Gypsy Living

Nearly 3 months of living between three households, socioeconomic classes, and family lifestyles is taking a toll on my mental well being. A year ago I was a mom who worked from home  as an artist/subcontractor, a full time student, and part time research archivist. What this meant in reality was I spent hours on the computer and the phone while keeping up a home with three teenagers, a husband, two not quite domestic house cats, and a pirate parakeet. The entire time I did this monumental task I longed for adventure, art, culture, and anything new. My family depended on me for mission critical things like clean socks, and rides to the mall.

   Well now I have it. A small artist's studio 4 hours and a world away from my Ohio home, and three days a week at a zip code well beyond my credit rating. La Bohemia! The starving artist bit I do not mind, no one makes a mess but me, my stuff is ALWAYS where I left it, and the question "Who ate all the ice cream and put the empty carton back in the freezer?" is no longer an hour long argument with celebrity guests like Not Me and I Don't Know appearing in staring roles. It took me a while to miss my family, a guilty but true statement. I do indeed sometimes miss the chaos almost as much as I miss the kids.

  I don't miss being needed, the fear I always had as my kids aged that they wouldn't need me anymore so what purpose does my role as Mom now serve, that seems ages ago. When they call me now to tell me they will facebook me later and somehow miraculously are not naked, starving, or in jail (fates I was certain the future may hold) . I am proud of their independence and ability to manage without me. The fact that they could of all along would of saved me hours of work and therapy, but at least I know now.

  So what now? What do you do when you are 80% of the way to the goals you demanded of the world for so many years you doubted their possibility? What next? As an artist it is easy to answer that question history always gives us a what next when you need inspiration, spin the globe a few degrees and advance a time line a hundred years and the art is all new. I have been working in geometric patterns and shapes reminiscent of the Prairie and Mission Style design of Frank Lloyd Wright. Classic and renaissance art has always been my passion, the industrial revolution my hobby and strongest skill set, but this distinctively American aesthetic is keeping my attention.

 Maybe it is a need for order in my life that draws me to simple lines, repeating patterns, contrasting colors, absence of line and the play of light to suggest a mood. Not in paint or physical objects but in the way a physical object functions within the light and feel of space. A door is art, as much as the painting on the wall of the room it opens too. I know this in a new way. the "uncreating" of art finally makes sense to me.

   It is so very funny that this revelation happens to me now, when I am finally surrounded by art on an everyday basis. I work in and near some top notch museums. The art in it still takes me to new wondrous places. But when given the tools to be an artist in my own hands it is "how can I bend the light to show this color on this piece of wood trim?" or "how do I give this room a cool tone without adding or taking away color?" Art has become not just a three dimensional piece like a vase or light fixture, but it has become both the piece and the environment it is in. How does this piece work in the world it will live in. I used to create glass series in colors or shapes until I purged them and moved on now I create for a space and time. I have gone "organic".


  My need to create to purge in order to vent has been quelled by my urge to enhance, or show hidden details, much like my parenting needs. It is not a blank canvas anymore that I must fill up every corner with imagery and try to say and show all my ideas at once without creating nonsense. A task that often left me disappointed in the results. Now I create for a space, and event, controlled, concise, limited. Like my family interactions. I have brief windows of time that can only be filled with small vignettes to represent what I hope to leave my family with. The same set and setting is lost on the next visit, the light and mood changes, new events and influences become more pressing. Parenting is an art and for me they are even more connected than I realized. Seeing it in my work has given me the ability to laugh at myself in whole new ways. Dammit kids who ate the last danish?

Saturday Night

   I remember when a Saturday night spent at home meant the end of the world, a WHOLE night to pace and sigh that I was bored, a night when no book was good enough, television was lame and I was 100% sure everyone in the world was doing something better than I was. I have 3 grounded teens tonight and am reliving that moment right now.

   They pace, sigh, and moan, (actions that have led to their room being magazine photo clean and laundry being caught up for the first time since before the holidays) and I, after assigning cleaning and tasks to keep them out of my hair but also from anything remotely amusing, cracked. I swear it was worse than when I was grounded myself. I used to think as a teenager my mother must have enjoyed having me grounded because she did it often enough. There was only one of me though. These three young ladies together in one house are having a make each other miserable contest.

   I admit it they won, not by begging or batting eyelashes, there were no tears or pleas, no butt kissing, no grand gestures, just boredom. They broke me by the weight of their sheer boredom into throwing the remotes to the PS3 and cable to them like you would feed hungry wolves. They broke me into breaking out my chocolate stash and my Lovecraft novels that I usually hide from the kids. The thing that surprises me is they did it without a word, they were surprised as I was that I cracked.

  Teenagers now loathing me at least quietly and behind my back is less oppressive than the weight of their collective boredom, but to make matters worse I have now caught it! I would do just about anything to get out of the house tonight. A reason to wear make up and clothes without elastic waistbands or old rock bands on them would have me dancing in the street. I have a life and wanted to do NOTHING this Saturday, I have a gauntlet of school, work and travel work coming up that will make me long for this day to do nothing.
 
   Not only did these children defeat me they converted me, I feel like my village was destroyed and the new pagan king says my gods are dead. I will keep up a good front and hope they don't see through my facade but darn it I am so bored.

Carbon Leaf - Let Your Troubles Roll By

A great song for a New Year and a time of uncertainty.

