Lisa Call

Topping Out

For the pure fun of doing something silly I decided to top out my home construction project today. Definitely in the joy category as it marks an exciting milestone in the construction project - that of the structure reaching it’s highest point.

Had I done the topping out correctly I would have done it last wednesday when they put the trusses on the roof and attached an evergreen tree to the last truss raised. Then it’s time for a little ceremony to mark that the framing has reached the top level.

It’s supposed to bring luck to the project but when I talked to the construction guys about it, to them it just meant they were supposed to get a beer. I gave them cookies.

So apparently I don’t know the rules, especially since I didn’t have a real tree, so instead it was a sparkly purple fake tree.

It will still bring good luck to the project, cause already it’s going really well. And it was pretty entertaining. I guess I owe the guys a beer sometime.

Latest construction photos are here: December 2 .

Artful Home

 
Structures #39 was selected to be included in this year’s Artful Home holiday catalog (pictured above). Today I had the first nibble of someone interested in buying it. Hurray! That is definitely joy. They changed their mind but I’m sure the right buyers will come along soon.

Being in the catalog, which is mailed to 200,000 homes, is delightful in and of itself. Here’s the page with my textile painting:

 
I think they did a fabulous job photographing the work. I need to tweak mine a bit:

 

Structures #39 ©2006    43"x29"

December Studio Newsletter

It’s nearing time for my 4th quarterly newsletter for 2008. I’m thinking I’ll have it in the mail in the next couple weeks.

I’ve decided to select one of my subscribers to receive one of my textile paintings as it seems like a festive joyful thing to share my work this way. I think it will be Structures #83 but I haven’t decided final details. I might decided to give away a couple ACEOs also. So if you’d like a chance to win a piece of my artwork please sign up below.

You can check out a sample Studio Newsletter here: Lisa Call Studio News if you’d like an idea of what you are signing up for.

Sign up here:

 
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.

Structures #104
©2008
6"x 6" - Mounted on stretched canvas
$85

Confession

Time for a confession. When I listed the textile paintings for sale on my small art for sale webpage a few weeks ago I said 6 of the pieces (Lines #1-#5 and Structures #104) were mounted on painted canvas. Truth was I had painted the canvases and I was pretty sure I could figure out how to attach them, but I didn’t think they would sell right away and I was going to take them with me to North Carolina to figure it out.

Er - nope - Lines #1, #3, #4 and #5 sold via twitter within a few minutes of tweeting about it. I hadn’t even announced the sale on my blog. I was leaving town in a couple days and had to figure out how to do this asap so I could get the work in the mail.

Turns out the little 3" square textile paintings are easy as the stretcher bars are small and I can stitch from the backside of the canvas and it went fairly quickly. And looked really nice. Like this:

Lines #2
3" x 3" - mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

I had a few minutes before leaving on my trip to tackle Structures #104 and wasn’t quite as successful. The stretcher bars are much larger on these larger 6" canvases and stitching next to them is not an option. The stitching has to go under the bars to hold the textile painting correctly and I was having a really really hard time figuring out how to do it. Oops!

Success

I ran out of the 3" canvases and wanted to make some more work this week so I decided to go for the 4" canvases and I bought and made a few new textile paintings in that size: Home #6, Home #7 and Lines #7.

Today was the day to tackle attaching these things on to canvases with 1 1/2" wide stretchers. Turned out that it isn’t all that hard. It’s not exactly easy but other than the one I got on upside down (never sign the back of the canvas before getting the textile painting in place) it went pretty smoothly. The trick is to sew from the front - in between textile painting and canvas. It’s a bit funky but works out great.

Here are my results:

Home #7 and #6
4" x 4" each - mounted on stretched canvas
$45 each

 

Lines #7
4" x 4" - mounted on stretched canvas
$45

Even Bigger

That accomplished I went back to Structures #104 and it’s 6" canvas, shown at the top of the post and mastered it. It’s just more stitching than the 4" canvases but same size stretcher bars.

Structures #104 and Structures #103 (not on canvas but also a small work for sale) were informed by Structures #45. I had it on the wall in my studio because it recently came back from an art consultant so it became the object of inspiration.

Here’s a quick look at these (it’s picture day on the blog tonight):

Structures #103
©2008
6"x 17.5"
$190

 
 

Structures #45
©2005
28" x 28"
$1200

For Sale

Yes - I know - as I talk about affordable art the subject of sales seems to be brought up a lot. Probably because that is the point. I’ll finish this up soon and be back to my normal posts, but I have a few more things to say.

