Summer Holiday

Although I was not intending it to be the case, Artful Mistakes (and I) ended up taking the summer off.  Creative work was still going on, albeit in my usual sporadic way, but I didn't have much to say about it.  After feeling bad about my neglect of this blog and accompanying implied shoddy work ethic, I've now opted for a broader view. A fallow period in any project can be wise in that it provides the opportunity for context, reflection and course corrections.

Artful Mistakes: A Short History

Artful Mistakes started as a place for me, a relatively private person, to be more public in my wranglings with art. I also hoped to start conversations and perhaps collaborations with other arty-inclined friends.

I started this blog in the very tail end of 2009, a few months after my brother's death. In retrospect, his death was the first several events punctuating a tough era of my life, one from which only fairly recently would I say I've emerged.

While my stated initial intent was to write about art in its many forms (writing, painting, photography, music, the creative process, etc.), what I also ended up writing about was absence, loss, grief, and difficult relationships, be they with the living, the dead, fictional characters or thorny art projects.  In writing about all of those, I necessarily wrote about healing and finding peace, the way out of dark places.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and died in 2013.  A man I knew killed himself in 2013. Another friend of mine's mother, Betty, an enormously kind woman who among other brave moves taught me how to drive, passed away in 2013 also.  Other family members had concerning, complicated health issues. I moved multiple times - DC, Maryland, New Mexico, Oregon, Florida - disrupting local support networks, and pursued romantic relationships that were stressful and ill-fated. It was no wonder I was having trouble moving out of grief.

One marvelous aspect of art is that it provides an indirect way into touchy topics.  My mother, for instance, became a consistent reader of my blog, and in that somewhat circuitous way, I think we began to know each other in a different way, not just as mother and child but also as readers, armchair philosophers, and lovers of beauty also put upon by griefs that preceded and followed my brother death.  Also, because this blog is public, any commentary was much less fraught or pointed than any email or phone call -- it was just what I was thinking about, and Mom could connect with it or not; it wasn't a barometer of our own personal relationship.

Of course, I suspected some pieces Mom would like more than others, just as I knew other family readers would like some more than others too. Some of those opinions were based on artistic merit, but often, it was also personal opinion and style -- and sometimes I was surprised by who liked what. Unexpectedly, friends would find something on a post to which they connected, and sometimes strangers, or near strangers.

One offshoot of this blog is that I was often uncomfortably aware that people could, if they liked to read, know a great deal more about me than I did about them.  Although I wish my writing more often had larger scope, I am largely a confessional writer. And, of course, some folks whom I wished would riveted by all things about me (me me me me me) did not commit each post to memory, much to my dismay.

Particularly during my mother's illness and for some time after her death, I struggled with, yeah, the meaning of life.  It became abundantly clear that time was short.  My brother's death showed that death could come out of nowhere, sudden, harsh, final.  My mother's illness pointed out that not only is it short, but that quality of life is of consideration too.  My friend's suicide made that even more clear as I floundered in and out of my own depressions, hoping to avoid coming to the same solution he decided upon.

I used art to communicate what sometimes I could not articulate, or could barely piece together. One of my first paintings - dreadful and not at all true to life, but one very large canvas - was of my mother and brother together.  And in working on that, I saw an insight into nuances of their relationship that I likely could not ever have seen had I not spent so much time staring at a photo of them and wondering about particular expressions and all the time that came before that moment, and the short time that would come after it and how to translate that onto canvas.  The literal struggle of understanding the angles of people's faces explored the more complex struggle of trying to understand the internal world of people I loved.

I would give a great deal to sit and talk to my mother again, or just sit and hold her hand. I would give almost anything to have been able to magically take away her cancer and give her a longer life. Instead, I only see her in dreams, usually with my brother in attendance.

