Lisa Call

First - The Trees

(scroll down below the pictures if you just want to read about art and success)

 
As my long time readers know, I recently moved and am remodeling and putting an addition on my house to add a studio. So in addition to my normal art writing, this blog will, at times, resemble an episode of This Old House because I’m really excited about the work so I’m going to write about it.

The remodel will be starting very soon so first step was to get some trees out of the way.

In area #1 (as marked on the first photo) were 2 cedar trees much much too close to the foundation. They made a mess, not so sad to see them gone.

Area #2 is my beautiful crab apple tree in the backyard (pictured above) that I talk about often. It too had to go, as the new studio will be sitting smack dab on top of it. It took me over a month to admit this was a reality. My builder was patient with me as I finally came to terms with losing the tree. It was simply too close to the house and there was no way to keep the tree and still do an addition. They guys that cut it down said it needed to go even with no addition, so that made me feel a bit better. They also said it was one of the most beautiful crab apple trees they had seen.

Area #3 was another large crab apple wedged between my house and the neighbors. It was ruining my driveway with it’s roots. Again, much to close to the house, and it was already rotting and was dropping limbs when I cut it down.

The trees are now gone as seen above. My yard feels HUGE and full of possibility. It’s exciting. And much less sad than I anticipated. I can’t wait for the remodel to begin!

Lesson learned - those cute little trees that we all plant in our yards. They eventually end up as really big trees. So best not to put them very close to the house or the next home owner will have to pay big $ to have them chopped down.

Success - A State of Being

In my last two blog posts I wrote about
- why I want to know my definition of success
and
- what being a successful artist meant to me.

In both of these posts I wrote about success as a destination. Success defined as a set of goals to be achieved. I’m a big believer in planning out the future and working on the those goals so I stand by that definition of success. It helps to define what actions I should take.

But success is more than that. When I wrote the first post about why I wanted to know my definition for success, I was thinking about putting in "so I will know when I have made it" as one of the reasons. But it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t find any words to say this that didn’t rub me the wrong way.

That is because I consider myself a successful artist today, even without reaching those goals. I’m so ecstatically thrilled every day I wake up and think "I get to make art today". No amount of external recognition or achievement is better than this feeling.

I’m so fortunate to have found something in my life I am so passionate about and love doing so much. Even the marketing stuff is really growing on me and I get excited about it.

The process of being an artist is the best part of being an artist. Even if I never reach the goals I set out in the last post, I will always consider myself a successful artist by the sheer fact that I am one.

Although honestly, I’m pretty sure I will reach all of those goals, and it will be a fairly effortless process because I find all of this to be pure fun. I don’t feel I’m grasping or desperate, it’s just total joy each day to wake up and think about what I can do to move my career forward.

For me, success is both a destination and a journey and I wouldn’t want to give up either.

Thread racks installed in bedroom studio

Ready for Texture

Two days ago I prepared Structures #97 for the surface stitching. Last night I spent the evening with my builder working out what might be the final floor design so tonight I was ready to sit down and start quilting Structures #97.

Problem was all of my thread was jumbled up in plastic bags, placed there when I packed up my house a few months ago. It was all tangled together due to neglect and shuffling about the studio. Not very presentable or useable.

I use dozens of colors of thread on each textile painting and the thought of selecting the colors I wanted for this piece, without having them organized, hurt my head.

More Studio Set Up

So I spent a couple hours tonight putting the mettler thread back in order - around 190 spools.

[yes, I store it in numerical order by color on the thread racks - you can read more details of my super organized thread inventory of around 500 spools in this post about my thread.]

I moved the Valdani thread in plastic bin tonight as I don’t really have room on the wall for all of it.

My bedroom has more color with the thread racks on the wall. They may only be there a couple of weeks if I don’t have to go through a long building permit process. I should found out tomorrow what the approximate start date is on that project. I love the floor plan we came up with and am excited about the remodel.

Tonight when I sat down and spent about a half hour actually sewing and adding the texture to Structures #97 I was at peace. Making art, specifically textile paintings, is definitely my passion. It felt great to get organized and back to this part of the process.

Structures #97   (In Progress)    ©2008

Basting on a Bed

This evening I layered the composition for Structures #97 with the batting and backing, so I could baste the layers together with safety pins, before I start the surface stitching. As I talk about in my how I baste blog post, this step is extremely important in ensuring a flat finished piece.

I’ve perfected my method by pinning the layers to the carpeting in my studio (see the post above for details). I know exactly how tight to pull each layer for it to come out right for my style of stitching.

