Lisa Call

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Recently someone mentioned that they had a theory that when you clean stuff out of your life it creates a vacuum which will then suck stuff back in to fill the empty space.

I think it’s an interesting question as to what happens in our lives when we make some space. Be it time or physical stuff or even emotional crap. Do we just junk up the new space with the same old crap?

It’s certainly our nature to keep doing the same thing we’ve always done. I think if we live unconsciously within a short matter of time we just go back to old patterns and fill up our lives and homes and space with the same stuff.

Changing Habits

In the past 9 months I’ve gotten rid of close to 1/2 of my possessions and I’ve said no to a huge number of things - including some relationships that were not positive for me. I can see the tendency to just do the same thing as before - it’s easy - it’s well known - these are my habits.

I’ve been putting a lot of intention into not doing that. It’s uncomfortable at first - to have all that space - shelves and rooms that aren’t cluttered - spending only quality time with friends that support me - slowing down - cherishing the space.

It’s a big question - what do we do when we decide not to do the habitual thing?

There’s a lot of things that can rattle around in all that space. I’ve found that by just sitting with it and letting it be that I learn to grow comfortable with it. It was a challenge at first and I’m getting better at it each day.

I love my open uncluttered house, life and all the extra time I have. So I’m doing everything I can to stay aware of how wonderful it is so I don’t clutter it up again.

Home Repair Report

My hardwood floors are done. Now I’m having my house painted, inside and out. Moving things off the hardwood floor was a lot of work. Moving everything away from every wall so it can be painted. That’s really big work.

The result is there will unlikely be pictures on my blog over the next few weeks as I’m in the home stretch for getting the house on the market. My goal - June 3rd.

Shaded Walk    ©2007 Stephen Carl
Reprinted with permission from the artist

Artist Breakthrough Program

The last 4 weeks I’ve been participating in the Alyson Stanfield’s online Artist Breakthrough Program.

Today is the last day, the last phone call. Time to evaluate how things went.

So to start here are the goals I stated for the month:

1. I work 5 or more hours a week in my studio making art.
2. I complete the rewrite of my website and blog and go live with them by May 12, 2008.
3. I update my resume to include jurors for all juried shows.
4. I create a complete resume for my personal use with every show in my career listed. This list also includes a list of which pieces were included in each of these shows.
5. I design a portfolio package to send to galleries (the package does not have to be complete but I identify all the parts and the format of the package)
6. I start a list of potential galleries to contact for representation. The list has 30 or more galleries listed.

In addition to the above, I was also working on getting my house ready to put on the market. Cleaning, packing, hiring contractors, yard work, etc.

How Did I do?

1. I worked in my studio 19 hours over the 4 weeks - very close to the my original goal.
2. Nope - the website is coming along nicely but it needs more work.
3. Didn’t even start
4. Didn’t even start
5. Didn’t even start
6. I have between 15-20 galleries on my list with contact info.

In addition I got a lot done on prepping my house. This weekend I completed the last of the decluttering, and have done a bunch of packing, cleaning and yardwork. I’m almost done getting contractors lined up to do the big stuff (paint, carpet, refinish hardwood, etc). This was a larger job than anticipated, getting estimates, rescheduling, etc, etc. I’m certainly learning a lot about how to deal with these guys (number one tip - don’t have expectations about getting anything done soon).

How Do I Feel About It?

I’m super happy with how things went. I probably stayed focused about 70-80% of the time I had available to "do stuff", which is a lot more than normal. Although I didn’t complete everything on my original list I didn’t really think I’d get it all done so that’s fine (more on this later).

I knew I’d be super busy, not just because of all I had going but also because my kids were with me almost the entire month since I didn’t get to see while they were in Europe for 3 months. Not every weekend was as crazy as the one I outlined in this post, but we were still busy. Staying this focused for a sustained period of time, with my kids at home, was probably a first so I’m very happy about that.

I got some really great ideas from other participants in the program for my website so I have more work to do than originally planned. I’m writing a custom plugin for wordpress to display my artwork images, as I couldn’t find anything out there that did what I wanted. I haven’t written code in a while so I’m excited.

