Pablo Picasso Month - Day 2

Thinking about work/play... you know – balance...

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

~ Pablo Picasso

I am pretty lucky in that I actually like the work I do at work. Some of it almost sucks, but for the most part I get to be creative now and then and I get to "make" things, even if they're only pixels on a screen. And I do have time (and resources) to make art, which is a joy. And I get to have a great home life – another joy.

Still, sometimes I think about the whole idea of success and the la la la that goes along with that (stress, responsibility, strange/long hours). I think about having a simpler lifestyle which would allow me to downsize my job. I think about not having a job where the first thing I do in the morning is to turn on the computer and check to see if the university's website is up and running and the last thing I do before going to bed is to turn on the computer and check to see if the university's website is up and running (or to check if there are any emergency emails that need immediate response). I wonder what it would be like to go on a vacation and not take my computer (and a mobile hotspot) with me. I think about actually being done for the day, reaching the end of the to-do list and going home (at quitting time) instead of always being behind and having a mile-long list facing me every morning. I worry about not having the time to do the research I need to do to stay current with the technology I need to understand.

I think about a plain old 9-5 job...

And I know I'd be miserable, even if it gave me more time to make art. I guess I like all the stuff that goes along with the job I have.

Even so...
I might like to teach someday.
I think I'd be good at it...

Another Charity Art Auction Request

Sorry folks. I don't donate my work to charity. I do donate money when it is a charity whose philosophy aligns with my own point of view and/or I feel does good work for society... but give them my artwork to auction off at a fraction of its market value - nope.

Most people who ask for art feel like it benefits the artist - you know, gets them "exposure." In reality, it hurts artists and galleries. When art sells cheaply at auctions - which is almost always the case for all but the most renown of artists - it devalues the art and the artist's name/brand and makes it harder for all artists to sell their work at a fair market value.

If the buyers can get the art at auction prices, why would they ever buy from artists/galleries at a fair price (definition - one that pays the artist a living wage)?

Did you know that  the IRS does not not let the artist take a deduction for the market value of the art donated? Artists cannot take a deduction for their labor either - only for the cost of the materials used in the piece... while mosaic materials can be quite expensive, the real cost for me is my labor. Some of the mosaics I've done have over 100 hours of work in them. Even if I only paid myself $10/hour the cost of the labor for any of those pieces would be well over $1,000.00... I doubt if anyone would cough that much up at an auction, let alone the higher rate I actually do pay myself.

I don't need to make my living off of my art so theoretically I could donate it without greatly harming myself - however I feel that making that kind of bad business decision does a great disservice to other professional artists, especially those who are trying to make their living off of their art.

And in the end that hurts all of us.

Others' thoughts:

Joanne Mattera

Mat Gleason


and Harlan Ellison (warning - profanity, indignation and a whole lot of emotion)

Thomas Kinkade

Well... not a fan, but you most certainly mastered your craft. Even so, I would never have named you The Painter of Light... but rest in peace, Thomas Kinkade. The world is lessened by your passing.

Thomas Kinkade dies at 54; artist was called the 'Painter of Light' - latimes.com

Still... the idea of selling reproductions as art disturbs me.

About a month ago I had the "reproductions vs. art" discussion with some friends. We were sitting in a local diner that had Kinkade-ish prints spectacularly framed and hung on the walls. Like a fool, I mentioned my disdain for the practice of treating prints of paintings as paintings... I then had to try to put hours and hours of thinking about this into a coherent statement during the 25 minutes our meal would take. I wasn't eating, so at least I didn't have to give up chewing time.

One of my companions said that he was in favor of "Kinkadeing" since it put art in the hands of people who couldn't ordinarily have art (of that quality). He thought it was perfectly fine for an artist to create originals and photograph/scan them to create printed reproductions AND call those reproductions art.

Leaving alone the fact that Kinkade prints weren't cheap enough for the people he was referring to to purchase, I tried to explain my view on the whole idea...