I’m working on a post for Christine Kane’s blog about my word of the year, courage. Talking about my artwork being for sale on my blog requires courage. Art and money are a bit weird sometimes and commerce on a blog is also a bit touchy, but forge ahead I am, knowing that my art does add much value to the world and unless I make it clear it is for sale it tends to just hang out at my place with me.

So, all the pieces in this post are available for sale on the Small Art for Sale webpage, except Lines #2, which sold in the middle of preparing for this post.

Most of these shown today are new so I did a bit of clean up and moved the sold pieces off that page and onto a sold page. In addition to the work shown here there are a few other new Lines piece (#6 and #8) and a couple of new ACEOs (#28 and #29).

I also did this because rumor has it a blogger with a huge readership is going to mention the 2 group artists websites I’m a part of so we might be getting a lot of traffic tomorrow. That would be great! (A reminder they are Fine Art Department and Small Art Showcase - I will get these into my sidebar soon so I don’t mention them so much in the blog).

And one last photo of all these guys on canvas at more of an angle so you can see how cool they look on there. I ordered some 2.5" x 3.5" canvases and will be putting some of my ACEOs on them cause I’m loving how this looks.

Structures #46
©2005
45" x 61"
Sold

Thank You

It’s the day for giving thanks here in the US as we all celebrate Thanksgiving (generally by eating too much). I am so fortunate to be surounded by many wonderful people and am grateful for all of your support and love. Thanks to all of them for being a part of my life

A few in particular I want to mention:

• My Collectors: Thank you to each of you that have purchased my art this year. It was a big leap for me to decided to start selling my textile paintings seriously and I am thrilled with the response. Each of you has my profound gratitude
• The Builders: Jim, Carl, Eric, Colin and all the guys that have worked on my new studio and home. You’ve all been wonderful and I couldn’t be more happy with the project. Thank you!
• My Blog Readers: I mostly write my blog to work out my own thoughts about my art, yet it’s wonderful to have such a supportive community out there listening and participating. You all are awesome - extra pumpkin pie to everyone.
• My kids: You are the best. I love you both!

This has been an amazing year for me. So many wonderful things have happened I sometimes find it amazing how perfect it all turns out. Then I realize much of this is about my attitude change as things have generally gone well for me. Each night before I go to bed I write a list 5 things I’m grateful for and it seems there is a never ending supply of wonderment to appreciate.

Giving Back

Earlier this fall I sold 2 additional large textile paintings to the University Hospitals in Cleveland (previously they purchased Structures #35). They purchased Structures #46 and #36, both pictured in this post.

As I mentioned before, I donate and gift 10% of my art income to causes and people that I learn from, are inspired by or who I feel are doing amazing things for the world. Borrowing a term from Christine Kane, I call this expansive giving

Although I write checks each month, this sale gave me the opportunity to write some nice checks to some organizations I support. FINCA, an organization that provides financial services to the world’s lowest-income entrepreneurs, was again top of my list. In addition I sent checks to the American Cancer Society, Volunteers of America (they do meals on wheels), World Wild Life Fund and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

You can read more about what I consider expansive giving on my previous blog post on the subject: Expansive Giving.

Now that I do this giving as a matter of course, I didn’t have any qualms with sending this money out into the universe, even as I am spending more than planned on a new studio and watching my investments shrink. It simply feels right.

What I find fascinating is that as this money was headed out the door to help others someone purchased almost the same $ amount of art from my Small Art For Sale webpage. Now I can give back more in December.
 

Construction Update

Huge progress on my studio! The roof sheathing is done. The space is now well defined and I’m absolutely thrilled. This weeks photos:

Construction Photos - November 24 and 25
Construction Photos - November 26

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
 

 
Structures #36
©2005
69" x 50"
Sold

Structures #102
©2008
6"x 6"
$85

My Seven

I was tagged by Susan Donley for this meme. Write 7 things my blog readers don’t know about me then tag 7 people to keep this going. I’m not sure which one is harder. Is there really anything I haven’t written about on this blog over the past 3+ years?