So what I am saying in again, a somewhat circuitous way, is that art is one thing that kept me afloat during a sometimes isolated and tumultuous time.  I didn't know that's what Artful Mistakes was about for a while, although I realized I wrote about the dead too often for it to be a Fun, Lighthearted blog, and that my writing is (as this post is as well) often too personal for some folks. Probably, I have lost some work opportunities because of this blog, but possibly, I have also been given some opportunities because of this blog as well.  Certainly the warmth and conversations it had generated have more than made up for the discomforts of exposure and vulnerability.

Artful Mistakes: Looking Ahead

And now here I am back to life, and a fallow period (perhaps) coming to a close, grief managed as much as any losses ever are.  My address is constant, my friends and family solid, and one ancient cat still purrs next to me.  Many things still need to be figured out -- it's life, you don't just arrive one day, the decisions big and little keep on -- but I know I am more solid at the core.

Ophelia
acrylic on canvas

What that means for my creative life, and how it will manifest in this blog, I'm not sure.  My current painting in progress is Ophelia from Hamlet.  In some ways, I'll always be drawn to darker subjects. But before her, there was Tree of Life.  My hope is that my art will be more about exploration and curiosity, more external, less internal, and more connected.

When I was researching post-traumatic stress disorder for a former client, I had opportunity to learn another term: post-traumatic growth. After the bad times can sometimes come a leap forward.  And I am hoping that leap is next for me after this fallow period, that the ground is restored and ready for new growth.

Like everyone, I have regrets - things I wish I had done, thing I wish I hadn't.  But I'm resolving to to look forward more than backwards, to look toward those adventures yet to be had, love and laughter and all the other greeting-card sentiments that are, as those cards proclaim, the moments that make our lives quirky, creative and wondrous.

Tree of Life

Tree of Life
acrylic & ink on canvas
11" x 14"

At long last, I spent some time painting.  Tree of Life was inspired by a photo I found in a landscape coffee table book.  The original photo is more muted, the bare tree in the fog, but still had the same peaceful blues and greens.

Recipe for a Cheap Desk

1. Go to Habitat's ReStore and get an unfinished birch slab door for $8.00.

2. Sand, stain and polyurethane wood. 

3. Buy Adils table legs at IKEA ($3.50 each) and attach to the wood.

Voila!  A huge, basic desk.  

Be warned that if your door is hollow (as mine is), it may be a wobbly desk as the leg screws don't have quite enough wood to grip onto.  At a later date, I may do some kind of reinforcing there to stabilize it.  For now, the file cabinets keep it secure enough so that I can type away without incident. I am grooving on the extra space - and hopeful that I'll also now remember to water the fern.  

Design Class Update

Design class has continued, with mixed results in terms of project enjoyment and loveliness of final pieces.

Vines, ink on paper on board, 12" x 12"

Vines was created by carving two 1-inch linoleum squares with different patterns, and then using them to print squares on various colored paper (white, gray, black) with black and white ink. The squares were designed so that the patterns would hook together no matter how they were placed next to each other, lending some order to chaos.  I remain a slob, and got inky fingerprints everywhere (which were fortunately trimmed off of the edges of the individual squares).  There's something I don't quite like about the final project, aside from my questionable printing technique.  If I were to do it again, I think I might limit the number of colors further, which might highlight the pattern, or do a less random arrangement. Still, having never worked with linoleum or printing at all, it was a fun project and contained some interesting revelations on symmetry and repetition.

Ain't That a Kick in the Head
acrylic paint on paper
10" x 15"

Ain't That a Kick in the Head has four elements included - a piece of Renaissance art (the woman's head), a piece of non-Western art (the foot of, in the larger piece, a Persian goddess), a logo (the Apple logo) and a pattern from an animal (the apple pieces are actually part of a feather pattern from an eagle wing).  Color scheme had to include a primary with complementary to either side, so mine ranges from purple through red to orange.  The design had to have the illusion of transparency too, that is, areas where shapes overlap and the color changes. And, the design also had to use the golden ratio -- which was where I ran into a lot of difficulty.  I'm still not sure that the nautilus spiral is in there with quite the emphasis I'd like, but so it goes.  I knew before going into this class that shape and composition are my weak points, while color comes somewhat more naturally.  And in fact, the illusion of transparency is no problem for me to figure out. Compositionally, I probably could have done with less of it in order to highlight shape elements more. I also probably could have done more with the gray background, which is a little flat.  I continue to have a tendency to wash out contrast.  