I believe that for most artists selling reproductions of their work do so purely for a financial reasons, not for some altruistic desire to put art in the hands of less-affluent patrons (an exception to that, I suppose, is the ego boost of having your "art" purchased by people and the warm glow that it creates deep down inside you).

For the most part, I have no issues with the practice of selling reproductions. It's hard to make a living doing art. But I believe that the artists who sell reproductions as if they are art are making a mistake. In fact, I think it's the biggest mistake we make - plus it's a bit like snake-oil... 

The primary reason it is hard to make a living making art is that we have a predominantly ill-informed/under-informed audience. They already don't see making art or being an artist as a realistic career. Unless they are among those who idolize artists (and this group is just as likely to be ill-informed), they tend to think we're all dreamers and misfits who have yet to "grow up and find a real job." They don't recognize the validity of an art career or the benefits of having art in their life. They don't know how to determine the amount of work that goes into creating art or the monetary value of that work.

So we have an audience, a client base, a market, that has no method for determining the value of the work we want to sell (for me, being unsure about the cost/value of something makes me less likely to purchase it). Selling reproductions as art compounds the problem by cultivating the point of view that art should be inexpensive. 

Someone said to me that I only felt this way since my work (they meant mosaics and sculptures) do not work as prints (no one is confused thinking a photograph of a sculpture is a sculpture or even art). While I will concede their point, my argument is not a sour-grapes point of view... I do make art that could be sold as reproductions - my encaustic abstract art would make fabulous giclee prints...

I guess I just think that the only visual artists that should be selling prints as art are the printmakers...

22 Below Zero

On this past Thursday it reached 22 below zero just before dawn. Our high that day was 4 below zero. While not quite a record, it was pretty damn cold. We spent the day doing two of Minnesota's favorite things - remarking on how cold it gets and congratulating ourselves on how well we do when it gets that cold.

Friday was when it all hit the fan, though...
Read more...

Friday evening after work Abelisto & I stopped by the shoe store where I purchased a pair of Timberline hiking boots since my Asolo boots don't fit since the foot surgery - well, it's not so much that they don't fit, but rather that the tongue of the boot presses right on the scar on the top of my foot, making it really uncomfortable to wear them. I am saving them to see if someday the scar will be less tender and I can wear them again. The Asolos are a really heavy pair of hiking boots and I would love to wear them again in the future. Anyway, after shoe shopping (always a taxing event since I have a hard time finding shoes that fit) we went out to dinner stopping on the way home at a new recycled clothing store here in Winona.

When we got home we discovered that the washer was not working. We have one of those computerized front loading LG washers that control water and wash time based on how much you put in the washer. It has a LED display that tells you what the problem is if there is something keeping the washer from working. The panel was flashing a code I had never seen before and instead of looking it up on the handy guide (which is conveniently magnetically attached to the side of the washer) I simply popped the door open. Out poured around 20 gallons of soapy water - right onto my new boots.

This was how I discovered that waterproof Timberlines are, in fact, waterproof.

I quickly shut the washer door, but actually at this point the water was below the door level and wasn't going to pour out any more. We found the shop vac and cleaned up the water mess and decided that since it had been warmer that day we would let it go until morning and see if it would thaw out. We also discovered that the waterline to the dishwasher was frozen too.

During the night Abelisto woke up smelling smoke. He got up and went over the house from top to bottom, and not finding any reason to be smelling smoke, tried to get some more sleep - but never managed to fully get back to sleep.

When we got up Saturday morning there was still some strange water issue in the kitchen and laundry room. Before I had much time to think about it the telephone in the front room rang. It was the land line phone - all our friends usually call us on our cell phones, so I figured that it was the usual telemarketer and didn't make a serious attempt to get to it before the voicemail answered it.

As I got to the phone I heard the head of the maintenance department at work leaving a message telling me that a waterline in my building had burst overnight and the office was affected. He also mentioned two other people whose areas are in the part of our offices that are across a rather wide hallway. I thought he probably was just calling everyone in the office, but that the damage was really in the offices across the hall. Besides that, I had water issues at home to deal with.