Here’s my try:

1. I’ve only owned 3 cars in my life. I didn’t buy my first one (Bufurd) until 1989 right before I got married at age 26. Bought the second one (Annabel) in 1992 right before my son was born and it was clear we would have to become a 2 car family. I bought the 3rd one a few years back when the one from 1992 was totaled in an accident. The first two I bought new, my current car is a 1996 Honda Accord named Pam.
2. In my grad school days I was a co-author on a few computer science research papers. We presented one of them in Orlando and I had to fly down to Florida with my adviser in his small airplane. He made us (myself and fellow graduate student) help navigate. I didn’t want to and put no effort into it. I was generally on the wrong map page when he asked me to show him where we were. We still made it to Florida and back just fine.
3. When my grandparents sold their farm in 1987 or 88 they had a big auction. I bought my grandmother’s floor quilting frame but couldn’t get it home with me on the plane so a few months later I drove from Wisconsin to Kansas (in Bufurd) to get them. So basically I drove 1200 miles round trip, alone, to get a bunch of old 2×4s. I came close to getting rid of it when I moved this year but didn’t, so it is currently crammed into my storage locker.
4. I’m really really good at playing Blockus as I’m really good at thinking spatially. I have to bribe my kids to play with me but mostly they refuse because I always win. I’m also really good at tetris and prefer 3-d tetris cause regular is too easy. And even better, I’m really good at packing a car with tons of stuff. I think this is why I like making the type of art I make, it’s very much like putting a puzzle together to make it all work out. Requires a lot of spatial reasoning.
5. My first cat was named Radiation Burn. I called her Raid. I stole that name from my best friend Kelly as she was going to name her first child this but her husband objected. I’ve since had cats named Toxie (Toxic Waste) and Indie (Industrial Waste). Our current cats are Nukie (Nuclear Waste) and Abby. My daughter was 5 when we got Abby and didn’t quite pick up the pattern. Next cat is already named. It’ll be Medi (Medical Waste).
6. I was a girl scout growing up. My mom was our leader and we did lots of camping and backpacking and I loved it. I have many fond memories of those years. In my 20s I dreamed of having a daughter and being her girl scout leader. I was most happy when my daughter said no way she would do girl scouts. Whew - off the hook. Teaching and herding kids is not very high on my ‘like to to do’ list. My mom was a saint. (Thanks mom!)
7. I don’t like rules.

And so given #7 I’m going to skip the part where I tag other people specifically. Instead I’m tagging anyone that reads this blog and has exactly 2 A’s and 2 E’s in their name (first and last). If that’s you - your turn!

Small Art

This weekend I was hoping to wrap up the small art I planned for the online holiday sale I’m participating in but it didn’t quite happen. Which is fine as I’ll wrap it up this week. Along with packing up my house so they can rip down walls.

The above piece is part of the sale and in the next day or 2 I’ll get my webpage up with all of the work. It’s been fun to make these little works but I’m also itching to get back into making some larger pieces now.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Structures #43
©2005
21"x 22"
$750

Talking about Twitter on Facebook

I said a while back I’d write about how I use twitter. Today 3 things happened that made it clear today was the day to do that.

First I had the following conversation on facebook after I clicked to become a fan of twitter:

Friend: Hi Lisa, I should get this, but thanks to old age, I don’t. What do you use twitter for? Is it more than just another facebook-like status? What am I missing?

Me: As an artist (this tech thing for 40 hours a week where I see you is just a hobby) I find twitter more useful in terms of resources. Not sure about the marketing side of stuff but I have a good group of followers that are quick to help me out. Today I asked for pointers to paper sources to print thank you cards with my art and got great comments.

Lots of artists on twitter. Maybe a bunch of geeks stuff over there also but I’m mostly interacting with artists.

Some people auto publish their tweets to their facebook status - I don’t - I view them as different conversations. There is some overlap in audience but facebook is more of everyone I know - most of them in person, but not all. Twitter - I don’t know many of those folks in real life. So I write about different things.

Twitter is more everyday mundane stuff and I update many times a day. Facebook isn’t quite as interactive - so I only update it every couple days as people don’t seem to check it as often.

Friend: That makes sense: different communities, different granularity. Thanks for the explanation!

How I use Twitter

So that kind of explains how I view twitter. I view it as walking into a room full of friends and joining a conversation for a bit then leaving again. I come back throughout the day and the conversation shifts and flows as the day progresses.

