.

I’ve posted pictures of my solo show at the Macky Auditorium Gallery on my website at http://www.lisacall.com/macky2006Show.html.

Here are a couple more pictures of the Auditorium building.

The cool ceiling things:

 
An outside door into the building:

I blogged the other day about the Take Cover invitational show at the Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA closing this past weekend.

Some very good friends of mine went to the gallery when the show first opened in Janurary and they just sent me this picture from the show. It gives you a good idea of the size of my pieces.

This is Structures #32 (67″x53″) and Structures #1(38″x74″):

My solo show opening reception yesterday was wonderful. It was well received and having several friends in attendance was wonderful. Seeing the gallery filled with 14 pieces of my work along was a very affirming experience. It inspired me to get busy looking for shows for 2007 and 2008.

My show is being held in the lobby of the Macky Auditorium at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The patrons of the opera, lectures and other events held during the month will get to see my art as they wait for their performance to start. The gallery is also open to the public on wednesdays from 9am to 4pm. For directions and more information see this post.

I’m working on getting a few photos from my opening up on my website but here are a few until I get that finished.

The gallery design provides a bit of a challenge for hanging the art. The very cool ceiling decorations and the plaques on the walls make centering some of the work a bit of a challenge. But the gallery director did a wonderful job hanging the work around the obstacles.

This is the largest of the walls between the doors leading into the auditorium:

 
My kids spent most of their time running up and down the stairs of the auditorium or eating food. They said they had seen my quilts at home and weren’t interested in spending much time looking at them in the gallery.

My solo show opens tonight. If you are in the area please join me from 6-8pm at the Macky Auditorium Gallery at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

For more information check out the information on my exhibits page or the Macky Gallery website. Here are the directions to the gallery and where to park.

 
For a few installation photos of the invitational show Take Cover at the Quirk Gallery in Richmond, Virginia check out Cathy Kleeman’s blog. Sounds like the show was extremely succesful. It closes this saturday so you have one more weekend to see the show if you are in the area.

Cathy, thanks for posting such a nice review of the show!

 
I’ll post photos from my opening tomorrow or sunday.

At Melody’s request I’ve created a button for my blog. Now she can have something other than my red signature on her side bar. Everyone else is welcome to add this to their blog links also.

 
The html code you need to add this to your page is as follows. You can copy and paste this code and it should work. Let me know if there are problems.

<a href="http://blog.lisacall.com/"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5412/875/320/lisaCallBlogButton.2.jpg" alt="Lisa Call's blog: New Work and Inspiration" /></a>


Update [8/3/06]- the following code will only work from a blogger.com blog.

If you have a blog elsewhere you will need to upload the button to someplace you can access it and modify the URL for the button in the code above to reflect the true location of the button.

This week Alyson Stanfield wrote in her weekly email newsletter: “There will never be enough time to do everything you want.”

I have a sign on my wall in my studio (right in front of my sewing machine so I see it daily, and often) that reads: “Everything changed the day she realized there was exactly enough time for the important things in her life.”

I think this says the same thing Alyson is saying but from a slighly different point of view.

For me learning to accept that there wasn’t enough time for everything was key to my happiness and success. I make sure my “important things” are identified so I make time for them to happen. In other words, just like Alyson recommends, I have to think about what my real goals are if I’m going to find time for them.

I fininshed everything on my to-do list yesterday and delivered my quilts to the gallery today. We planned the layout for the show by laying the quilts out on the floor where they are going to hang on the walls and I think it’s going to look great. I can hardly wait for friday when I’ll see my first solo show up on the walls.

Last night I didn’t finish the binding on Structures #33 until it was too dark to take photos, which I do outside on my portable photography wall. So I had to take them first thing this morning before heading to work. It was 10 degrees outside at 7:30am when I started this activity. Brr. The price I paid for procrastinating.

Here is a detail of the quilting on Structures #33:

While I always think I won’t wait until the last minute to finish a big project I always seem to manage just that.

I deliver my quilts for my solo show to the gallery tomorrow in the middle of my work day and I have a full days work to get them ready.

I had planned on doing some of this yesterday but instead spent 4 hours in search of hardware I will need for my quilts to work with the gallery’s rail and hook hanging system. My hometown hardware store closed up shop a few years ago when Home Depot and Walmart moved in next door. And of course none of the big box retailers had what I needed. After a few hours of grumpy artist (and grumpy kids that had no choice but to join me on this quest) I found what I needed at an Ace hardware store about a half hour away. What a hassle.

This little episode killed my motivation for the day so I spent the afternoon lounging about and fixing Melody’s blog for her. As I use firefox her broken sidebar has driven me nuts for months and the geek in me just had to fix. And what a great way to waste time!

Now it’s a new day and I must get these quilts finished, the boards fixed for the rail and hook system, and them all packaged and ready for delivery.

Here is my list for the day:

• Finish quilting Structures #33 (I have 2 hours left).
• Binding on Structures #33.
• Make labels for #33, #39, #53.
• Make sleeves for #33, #39, #53.
• Attach sleeves and labels to #33, #39, #53.
• Photograph #33 & #39.
• Cut boards for #33, #39, #46, #53.
• Attach hardware to boards for all 17 quilts going to the gallery.
• Make 3 more cloth bags for transportation to show.
• Package up all 17 quilts, delint and steam quilts as needed.
• Make popovers for breakfast as I promised the kids.
• Order pizza for dinner as I will be in total panic mode by evening.

Lest you think blogging is yet another procrastination technique (never!) I have completed the labels for the quilts. I print my labels on fabric from my printer so I had to use the computer!

Hm - I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight.

This week I booked my airline tickets so I will be attending the opening for Art Quilts at the Sedgwick the weekend of April 7-9, at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA. If you are in the area please stop by as I’d love to meet you.

I’ll be rooming with my fellow Material Evolution members, Carol Krueger, who also has a piece in the show, and Sandra Woock, who is joining us for a weekend of fiber. I also have family in the area and am looking forward to spending some time with them.

 
The postcard invitation includes a small thumbnail image of each of the pieces from the show, which makes for a fun game of matching the artist with their tiny quilt picture.

See if you can find my quilt on the card _{(click on picture for larger image).}