We went to Menards and picked up two ceramic space heaters. We put the insulation that one of the cats had torn down back up in the basement window, plugged the pipe heater back in (neither of us remembered unplugging it), and placed a space heater in the basement room with the pipes and in the laundry room.

All of a sudden we smelled smoke again. I was fairly certain it wasn't the space heaters, but we went on a search of the first floor of the house and the basement.

We found a gruesome sight. Sometime during the bitter cold of the week, a starling had come down in the chimney vent for the water heater. It must have been drawn to the warmth. It found itself in a bad situation, though, when the water heater turned on and hot gas fire exhaust came rushing up the chimney. The bird's struggles had lifted the chimney duct pipe off of the water heater - it almost escaped death, but not quite.

It actually was good that we found this - having the chimney vent almost knocked off could have given us carbon monoxide poisoning.

A bit later it seemed that the water lines were thawed. I had tried turning on the washer and it immediately started pouring water into the washing compartment. This washer has water saving controls and it never just pours water in. Even when I turned it off the water still came in. Abelisto and I pushed the washer sideways a bit so that we could reach the water valves and turned them off. By the time we got that done, water was pouring out onto the floor again so I got the shop vac and sucked it all up as well as sucking out as much of the water in the washer as I could.

At this point I figured that the washer's inlet valves had been frozen and were likely toasted. So I packed up all the wet soggy clothing and towels, and all the rest of the unwashed laundry and headed off to a Laundromat. Since I was out and about I drove by the university to check out the burst pipe scenario and discovered that my desk was part of the flooded area, but my coworkers were taking care of it, which was a good thing since it only took a few minutes of being in the room to trigger an asthma episode. The dissolving ceiling tile, or the debris or something was off-gassing some chemical that had my airways tight in no time. The water had splashed all over my laptop and new, 22" auxiliary monitor, but they both seemed to work alright.

I left my coworkers cleaning things up and went to do the laundry.

When I got home Abelisto mentioned that the furnace did not kick on during the entire time I was gone. We usually have our thermostat set around 60 degrees to save energy, but we had turned it all the way up earlier in hopes of helping to thaw out the frozen lines. At this point the temperature in the house was around 45 degrees so I went down and tested the fuses. None were blown so we called a service company.

Three and a half hours later we had heat. We also had $600.00 less in our checking account. It turned out it was mostly our own fault - if you don't change your furnace filters regularly it causes the blower motor to run harder which overheats the circuit board which will, in time, fry the furnace's computer.

While waiting for the service man to get the furnace fixed we decided to run the dishwasher and do some cleaning up. I was filling the sink and washing counter tops. Abelisto loaded and ran the dishwasher. I noticed that the sink drain bubbled up when the dishwasher kicked into rinse, but did not think much about it.

We stopped to make supper and I worked on the mosaic and finished cutting the tile order into sample-sized sheets of tile. Abelisto worked on his lecture for Monday and did some grading while I played with cutting glass tiles and building a jig for cutting better triangles from the 3/4 inch glass tiles.

At some point I went back in the kitchen and discovered that there was water pouring out of the washer AGAIN. Once more we got the shop vac and sucked it all up. I could not figure it out. We had turned off the water valves. I thought perhaps they weren't closing all the way, but that did not seem right since we didn't hear water coming in. I thought perhaps it was just trickling in.

I decided to open up the drain trap on the washer to completely drain any water that was in it. This, of course, made another mess which we sucked up again. This time, I was lazy and poured it down the sink instead of taking it outside and dumping it out.

I was sucking up the water on the kitchen floor (I did not do the best job lifting up the shop vac and some of the water missed the sink) when I realized that water was coming out of the washer drain trap again. Suddenly I knew what our problem was. Frozen drain.

I went downstairs to trace the drain pipe. I found a place where one of the cats (it was Finn) had pulled down the insulation from a window in the basement. This window was missing a pane and last summer when Finn decided he simply must be an outside cat we had half-heartedly covered it up with a board and leaned an old door over it to keep Finn from pulling down the board (the basement walls are old sandstone and mortar, no way to nail anything up to hold in the board). I had meant to fix it, really, but it slipped my mind. I don't go in the basement much - it makes me have to use my inhaler too much.