Problem is there’s not a lick of carpet in my new little house. Hardwood floors everywhere. I’ve been pondering how to baste this quilt for a week and finally came upon the idea of basting it on my son’s queen sized bed - the only large flat surface in the house.

It worked out quite well and I think the final textile painting will be wonderfully pucker free. Although I have to admit I had to remove at least 80% of the pins and redo them as I ended pining the layers to the mattress pad. I finally got my long rotary cutting acrylic ruler out to slide between the quilt and bed to prevent this little problem. With carpet, if a pin catches some fibers I can just yank it up and no harm is done.
 

The Right Tools

Today Photoshop CS3 arrived at my house and I installed on my new laptop. It’s amazing what 4 gigabytes of memory and a fast processor can do to speed up the manipulation of images. It’s wonderful. I’ll save hours of time each month not sitting around waiting for photoshop to load my huge raw image files.

The other exciting news is that I can process the raw images from my new Nikon D200 with this set up. I was unable to get my older version of photoshop to behave with a mixture of D70 and D200 raw images. This means I can now take my own high resolution images for publication.

Finally, I have all the right tools to do what I need with my images. It’s definitely time to take some classes to learn how to use them instead of my very improvised methods I use today.

Structures #97   (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

This evening I finished the construction of the composition on Structures #97, as shown above. The next step in creating a textile painting is to baste it, then add the surface stitching.

I don’t have my large custom sewing table set up in my new house yet but I think this piece is small enough to do the stitching with my smaller table. If it’s too frustrating I’ll stop and put it aside for later and move on to creating new compositions but I hope it will work. It will be fun to have a textile painting that was started and finished in my tiny bedroom studio.

Upcoming Week

This weekend was pretty laid back and relaxing. Friday night with friends, saturday in my studio and getting a few things done, sunday a beautiful 7 mile hike in the mountains with a friend and the evening spend in my studio.

Next weekend is crazy busy with birthday celebrations for my son (he’s turning 16 this week), a day/evening long interview for inclusion in an art quilting book, a free composting class offered by the city of Denver and my work will be in the Denver Modernism show over the weekend (more on that later), so any progress on art or art business goals will have to happen M-Th. Not a lot of time.

I decided the focus this week should be about making art - and doing a bit of organizing - specifically:

1. Baste Structures #97 and begin surface stitching - finishing at least 1/3 of the piece.
2. Play around with some of the house/home ideas I have in fabric.
3. Finalize floorplan for my remodel/addition (we are getting close).
4. Finish setting up my new laptop and retire my desktop.
5. Update my Getting Things Done list with all my projects (art and personal). I’ve let this lapse since my move and I’m starting to lose a bit of focus as a result.

Where did my weekend go?

Now that I’ve lived in my 1955 built house for a month I realize how much I take for granted. Like screens in the windows. What an amazing invention, without them one ends up with moths and other flying creatures all over one’s studio when working at night with a light on. Kinda fun to flick bugs off my computer screen, in a "once in a life time adventure" sort of way. I’m thinking long term this might not work out for me.

I had hopes for getting quite a bit more done this weekend but it was hot hot here in Denver, 100 or close both days. The modern convenience I miss the most is my air conditioning. Not only is it so crazy hot in the house the thought of turning on an iron is insane, it doesn’t cool off much at night so sleeping has been a challenge. After a week of 4 hours of sleep each night I was pretty wiped out by the weekend. Did a lot of nothing.

Even the cats are unhappy. Abby (see above) has taken to sleeping stretched out and upside down (and climbing out the screenless windows and escaping - but that’s another issue). Nukie (below) passes out behind my sewing machine so I have to move her every time I come back to sew. She makes a pitiful sound but she gets over it, and comes right back as soon as I leave. She’s no dummy, the fan is pointed into that corner of the room.

Last night I figured out the secret to sleeping in this heat (a wet frozen compress is a wonderful way to cool off) so that problem should be solved and I’m feeling more on my game with some rest. We’re only in the 90s this week so it’s positively chilly in here. Tomorrow if all goes well I will finish my studio newsletter and email it.

If not I’ll be napping in the heat.

Unpacked - For Now

The studio/bedroom/computer room

My studio is set up! I even have an 8 foot by 8 foot flannel covered design wall with Markings #21 ready to go (it was folded up with lots of pins in a box until yesterday).

The entire house is pretty much unpacked. At least for now. In about a month I will be taking everything back down and moving to an apartment as the builder I hired adds the addition (on top - decided going back would hurt my tree). I hope to be back in the completed house, with a nice big studio, by christmas. It’s definitely an exciting, action packed year around here.

