Lisa Call

Dream #41
©2010 Lisa Call
24" x 24"
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)

Intentions

Intention:
1. a determination to act in a certain way
2. what one intends to do or bring about

Intentions are a powerful way to move forward. I haven’t seriously worked on setting an intention since January when I picked Construct for my word of the year. While that sounds wonderful, I need something a little less intense at the moment to rebuild.

So this week I set 2 new intentions:

1) To effortlessly refocus on my art and art career.
2) To clarify who I am and what I need in a relationship.

It’s almost magical how writing down an intention can be. Yesterday I spent an hour in my studio for the first time. It was indeed effortless.

Depression

First – a big thank you to everyone that commented on my blog post yesterday. Your support and understanding mean a lot to me and are very helpful.

Second – I am not a doctor and what I am doing won’t work for everyone, so please, if you are also suffering from depression, talk to your doctor as it is a serious issue and not something to ignore.

I am not currently pursuing a pharmaceutical solution to my problems. While I believe they do work wonders for many people, they also have their downside. Getting off these medications is a known issue and one I’d like to avoid if I can address the problem in a more natural way. They also don’t work for everyone so they come with no guarantee. I haven’t shut the door completely on this option, but it will be a last resort for me.

Instead I am doing acupuncture, this week increasing the frequency from once a month to twice a week. I’ve done acupuncture for 2 years now and I find it incredibly helpful. I’m certain that this will be a key in a natural remedy and return to positive thinking.

I’m also seeing a therapist and doing talk therapy. Having a neutral party to talk to and get support from is invaluable.

And I’m also exercising. Training for a half marathon was my therapy post divorce 8 years ago. I’m trying out different options for what I’ll do this time. Right now I’m working out at corepower yoga. It does the trick for being a good workout although it’s not exactly my thing (the core-power part – not the yoga part – I love yoga – just not sure I want it to be a sweat inducing exercise). We’ll see what next week brings as I consider my options.

I know things are looking up as I’ve motivated myself to workout 5 out of the last 6 days and last night I spent an hour in the studio. I’m headed back up there now to put in an hour this evening also.

Feels good to be making baby steps.

In The Studio

I’ve been trying to start big new textile paintings for a couple months and it just isn’t happening.

So last night I decided to try a different approach. I’m going to revisit a couple of quilts from my solo show and complete the quilting I didn’t have time to do before the show was hung in February.

I’m starting with Dream #41, shown above. I removed the bindings (the edging that finishes off the outside of piece cleanly – which you can’t see as it’s on the back of the quilt). I’m now adding my customary 1/8″ apart stitching to the entire surface.

It’ll take me 4-6 hours to complete the work, a nice sized chunk to tackle as my first project back in the studio in a few months.

Thank you all again, and now off to the studio.

Having created a significant body of work over the last decade (nearly 200* completed quilts), I plan to continue pushing myself to excellence by building on past successes and learning from the mistakes. Working as a professional artist, with any eye to creating a lasting legacy for my artwork, is my intention.

 
 
 
* I’ve completed approximately 195 textile paintings larger than 12″ square and over 130 smaller in the last 10 years.

This year I selected the words Expansion and Integrity as my words of the year (in lieu of a resolution or setting specific goals for the year).

Some fabulous things did happen for me with my art career in 2009, but most of the expansion in my life was on a personal level. A home remodel project and the addition of a gorgeous new studio, a month in Africa and moving my mom to Colorado so she could live near me. Huge expanding changes and all of it wonderful.

When I set my intention last January I mainly had my art career in mind but clearly life had other plans for my expansion. Tomorrow I’ll post a list of my 100 accomplishments for 2009 and it will be clear my art career wasn’t neglected either. The completion of the South African Impressions Art Project was very exciting.

So here’s to 2009 – it wasn’t what I expected but it was still fabulous and the growth that I experienced I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Looking forward to 2010 – I’ve selected my word for the year and another one for the decade and I’ll post those on Jan 1.

New Hardwood floor has been laced into the existing floor.