It takes a while to get the hang of twitter. The @replies, which aren’t obvious, are a big part of it. Once one gets that figured out I think twitter makes a bunch more sense. An @reply is like a comment on a blog post. I write a tweet, if someone responds it puts and @lisacall in the front of their tweet back and I get to see all of those on another tab. That is how twitter becomes a conversation.

I have twitter set up so that I see @replies from people I follow to other people that I follow - which expands the conversation beyond just me and 1 person. I’ve had several multi-person conversations as a result of this. I don’t get all @replies (so I don’t see replies from people I follow to people I don’t follow) as that seems like too much to me. Setting it to see no @replies at all didn’t feel as much of a conversation. Each person can decide how many @replies they want to see.

Twitter is a never ending conversation. We all need a break from that at times. So for me the key to not letting it overwhelm me is that I don’t worry about what was said in my absence. Sometimes I go back and read stuff (like during lunch at work) but mostly I just let it slide. Although I always respond to @replies directed to me.

But again - twitter makes no sense at all to some people. Not a big deal - there are thousands of way to communicate with other people - twitter isn’t required or even necessary. Some of just find it highly entertaining.

If you want to follow me my profile is here: Lisa Call’s Twitter Profile. Or you can just go take a peek and see what I’m saying today. At some point I’ll put my most recent tweets into my sidebar. It’s on my todo list.

Twitter Articles

The other 2 interesting things that happened today were people tweeted pointers to some really great "how to use twitter effectively" articles. These said things that I might have written in this post, and now I don’t have to repeat. The articles are excellent:

How not to be annoying on twitter

What to write about on twitter

I really like that first article. I’ve stopped following some people that don’t seem to understand this.

Not everyone loves Twitter

For a fair and balanced view, I also read this blog article about twitter today:

Is Twitter Too Good?

That doesn’t paint twitter in such great light. It was written in March 2007 by Kathy Sierra, who no longer blogs. Although, ironically, you can follow her on twitter now. Hm…

Construction

I didn’t get home from work until 5:30 tonight - way too dark for photos. But it’s way cool in the backyard - the forms are down and I can see the walls. Photos will have to wait til tomorrow.

Structures #43

I’m building a webpage for a holiday art sale. Turns out it’s supposed to be for art $500 or less. Oops - I thought it was $1000. So now I have to pull a bunch of my stuff off. My fault for not reading the info again before starting.

Anyway, came across this piece while doing the page and remembered how much I love this piece. It’s over $500 (it’s $750) so it’ll have to come off the page, but decided it needed to appear on the blog today instead.

Structures #66    ©2007    22" x 31"

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Today was the first day of work after the clocks went back an hour (good bye daylight savings time until March) so as I was headed home at 5 it was already getting dark and by 5:30 it was all over. I had big plans to do tons of stuff tonight but found myself wandering aimlessly about the house for a while a bit disoriented.

I usually find this darker time to be a great period of motivation. I’m getting tons of sleep and it’s too cold out to want to wander about so my studio is the perfect place to be.

This year it feels odd. Probably the weather. Usually it’s fairly cold when this happens so it feels natural but this year it’s been in the 70s. It’s too warm for the days to be getting shorter! Which is really quite good in terms of pouring cement for the foundation of my new studio - I truly am very grateful the weather is on my side on this one.

Twitter to the Rescue

So after a bit of pacing and greeting the cats I naturally found myself in front of the computer instead of the sewing machine. No new email to distract me so off to twitter. I started to write something that felt whiny then realized I really don’t want to be that person.

So instead I found myself writing: First day home after dark from work. It’s going to take some serious energy to get me to that studio. Okay - no whining - off I go.

and headed to my studio for a little over 2 hours of art time today along with an hour of work on the website rewrite as I am determined this will be done within the next week.

I just had to decide to do it, and then I did. Thank you twitter for the chance to remind myself of that.

It’s a good day to follow up on my very productive weekend of 12 hours in the studio and 4 hours in the office. Kids are at their dad’s, boyfriend is out of town so no excuses to not stay focused and get stuff done.

Structures #66

I wanted art for the post today so selected a piece with a lot of black. I love this piece (do I say that about all of my work? Sometimes it feels that way, maybe because I rarely show the stuff that I don’t say that about).

I’ve never shown this textile painting in public and it’s pretty much lived in my closet it’s entire life. I need to find it a new home where it can get out of the darkness. I’m going to be putting all of my artwork on my new website over the next month (with prices - this piece is $1200 - which reminds me that I want to do a post about how I price my work) so I trust it will find a lighter place to live once the world knows it exists.