The studio/bedroom/computer room

Good thing I don’t have many clothes or there’d be no room for art.

Making Art

And even more exciting - I’m making art! It feels great. It’s been months since I spent any serious time in my studio and I’m loving it. I feel like a real person again. Or maybe I just feel like an artist again.

Yesterday I sat down and was ready to get to sewing when I realized I didn’t have some very important things - like rotary cutters, scissors, seam ripper, etc. The simple basic things I used every day. It took me 2 hours of hunting in my garage to find the box with these items. It was all in a slide projector box, labeled on every side as "Easter". Clever of me to hide it like that to make unpacking more fun.

Here’s what I’m working on:

Markings #21 In Progress

After a few hours of sewing today this is the result:

Markings #21 With Some Progress (the left 2 panels have been sewn together)

The Newsletter Will Happen

I think I will make 3 or 4 ACEOs with my scraps from this piece to offer in my studio newsletter, which I plan to email by this weekend. That’s a bit later than I hoped but I’m still working on it. Last week I got a bit side tracked with life but I’m back to really focusing on the art this week and am making some great progress.

Today I cleaned out my studio in preparation for new carpet on Wednesday. Moving all of my fabric and tables and supplies out of this room took quite a while.

Then came the fun. I ripped out the carpet myself, with help from my son and cats. Six years ago when I got my kids their first cats my daughter picked out a declawed cat from the animal shelter. I never declaw my cats so this was a new thing for me. Unfortunately, Dorothy had very bad litter box manners. As in, she preferred my studio floor to the litter box.

I read later this is a very common behavior for declawed cats and it’s not surprising her previous owners gave her away. Sadly, this cat disappeared one night after about 7 months at my house. My daughter was crushed. I can’t say I was quite as sad. My daughters current cat has claws and doesn’t have this feature - yay.

I am sealing the cement floor so the odor will finally go away. This little issue in my studio hasn’t been much fun the last 6 years. I dumped huge amounts of Natures Miracle on the carpet and it wasn’t noticeable most of the time, just the hot humid days, which we don’t have very often in Colorado. Now it’s time to seal the cement so the problem is gone for good.

 
With no studio to work in for the next few days I will be completely focused on house stuff. The painting is done. This week is carpet and final landscaping and home repair details. One more week and the house will be on the market.

The Studio

My hardwood floors are done and after 8 hours of wiping up dust off of everything I’m ready to head back to my studio. At least until I can get the inside painting started.

I’ve been working on adding the surface stitching to Structures #72, which is bunched up under the back sewing machine.

In January I added a second large work table to my studio. My sewing machine, a pfaff 1475, nestles down into the these tables and gives me a large 4 foot by 8 foot surface to work on. It’s a wonderful setup that helps facilitate creating my textile paintings with ease.

I wanted a second table so I could use 1 table for surface stitching and the other table for constructing the compositions. These two activities require different creative thinking on my part and different sewing machine set up. Having 2 machines and 2 tables would allow me to switch between activities quicker and with less interuption.

Open Space

As soon as I got the new table set up my productivity in the studio crashed. I kept trying to tell myself I loved having the 2 tables but it wasn’t working. My studio felt cramped and crowded. I’m used to having lots of open space. It’s interesting how much the energy shifted by adding more furniture.

I’ve used the second table only for a few hours, always going back to my original table to do sewing. A few months after completing the new table, I decided to move into a smaller house, where there will be no way the second table will fit.

My original thought was to store the new table until I can move into my dream studio (slated for 6 years from now when my kids have all left home and I will move again). I still think having 2 tables is an excellent idea. I just need more space to do it.

For Sale

Then I got real and recognized I won’t have room to store the table top and all the bookshelves in my new smaller home. So the second table is for sale. I obviously can’t ship it but if you live in the denver area and are interested let me know. I’m asking $200 for the table (I paid $180 for the bookshelves and table top and $175 for the labor to build the shelf that holds the sewing machine).

It is custom fit for a pfaff1475 but can be modified to fit many other machines. Recognizing that I probably don’t need all 3 of my pfaff1475s for the next few year, I will sell one of my pfaffs for $700 to the purchaser of the table if desired. I’m selling the one I bought last year for $740 then paid $100+ to have it serviced. I’ve used it very little since purchasing it so it’s in excellent shape.

If you are interested please send me an email or leave a comment below. The table top is not fastened to the bookshelves so it is (relatively) easy to move. It’s definitely heavy.

I’m going to list it on craigslist in a few days if none of my readers are interested.