Suffer for Craft

When I was 18 I had this running joke that “when I grew up” I was going to pursue writing and art on the side and that, after long days at the office, I would come home, sit in the windowsill of my studio apartment, drink gin and chain smoke cigarettes. “I don’t smoke or drink but I believe in suffering for my art.” I would always add. “I believe there are few things more artistic than lung cancer and liver failure.” This running joke went so far that I spent my first two quarters of college studying to be an accountant. It ended abruptly when I realized how deeply apathetic I was about business calculus. 

By a twist of fate, I ended up as a housewife. While I have plenty of time to pursue art and writing, the windowsill is too tiny to perch on and we don’t have any gin. Somehow I doubt sitting in a cushioned swivel chair sipping tea and chewing candy cigarettes is suffering by any stretch of the imagination. 

I wasn't joking about the candy cigarettes. My sister was kind enough to send a carton for NaNoWriMo.

Cozy and full of cookies and bonbons and other stereotypical housewife foods, I decided tonight I would suffer. Not for art, not for writing, not for calculus. Tonight I suffered for craft.

I try to avoid crafts. We don’t do cute tea lights in mason jars with raffia tied around them to light up the porch table. We don’t even have a table on the porch. There are no rustic “Welcome to Our Home” banners cut from Tim Holtz construction paper and threaded with hemp. No faux succulents planted in gold picture frames. No heart throw pillows with our faces and wedding date printed on them, or coat hooks with our initials or corkboards made of actual corks. For the longest time our only Pintresty item was a flat black canvas with green ombre lettering that read “WELL DOUBLE DUMBASS ON YOU”. It has since been joined by a tea holder made of clothes pins and cardstock.            

I wasn't joking about this either. No jokes allowed on this blog.

I have nothing against crafty décor in theory, in fact I am all for it, as long as it’s just a theory. When people tell me how they made x,y,z thing for their house or post all their mason jar creations I smile and nod.

But I suffered tonight. I suffered for craft because of a photo my sister sent me.

It was a collage of three photos, no words; it didn’t need any words.  The first photo showed a Ziploc bag of felt scraps in analogous colours. The second showed a few coiled around each other with a glue gun off to the side. The third showed a finished shoe mat. A really cool, simple, felt shoe mat. I was sold immediately, and picked up three big sheets of felt the next time I was at Daiso.

It was going to be perfect; I would finally have something to replace the rice bag I was using to hide the stain in the carpet and for a fraction of the cost of buying one wherever you even buy mats at. I had just recently gotten my first glue gun since mine had been confiscated at age ten and I was in love all over again.

I started on it tonight as a way of unwinding from a stressful week. I measured the felt into one inch strips, which immediately somehow warped themselves into weird 3/4^th inch on one end 1 ½ inches on the other. I free handed the rest of the strips (all 4 sets of them before I got bored) and they turned out slightly more uniform. So far, so ok.

I put on some relaxing music and coiled my first color. And added a few strips here and there. I glued and squeezed and bent and rolled. The glue kept squeezing out onto my fingers; there were slight gaps between the felt layers, not a big deal. I kept going until an hour had passed and I got a glob of very hot glue on my thumb. I decided it was time to take a break and reassess. 

oh. well... I guess...

Time spent on project- one hour. Progress on project- maybe 15%. Blisters- one on my thumb. And the project itself? covered in glue globs and weird hair like glue strands, some of which may be actual hair too, because who knows. Is it the worst thing to ever come from my crafting? Certainly not. But the more I stare at it the more I know if I admit defeat I just wasted an hour and ten bucks and if I persevere I stand to waste up to 6 more hours on it… for something that will get shoe stains on it and be next to impossible to clean due to all the ridges and crevasses.

You can suffer for art, you can suffer for writing, you can even suffer for business calculus, but if you’re suffering for crafts you are probably doing something wrong.

note: this post was written a year and a half ago, when I was thinking of starting a blog but decided not to. I left the post mostly as was, but will add the epilogue that the shoe mat was thrown in the trash bin in a wave of defeat. Further more, the Double Dumb Ass On You wall hanging was covered to say "fuck yeah potatoes!" because my husband hated it. He hated that as well, so the canvas is patiently waiting to be covered in not so subtle vulvas and rehung in the kitchen.  