The Power of Building

Just a few weeks left to go and the house will be done. Today all sorts of people were doing stuff, which is documented over on smugmug in my daily photo update: February 16 construction photos.

We’re in the phase of construction known as "totally in your living space". So every day I have stuff to move about so I can cook dinner. Yes – I know crazy to keep cooking but it’s in part my desire to not eat crappy takeout food that made it so I can afford this remodel in the first place.

I look at the hardwood floor and the nice cabinets and my amazing studio and know that not going out to eat very often or spending money on $5 coffees over the last 7 years is a large part of why I can do this. So I cook dinner and just get over it. It’s been a very powerful experience to build a house with money I earned myself.

There have been times when I started to question some of my decisions – especially since they are a bit out of the ordinary. There is very little closet space in this house. But I have no desire to have clutter and to store a bunch of stuff – so why build in a place to store junk I don’t need?

Takes much relaxing to realize this house is mine. Totally my power to do what I want, I earned it. And the best part is, if I change my mind in 2 years I can just change it. I have the power to do that also.

New Goals Update

I set some really excellent goals to work in my studio an hour a day and keep up with email and make forward progress on my other art goals through the end of the construction.

Some days I pull this off and some days I don’t. Most days I don’t. But I have made it to my studio more days than I haven’t so I’m still keeping that intention in mind each morning and seeing where it takes me.

This weekend I spent over 6 hours in the studio working on the final piece for the show that I cannot yet show everyone. I’m loving it and as soon as it’s done I”ll start something else and then I can post photos of my artwork again.

Between construction and the last couple months being about art I cannot share I’m amazed I find anything to write about at all. So thanks to all of you for coming back every so often to see I am still here.

Structures #15
©2005
12" x 13"
Private Collection

My Intention

Expand: to open up, to increase in extent or scope

Expansion: the act or process of expanding

Integrity: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility

I set my intention for the year by selecting these words to guide me.

Expansion

I am focused on growing by leaps and bounds in 2009. I chose the word expansion over expand as it’s the process of expansion that excites me. The end result will be great but I’m going to love getting there as much as being there.

What does it take to grow my art business? What structures, routines, and systems will I need to succeed? What goals do I need to set? What habits do I need to form? I love thinking about the process and then executing on it.

This isn’t just about my art career it’s about internal things also like expanding my acceptance and understanding of others. About deepening my relationships, expanding my view of the world, etc. The list is endless.

And of course building a great big new studio to make more big art. That’s the easiest and obvious expansion at the moment.

Integrity

When I settled on the word expansion it felt incomplete to me. I wanted to qualify it. I wanted to say "Yes – I want to expand but I want to recognize and honor my values – to be authentic." Not just to clarify the expansion but also because exploring and defining exactly what I want is an ongoing process.

While I have a good idea of who and am and what I want and how I want to say it, I’ll be doing quite a bit of marketing of my artwork this year. So to that end it is vital I am very clear on the message I want to send.

I wrestled a bit with the word integrity as the definitions sound very moral preachy, but that’s not how I think of the word. I think of it more as just being authentic and not being easily swayed by things you don’t agree with.

I considered authentic but it doesn’t sound as good with the word expansion. So I read more about integrity on wikipedia and felt it really was the right word. And it sounds great with expansion. Given my current studio construction I also like the connotation to the integrity of expanding a physical structure.

My intention is to identify my values and honor them, as well as expand beyond my wildest dreams.

Courage

I won’t be abandoning my word for 2008, Courage, as it will take much courage to proceed with some of the plans I have for the year. Expanding and living bigger is scary. Courage is about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. I got a lot of practice with that in 2008 and expect it will come in very handy again this year.

My Studio Newsletter

Yesterday I emailed my 4th studio newsletter for 2008, making my goal of 4 in 2008. It was my first year for newsletters and it feels great to have met that goal. If you aren’t a subscriber and are interested you can read it and subscribe here: Lisa’s December Studio Newsletter.

Structures #15

I wanted to include an image with this post so strolling through my folders I hit upon this small hand embroidered textile painting. I rarely hand stitch my textiles and to date this is the only one of the Structures series where I’ve done this.

