physicality of art

June had 18 days over 90 degrees, which may explain my blog silence, at least in part.  It's been hot, continues to be now that we're well into July, and after hours out with the doggies, I am flat out.  Despite my griping (significant) on the weather, however, I appreciate the physicality of my day job, and groove on that aspect of art as well.  If you spend 3 hours moving very large canvases around, your arms will eventually feel like Jello.  Art is not just the theoretical, the-what-does-it-all-mean?-and-how-does-it-make-you-feel? touch feelie aspects, but also sweat and labor, hauling canvases and cans of paints and visiting hardware stores and finding lattice the right size (still looking) and inhaling weird fumes that may make me grow a third eye. There will be nailing (hopefully not of my thumbs), hoisting, more moving of collected supplies (some of it aka "crap") in the future, cooking up base coats (gesso? rabbit glue?  I need to figure that out) for big frames, chopping up bits of metal for Ugly Mobile #3, drilling, cutting, etc.  It's Twister movements trying to get something heavy affixed to the wall and tiny fine motor skills getting that dot in the eye in the right place (faces: still a complete painting mystery to me).  That physicality is, in some ways, why art looks different in person...you can see the 3 dimensions of it, the peaks and valleys of brush strokes, the way you know a painter not just by subject, but by the movement, the physicality of the way he applied paint, as personal and complicated as a fingerprint.  I love that.