On this one, I also realized that I can't actually do design for design's sake without having some kind of idea behind it...and so there is a story behind this, which could be variously the hostility between east and west, conflicting ideas of womanhood, a reference to Eve and that darn apple, or simply my own frustration in composing the project (kicking my own teeth in).  I didn't need to decide on any of those ideas, or flesh them out at all, but I somehow had to have *something* to play around with to motivate where to put pieces (beyond the golden ratio, which never felt all that delicious to me).  I suppose the writer in me needs to put story into everything.

Clouds of Joan
acrylic on canvas board
12" x 16"

Clouds of Joan is, to be honest, evidence of not following the directions.  I needed to come to class with a person, an animal, and a word in a specific font to work with on this project, and while I did, the morphing between those in five steps each simply went beyond me that day in messing with graph paper and thumbnails (hey, I'm auditing for a reason).  So I took a break, and played with the image of the person (writer Joan Didion) and with paint and color. Composition was not considered, and I'm not crazy about her being squat in the middle there, but I do like the fun with color, and it was relaxing which, after all, is a part of my motivation in messing around with art.

It's been an interesting class.  It's not what I expected -- I'd envisioned more conversation, lecture, discussions, and largely, it's just assignments, silence and studio time -- but I have accumulated a few new ideas, and a few new tubes of paint, so I'm pleased with that.  

Design Class, Project 1

Leaves & the Letter O

I started an art class recently, a basic design class, and so have been spending the last couple of weeks either climbing up and down ladders, busily painting my new house (!) or sitting at a table playing with inks and paints in class.  This combination means I currently always have paint in my hair, under my fingernails, and on at least one elbow.

We've only completed one project thus far, as the printmaking project is more involved and taking longer. I have to say, I am glad I'm auditing the class - this is not a world where I think I'd like any grades.

Project 1 involved taking a leaf (real or photo), making a 2D simplification of it, and creating a pattern with it, and a letter of the alphabet, where the leaves and letters interwove at least 3 times.  It sounds easy, but I made gazillions of thumbnail sketches with various leaves and letters that were all aggressively ugly.  The final product I finally created post thumbnails and roughs, well, umm, it's not perfect.  Critique included very politely worded commentary on the importance of craftsmanship, as in, ahem, I'm a slob, and the paint ended up extra lumpy on this one, and white paint doesn't really cover fingerprints terribly well on board, etc.  The design itself is not terrible though, not nearly as awful as some of those thumbnail sketches. Varying the letter O sizes more would have probably helped - that, and better craftsmanship.  I am not good at being careful and precise with paint, as the baseboards in my house will attest.    

The interesting thing about working on the project was knowing I was learning something in all the experimenting, but not being really sure what I was learning.  My hope is that the experimentation involved in art leads to developing a personal aesthetic style. We'll see if, down the road, I'm better able to articulate what I like, what I don't, and why.  

The Cat in Antlers Tradition Continues

After an exhaustive search, and much to Hazel's dismay, I finally found where I put the antlers for safekeeping.  Merry Christmas!

A reflective reindeer.  

"Every. Year.  What's wrong with her?"

Painting in Process: Tenatively, "Bubbly"

Bubbly
acrylic on canvas
24" x 30"

Time Lapses

After my mother died, I kept thinking about time. When she was sick, there were predictable thoughts -- precious time, wasted time, good times & bad, being cheated of time, how much time she lived and how long she suffered in illness.

But after she died, I more often thought about time as it works as a dimension. Time, sometimes called the 4th dimension, locates a specific event as it occurs in a specific location.  After she died, that's the time I wanted to understand.

