Lisa Call

Structures #80    ©2007    15.5" x 15.5"
 
I haven’t had much success in getting things done this week, other than attending the museum opening. I rarely go to a social type event like that alone, so I spent the entire day telling myself how much fun I would have and sure enough I really enjoyed the evening. Amazing what we can convince ourselves of if we think positive.

I’m not much for walking up and talking to people I don’t know but I chatted with several of the volunteers and one of the exhibiting artists. Something that normally I would never do. The internet/email is generally my domain, but I’ve decided I’m not going to get very far in this art world unless I become a bit more social. I’ll never be an extrovert, INTJ that I am, but I think socializing is probably a learned behavior and if I can jump off a bridge I can probably learn to make small talk.

 
I’ve only put in a few hours in my studio so far this week as I’m still lacking focus after my dad’s memorial service. I’ve designed a few new small pieces but they aren’t ready for prime time yet. After I finish this post I hope to get a few of them a bit further along.

I’ve had work at the Lux Center for the Arts that past year that is shown in rotation in their new fiber art classroom. I asked them to send them back so I could send in some fresh work and they’d like mostly smaller pieces.

I need to sit down and see what I have given my other obligations this fall/winter. My mom is coming out to visit next week and then in November I hope to have the focus to get back to work.

Structures #80, above, is one of the small pieces I completed earlier this year.

Last night I attended a preview event at the brand new building for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) here in Denver. The museum doesn’t open to the public until saturday but they are having a few members only preview events this week to help with the fund raising for the building. A nice building for the contemporary art museum in Denver is something I am very happy to support.

I thought the building was wonderful. It definitely complimented the art on display and it was great to not be disoriented by weird angles like in the new Hamilton Building at the Denver Art Museum. The environmentally friendly design is both wonderful and responsible.

A few factoids on the building from the MCA Denver website:

- A DESIGN THAT SUPPORTS RATHER THAN DEFINES THE MUSEUM’S MISSION. The design clearly articulates the Museum’s exhibition and program requirements.

- A FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE PROJECT. The construction cost for the new building is $11.3 million making the project $418 per square foot.

- AN ENVIRONMENTALLY-EFFICIENT BUILDING. MCA is actively pursuing LEED certification, which would make MCA the first contemporary art museum in the country to achieve such status.

Several of the artists that had work in the inagural exhibit, Star Power: Museum as Body Electric, or that have site specific installations in the museum (a roof top garden and art in the walk way leading up to the entrance) gave a short talk about their work.

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Rangi Kipa’s description of his art and thoughts about how his work fits into his culture, country and the art world. After spending 5 months in New Zealand I’m always very interested in anything New Zealand and the Maori culture. Brought back good memories, now I want to go back.

The only disappointment of the evening was learning that not all of the artists were there. They split them between last night and an similar event tonight so I didn’t get to hear some artists I had hoped to. I also also hoping to hear the architect speak but I either missed that or it was tonight.

One thing that struck me was that all of the artists were very good at talking about their art. With this blog I’ve gotten better at writing about my art but speaking about it in person, I’m terrible at it. Definitely something I need to work on.

I really like the way the museum is handling the grand opening. The first visitors invited to the museum were school kids on monday and tuesday, before the member’s only cocktail parties. In their words "reversing the idea of the VIP"

The museum isn’t quite finished, as it doesn’t open to the public until saturday so not all of the art has been installed and they didn’t have up signs with artist information and there were no maps but even with these small details to finish up the museum is looking wonderful. And the hors dourves were yummy.

Structures #78    ©2007    18" x 18"
 
Today I finished stitching the texture lines on Markings #10 (shown in my previous post). I still have to finish the edges and attached the hanging sleeve but I’m going to save that work for a while as it’s been a while since I designed new work and I want to make some more small pieces such as the one above.

My original goal for the year was to complete 10 new small pieces but in July that changed to 18. So far I’ve completed 10 so 8 more to go. An easy goal to accomplish, I hope, because at the end of November I’m going to need 6-8 small pieces for a holiday art show and sale at the Arvada Center, a local art center. I’m also hoping to send some small work to the new Visions Art Quilt Gallery in San Diego

 
Until this year I rarely made small work because I felt too restricted by the small spaces. I like big, the impact and the room for so many possibilities. This year I’ve learned to love to work small. Getting the proportions right is much harder in the small space so it really forces me to pay attention to what I’m doing.