Now that I see this I’m getting ideas for incorporating some stitching with my thinner lines. Hm…. Maybe time to explore and see if this idea pans out. Expanding the series in a new way. Cool!

 
Happy New Year Everyone!

Joy

I dedicated the month of December to Joy. After the end of my relationship with Jim and the upcoming holidays and the frenzy that can entail I felt it was a good way to keep things in focus and enjoy the festivities instead of feeling overwhelmed by it all.

At the start of the month I posted daily and truly had some joyous things to share. Intentially focusing on and looking for things to be joyful about was a big help in keeping things in perspective. I went through some rough parts towards the center of the month and by focusing on joy and gratitude I was able to move through it.

Towards the end of the month I no longer felt a need to purposely look for the joy as it had returned to my life as a daily fact and had a wonderful Christmas with my kids.

I even managed to write 22 blog posts in 30 days – definitely a record for me. I won’t be looking to keep up this pace of blogging but it was a great way to feel connected this month.

As the year comes to a close I want to again thank all of you for the joy your support and comments bring me. I really appreciate it when you take the time to share your thoughts and just knowing you are there is excellent.

Selvages

What is that wad of stuff on my floor in the photo you might be wondering? Those are the selvages, the edge of the fabric, from 20 yards of fabric that are going into my newest large textile painting. They are are usually a bit funky (tightly woven or fuzzy or full of holes) so best that they go away and I start with a clean cut.

Most of those that work with textiles just pitch these things in the trash. Not me. I keep them and I roll them into tight balls. I’ve got a pile of them somewhere, probably in storage awaiting the studio completion, and I’m thinking some day I will offer the balls for sale – cause they are pretty cool. I love to keep a few in bowls around my house. When I locate them again I’ll take some photos.

Welcoming 2009

In just 2 days we have a new year – wow – I’m so excited! Before I jump ahead too quickly I’m going to devote my post tomorrow to a review of my accomplishments for 2008. I’ve had an amazing year so I expect the list to be long and very joyous.

On January 1, I’ll share a post about my intentions for 2009, I’ve selected my words for the year to help guide me through my daily actions and will share those in that post. Yep, words, after weeks of pondering I was unable to select just a single word and have picked two. Yay! For those of you following me twitter you have a sneak peek as to what they will be.

On January 2, I’ll post some specific goals I’ve set for 2009 and will follow up through out January reviewing some work habits I’m developing to help me stay on task. I’m really looking forward to starting the year as I’ve got some awesome plans.

Preparing for the New Year

I’m not sure how it got here so quickly, but it’s December. I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to approach this month for a while and have decided to dedicate it to Joy. Absolute wonderful peace and delight in things that make me happy.

A snippet from my journal this morning:

Hello December, I’m happy to see you. This month is all about joy, peace, happiness. I’m going to have 31 days of delight. Each day my intent and focus will be to appreciate and do joyful things, have joyful thoughts and experiences and be a joyful person.

As I was writing my cat came over and silently sat next to me, her sign for "pick me up and put me in your lap so I can purr". My first moment of joy after declaring my intention for the month.

I will share my experiences with intending joy each day in our typically busy holiday season throughout this month of blogging and hope to hear from my readers about their joyful days also.

Pencil Holders

Driving home watching the beautiful sunset I was excited to see a package by my front door upon my return home. Aha – total delight – my pencil holders from Paula have arrived. I love them – look at the 9 new holders all in a row in the photo. I love it. I love repetition.

Paula – thanks for sharing your art and spreading happiness to this corner of the planet.

Thank You

And next a huge thank you to all of my readers as the pageviews for my blog topped 100,000 for the month for the first time ever. I’d been holding pretty steady around 75K-80K for a while and finally something pushed it over the top. Maybe spammers. Who knows, even if I cut that number in half to account for the noise, I have a lot of readers. Unique visitors are over 22,000 per month and average around 1300-1500 per day. Thanks everyone!

Thank you all for reading and commenting. I love what I learn about myself and my art when writing my blog and then I get more from all of your comments, rethinking my ideas. I fall behind occasionally on comments and I suspect there are questions I said I would answer that I forget about. Sorry about that – if it’s important, just ask again. Just wanted to let you all know every comment is greatly appreciated and my goal is to respond to them all.