I've long tracked my own history by location, e.g, if it was when I lived in New Mexico the first time, it must have been 2006.  Because of my many moves, my timeline is easily tied to longitude and latitude. Many of those locations I have repeated.

In The Moviegoer, Walker Percy writes about the pleasure of repetitions separated by time.  In his character's formula, a repetition is "the re-enactment of past experience toward the end of isolating the time segment which has lapsed in order that it, the lapsed time, can be savored of itself and without the usual adulteration of events that clog time like peanuts in brittle." When I moved back to a location, it was often with the (mistaken) belief that the peanuts would be gone this time.  And, of course, it was never like that -- life is always throwing peanuts at you, no matter how many times you leave and return, a point that I'd been rather slow to learn.

During my mother's illness, time's looming presence for all our family was largely tracked by her life, with markers for key moments such as diagnosis, first surgery, chemos, remission, recurrence, emergency surgeries, hospice, death.  And we chronicled the first of every event after her death, as in, all the things she missed, all the times and places when and where we missed her.

But if time is just a portion of the equation of locating a person in a spacetime, I reasoned that it seemed like just one measly layer, one that if you could just peel through it a bit, you could see everything and everyone that had ever been there in that location throughout time, and see them clearly. Think time-lapse films, where the plant germinates, grows, blossoms, withers and dies.  Everything is there on the film, all happening all at once; it's just where you choose to play the film that gives you what you want to see.  

In the refashioning of history and relationships that happens when one party is no longer there to refute them, I found my mother everywhere. There were remnants of her in the places she frequented, in every object she touched, even in the way she appeared in dreams, as dream time seems the most permeable to changing the physics of time, a loophole or wormhole or what-have-you.

In Bill Bryson's book A Short History of Nearly Everything, he talks about the dispersal of durable atoms over time and points out that we all may have a little bit of Shakespeare in us (o happy writers!), as those freewheeling atoms have been circling about for long enough that some may have found their way into your pinkie finger  But if you're hoping that you have some Elvis atoms in you - sorry. There hasn't been enough time since his passing to have dispersed the atoms far enough through the universe for you have incorporated his atoms. I thought about Mom's atoms when I walked on the beach, splashing feet in the water, as up in Maine, some of her ashes went into that water. Who doesn't want the whole ocean, all oceans, as their mother?

People talk about ghosts, but what if it's just you can sense evidence of where they were, like perfume that lingers in a room someone has just left?  And what if everything is drowned in that smell, and peels layers of time away like turpentine on paint?

Or what if you just miss your mom - and you want to bend your limited scientific knowledge to keep her around for a while longer, even if only is in some great cosmic metaphysical time travel kind of way?

Joan Didion describes in The Year of Magical Thinking how after the death of her husband, when she was clearing out his closet, she kept some of his shoes because he would need them when he came back.  It was around then that she realized she was not, perhaps, holding things together quite as well as she had hoped. She writes:

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes."

I remembered that comment with particular relief when, after my mother died, I realized some part of me believed Mom was sending me messages in the lyrics of pop songs.

Immediately after she died, I moved to Florida.  Coincidentally, Phillip Phillip's song "Home" was playing incessantly everywhere, the song with the refrain, "Just know you're not alone / Cause I'm going to make this place your home."  If, for instance, you are afraid you're going to start to cry for no reason standing in the towels aisle of Target, and that song comes lilting on the piped-in music, it feels like a benediction - or it did for me.

And then I spent some time pondering how it must be for those people with schizophrenia or psychotic breaks of some kind who believe they are receiving coded messages from the TV, and I got a little uncomfortable with finding comfort in pop songs and feared I was just a short time hop away from wearing a tinfoil hat to keep the aliens at bay. But even with that, I took the comfort anyway, that moment at Target and those that came after, moments where the music felt like what I needed to hear just then -- a coincidence, a serendipity, a sign, grace, good vibes, self-nurturance or my mom looking out for me, whatever it was, I took that comfort. I let it be, which I suppose is my own version of faith.