Once I cut the fabric the only way to fix a mistake is to redo the section. But it’s not always so easy to know where to make the cuts because I lose at least 1/2" on each shape when I sew it to the adjacent pieces. It’s taken me years of practice and I still mess up and cut in the wrong place. So I’ve cut/sew and the recut/resewn some of these composition several times to get it as I want it.

Any time I get lazy and think "good enough" I always regret it so I’ve learned to love this process of redoing. But more importantly, I’ve learned to get good at knowing where to cut in the first place as the consequences can be fairly high for screwing up.

 
I originally made Structures #78 as my piece for The Blogger Show in New York. Then I realized I should have read the rules first as this was too big by 2". So I made Structures #79 and sent it instead. You can get a preview of this show on The Blogger Show Online Portfolio. Thanks to Marc Snyder for creating the website.

Markings #10 In Progress – stitched section ©2007

 
One of my goals for this year states:

I complete the 17 major pieces started prior to 2007 that are still unfinished: Structures #47, Structures #48, Structures #49, Structures #50, Structures #65, Markings #4, Markings #5, Markings #6, Markings #7, Markings #8, Markings #9, Markings #10, Markings #14, Portals #1, Portals #2, Circles #1, Circles #2.

When I revisted my goals mid year, which I failed to write about, I changed this to completing the 13 pieces in the Structures and Markings series. This week I’m very likely to complete this goal. Markings #10, the last to be completed, has about 14 more hours to go.

Completing this work mostly involved hours and hours of sewing parallel lines of stitching into the work to create the texture I love. To me my work isn’t completed just because the design is done and all the shapes have been sewn into a composition. It looks too flat, too untidy, less interesting. Plus it doesn’t store well as the fabric gets all wrinkled:
 

Markings #10 In Progress – Prior to Stitching ©2007

 
I have to added dense stitching or it just doesn’t feel right. After creating a fabric composition I layer it with cotton batting and a second layer of fabric for the back. I baste these 3 layers together and then spend hours adding stitched lines to the work to add texture.

This goal has been a good fit given the difficult year I’ve had, spending teh majority of my studio time in this meditative process of sewing lines back and forth. There are some artistic decisions to be made but much of this work is done on autopilot. A wonderful time to contemplate the events in my life and try to make sense of it all. Or listen to music or books on tape.

I had to take a quick break as I ran out of one of my green threads and I’m waiting for the local quilt store to open. It’s a rare occurrence for me to run out of thread given my rather detailed thread inventory system but Markings #10 is a large piece (probably 7 feet x 8 feet) and I forgot just how much thread is needed for such a beast.

Time to brave the first snow of the season an go get my thread and some more books on tape at the library.

I had been hoping to ease back into life this week but then reality hit. Missing a week of work when I was already behind didn’t make for a relaxed return to the cubes the last few days. I really needed to work tonight to try to catch up but instead I had to package my work for the two blogger shows and print out my pages for the gallery book.

Normally this job would take 2-3 hours but since I decided to no longer use the word quilt as the noun to describe my work it took some time to reword my artist statement and bio. I did a quick job of this but I need to revisit both of these docs and update them as it’s been a few years and they feel a bit boring. My bio certainly puts me to sleep. I need to think of something interesting to say other than “Lisa was in some shows in some cool places”.

Then I decided to spend a couple of hours creating new thumbnail pages to include (my old ones were very out of date and had a different header than the rest of my materials). First I tried to do it in photoshop but I don’t really know how to use photoshop so that didn’t make for quick work so I switched to microsoft publisher. I used to edit a newsletter and vaguely recalled how to use publisher and after a few false starts I remembered enough to hack something together. Publisher does some funky things with the colors but it looks pretty good.

One of the advantages of making textiles is the ability to roll up the artwork and ship it off in a tube. In theory this saves the artist a lot of money in shipping costs but now days I don’t think it’s possible to ship anything cheaply.

It cost me $14 each way to ship a small 15" square 1.1 pound piece to New York in a very small tube. Not exactly a bargain. Although it is only $24 each way to ship a 48" x 64" piece to Pennsylvania. I suppose a painting of that size would be considerably more to ship so I shouldn’t complain. Although $80 in shipping for these 2 shows – ouch.

Everything is finally packed up and ready to send tomorrow and I should have headed to bed but decided I could just go to work tired tomorrow since all of my coworkers came to work tired and grumpy today after staying up late to watch the Rockies win the National League Championship last night. I guess this means the Rockies are off to the superbowl World Series. I didn’t even know they were playing last night – something I probably should not admit.

