Lisa Call

Home #42 (informed by Home #11)
©2010 Lisa Call
3.5" x 2.5"
Textile Painting (Fabric hand dyed by the artist, cotton batting, cotton thread)
$40 $34 + shipping

zzz…

Yesterday I wrote about my complete lack of motivation and energy. Today I started down the path to getting back on track.

In addition to very short todo lists and some scheduled time in the studio, near the top of my list is the need to get 8 hours of sleep a night. Or more.

Lately I’ve been staying up much too late. Or waking up in the middle of the night and falling back to sleep. In general not sleeping well.

Time to for a well rested night to be a regular thing again. Relaxing before bed, exercising (which really helps sleep), eating healthy. Etc. It’s all tied together, although right now sleep is top of my list.

I spent a few minutes yesterday and today in my studio and I’m looking forward to having the energy to do more very soon.

And thanks to everyone that comment on my blog post yesterday. Your support is so very helpful and welcome – thank you.

Mini Home Textile Paintings

My Dwelling exhibit came down last weekend and I was going to change the prices of the remaining Home aceos back to there regular price of $40, but turns out there is only 1 left, Home #42, above. So I’ll leave it at $34 until sold.

I have a few more small Home artist trading cards in progress but they will all be the normal $40 when completed and then I’m going to move on from houses for a while. I’m certain I’ll return to them as I have loved working on them but it’s time for something new.

Then I’ll clean up the piles of fabric from all the Dwelling artwork and get a fresh start on some large artworks I have brewing in my head. I’m targeting April 1 for the transition.

Paint

Today I’m taking a pass on my great plan of doing art and business stuff because I didn’t get much sleep last night. But I did completed my office painting project for the weekend so yay for that. Dark reddish brown and an orangy peachy kinda of color.

All of today’s construction photo are here: February 9 Construction Photos

Time to Vote

 
Above is the current state of my porch gable. Someone (either me or Jim The Builder) thinks that another set of sunburst beams needs to be added to the gable cause the bottom empty area is too big. The other one of us says it’s fine.

I told the builder I’d get opinions from my blog readers on which way would look better (not that I won’t do what I like but everyone loves a poll).

Cast your vote – which do you like better: as it is in the photo or would you add another set of beams in the lowest sections?

I thought about figuring out how to do one of those polls on my blog but I’m too tired. So just leave your vote in the comments.

 
And since I’m way off topic today, Happy Birthday Mom!

My goals for today were:

1) 10 hours in studio
2) massage appointment at 3pm
3) blog
4) journal
5) yoga
6) walk
7) to bed by 9:30

How’d I do?

1) 9 1/2 hours in the studio – yay. With yesterday that makes for 22 hours in the studio for the weekend and around 25 for the week. That is the most I have worked in my studio since February of 2008 when I had a week where I put in 45 hours. That was the week before my solo show opened so I was crazily finishing 2 last textile paintings before the delivery day.

Since that day I’ve had only 1 other week for all of 2008 where my studio hours topped 20 hours. Wow -moving has definitely impacted my art making. This could be the last of art for a while depending on how construction goes this week so a nice way to bring closure to the bedroom studio.

2) massage was excellent (I think I kinda fell asleep for a bit – hope I wasn’t snoring)

3) if you are reading this – yes

4, 5, 6) I put yoga/walk/journal on my todo list every single day. Journal I almost always do, yoga maybe 1/2 the time (for the first 3 months of 2008 I did yoga every single morning – can’t wait to get back into that habit), walk has been a ‘no’ for a while so it felt good to get out yesterday and today and move.

7) Yes – so goodnight. I hope you all had wonderful weekends.

Aspens #1
Textile Painting with hand stitched texture
©2002
16" x 13"
Private Collection

Sleep

Probably the most important habit I try to keep is sleeping 8 hours a night. I know that when I start slacking off and thinking I can get by with less sleep I really start to feel it. Generally I skip sleep because I think I can get more done if I stay up late. The reality is that the opposite generally results.

When I’m tired my brain stops working as well and I can’t focus on tasks as easily. The result is I am significantly less productive, which for me generally means surfing the internet reading art blogs and playing around on twitter and facebook.

Like right now, I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Just now I thought, hey I should link to my twitter profile in that sentence. So I opened twitter and had to write a tweet about my son’s musical taste (he’s listening to the Beach Boys of all things) and then I thought I should add twitter to my sidebar so opened my dashboard for wordpress and saw they were doing a survey for features for 2.8. I started doing that when I realized. Wait – I’m writing a blog post.

I can go on like that for hours if I get tired enough. Clearly skipping sleep does not make me more productive nor does it give me more time to get things done. It just give me time to waste doing useless things.

Because I always seem to wake up at 5 or 5:30 and am a morning person, it is really important for me to be in bed by 9:30. So this is the first habit I’m going to concentrate on for 2009. I haven’t sleep super good the last 3 or 3 months and I need to get back into that habit. I think tackling everything else will be a lot easier if I’m well rested.

[hm got sidetracked again, but did get twitter and facebook in my sidebar, and updated my status on facebook while I was at it.]

The Hand Stitch

People have been commenting positively on my posts with the hand stitched work so here’s another one. I wrote a post about Aspens #1 a few years back that includes more information about what inspired the textile painting (a backpacking trip) and it includes a detail shot of the stitching. In this instance I didn’t add a second design over the top of the Aspens but instead echoed the shapes with my stitching.

I love doing hand stitching but it is hard on my hands so can’t do as much as I used to. I haven’t given it up but I haven’t done any in maybe a year. In the past I haven’t devoted much time to it but I really want to get back to it more. I have the idea to do a couple hand stitched Home pieces in the next month as I’m going to get kicked out of my studio soon so construction can progress.

I also have a heavily hand beaded piece that is a few hours away from completion. I’d love to get that done and show it to you all in the next couple of weeks.

But first – it’s time to catch up on some sleep! I’ll catch up on comments tomorrow. Thanks everyone for the positive responses the last couple days.