5/24/07

Madly busy, worse than usual. Open Studio is just a couple of days away now. Even though I don't have to load up my car and transport my stuff somewhere, there's a lot of work that takes away from production time. For one thing, I feel as though the house and gardens have to look as though I live a tranquil art life AND have everything perfect around me as well (far from the truth). To call the area in which I work a "studio" is in fact an exaggeration. I do most of my pasting of stencils in the kitchen - fortunately we have a high worktable  in the center of the kitchen, which is plenty big enough to paste t-shirts, usually big enough for scarves, but I have to be pretty darn creative to paste bigger pieces. I sew in the room that is sort-of-a-studio, mostly a passageway to the laundryroom, and where my son also sits at the computer playing "Club Penguin" the instant he gets home from school (that is if he's not practicing on his electric guitar.) Any work I do that requires serenity and concentration needs to be done before he gets home, though out of necessity I'm learning to block out family noise and activities.

I haven't done Open Studio for two years. What makes Open Studio different from the other shows I do is that I need to be prepared to show how I do my craft - not so hard as I have numerous project underway - but also every little piece, every second I've ever produced, is fair game to put up for sale. I have some 50 shirts I've thrown in the seconds box over the past two years, and probably 30 or so scarves. As I look at older work of mine, I see what a long way I've come, particularly in the past year. The temptation is to just throw everything out and start fresh, but I can't afford to do that.

And now, to work again. At the Open Studio I plan to work on the Poiret shawls, but for now it's ironing shirt after shirt, scarf after scarf.