So when an ABBA tune played while I was in the rug section in IKEA, I got teary because I figured it was A Sign that buying furnishings was a good plan, tending to my new home.  Mom and I listened to ABBA in the car on the way to chemo a couple of times.  She came to ABBA late in life, having spent most of her life listening to classical music and occasionally musicals, but somewhere in there, Mamma Mia picked up the relentless happy beats of ABBA.

After Mom died, I turned to time, wanting more of it, wanting to redo it, wanting to relive the good parts and fix the bad parts, and I wanted her to still exist in a fashion, to be literally living and breathing.  And in the timeline, she is.  I can't fold time over like a Star Trek episode, but then again, I live on a planet that is still receiving light from stars that could have winked out of existence hundreds of years ago.  If all things are simultaneously happening in all timelines, then in some tiny portion of those instances, there is Mom humming along to store music as she did sometimes.  Why shouldn't I find parts of her in pop songs -- or wherever else she pops up?

Graffiti seen in a park, Bangor, ME

Back from the Dead

Having not posted on this blog for months, I found I'm tongue-tied by the prospect of return.  Like most things, writing is a habit, and when you fall out of the habit, picking it up again comes with the aches and pains of, say, trying to start jogging again (another habit I am trying to resurrect).

Confession: The last months have not been full of giant creativity.  Until very recently, my easel remained disturbingly dusty.  Last week, I finally brushed off some very old short stories for some revision.  But largely, I reached a What's the Point moment with art, which led to an extended stall, and so I explored other avenues in my eternal quest on How to Feel Good.

This wasn't made any easier in July, since it became clear my beloved 17-year-old cat Leo was heading down to his final decline.  In the weeks in between the 1st anniversary of my mother's death and her birthday, he was diagnosed with cancer, and became so weak that he could no longer walk. I had to have him put to sleep. I cried a lot in July.

Leo sporting his acupuncture needles. 

Aside from innumerable veterinarian visits, I also spent a lot of time in an easy chair napping with needles in my ears, arms and legs -- I discovered the magic of acupuncture. Typically, my cat received acupuncture first (from a vet), with the hope that it would help his pain issues, at first thought just to be worsening arthritis. And it did seem to make him feel more relaxed.   Given that animals have no interest in the placebo effect, it seemed a good bet it might help me too.  I found a community acupuncture clinic (for humans) (http://stpeteacupuncture.com/) and got myself into that lounger. On my first few visits, I was near elated post treatments, perhaps a sign that I really needed to calm the heck down.  More recently, my reaction has been less intense, although I still leave relaxed and soothed.

In August, I started a couple of classes at the local community college in environmental science. Given that it's been twenty or so years since I've taken a science class, that was a mild shock to the system.  And yet, my 20 year old student self persists in some ways, with notebooks full of doodles and journal entries interspersed with actual notes. I still sit in the back of the class and daydream too much and still manage to cram my way to As on exams (which probably pleases me more than it should, the gold star of intellectual approval). College campuses are, from the small sample of my recent exploration, more or less the same, except for the addition of cell phones.

You missed seeing this amazing mural from the exhibit My Generation:
Young Chinese Artists. It closed at the end of September.  Still time
to see Jamie Wyeth's Portraits of Rudolf Nureyev though. 

There are still guys on skateboards weaving between very young women trading stories about their, yes, prom dates. Color me Methuselah.

Through most of my silent summer, I continued on at work at the museum, and continued to be impressed by the kindness of most of my coworkers.  I left that job at the end of September, as their kindness no longer successfully masked the inherently dull nature of processing memberships. I saw several coworkers at the last exhibit opening, where I was just a civilian again, there to see the art and collect a little shop gossip. I'm immensely grateful to the people there for their good will during my odd transitional first year here in Florida, something I worry I failed to make clear.