Days late, Dollars short

I was thinking, briefly, of taking a blog hiatus for the summer, but two days past my first missed post and I realize I actually like the normalcy of posting weekly. 

I've been doing a lot of little creative projects these last two weeks, but not taking lots of pictures. Half because I forget, and half because they aren't that exciting to me. Doing them is fun, fulfilling, whatever, but they feel like nothing to write the internet about. This week, here are a few things that are exciting to me.

This snail decided to live on the sliding glass door.

For some reason we made a rainbow cake. By we I mean I made the cake while the kid took pictures for snapchat. It tasted like fruitloops and, if I had had the patience to actually let the crumb coat chill in the fridge for a bit, probably would have been beautiful. I would like some credit for the fact I do not actually own any cake tins, each layer was done in a pie dish.

I saw this lizard at the park. Actually I saw a big ol' snake and my people pointed out the lizard right by me. Mr. Me "humorously" pointed out that it was a good thing it wasn't a snake or it'd'a bit me.

I got a proper new sketchbook. Tried to start one that I had on hand and was not spiral bound but I hated it. I'm trying to do some quicker looser pages to catch memories instead of accuracy because life isn't very good at holding still.

We went to ikea and I got new paint towels. I think it has been a good two or three years since the last trip. I made it out without buying any stationery, stuffed animals or posters of pancakes.

At one am just as we were agreeing it was time for bed, a blob flopped into the kitchen doorway. Apparently we have a backyard full of the cutest little toads now and one snuck in.

Unfortunately not pictured, but a final one for the road.

We were sat on the sofa writing, I was struggling with dialogue and glanced wistfully up and out the window to consider it and what do I see but two bicyclists towing a statue of a rhinoceros on wheels with two more bicyclists following. CCR's "Lookin' out my backdoor" pretty immediately springs to mind right about now...

(and this is why paintings and mail catch-up did not quite seem so blogworthy this week)

Living Dead Girl 2009-2010

It's September of 2009. I'm sprawled across the sofa reading Fahrenheit 451 and listening to one particular Rob Zombie song on repeat one. Somewhere in the house I've got a blank sketchbook and a new set of ink pens. Let's take a look.

Practicing form and shading with my new pens. I am willing to bet these were Faber Castel, I had this set for years before it gave up the ghost.

I accidentally signed up for a martial arts class and got really ironically into it. I believe I said this before roundhouse kicking the kitchen table.

I was (not at all ironically) really into collecting old issues of Heavy Metal Magazine and Hellraiser comics at the time. I really dig this monster dude and think inspiration for him came somewhere thereabouts. 

No one ever hung my artwork on the fridge.

Ok, apparently I was just really into weird ass mutant creatures. 

"it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine" as I recall this was a concept sketch for a digital collage I was supposed to make. I ended up doing one with a dead possum and a lot of lens flair instead. 

Ok, another weird mutant thing, but more importantly, MY HANDWRITING. I get a lot of flack now for my eccentric cursive being a little hard to read, but it is nothing compared to this nonsense. In some burst of eccentricity I decided to write in a stylized Sütterlinschrift. Thankfully that did not last long.

Half finished ballpoint pen dragon monster.

Oh, this is fun. My grandma and aunt had all these embroidered dish towels and they all had days of the week on them. Of course, it never actually was the day of the week as the towel hanging on the stove. I embroidered my own set of two, one reading "today" and the other "tomorrow" this was my design for "tomorrow".

For some reason, my grandma didn't want this one hanging with all her ducks in dresses and colonial ladies in bonnets. Forget the fridge, apparently my art just is not allowed in the kitchen. 

Two things- I cared enough to wear earrings at this point in time and I was really really over the moon with fractals as a concept, especially these circle ones.

This post is continuing my old sketchbook series, for the previous in the series click ye here.