Lisa Call

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Making Art

The mornings are cool enough to turn on my iron and work on my latest textile painting. This week I finalized on the basic structure of this piece as can be seen in the photo above.

Next step is to select colors and approximate placement of my lines. It takes quite a while to do this. I cut the 7/8" wide strips freehand, using my rotary cutter (like a pizza cutter for fabric), without any rulers or guildlines. Years of practice results in pretty straight cuts, but not too perfect. They still have that hand cut feel to them.

I then pin the strips to the background shapes. Below is the current state of the piece on my design wall. It’s cool this morning so I hope to make more progress before heading to work.

Summer Reading List

In the afternoons it’s not so cool in the house. It’s been sunny and still hot so even with the swamp cooler we are moving slow. As a result we’ve been playing a lot of boardgames and doing a lot of reading. My daughter read all 5 books needed for the library’s summer reading program in a week and last night got her prize - a free pass to Elitches (a six flags amusement park here in Denver).

A couple noteworthy books I’ve read this summer (there is also long list of light summer reads that I can’t remember at the moment):

Savvy by Ingrid Law. This is a children’s book (along the lines of Harry Potter) by a friend of mine. Ingrid used to belong to one of my artist support groups many years back. She’s now a published first time author with a big contract for her second book and getting rave reviews. I think they’ve optioned a movie from this first book also. The success couldn’t have come to a better person. My 12 year old daughter loved this book and couldn’t put it down. I definitely recommend it.

Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff. I haven’t actually finished this book. I had to return it to my old library and am waiting to get to the top of the hold list at the Denver Public Library. What I did read, I found quite interesting . There has been a lot of research into happiness lately and Marci has interviewed people she identified as truly happy and reports her findings in this book. Definitely worth finishing.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I listened to this as a book on tape last summer and it changed my life. It’s what lead me to attend the retreat by Christine Kane last December and really think about where I wanted my life to go and the person I want to be and the people I want to spend time with. My move to Denver is part of this chain of events and I know I’m on the right path. I decided to read it in print this summer and very much enjoyed it again.

The Appeal by John Grisham, about a fictional town with contaminated underground water and all the big business and political craziness that might surround such an event. Typical Grisham, always a fun light read.

A Bit of Fiction Reflects Life

Turns out the house I bought is in an area with contaminated underground water, so reading the Grisham book was quite intriguing. Fortunately we drink Denver city water from pipes and not the stuff under us.

They are in the process of cleaning up the mess left by a rifle scope manufacturer that dumped all their solvents into the ground. The affected houses have mitigation systems for the fumes from the solvents, pretty much like radon mitigation systems. From everything I read there is little to no threat the my health over this and even without mitigation I’d never be able to smell the fumes, it’s just annoying.

Before I moved in, home owners tried to sue, they lost. Supposedly the bad water does not effect real estate prices (I saw no signs of it) and when I build my addition the company responsible will pay to modify/extend my mitigation system if needed and I hear they are fairly easy to work with.

The Whole House

Add to this asbestos siding, lead paint, more electrical problems than I mentioned yesterday (the main line to the house is woven through the gorgeous crab apple in the back yard and the fuse box is faulty and built by a company that was successfully sued and now out of business), a cracked clay sewer pipe and also a nasty mold problem in the back of garage that has to be torn out. It’s fun!

It’s definitely in the fixer-upper category. It was a rental for 10 years and the owners lived in texas and ignored it. The grass looks like it hasn’t been watered in years and it’s mostly weeds and dirt. My house is definitely the ugly step child of the street at the present moment but I still love it and know when the remodel is done it’s going to be gorgeous. Plus I got it at a good price and have a big chunk of money in escrow from the sellers to pay for most of the stuff listed above.