Anyway, the door leaning against this botched repair job was channeling frigid air right down the wall and onto the drain pipe. It took ten minutes to insulate the window, secure it with several layers of cardboard pressed into the window framing (another half-assed repair, I know, but I need some concrete anchors and a masonry bit to fix it right and I don't have any right now), and move the space heaters to where they would blow right on the pipe.

Three hours later the pipe thawed and the sink drained.

Further Thoughts on a Priority

On the priority of attracting and retaining a diverse and qualified student body-(see taking a stand in a town hall meeting)-most people spoke to the diversity aspect of this priority. A few spoke on educational standards for college entrance. Others talked about disadvantaged students and their needs.

I think that one thing that was not mentioned was that even though we would all love to attract "qualified" students, the most important thing is not their qualifications when they arrive, but their qualifications when they leave.

How to take the less prepared students and get them "qualified" before they leave WITHOUT degrading the education and experience for the exemplary students is an important thing to consider.

And perhaps one of the more difficult things to do.

Taking a Stand in a Town Hall Meeting

Today, in a "town hall" meeting, we discussed a group of priorities for moving the university forward. We have a new president and he is reaching out to everyone in a number of ways, looking for input on where each group, each person, thinks the university needs to focus efforts and energy.

I did not bring home my notes, but there were eight priorities laid out for discussion. I think I can remember them: the university's Catholic, Lasallian heritage/identity; an excellent teaching and learning environment; a diverse and qualified student body; financial vigor and viability of the university; the well-being of all; internal & external communication; preparing students for an increasingly "global" world. I am forgetting one of them. Perhaps it will come to me as I pull my thoughts together here. Oh yeah, enhancing technology to support learning. That was number five I think.

The president, after taking perhaps 15 or 20 minutes to introduce the priorities, simply stood as moderator, pointing out members of the audience/gathering so that they could speak their thoughts on these priorities.

For the most part people brought up ideas that would either support or question the feasibility of a given priority. Concerns were voiced that we should respect the financial health of the university, but not let economics strangle its essence. Several faculty members mentioned a deficit in the teaching of foreign languages bringing up the idea that we need more language instructors. I think I would take it even further - we need to teach more languages. Simply offering French and Spanish isn't good enough anymore. Yes I know we also have Latin and Greek, and we also offer the occasional Arabic course, but I am thinking we need to offer Chinese. We need to have a fully established program in Arabic.

At one point someone made mention of the vocational vs. liberal arts education models, claiming that we need to decide which we will be and what it means to be one or the other, as well as a few other points that I have to admit did not really stick in my mind.

The idea that education - higher education everywhere, not just at our university - is sorely lacking in its ability to engage students in intellectual discourse (that heady, inspiring dialogue that leaves you reeling, that pushes you right up against the abyss, leaving you tottering on the edge of all of your prejudices, your assumptions, your ignorance, while you strain for a transcendent moment, a crystal clarity, that moment when you realize a tiny particle of truth, the moment that makes you feel truly alive and vibrant) was a point that many voiced. Faculty and students alike mentioned that they missed the challenge that this kind of thinking, this kind of being embodies, they missed, whether or not they even knew it existed, the high brought on by intense mental engagement.

I found much to agree with in the discussion of creating intellectual dialogue. I believe that college, without this experience, is just advanced high school.

I was impressed by the solidarity expressed by those who chose to speak and those who listened with total concentration. For the most part it was a very civil and respectful discussion.

The students that came and spoke were probably mostly seminarians - although one female student also spoke. One student spoke several times. One of my co-workers mentioned that she thought he did very well with the first point he brought up. She thought he perhaps came with that statement prepared ahead of time. I think she may be correct. He definitely did not do as well on the second, third or fourth time he spoke.