Epiphany

A Holy day marking several things on the Christian calender, baptism of Christ, The Wedding at Cana, the loss of the umbilical cord, Arrival of the Magi, the first full manifestation of the Trinity, and the last day of the Christmas season. In our house it is an extra special day it is the day we began as a family. 14 years ago you could say I had and Epiphany and life changed forever.

 http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05504c.htm

Some times the things in life happen like waves breaking, where they hit the shore and how hard varies with many factors but the wave does come. For me Epiphanies are "rouge waves" they hit when I am not expecting them too, when the shore of my life has been calm and free of debris for a while. These waves come and deposit things on the shore and change the landscape causing small eddies and tide pools. Not all of them are helpful or welcome at the time.


  Crises of faith, marriage, and grasping to keep a sense of reality are common side effects when the Epiphany shows up. This can be the January 6th one that corresponds with the calender, or the several spiritual events that could be called epiphanies. The current one here on Lake Ang is about Salvation. I mean I have heard of salvation for many years, it is the goal of the sacraments, the belief in The Passion, so many religions points hinge on the need to seek this one thing. Some sects believe I must "be saved", others believe they have saved me with their words and ceremony. I have a problem with placing the hope of my entire next big thing on picking God's winning horse at the Belmont Religious Cup.

  I believe that God placed in us the intellect the power to see or at least "feel" when we are close to him. That being saved from myself is really the biggest point of salvation. I have to want the goods you are selling or I just make it myself at home. So I like the flavor of the Roman Church, the guilt works, the art inspires, the sacraments transform, I get it and I dig. But there is this one little part of me that screams out how can all of this save me, it can't be A. That easy or B. That complex. All the trappings of the faith are valuable and irreplaceable to me, but can they truly save me?

 And save me from what? Is God really so concerned of the affairs of one crazy woman that he will build a horrible place to house her and those like her when they die. I believe in hell, I know it can be wherever a person is, hell is a state of being, and heaven, it's joy and bliss are as real and as easily obtainable as hell and all that lies in between them are broken  pieces of the joys and sorrows of both, I just do not think they were built special just for me. It is my job to obtain GNOSIS, to know better, and then to do better. To avoid sinning upon knowing it is sin, simply because it gets me nowhere as a person, not because an angel cries, this is my goal. 

  My Epiphany is this, to obtain salvation I must save myself from the world, fueled with the help of sacraments and tenants of faith to stay on a path far enough on shore to experience each wave, but not to close as to get washed away by it. To know that the refuse of a wave is only evidence of the wave was there, not some gift granting me a secret pass to the saints, nor is it punishment for being late for mass or not present at all. The only person my sin or chosen ignorance hurts is me and those I wrap up in it. Being "saved" is being self aware, and knowing there are consequences for each action that are bigger than the amount of Hail Mary's it will cost you after confessing. It is living in the hell those consequences create for those around us who are forced by innocent circumstance to witness our folly, and the seeing the heaven that knows love is bigger than we are capable of destroying. Saved by heresy? maybe.

Grass is always Greener when I paint it.

This is my first blog, well at least my first non myspace or social network rant. I followed my oldest and dearest friend here and have put off doing this for too long, but I start Grad school this spring and want to be one of the cool kids so I will blog too.

Speaking of the Oldest and Dearest she sent me this article today and it prompted this blog:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/452786.html

  Neitzsche was moved or stagnated by what he saw and it affected how he wrote and felt about the world depending on locale. He and I have had a love hate relationship through the years. He makes me think about faith in ways I find unsettling, it usually leads to religious crisis followed by zealotry that only a lapsed catholic can manifest. When I crawl out of my Canonical Law cave where I hid from the truth he was laying down, Neitzsche changes me. His humanity, and explanation of it in others is rarely wrong even when I am determined it should be. So when I read about where he was when, and what he saw and felt as his writing happened I can see how the visual landscape shaped his work. Is it no wonder that all my papers are beginning to sound the same, and my glass looks like the same collection no matter what shape and color it is? I mean when the world is only a tank of gas big how much can really change? I would like to think I am am smarter than that, that the rut I am in is a state of mind not a state being, but I know I am full of beans. All my attempts to "Live Art" in my local museums and in my internet wanderings are just that attempts to live. Only but putting my feet on the ground and seeing beyond the gallery, into what was in my favorite authors, painters, sculptors, and friends field of vision can I really experience where their heads were when they created.

  I have tried so hard to put myself beyond my comfort zone, trying some radical new challenges of mind, body, and faith this past year. I usually blame it on budget, my lack of artistic travel is directly related to my finances this is true, but I am beginning to think that the travel physically will suffer the same fate of underwhelming me with how much the modern world has taken away from what is beautiful, or overwhelming me with the amazingness of the world leaving me a drooling caveman incapable of taking what I see and feel and putting it into intelligent words and art.

   Change is began in the physical not the mental, how very practical. I have been trying to change my world from the deepest recesses of my mind and artist yearnings, maybe the best way to affect change and to effect what I see is to change where I see it from. Pray for me blog world that when I save the cash to get to Venice it hasn't sank and I can write a sentient blog from some beautiful old world building not from my table at their local McDonald's. Let there be enough of the world of beauty left to see under what we have done to it as a modern society, by the time I can afford to get there. Tell me that these places are not like men, great on paper but lackluster in practice. Let the green of my favorite paintings be a cheap fallacy compared to the green of the inspiration landscape.