In the last months, I've also spent a great deal of time looking for a house to purchase.  I've looked at zillions, thanks to a very patient real estate agent, and even made offers on a couple, but nothing has quite come together, which has left me questioning the whole project.  Is buying a home going to make me feel rooted?  Or trapped?  Will I feel at home, or like an impostor? Will I just add inability to decorate to my list of character flaws? Could I overthink this more?

17-year-old Hazel pointing out that not only is she still
alive, she is also still darn cute. She'd also like a backyard
for lizard hunting. 

In my online searching, for a time, I was also looking for dates when not scanning real estate ads. The process is not dissimilar, where you scan through pictures and profiles and see what you can live with (no garage, but a lovely fireplace) and what you can't (appears to be screaming racist and not-so-bright). Thanks to the wonders of online dating, I met with four people in person, and three of them were pleasant enough, if not fabulous love matches, a reasonable percentage all things considered. But then I reached my saturation point. Right now, I'm not sure I want to hear about more divorces and broken hearts (and this also begs the question, if you've only been divorced for 45 seconds, or you're desperately hung up on your all-but-perfect ex, or you're not sure, but you might actually hate all women, then why exactly am I sitting here having a cup of tea with you? Do I have a special gift for picking people who are unavailable? Or am I just too picky in general? Am I supposed to be so fanfuckingtastic that I make all forget any previous woes? Sorry, that's clearly not gonna happen; we all drag our baggage into the event, as evidenced by this mini-rant).

The aptly named Sunset Beach, Treasure Island, FL

Maybe despite all my relentless questing and researching and occasional successes all things are not found on the internet. Shocking. I am trying to spend less time tangling up in the world wide web and more time out wandering in the real live world.

Throughout my tenure in Florida, I've remained dedicated to my sunset walks the beach and enjoying people watching happy locals and tourists. A week ago, a woman was standing stock still at the tide line because an enormous dragonfly had landed on her.  She was beside herself pleased with its magical presence: "He thinks I'm a great big flower."  Yesterday, I saw a woman sauntering along with a brightly-colored parrot perched with great dignity on her shoulder.  Never underestimate how delightful it is to watch the tide slowly devour a sandcastle or how in-tune the herons are with the possibility of snacks as they linger by the fisherman.

Philippe Park

Besides my beach trips, I've been checking out local parks, mini-road trips to find new views.  The slightly-busted camera that lives in my purse is getting a work out, and I've explored places like Philippe Park, which is just crazily beautiful.

I know this much: happy does not come from basking in some external bullshit socially-acceptable status checklist. I know people with houses, jobs, relationships, friends and full bank accounts who are also flat out miserable, and desperate for someone/something to blame (a bigger house, a "better" job, more money, a spouse or partner who doesn't or does __[fill in the blank]__, losing just 10 more pounds, waiting just one more year for ____ to happen).  Who I don't know are that many people that are actually, on balance, mostly content with their lives.  Some, mind you, many even.  But not as many as you'd think given their full checklists.

And maybe no one should be too content, lest that be too close to complacent.  One review of the news is enough to verify that there is no shortage of pain, tragedy, misery and horror out there, the real stuff, not my first-world middle class angst. Should anyone be content in the face of the sad state of human nature, the environment, governments, world politics, religions, wars, swaths of --isms and violence run amok?

Or is that just evidence of my bad attitude, an inability to thoroughly embrace the power of positive thinking?

That's something to ponder as I walk the beach and see if I can capture a photo of a pelican in flight, something to mull on while I  breathe the sea air.

Mother's Day

Quilt made by Margot Daffron,
finished by her daughter Susan

Designed and pieced together by my mother, this quilt was (we believe) intended for me, but still resided in the UFO (unfinished object) category at the time of her death. My sister had the pieced work professionally quilted and finished the edges and backing herself, and mailed the completed quilt to me a few weeks ago for my 45th birthday.

As such, on Mother's Day, I can curl up on the couch and be warmed by the colorful heart and creativity of my mother.

Thanks to my sister for such an amazing gift

and

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.  We miss you.