I think it was the second time he spoke, maybe the third, when he joined in on the discussion of the "intellectual life" at the university. He used those moments to praise the merits of taking logic courses, taking philosophy courses. I would have been fine with what he said, except he implied that philosophy courses are more important than other courses. He said something along the lines of why would anyone want/need to take a ceramics course - why would a university worth its salt offer a ceramics course but not make logic (a philosophy course we offer) required for every student - what possible good could someone get from taking ceramics, etc.

I admit that I sort of got fired up about this statement (and the implied lesser worthiness in vocational education that a faculty member stated earlier). It wasn't soley that he was a bit arrogant. It wasn't solely that he was getting great pleasure from hearing himself speak. It wasn't that he dismissed art as having any value - at least not entirely.

What I cannot get past is the elitism, expressed here as my course/major/department/program has more worth, is more essential to what is that defines intellectual discourse, than your course/major/department/program. It was the implication that as a philosopher he was worth more than someone who took art classes.

And that is just plain wrongheadedness. So I had to say something.

You cannot build intellectual discourse without passion. Not everyone has the same passions. The real work of a university is to engage the student from within the context of his or her passion. An art course, a business course, a philosophy course or a language course - any course can inspire passion which can then lay the foundation for intellectual dialogue.

I absolutely, totally, passionately(!) believe that lasting , meaningful learning, that true expansion of one's awareness comes from discovering a passion and exploring it.

I hope I was more eloquent when I spoke than I have been here. I need to think about this more.

New Blog Design

I just did a major redesign of this blog. I wanted it to more closely match my website. The redesign involved hacking the Blogger template.

I need to be able to do this for the various blogs that my co-workers create for the university. I had tried before but was not too successful at actually modifying the template (instead of just changing colors and fonts) until I found some excellent guidelines provided by Amanda Fazani of BloggerBuster. Now I need to take a look at all the blogs I manage and assist with for the university.

This is the fun part of my job.

Over my lunch hour I might play with different colors for borders and text. Or maybe not...

Making Decisions

Today I am making decisions - all sorts of decisions.

1. Whether or not to move some websites to SiteGround so that I can use Drupal for CMS
   
   • Magnetic Aesthetic
   • Winona DFL
   • Sustain Winona
     
     
2. What changes need made to payroll items
   
   • deductions & exemptions
   • payroll automatic deposit: how much to which account
   • how long to keep kids on insurance
     
     
3. Priority of house repair tasks
   • ROOF - 1st week in August - $6,500.00 (hired Zane's Roofing)
     
   • Front porch - priority moved from after back porch to before, in order to get it done before roof in August - Some decking, posts, railings, roof joists and decking - $800.00 (us doing labor)
     
   • Back porch - remove screen, replace with lattice, level and paint decking - $125.00
     
   • Side porch - replace screens, add door(s), paint deck and posts & railings
     
   • Finish fence - 5 panels, 6 posts - $180.00
     
   • Landscaping (Mike & Nova for front yard, Mike, Nova, Abelisto & I for back)
   • Cracked plaster (6 spots on 1st floor, 3 on 2nd) - $125.00
     
   • Paint walls - $200.00
     
   • Stain woodwork - $100.00
     
   • Downstairs bathroom - yuk
   • Upstairs bathroom - more yuk
     
     
4. New car or no new car or new-used car - leaning towards putting off this decision until I hear back from EC
   
   
5. Tapestry, or Armor, or Quilt project next

I think that's all that I need to decide on today.

Compressed Ulnar Nerve

Two days ago I started having numbness in the 4th and 5th fingers on my left hand.

I tend to ignore medical things until they really begin to irritate me, but everyone had such an immediate response when I mentioned the numbness I decided to call the doctor.

It just so happened that one of the questions that the nurse practitioner asked me was about headaches (she also asked about chest pains - no chest pains at all) and I had to say that yes, I have had some dizzy headaches lately. I attributed them to running out of allergy medicine a while back and going without for several days (turns out I was correct on this). Anyway the nurse had a fairly strong reaction to the admission of headaches, especially dizzy headaches, and asked me to come in (they really should not put such excitable people in a position to counsel patients).