What Did I Learn?

I set my goals higher than was realistic. I did this to keep myself motivated. But what I found as the weeks went on is that I wasn’t taking the goals quite seriously enough. I’d list 6 or 7 things to do in a day and only have time for 4 or maybe 5. So I set myself up from the start to not finish everything.

I think this is how I normally operate. It’s safe - because I know I never get everything done I fall back on that as the excuse every time to not do stuff. Eventually I start to think I don’t really need to finish things.

This month has shown me this is maybe not the most optimal way of doing stuff. I love my Getting Things Done project and tasks lists (from David Allen’s Book) as they are great at capturing the big picture. Yet this month I’ve found I need to get more specific, and more realistic, about what I am doing TODAY.

So in addition to my big lists, each morning I started to pick at most 3 things todo. The super most important things that absolutely have to get done. And I put my focus on getting those things done. At the end of the day it’s awesome to say I’ve completed them all.

Learning this new way of approaching my work was the best thing I got out of this class. Taking the time to think about how I get things done and to try some different approaches.

Where Does Blogging Fit In?

Obviously I stopped blogging about 1/2 way through the program. I’d find myself with an hour of time to work on my website or to write a blog post and more often than not I’d blog. So I decided to drop the goal to write and spent my free computer time on my website.

I don’t intend on making this a habit. Living my life at a pace where I don’t have time to blog is not okay with me. I love writing and I find it a great way to process information about my art and myself. So something else is going to have to give because I’m going to continue to blog 2 or 3 times a week throughout the process of selling my house.

One fun thing about this class was watching other artists work on their goals. Steve Carl (photographer - the above image is his work) had a goal of starting a blog and it’s been fun watching him and remembering back to when I started mine 3 years ago. I think he’s off to a great start. You can check it out here: Works by Steve Carl

What’s Next?

The other important thing I feel I learned is that trying to do 3 things at once (make art, build a website and get a house ready to put on the market) is too much. I think if I would have focused on just 1 thing at a time in the end I would have gotten more done.

Time to focus on the house and get it on the market. I’ll have a few moments here and there to do some art/art business work but at least 2 of the 3 must do items on my list each day are going to be house related. While I’m not excited about losing momentum on the website I think in the end this is the best choice. I’ve been feeling a bit too scattered the last few days not really making huge headway on any one thing.

Structures #15    ©2005    12"x 13"

Blogiversary

Today marks the 3 year anniversary of my first blog post, which roughly corresponds to the purchase of my first digital camera. According to wordpress this is my 425th post.

Some numbers (because I like numbers). Assuming an average posting time of 45 minutes, which is probably on the low side, I’ve spent at least 320 hours writing blog posts over the last 3 years. That’s an average of 107 hours per year.

In comparison I spent 865 hours last year in my studio and probably around 1800-1900 hours at the day job and at most 20 hours watching TV shows for the year.
 

What I’ve Learned

After all that time I feel I should have some profound words of wisdom about blogging so I thought I’d make a list of what I think I’ve learned during this process. You can decide if it’s profound.