 
The above photo is another plant photo from my dad’s yard in Arizona this last spring.

 
I want to thank everyone who left a comment on my previous post or sent me email. They were all very much appreciated.

I returned home Friday after my dad’s memorial service in Arizona. I had to rush back home to attend my son’s black belt test in taekwondo today. I was torn between staying and spending time with my family when it is much needed and being here to support my son in his triumph after he put in 4 years of hard work to achieve his goal. Watching him today I know I made the right choice but it’s hard to not be with my brother, sister and dad’s wife right now.

My dad was an incredible person and the loss is going to take some time to get over but life goes on and I have numerous wonderful memories to comfort me. Letting go is never easy but it’s time.

 
In January I posted my very optimistic list of goals for the year. When I wrote those goals I knew it would be very difficult to meet them as my dad was diagnosed with cancer in October and I lost my 2 grandmothers in September and December 2006. But we were very optimistic and sure my dad would beat this and I new that goals and structure would help me through these difficult times and keep me motivated and focused. I was thinking positive and looking to move forward.

Then in January my mom’s husband passed away (it’s not been a very good year for my family). So things got off to a rough start. After a bit I was able to refocus and I muddled through the year meeting some goals and completely blowing others. The worst was sending out a postcard to the press as a teaser for an upcoming press release. Then I went to visit my dad and all motivation for writing the press release disappeared and it never happened. Probably a serious crime in the world of dealing with the press for an unknown artist but so be it. It wasn’t meant to happen.

My studio newsletter is still non-existent and in general most of my business plans didn’t come to fruition due to neglect. I’ve come to terms with it all and accept that things will happen when it’s time. This was not the year for some of these things.

There are some bright spots in the year, such as being asked to curate a show at an art center in 2008 (more on that soon), and I have no regrets. I focused on my family and that was what I needed and wanted.

This fall I realized the year didn’t pan out as expected so I entered some juried shows for the emotional boost those acceptances provide. So far I’m running 3 for 3 in acceptances with 4 more still to hear from. While these juried shows aren’t my future they seemed like just the right fit for the year I’m having.

I’m chalking this up as a year of experimenting and learning (ie etsy is not for me).

And letting go.

And most importantly – moving forward even when things are difficult. The direction may not be as planned but moving forward and thinking positively has helped me keep on going.

 
Again – thank you for all of your support this past week.

The above photo is of an agave that bloomed this spring in my dad’s yard.

Arizona Sizzle ©1995

 
I made the above queen sized bedquilt in 1994-1995 for my father. It was my first (and only) commission and was made to match the decor of his new home when he moved to Arizona. My dad was always very supportive of my art work and this quilt ended up a couple of inches too large so he just put his bed up on blocks to make it work. This is what my dad did, he was always able to just make things work.

This morning my father passed away after a year long battle with cancer. I was able to visit him several times over the year and for that I will always be grateful. It is a relief his suffering is over but he will be missed tremendously as he was an amazing person.

 
I’ve mentioned a few times that my structures series was inspired by a picture of my dad’s fence taken back in 2000. This it that image – I was hunting through my pictures recently looking for something else and came across it.

The motif in the Structures series is an E shape based on the top prongs of this fence. The fence is about boundaries – both physical but also emotional. Fences keep us safe. They keep others out. They define us and hide us. I doubt I’ll ever get tired of exploring both their physical properties and their emotional impact.

Alyson asked for thoughts on how we organize our email over at Art Biz Blog and is running a series of articles in her newsletter about email.

She talks about using folders to store email, which is what I do. For details on using folders check out Alyson’s newsletter. What I describe is how I put those folders into action.

One of my goals for this year was to get my email under control. I started the year with over a hundred emails in my inbox and a disorganized system for dealing with them. I’ve gotten my queue down to 6 a few times but I still haven’t conquered it. My goal is to end each week with 0 emails in my inbox AND to minimize the number of times I have to touch each piece of email because it’s unorganized. I swear I reopen some of the same ones over and over again when things become a mess.

I read my email both from home and from work so I use an IMAP email server (which keeps the actual email on the server so I can read it from anywhere and it always stays on the server). At home I use Thunderbird to read my email but at work, due to the firewall, I have to use Horde, a webbased email package (not my favorite but I survive). I don’t have much time at work to read emails but I check it throughout the day and respond to a few emails here and there.