So I took the afternoon off, drove to La Crosse and waited for a squeezed-in visit with the doctor. It took him a whole 3 minutes to decide that I was not in any danger of a heart attack or a stroke and that what I had was a compressed ulnar nerve - a condition which normally clears up on its own, but sometimes requires surgery by an orthopedist who specializes in hands and elbows to move the nerve to a new location. Usually they only do this if a person starts having muscle wasting.

Today I am working with a neoprene pad under my left elbow and trying to keep it unbent. It is going to take some getting used to. I need to talk to HR about an ergonomic study of my workstation.

Microsoft Interview

About three years ago - when I worked for the graduate programs here at SMU - I was interviewed by Microsoft. I never heard back from them about the interview and thought they decided not to use it.

Today I discovered that they did use it. I found it online.

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Robert Rauschenberg

Oh no.

Robert Rauschenberg has died.

As an interdisciplinary artist who works in a number of media, often combining media, materials and techniques in a single piece, I have always been rather awed and inspired by Rauschenberg. He was one of the first to tell me that I did not have to be just a painter, just a sculpture, just a fiberist.

He did Art Cars.

I like combinations, integrations, adulterations. I like experimentation. I like coming face-to-face with the unexpected. In art and in life. I suppose I like being shocked (at least a bit).

I love the way Rauschenberg was constantly re-inventing both himself and his practice, and thereby, the world - at least as far as art is concerned...

Rauschenberg's Bed and Satellite (both done in 1955) and numerous other pieces of his work (especially those using fabric, yarns & cords, feathers, rocks to express memory and identity) have informed my practice and my context as a fiberist and sculptor in significant and meaningful ways. One of my current works-in-progress is directly inspired by Rauschenberg's work.

Doing another redesign

I must be a bit crazy.
I am right in the middle of a nearly overwhelming web redesign at work - a huge project with the herculean task of condensing and redesigning a website that now has over 3000 pages.

I just redesigned the Sustain Winona website, and I am still playing with that a bit.

I am on the technology committee (chair no less!?!) for the Winona County DFL and have undertaken the redesign of that website.

I have promised to look at the Dakota Homecoming site and see about redesigning it.

And I have decided that I need to redo Abelisto & my website.

Last night I worked on Abelisto's part of our website.

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Making Sustainability Sustainable

Went to the Twin Cities this week with my boss for the meeting between our web team and the vendor that we are working with on the website redesign. It is a bit over two hours each way for us to go up there. We talk a lot. It is sort of nice to be able to do that. On the way up we talked about our tastes in music (I had taken my iPod and FM transmitter) and our families and what we were doing at various times growing up (we are close in age, but from different areas of the country) which got us started again on music. He asked if I could guess what artists were on his iPod (he has a really strange mix). We also talked about sustainable living, something which interests both of us.

On the way back we talked a great deal about sustainability - after we finished taking apart the meeting we had just been to and putting it back together again.

My boss gave me a charge - figure out how to make sustainability, the sustainable life movement, sustainable.

Now that is quite an assignment. Anyone have any IDEAS?

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Between teaching and the website redesign

I am now teaching part of Brother Roderick's Graphic Design II class. I am teaching the website design part of the class. the class meets three times per week for one hour and 15 minutes. I have one of those class sessions. It is not really enough - we need an entire class for web design. The university is a bit behind, make that a lot behind. However I have made myself a bit of a P.I.T.A. (pain-in-the-ass) to the VP of Academic Affairs (who so unfairly and incorrectly dismissed Abelisto's sabbatical proposal) and the best I could do would be to push the university to create the class and hire someone else to teach it. I may do this. Our students really need it. They are leaving here at a great, great disadvantage. I need to wait until near the end of the semester though. I do not want to get Roderick into any hot water about me team teaching his class. I am not getting paid for it, so they cannot bitch about that. I think that as long as the students feel they are getting information and skills they need they will be happy. Those two things should keep the administration off of Roderick's back.

