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.  

Head Lumps

I don't get to brag about this often, but I have a remarkably unlumpy head. So unlumpy, in fact, that it's really a shame my hair is not a team player or I would keep the sides shaved. Unfortunately, when my hair gets much under an inch certain chunks of it turn a light blonde that makes me appear to have bald spots unless I rub chalk pastels in my hair, but that's another story.

I mention my lack of head lumps because this week's blog project was inspired by a swap Steph posted in the mail pals group for Artist Phrenology Charts. 

I made mine well over a week ago, but seeing her write up about the one she made resparked my interest in the whole ordeal.

As the starting point for today's project, this is the one I made for the swap.

I used an impromptu side selfie as reference to draw my own chart and painted it in gouache before using a very convoluted method of masking and x-acto knifing to fill in the little sections. It is a postcard sized piece, so I did not exactly have a lot of room to work, which is fitting since there never seems to quite be enough room in my skull for everything, anyhow. 

Since the project itself is rather personal in nature, I went for things that were symbolically important to me, but that wouldn't be weird for someone else to hang on their wall if they were so inclined. I also know there are a few people in the group who let their kids get the mail, so I decided to go for G just in case it ended up in their mailbox. 

My aim for today, instead of just making another chart, was to make a little stamp to use in my journal and probably in mail art and letters as well. A shorthand for "here's a random thought" or "this is what's on my mind today". 

I worked my design mostly off of the chart I had already drawn because I am lazy and see no reason to put the work in twice. I decided to extend the hair all the across the head and I toned down the chin because daaaaaang my chin is not that big. No idea how I missed that when I was doing the preliminary sketches. 

It occurred to me while I was tweaking the design for the stamp how much of an artistic shorthand I have developed for portraying myself. Even though this is so minimalist, and not really a great reflection of what I look like, I see it as being me because of a few quirks that show up in every drawing or doodle of myself. I think the quirks are more telling than anything I actually put as being in my head. 

The bridge of the nose (which head on I tend to draw like < > ) is because there is a running joke between my sister and I that the "family nose" is simply "broken". I broke mine when I was 3 running around the edge of a swimming pool in Las Vegas. 

Specifically using the left side of my face for profiles is because my beauty mark by my nose is on that side, as well as my eyebrow piercing and the part in my hair.  

Unkempt or bushy eyebrows (even though mine are usually in the general vicinity of "point" these days, not exactly "on point" but close enough to order takeout and have it delivered from there) are because my eyebrows are... noticeable. They wiggle around a lot and seem to make up about 70% of my facial expressions, and, when combined with well timed shrugs, 95% of my dance moves.

If I am adding color, an orange scribble suffices fine for hair, because in school a boy once tried to annoy me by telling me I wasn't a redhead because my hair was orange. I said "huh, yeah, guess so" and my hair has been orange ever since.

And that's it! That makes a me. 

After I was happy with the design (and scribbled some mess ups out in pink since I never remember to buy white out) I taped it to the window to trace the reverse. I had no choice since we're out of printer ink, but I think this is faster anyway.

Transferring with chalk was a huge fail. Way too fine of details. Chalk everywhere. 

The sharpie bleed through method always has my back though.

The biggest problem with minimalist stamps is being tidy while carving. It's damn near impossible to keep any carve marks from showing up when you stamp, so you have to make sure every single mark that might show up looks good. I did not know this when I first started carving and a lot of my early stamps looked like they were made by a maniac or someone with the patience of a gerbil on speed (they were).

Many proofs on this one. I tweaked little things each time until I figured I was as good as I was getting. I was a little disappointed with how sharp the bridge of the nose was, if someone was paying me to do this stamp I think I would have redone it. Since it is more or less a caricature of myself though, and that is something I exaggerate anyway, it isn't the end of the world.

The final stamp on a page in my journal. I sectioned the brain off and scribbled random thoughts in it. Oh the possibilities are endless. The color that could be added, the doodles and quotes and ideas and ink splatters. I can stamp ahead in my journals, write addresses in the head noggin, or put postage there... Yeah, I am going to get a lot of use out of this little lady.

Ghosts of Hobbies Past- Books!

I'm cleaning my office out currently for a myriad of reasons. The biggest one being oh dear god why do I have so much crap, where did it all come from and what sort of lunatic am I to have a box full of pieces for repairing dolls when I have never once repaired a doll in my entire life and haven't even done assemblage art for half a decade. I'm doing my best to goodwill and/or garbage the crap I know I'm not going to use, but it's the ghosts that get me. 

What to do with all the really neat things I made that never found homes? Hitting especially hard today is bookbinding. I love bookbinding but had to cut back on it precisely because little journals and things kept piling up with no one to take them (well, I'm sure someone would take them but I'm not crazy about paying postage to give away things I calloused my fingers making). Here's a few choice bits I found today. 

Tiny stab stitched books! More importantly, a little container of papers cut to the perfect size for this project. As I recall, these were perfect for slipping into outgoing mail as they were thin and light and pretty quick to assemble. I'll probably cut down any other weird papers I find to this size and restart this project. I love that the sample I have made uses a piece cut from blind contour practice I was doing. YES. That's the way to re-art things.

A somewhat close to paperback novel sized arty book journal thing. It's a hard ish cover with wrap around binding and stenciled throughout with a plastic keyboard cover deal. Along with a tiny pink book beneath. 

These tiny pocket notebooks, coptic bound and cute. 

mmmmmm. I am very very happy with my binding on this one. Not to brag but my stitching here is delightful. 

And finally, prototypes from one of my more ambitious binding projects, arty books that are inspired by flowers. They are also coptic bound and pretty dang cool if I say so myself. Some of the later ones I did turned out even better (and actually found homes). 

In all likelihood, these are going back in the closet where I found them because I still have no idea what I want to do with them, except that now I would very much like to pull out my thread and get binding again. I guess it's not really too early to start on Christmas gifts for this year...