I’ve found that the fewer folders I have the more organized I am. If there are too many choices for where to put something I get confused and don’t know where to put it, which tends to result in me ignoring it. So I’ve tried to eliminate any ambiguity in my system.

This is the folder structure I came up with at the beginning of the year and seems to be helping:

I have 4 art business related folders:

• art action - this is where I put emails that I need to do something with. This folder has subfolders for specific things I might need to do with the email such as:
  • weekly to-dos – these are emails I have to act on by the end of the week. I clear out this folder at the end of the week.
  • items for my blog – things I might like to blog about someday
  • mailing list – people to add to my email list
  • letters to answer – it’s hard to respond to all of the emails I get in a timely manner so I store them here so they don’t make me feel guilty sitting out in my inbox. While I love getting the email it can take me weeks to months to respond to it. When I have a few moments I’ll go in here and respond to a letter. I view these correspondences more like real letters and try to give them more thought than a quickly dashed off "thanks for the input" type of response.

  I often send myself emails with notes I need remember to be sorted into these folders. A great way for me to keep track of things I think of at work and need a place to jot down.

• art galleries – here I have a subfolder for each gallery that represents my work. The list is currently fairly short but I have no doubt it will be much longer by the end of 2008.
• art shows – I create a subfolder for each of my upcoming shows (juried, group, solo, etc) that generates emails to keep them sorted out
• art misc – one subfolder for each project I have going, or workshops, etc. Plus one subfolder labeled misc requests for the one-off type requests that I need to handle

These are my active art email folders and they are available at home and work through my IMAP mail server. When a show or project is over I move the folder to my archive – local folders on my computer at home in Thunderbird – so it doesn’t clutter things up. Every 6 months I’ll sort through folders like the misc requests and archive those emails also.

In addition I have a folder called To Be Filed for email that will go directly from my inbox to my archive folders. I use this while at work because my archive folders are not available.

I also have 3 folders I’ve found very useful over the years:

• Online Account Info – where I store the zillions of emails related to all the accounts I have all over the place, REI, banks, airlines, etc. Anything with account info I might need goes here.
• Online Purchases and Sales – all emails related to things I buy and sell online. I occasionally go through and delete old receipts I no longer need, printing off the ones needed for taxes. When I travel my airline and car rental confirmation emails are dumped in here so they are quick to find and they aren’t cluttering up my inbox.
• Print and Delete – things I know for sure I need to just print out and then I can delete. Usually for taxes or some other book keeping task. Again I generally use this while I’m at work

I also have a folder for anything kid related, usually school stuff, that I need to have at both home and work. This folder is emptied at the end of the school year.

I belong to only 1 email mailing list, Fiber Connection, and I have a filter on my inbox to direct all emails from this group to a separate folder. I read and delete (or move to one of my subfolders above) these emails almost immediately. This is yahoogroup and yahoo stores an archive of the emails, so no need for me to do it also.

I used to belong to all sorts of mailing lists but I’ve decided they are mostly a huge waste of time. So I’ve removed myself from them all. And surprisingly I manage to survive just fine. Although I suspect that whole "nature abhors a vacuum thing" manifests itself in my blog reading habits. The nice thing about blogs is I go to them when I want to see the content and it doesn’t come to me and distract me.

The last remaining and most annoying email group are what is now being called bacn – email you have subscribed to but in general it annoys the heck out of you when it arrives. Frequent flyer mileage updates, the near daily special offers from vista print, newsletters, etc, etc. Great stuff to read when we have time but please stop appearing in my inbox.

For a while I tried to create filters to sort all this stuff into a separate folder so it didn’t junk up my inbox but lately I’ve decided it’s a losing battle. So I’m in the process of redirecting all of this stuff to a different email address. This isn’t junk mail – I want to get the emails – I just don’t want it mixed in with letters from my friends and notes about my art.

 
I’ve been reading email since 1985 and I’ve tried many ways of organizing my incoming email and processing it in a reasonable manner. This new scheme feels like the best fit for my needs, maybe because I spent several weeks analyzing my email habits and needs and then devision a system that fit those needs. My old plan was usually to think "I have no where to put this – I think I’ll create a new folder", which didn’t work out so well.

This is probably way more information than anyone will read, and I could have answered quite a number of emails instead of writing this, but it was good to sit down and think through my organization to see if it makes sense, ie I’m procrastinating.