This post started out being an explanation of why I have been so lax with this blog... Between learning the things that I need to learn in order to give the students the best I can give, and the craziness of the web redesign project, I am generally sick of computers by the time I get home. I do not believe I have mentioned it in this blog, but the university is in the midst of a total website redesign. Everything is on the table. As Director of Web Communication, a major part of the work is mine. I can tell you that when you are doing a redesign of a 3000+ page website, it is a bit grueling.

Anyway, once again I am trying to reconnect with this blog.

We will see.

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Starting again

Okay. I've been busy, or maybe just lazy. At least lazy with this blog. Time to get back into then habit of writing here.

Now for a quick synopsis of what the last month has brought.

Currently I am putting together my CV, so that I can send out some applications to a few universities. I would like to be able to teach for real, rather than just being an unofficial faculty member. Right now other faculty members ask me to help teach their courses, but the university will not consider hiring me as faculty. I am fed up with it.

Abelisto is also fed up with the university too. His sabbatical was turned down, and not for a good reason. Read here, and here, and here. We need to find a school that needs a sociologist and an artist.

The website redesign at work is just now getting started. This past week my fellow team members and I filled out a fairly detailed questionnaire for the discovery phase. We meet with the Atomic Playpen team on the 3rd.

Daughter-2 has gone back to Las Vegas, enrolled in UNLV and hopes to get the 7 credits necessary to finish her BA there. The registrar at our university was wonderful when daughter-2 went to speak with her about the options.

Daughter-2 was due to fly out of La Crosse on Christmas day - at 6:30 pm on the last flight heading to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I love flying out of the La Crosse airport - it's 25 minutes from our house (unless we get stuck on the wrong side of the railroad tracks). All flights go out of gate 2... I don't think there is a gate 1. I know there's not gate 3... It's great - they actually have an area where you can wait with your loved ones up until maybe 20 or 25 minutes before their flight leaves. Then they go through a short and quick security check and get on the plane. No more driving two and a half hours, dropping someone off and giving them a quick hug on the street, trying not to get hit by the crazy drivers or yelled at by security.

Anyway, when we got to the airport around 5:30 on Christmas day, we stood outside for a little while (it was not very cold, compared to the previous few days) while daughter-2 and daughter-3 shared a last cigarette together and then wheeled, dragged, carried the luggage into the airport. They ended up coming back out, dragging the luggage with them. Turns out the flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul was canceled, not due to weather - which was our first assumption - but due to a mechanical problem with the plane. Since it was to be the last flight out that day, the best we could do was come back at 4 am for the first flight of the next day. Daughter-2 was not happy at all, and actually I did not relish getting up at 3 am to make the trip all over again. The clerk, seeing our faces, said "what a shame, the only ticket left on that flight is in first class..." Daughter-2 promptly stated that she would take it. So she got to fly not only between La Crosse and Minneapolis/St. Paul, but all the way to Vegas in a first class seat.

Since she left I have been a bit sad. I really did not get to spend much time with her while she was here. All her old friends kept her quite busy. I had forgotten (and I think she had too) how many firends she has here and what a social creature she was (is). I am hoping that everything works out in LV school-wise. She really wants to finish her BA.

I have a few projects in process right now

• a 4 yard swath of linen/rayon/cotton fabric that I am weaving. It will end up being a garment of some sort. I have about 2 feet of it woven as of tonight.
  
  
• two encaustic projects - one on driftwood and one on heavy watercolor papers
  
  
• a quilted vest for Abelisto. We keep our house between 60 and 62 degrees and sometimes a sweater, sweatshirt or jacket is too much, but a turtleneck is not enough.
  

I think there is something else, but right now it escapes me...

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I would do this work

Danielle - if you are reading this - this is the work I want to do... But no one in Winona would pay anyone to do it.

Just kidding - or at least partially. I would like to do something like this, maybe not as a career, but as performance art or community/collaborative art. But I think I would have to develop a style first - or at least a style that someone would admire.

Not gonna happen anytime soon is my guess.

