Lisa Call

Structures #2    ©2003    36"x37"

 
We had beautiful fall weather this weekend. Today was sunny and warm and the kind of weather where I had no motivation to remain in my studio, knowing we are headed into winter soon. Although I have to admit I have really been struggling with studio time this month. I thought I was back on track and put in 20 hours in my studio a few weeks ago but then the ridiculous mess with the day job (working late, then losing all my work) has messed with my motivation.

I need to find it again because between today and the end of Thanksgiving weekend (Nov 25) this is my list of goals:

• Complete 6-9 small pieces for the Arvada Center Holiday Art show - I have 2 finished and 3 in progress.
• Deal with paperwork for several upcoming shows, including preparing some images for catalogs.
• Start a blog for the group show I’m curating next spring.
• Make 10 quillows and help my daughter make 10+ pillows. She has a to start a business and is getting a business loan from the city of Denver to help out for a class project. She will have a booth at the December 7th first friday art walk on Santa Fe driver here in Denver to sell her wares along with her classmates. The kids are studying capitalism this year.
• Buy christmas presents as we are celebrating christmas on thanksgiving because my kids will be in Spain with their father on Christmas day. Step 1 of this goal - figure out what to buy my kids.
• Write and review requirement documents for 3 projects. This would have been 1 1/2 projects had the server not crashed last week.
• Attend another memorial service for my father next weekend.
• Sleep

Now that I’ve written all of this down the reality of the situation is a bit daunting. Or maybe a lot daunting. With 0 more weekend days available I’m going to have to really focus to make it through this list. I’m not sure it’s possible but other than the group blog I don’t see too much that I can skip.

I knew all of these things prior to this weekend but I wasn’t ready to kick into gear, I needed the lull before the storm, or something like that. I spent yesterday at a friend’s sitting and talking and stitching beads onto a small piece I’ve been working on for over a year. It was a nice change of pace to not rush around doing stuff all day. I spent today hanging out with my kids and watching movies.

We finally watched An Inconvenient Truth in honor of our gorgeous weather in November. I had to force my son to sit and watch it but it was worth it since his previous source of information on this topic was our wonderful media here in the US. He was happy he sat through it as it opened his eyes as to the importance of thinking about where one gets one’s data. I hope now he’ll stop telling me we’re in the middle of a mini ice age. But more importantly I hope he stops complaining my house is too cold/hot.

We also watched Evan Almighty, which according to wikipedia, became NBC Universal’s first film to offset the production’s carbon emissions:

We worked closely with The Conservation Fund to calculate our carbon emissions from what we used on the movie—whether from vehicles used or any of the construction equipment. Once our carbon emissions were calculated, we planted trees that will effectively zero out our climate-changing footprint left behind from the movie.

 
The piece above, Structures #2, was made during my 2 weeks at Ghost Ranch in October 2000, and was inspired by the beautiful fall weather in Northern New Mexico. The blue blue sky, the yellow and green cottonwood tree leaves and the brown trunks.