New Beginnings

So what’s behind all the joy crap? Well a couple of things. The first is I have signed up for a year of coaching with Christine Kane and I suspect she might have been a baker in a previous life because most of us are are really getting a bonus 13 months, which means it started today.

I plan to get the most out of the upcoming year and I know that change comes from within, not from Christine, she’s just really good at holding me to the things I said I would do and calling out my bullshit. It felt right to dedicate the first month of the coaching to shear delight.

The other motivator is that my relationship with Jim has come to an end. It was time and while I’m sad I’m not surprised. I’ve gotten very clear about what I need and want over the last year and things weren’t working out for either of us. I wish Jim well and trust he will have a joyful life moving forward.

Clearing Out

Over the past few days, inspired by Colin’s rss cleanout, I’ve removed a large number of blogs from my feed reader. I think I was up to 150 or something around there. I was always behind and reading blogs wasn’t an activity it was a diversion.

I’ve got the list down to less than 70 and will probably weed out more as I find the ones I don’t really read. Now reading blogs is an activity – 10-15 minutes a day and I should be caught up. Feels great – it’s decluttering! I’m hoping this leaves me more time to respond to blog comments and look over the blogs my readers are writing.

It felt great to dump all the "you should read this if you are a real artist" type of blogs, like Tyler Green. I tried really really hard to care. I just couldn’t. It always just sounded like gossip and complaining, or it was just boring. Reminder – I am defining my art career, the only MUST DO things are the things I define.

I dumped most of the inspiration type blogs and the marketing type blogs as they started to sound repetitive. I’m really tired of blog posts with lists: 7 ways to have more energy, less hair, more clothes, less time, etc. That format has lost it’s charm on me.

Also, anyone that didn’t publish a full blog post in their feed got removed. Okay – 2 exceptions – but I still prefer you publish full posts. Katherine and I already had this conversation and agreed to disagree, darn. Colin, please, give us the full feed – save us from carpal tunnel having to click to read your thoughts.

Sea Foam Green

Two of the new pieces of art I made over the weekend were sea foam green in nature. Looking at Paula’s pencil holders I can see what inspired me. Not to mention the same color on the mugs I bought from Cynthia. Hm.

Here’s my green:

Lines #7
©2008
4" x 4" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Lines #7 – On Canvas

ACEO #29
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

Available for purchase here, along with art that is not green in case that isn’t your thing. I think I had those old pink and green bathroom in my mind when I made these. Or maybe there was never a time when people had pink and green bathrooms. But it sounds good.

My daughter wants a neon orange bathtub. Do they make those?

 
Happy Monday everyone!

Morning Aspens
by Stacey Peterson
Oil on Panel
9×12″
2008
reprinted with permission by the artist

Being Decisive

I think one reason I get so much done is I’m good at making decisions, meaning that when presented with choices I don’t spend days or weeks or months deciding what to do. I just decide. Then I do it.

When I decluttered my house at the beginning of the year I had no intention of moving at that time. But once the idea that I really could move came to me, I didn’t ponder it forever. I simply decided to move based on how that decision felt to me and within a week I had a Realtor lined up and got to work making it happen. I went from thinking "Hm, maybe I could move" to living in my new house in only 3 months.

One of my strengths is my intuition. I rarely sit down and make lists of advantages and disadvantages of doing something. I just listen to my feelings and pick the choice that feels right and move forward. I do journal and find writing (not list making) helps me listen my desires.

I don’t believe that every decision has a wrong and a right choice. I think there are pros and cons to all choices. So I focus on the positives of my direction and don’t let the negative aspects stop me.

This isn’t to say I don’t sometimes decide my choice wasn’t the best for me. So then I just change my mind and do something else. And once that decision is made then I just move forward in the new direction.

It’s hard to make forward progress and put energy anywhere if I don’t make a decision as to which direction to go. So step one is to decide. When I’m feeling low on energy I often find that I haven’t gotten clear about a decision that needs to be made. Making that decision releases all sorts of energy and starts propelling me towards my future.