1. I make a lot of typos.
2. I rarely feel a need to correct typos that are not found within the first hour. I appreciate all my kind readers that gloss over my mistakes.
3. There are 2 types of posts that generate a lot of comments. Those that stirred up controversy and those that were very honest about my work and myself in a way that is somehow universally felt. I prefer the later and have been looking to avoid the former as it causes me to feel unhappy.
4. I’ve learned more about myself and my art through my consistent writing on the topic than through just about any other method. I have no plans to stop anytime soon.
5. I feel I belong to an amazing community of artists as a result of my blog, which makes this an extremely rewarding experience.
6. I change my mind a lot. If you read this entire blog you’ll see at one point I strongly advocated using the term quilt. I now use the term textile painting. The old me would have had an argument with the new me. The new me isn’t concerned with defending my choices nor getting others to agree with them or even like them. The only post I have ever deleted was on this subject because I decided I didn’t need to explain myself and it was generating controversy I had no intention of stirring up.
7. There is too much stuff in my sidebar. It makes me feel claustrophobic. When I redesign my blog very little will remain in the sidebar (much of it will move to separate pages - like the archives). It’s part of my decluttering - it’s invading all parts of my life. Simplify, organize, categorize, only keep what is really serving me and get rid of the noise.
8. My categories and tags are a jumble. They stress me out sometimes thinking about which to pick. This tells me I need to rethink them all. I think simplify, organize and declutter will be the motto here also.
9. My cat likes to sit on my monitor while I blog and she puts her paw down over the screen when she wants attention. Actually, she’s not particular, I don’t have to be blogging for her to do this. She’s just as happy interrupting my reading of random wikipedia articles.
10. Forcing oneself to be profound when writing a blog post doesn’t usually result in a very high quality post.

Structures #15

The above piece was included in my very first post. It’s the one and only Structures piece that has hand sewn surface stitching. The piece sold during the opening night at Quilt National 2005 from the gift shop to the collector that purchased my piece in the show, Structures #31. He had me sign the back of both of them in sharpie marker. Kind of freaked me out.

Check out this detail image of the stitching. I think it turned out totally cool.

 
Tomorrow is the artist reception for my show, Markings: Repetition and Pattern. I’m super excited! I can’t wait to see all the work hanging in the gallery.

A Mess of Images

In early 2005 I bought my first ever digital camera, an SLR Nikon D-70. I love the camera and it takes amazing photos. Over the past 3 years those photos keep multiplying and they have become rather unruly and unorganized.

I’m currently in the process of decluttering my house and life and cleaning up these images is on the list of jobs to tackle. It’s a big job.

First step was to figure out what to do with them. I want to share them, I want to print them, I want to organize them. And most of all - I don’t want them to be a hassle. [note - I’m not talking about the images I have of my artwork - that’s a whole other mess - but photos of everything else].

An Effortless Solution

Instead of researching and hunting around for the perfect solution I decided to take advantage of someone else’s research (my dad’s) and I’m putting my photos on SmugMug. It’s not free but it’s only $40 a year, a small price to pay for storage of all of my images. And because there is a fee there are no ads. It’s a really nicely designed site and so far I’m quite pleased with it.

I’m doing a weekly upload to smugmug and by the end of the year I will have everything organized and sorted out. Along the way I am sharing the pictures with the folks I promised I’d share them with (sometimes years ago). Yay! As I take new photos I am uploading them in a timely manner.

After putting the images on the website I am deleting the images from my computer. SmugMug keeps 4 backup copies of the files in 3 different states. I can’t come close to that kind of redundancy without a lot of effort. I get unlimited storage/bandwidth and I can print the images from the site (as can the people I share them with).

Definitely hassle free.

I love the idea of deleting them from my computer. I’m throwing away all my negatives from my print pictures also. It’s so freeing to get rid of this stuff I will never do anything with.

I’m going to be printing some of them, family ones for albums, inspiration ones to put on my wall and be inspired by. I’ve rarely (as in maybe once) printed my digital images in the last 3 years so this is a new exciting thing for me. Okay - I admit - learning technology sometimes prevents me from doing things - printing digital pictures was hurting my head - but no more! Yes I’m a software engineer and hand code the html for my website but I don’t know how to text message on my cell phone.

SmugMug Details

You can check out my smugmug site. I’ve got some public galleries in the inspiration category (some photos from Arizona and from North Carolina) and a few images from a show out in Arizona last year.

If you want the marketing stuff about SmugMug it is here. If you want to sign up you get a $5 discount if you have a coupon from a referral - you can put in my email address or use this code ZnhmaNpn2n1mk . Not required but $5 is nice. I get $10 off on my next renewal if someone does this so that’s also nice.

Above Image

The photo at the top is a close up section of one of the pictures I have on smugmug - it’s an aloe plant damaged by frost.

I’m so happy!