Lisa Call

Markings #14    ©2007    35"x37"

Two weeks ago I posted a list of projects I needed to complete by the Nov 25. My progress to date:

• Complete 6-9 small pieces for the Arvada Center Holiday Art show. Completed!
• Deal with paperwork for several upcoming shows, including preparing some images for catalogs. Completed!
• Buy christmas presents. We had a wonderful Christmas last week.
• Write and review requirement documents for 3 projects. Completed!
• Attend another memorial service for my father next weekend. It was a warm and comforting service with family and friends that knew him growing up.
• Sleep I slept lots over turkey day weekend - what a treat to have 4 days in a row to sleep late, which is making this week particularly brutal when the alarm goes off at 5:30am.

The 2 things I didn’t have to get done got pushed back but now the pressure is on to get these finished.

• Start a blog for the group show I’m curating next spring.I’m about half way done on the initial setup, although no rush since the show isn’t until next April we want to get our group blog up and running fairly soon.
• Make 10 quillows and help my daughter make 10+ pillows. This is painful, my daughter has little interest in this project and we need to have this done by thursday if possible. I’ve got 5 quillows nearly completed. Many many more hours to go.

So my goals for the next few weeks are to complete the above in addition to the following:

• Get back to putting in 20 hours a week in the studio - including this week. This will be a stretch but I’m tired of my life being so out of balance. Time in the studio with out time pressures and deadlines is where I recenter and it is much missed.
• Update my guild.com webpage. I’d like to submit new work as I’ve not had any luck selling the work on there yet. Time to add some new pieces.
• Ship some new small work to Lux Art Center. They shipped back my work I sent a while back, time to send some new pieces that they display in their fiber art classroom.
• Update my website. I have ideas for what to do but have not yet found the time to make it happen.
• Work no more than 40 hours a week at they day job. I put in enough overtime in November to buy me brownie points for a long time to come.

My plan is to wrap all of this up by Dec 11th as that day marks the beginning of a 3 month period that I plan to really focus on my art and my art business and get them into top shape. My kids are going to London and Spain with their dad for 3 months, leaving me with an empty nest. I’m excited for this opportunity for them but I will miss them a great deal, so I will focus on the art to make the experience as positive for me as possible.

 
The above piece I included in a post earlier this month about my Markings series and the image was terrible. I play around with the raw camera image in photoshop for a few minutes and figured out how to fix it . Hurray! Thanks to the commenter that left some tips on things to try to fix things.

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.