Structures #99    ©2008    33" x 39"
 

A Studio Day

Hurray! There is no construction and no teeth to distract me this weekend so I’ve been making art most of today.

I completed 5 ACEOs that I started last week that are inspired by Structures #99, shown above. I really love this piece and wrote about it in my October studio newsletter. It’s inspired by a painting of buffalo at the Denver Art Museum. My textile painting isn’t about buffalo, it’s about the colors, and my usual fences and barriers.

Potholders?

The new ACEOs will appear soon on a webpage for an upcoming holiday sale I’ve decided to participate in, along with several other artists. Look for a posting on that in a few weeks.

I also worked on 5 small 3″ square pieces that I will be mounting onto these very cute little 3″ square stretched canvases. I’m going to play around with ways of presenting my smaller work on canvases and even with frames.

I like my larger work to be unmounted/framed as I really like how the work hangs on the wall, ie not perfectly flat, but pretty close. It’s fiber, it drapes, it has movement. For me this is a part of the artwork.

For these smaller pieces they are very stiff as a result of the extensive stitching I do on them so they aren’t effected when mounted and framed. Nothing is lost and maybe much is gained as they no longer look like a potholder. Course I don’t think they ever looked like a potholder but that’s the common phrase we textile artists tend to say about why we frame smaller pieces.

This is the first time I’ve gone down this path. Not sure how this will go but you’ll see it here first I suspect.

November Planning

After 5 1/2 hours in the studio I’m now taking a break to get November off to a good start by paying bills and setting art and art business goals for the month. I share this list with my mastermind art partners and we help keep each other on track every day. I’ve also decided to share this list with my blog readers so you can see the type of goals I set for a month.

I’m not sure how construction will go on my house this month so I made a list of goals on the assumption they will be working outside the majority of the month. If that changes and they do work inside the house I’ll just have to be flexible and see what I can get finished.

I will take the items on this list and break them down into tasks and put them on my taskboard. Then I’ll track how I’m doing via that method. At the end of the month I’ll review how I did.

My November Goals

General

• Work in studio daily
• Work on my art business daily
• Track time on business (# of hours per day) as I already do for studio time
• Blog 3 times a week or more

Studio Goals

• Complete Structures #73
• Complete Home #5
• Design Structures #100
• Complete 4 or more small works (8” square or smaller)
• Complete 4 or more aceos
• Investigate mounting small work on stretched canvases
• Investigate framing of small work

Art Business Goals

• Go live with new website design
• Website for holiday art sale
• Create postcard and mail to mailing list for small art sale/museum shows
• Send list of available work for Danforth Museum Show
• Send info those that have requested artwork info
• Complete 3 requested interviews/featured artist blog posts
• Visit galleries in town at least 1 day
• Read/Review Personal Development for Smart People
• Write article for Christine’s blog for word of the year

The big big goal is the new website design. I started this many months ago (too many too count) and the move and remodel have distracted me. Time to get this finished as it’s holding me back for many other things. Instead of aiming for perfection I’m going to get up and running and I’ll worry about perfecting it later.

I’m sure that I get in my way much too often with my need for everything to be perfect. So when the website goes live, please excuse anything that is broken about it cause it’s just me trying to get over myself.

More Construction

They did a bunch of digging around and messing with my sewer on thursday and on friday they poured the footings for my basement on friday. I’m so bummed to have missed the cement pumper truck but I had to actually go to work and do that thing I get paid for. They pour the basement walls on tuesday and you can be sure I will be home for that event.

The photos for Thursday and Friday are now on smugmug:
Thursday Construction
Friday Construction

In addition I got all of my "before photos online" and they are here:
Before Construction

I’m not done with the captions on for thursday and friday and I’m sure I’ll rearrange them a bit. See that perfectionist thing. But in a effort to avoid that, and to not be late to dinner and a movie with a friend, I leave it like this for now.

 
I’ve mentioned a few times that my structures series was inspired by a picture of my dad’s fence taken back in 2000. This it that image - I was hunting through my pictures recently looking for something else and came across it.

The motif in the Structures series is an E shape based on the top prongs of this fence. The fence is about boundaries - both physical but also emotional. Fences keep us safe. They keep others out. They define us and hide us. I doubt I’ll ever get tired of exploring both their physical properties and their emotional impact.