Like all the news that's fit to print, I'll make it anywhere and anyhow

Like..."all the news that's fit to print...," I have a daily practice of making drawings and creating social spaces and it gets done even as the sun sets behind me and another day brings another newspaper delivery at my door. The laundry gets folded and shows get hung (tonight). Drawings eventually get finished and small children go to asleep and then we start all over again, looking, seeing, making connections, editing, and inviting you along.

to the bed

I worked from bed last night in a quiet apartment and re-sorted a method for making art that might be more amiable with running a social space. Instead of just adding Pocket Utopia as a task on another day as if it were another type of drawing,  I need to re-emphasize that it is an artwork that is text-based, folded, and built.  I need to incorporate it back into the overall structure of my art practice.

On another note, I met an amazing woman the other night, France Morin, who has just got back from Luang Probang, Laos, where she has been working on The Quiet in the Land. It's a curatorial project that places artists in a special community context where they then create artworks. Sounds like a great place to go. Now to go prepare for a "studio visit"" in the basement for a bunch of RISD students. Maybe they'll help me fold laundry.

On the floor of the tunnel, feeling the light

I'm working on the floor, crying my eyes out while emailing all the Etsy artists to tell them how amazing they all are and that I can't wait for the show! I draw a little, send more emails assuring more people that they are doing great work. I make a call and tell another artist that I love their paintings. All true.

I am so overwhelmed by my schedule. I get up at 5:30 am Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, workout Wednesday and Thursday. On Fridays I clean house (which really is better for Mondays late morning), I pick Grant up at school Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons at 12:15 pm after blogging, collaging, and cleaning up some more. I say hi to all the moms and their kids, I schedule playdates. I work on Fred Gutzeit’s art career, for he's got an amazing show up at Sideshow Gallery right now. Tuesdays and Thursdays I play with Grant all day long. I spoil him and feel terrible. He's getting bratty and his teacher told me he had a tantrum today over some issue about glue or was it snack. I'm a bad mom.

I still need to get references for Grant's new babysitter (she started today) since the last babysitter didn't work out so well (I never got her references). Saturday and Sunday I'm at Pocket Utopia all day. I mediate on the subway, meal plan while in the shower (and scrub the tub for that will save time on Monday or is that Fridays that I clean). I need to sell some more Lucas Reiner prints so I can pay the rent for Pocket Utopia in 5 days. The babysitter called, Grant just had an "accident". I need to go home and do laundry, make dinner, find an outfit to wear to somebody else's dinner (I'll draw on the subway on the way uptown). I need to call a therapist for I'm losing my mind (I need to get more references). But there's light at the end of the tunnel, I hope, for the new babysitter is coming tomorrow too and I can sit on the floor again somewhere and try to compose myself.

Kay space

I took my freespace frame of mind to Chicago for Thanksgiving and relaxed at Kay's place (mom) for a few days. Here are pictures of her studio.

Waking, sleeping Etsy

Whether I'm sleeping on the floor in Grant's room or he's sleeping on the floor in the kitchen at 6:00 am keeping me company, it's been a lot of sleeping and waking hours devoted to organizing the next show at Pocket Utopia, titled Etsy! It's a selection of artists from the hand-made artworld from the online site by the same name (Etsy.com)

I'm starting to understand why sharp divisions are made between art and craft, and the sensitivities those divisions stir up. I think the hand-made makes for a million emails. And I'm not done yet!  I'm not free yet.  This show is definitely going to cost me.

Pictured above, The Face of Nature, 2007 by Esty photographer Irene Suchocki

Morning sunshine

There is a Friday, and after toady, there's a utopia-weekend! There's been no babysitter all week to give me my precious 8 hours (a week), no money, no time (I already mentioned that but it's worth repeating), no space, it's cold and it's dark, but not today! I sold 3 Lucas Reiner prints last night to a distant member of the Royal family, Grant is at school, and I am just about to finish an un-straight line, turned geometric drawing/collage. I would call that a life in the sun!

Working in back

People walk into Pocket Utopia and read about Lawrence Weiner while I work in back. No artists were in residence, so I filled in. And now I am working again and preparing for a social Saturday with the other artists in residence.

It's all in the bag

All week, I've been roaming, sitting, and drawing wherever I can. I've been fighting a cold and fighting some new weird operating system named after an endangered species. My studio is with me all the time. It's in my bag. It can get heavy but I don't care, wherever I am that's where I draw.

Primarily, I've been working on my current project of drawing with my crooked, craved, and taped up rulers on the cover photos from the New York Times. I'm not sure why I started cutting out this pictorial current event, but it is daunting, interesting, keeps me on my toes and keeps me current.

By drawing on the cover photo, I'm recycling and using what's at hand as paper. I get the paper delivered, but just adding up the price printed on the paper, the daily newsstand cost of this project is $469. 50. Add in the weekend price and that's another $442. I don't pay that much, but it adds up in other ways. I'm am always cutting and drawings on major events happening around the world...And that's all the news that's fit to print.

Daylight Savings Time

This is the first time in my life I like Daylight Savings Time. I get it, for I've been getting up early to do my artwork (5:30 am). Working so early is hard and I inevitably wake up Grant. Although the other morning he brought his blanket and stuffed star out into the hallway and kept me company.

My brain doesn't work too well in the early morning, so I'll have to redone my drawings tomorrow morning.

Pictured above is a rocking chair at the The Early Childhood Resource and Information Center (play space) at the Leroy Library Branch. Grant played there yesterday for 2 hours, while I sketched.

Speaking in the public realm

This week found me speaking at a symposium on “Public Sculpture in the Community and its Responsibility to the Environment,” at Lafayette College. Audra Wolowiec spoke with me and showed images of her current work as did Del Geist and Patricia Leighton, Jose Balcells from Chile, and Tom Moran, the Director of the Visual Art Program at the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, among others.