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Too many files

I have spent a couple days now, on and off, looking for a file. The problem is I have three computers (maybe four - I cannot remember when I made the file, so I have no idea which computer it might be on...) as well as three network folders and three portable hard drives to search...

Time for some serious file management work. I need to start with the 500gig portable hard drive and get it organized. Then I could work through the others, looking to see where the newer versions of documents are and which should be saved/deleted. Then I could move the files to the portable hard drive and wipe and restore one or two of the computers, and reload only the files that need to go back on them. Then I could burn DVDs of the remaining data for archival purposes, and return to using the 500gig drive as a standard backup of all four computers (just the documents and software settings - not the software itself) and the other portable hard drives.

Sounds like too much work though - I bet it would take a month to look at each & every file - so I guess I will just muddle through the mess.

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Identity

The process of self-discovery is fluid, elusive and capricious. We find and lose ourselves, moment-to-moment, like the fleeting recognizable shapes seen in the clouds. The process of discovering our godhood is likewise fluid, elusive and capricious. We find and lose our divinity constantly. This is our mystery.

It seems to me that identity is a made thing, like art, like music, like a spinach soufflé. It’s part performance, done for an audience, often involving improvisation – even plagiarism – and part self-discovery, a continual self-recreation.

I cannot speak to how everyone does it, but I pick and choose between all the possible choices I can imagine and sculpt an identity for myself. Actually I have several identities – the work identity, the home identity, the mom identity, the lover/partner identity, the artist identity. These days all my identities are more similar to each other than they have ever been in my life. I think I am achieving balance.

Finally.

Postmodern society allows for each of us to keep a closet full of identities which we pull out and try on, wearing when and as we see fit. It seems to me that this is both a personal choice and a tendency based on cultural norms. Sociologist Victoria Alexander, in Sociology of the Arts, seems to agree, stating “…because people are more geographically mobile and can choose among a wide variety of consumer items, their identities have become fragmented and based on their consuming choices and lifestyles” (13). Did my grandmother have more than one identity? Perhaps she did, living with an unstable man, balancing a work life and home life, walking carefully on whatever eggshells the moment laid before her. Perhaps the need for multiple identities – or multifaceted identities – comes from having large numbers of people to interact with. Could it be that we need to be one person with that group, another person in this situation, and still another when we’re all alone?

In The Power of Feminist Art, editors Norma Broud and Mary Garrard, discussed identity with Judy Chicago. Chicago stated that, "Identity is multiple… when I started looking at Jewish experience people would say ‘Oh, you’ve stopped being a feminist?’ It’s because they had a very narrow concept of identity… one can be both a woman and a person of color, an American and of African descent, as well as a person of a particular class. One’s identity is larger than singular (72)."

My identity is indeed multiple. I self-identify as a member of a number of overlapping groups. In regards to ethnicity I see myself as predominantly western European (Irish, Scottish); class – this one is a bit fluid – I consider myself upper-middle class because I feel I am very fortunate in life, but I’m not sure if that’s how I’d be placed based on income. I place myself as an artist, a mother, a partnered individual, and a reluctant and somewhat anarchistic American. I have a work identity that oozes capability and responsibility, but I’d really like to chuck it all and be more bohemian, taking up an eclectic gypsy persona as my primary identity.

The clothes would be so much more fun.


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Ah, a new blog... oh, the possibilities!

Okay, here I go again, starting a blog once more.

There are a whole lot of things going on in my world right now. So why I want to start another blog at this time baffles me. It just feels like the right thing to do right now.

I am working on art for an upcoming show. We are gearing up for a major overhaul of the university's websites (oh, yeah, I am a web designer at a small, private, liberal arts university). I am teaching an arts appreciation course in three weeks (egads) - the first full-semester course I have ever taught. I am bidding for a prepress course in the spring (a topic that I am not the most well-versed in).

It is blazing hot for Minnesota, and particularly humid (and our old house does not have air conditioning).

And my father is dying. Or at least that is what all the doctors are saying.

So I have a lot of very intense thoughts right now.

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