If you are feeling like you don’t have the energy to devote to a project are you fully committed and have you truly decided that is the direction you should go? Maybe making a solid decision is the first step in boosting your energy.

Construction Zone

Tomorrow’s the big day – construction on my new studio begins. I spent a large portion of the weekend preparing my house for the event.

First up will be removal of the asbestos siding. Originally I thought I’d do this work myself. Then I decided that was a bit insane so I’ve hired asbestos removal people to do it. Once the siding is gone the builder can start and will begin by ripping the moldy shed off the back of the garage, which will create a pathway, through the garage, for the big digging thing to get to my backyard to dig a basement.

Pictures of the progress will start tomorrow and if things go as intended the artwork will also continue.

Morning Aspens

I love Stacey Peterson’s paintings of the Colorado landscape and have been saving up to purchase one for about a year. When she posted the photo of the above painting on her blog I knew instantly (there’s that intuitive decision making thing) it was the one I wanted and am happy to report it arrived at my house this week.

Stacey’s blog is one of my favorites. She’s my role model: she quit her technical job to support herself with her art and she lives in the Colorado mountains. Plus she’s really organized and hates clutter – my kind of person!

Depending on how messy it gets around here during construction the painting might have to live somewhere else for few months but right now it’s on the wall in my living room and I’m definitely enjoying it.

Now time to start saving up for the next artist’s work I covet.

Cherry Creek State Park, Denver, Colorado
 

Clarity

When I have clarity of intention I’m able to focus my actions on the things that will bring about my desires more quickly. I believe I am responsible for my own fate and focusing on what I want will result in it transpiring. So best to be very clear about what that is so I’m happy with the results. Hence my previous posts on my artistic success.

When I sit down with my todo list I think about each item and if it will lead to one of the goals on my list. If not I try to get the thing off my list – delegate it, don’t do it, or do it quickly. This is one reason why being clear is so helpful. It allows me to align my actions exactly to the outcomes I most want.

Another thing I meant to mention in my twitter for artists post, but it flittered out of my mind when writing, twitter fits into my long term success strategy. The marketing piece is probably there and it will help me sell art but more immediately I see it as a wonderful community of artists. I’ve meant dozens and dozens of new artists the last few weeks and am going to enjoy getting to know them better through their tweets. If you are trying to decided if twitter is right for you, one way to make that decision is to think about if it fits into your long term vision for your career.

Where Do You See Yourself?

Violette Severin has done a series of artist interviews on her blog and I was asked to participate. You can read my interview here: Interview with Lisa Call.

One of my favorite questions she asked was "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" I gave a fairly short answer on her blog as I wasn’t yet done working through my definition of success. The list of items from last weeks post, What Does Success Mean To Me, is the more clear answer to that question.

Some people might have a problem with defining success so another way to think about it is with this question. What do you envision yourself doing in the future?

Positive Day Dreaming

I’ve been trying out positive day dreaming and it seems most of the time it goes like this:

I wake up and get to spend the entire day in my studio making art. Then the next day I get to do the same. And the next and the next. I even toss in some marketing activities cause it’s fun now and of course eating good food, making the art in a beautiful studio and spending part of the time with the people I love.

Right now I can think of nothing I would like more than to spend an entire month making art and not going to work. Okay admittedly an entire life doing this would be better, but with the remodel I think I might be working for a few more years now. A tradeoff that will be well worth it.

Still – I think I’m going to figure out how to take a month off work and just make art the entire time. What a perfect use of my vacation time. It puts a huge smile on my face just thinking about it.

Studio Newsletter

It’s time again for my quarterly studio newsletter. I expect the September edition to be sent by end of the week if not sooner. As has become habit, I will have a few ACEOs for sale to my newsletter subscribers.

You can check out a sample here: Lisa Call Studio News.

You can sign up below for the newsletter:

 
And of course, I will never share or sell your email address and will only use it for the purpose stated above. All emails sent will include a link to unsubscribe should you decide you are no longer interested.

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.