Impressionable Artist

Long ago, when I was in college, I went drinking with a strawberry blond boy named Jonathan.  At different times, we hoped some romance would blossom between us, but never at the same time, and so it never did, which is just as well, as we had not much in common.  The last memory I have of him is him emphatically and ineffectually trying to explain to me that the water filtration system he was selling was not, indeed, a pyramid scheme. 

Well before that, however, one evening we were up in his dorm room, and he showed me a painting he had recently done, an abstract.  He said it was a personal piece to him, along the lines of a self-portrait and I giggled and said, “colorful.”  He put the painting to the side then, and gave me a disappointed and somewhat condescending look, at which point, I sighed, and went on, “I see the slash of red working though it as a representation of the anger that runs through you that you both try to suppress and secretly enjoy, but that the blues and greens behind it are more accurate to your core self, which is more placid and flexible and liquid, if less aggressive – that’s where you peacefulness lies.  Over here, in that dark corner, I see a reference to the grief that you carry with you – your father’s death, perhaps – but this explosion of shapes and color over here, that seems really joyful to me…”  I went on at some length, weaving in whatever I had gleaned about him through brief conversations and what I had intuited about his personality and way of being in the world, and connected it into that painting, a complicated line of compliments and complaints wrapped in a filmy gauze of bullshit.  I was a twenty-one years old English major, after all; seat-of-the-pants critique and rampant symbolism was my world (see http://www.artfulmistakes.com/2010/12/dualism.html for another example of that). 

By the end my explication of his art, Jonathan’s eyebrows were pulled together in creeped-out alarm.   He turned the painting to the wall, out of view.  Shortly thereafter, he shuffled me out the door. 

This is the thing about art: we want to be known through it, but then we don’t.  We use our own codes and symbols, hide our truths in plain sight, and then see who catches on to the joke – or attempts to rewrite our lines. 

In senior year of high school, for instance, a lot of my notebooks have this symbol:

which I made up because it has all the letters of my crush’s name built into it, along with a modified eye because he had ridiculously pretty extra-long eyelashes, and I personally felt a little too self-conscious under the watchful gazing eye of society and nice-looking boys. My little logo served the same purpose as writing his name with little hearts around it, but in a less mushy, more abstracted way. 

Given that my way into art has always been through character, through the emotional world of the writer or painter (including when that artist is me), working in an art museum poses somewhat of a challenge. Although my literary knowledge is broad, I have zero formal education in art history, and scant teaching in painting technique from several short art classes.  What I do know is hit or miss through whichever signs I’d read in art museums I've frequented or the artists I've researched or tried to mimic stylistically.  I can tell an impressionist painting on sight, but I can’t tell you exactly why.  I've limited information on the revolution it posed.  I can tell you they used purple for shadows. 

I know Modigliani figures have elongated faces and long necks, and those graceful long lines give me some insight into how he must have been as a person, someone full of romantic ideals and yearning – but that is entirely imagined on my part, even less informed than my armchair analysis of Jonathan’s painting given I’ve never shared a beer with Modigliani.  Modigliani was ill for much of his life, and hid his illness with excesses of alcohol and drugs (which obviously came with its own set of problems).  I feel that secretiveness and despair in the way he presents people in the world.  But these are simply my own loosey-goosey thoughts on a famously tragic artist that died young. 

Mood and style are only a small part of the conversations of the art world, where artists are categorized into larger schools of thought, movements across time and society.  Artists rise to the top given the tastes and values of that time.  Warhol’s fame could not have launched in the era before mass-media advertising and a growing cult of iconic celebrity and narcissism.  The rise of photography likely impacted the fall of realism.  Art museums carry on the cannon of the accepted norms, expanding what qualifies as art only once it has been debated in the smaller galleries.  Not too long ago, photography was considered a science experiment, not fine art.   Now, the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg (where I work) has a curator dedicated to its extensive photography collection.

While the sociological implications of movements of art intrigue me, they don’t fascinate me the way individual stories do.  My leanings are toward the microcosm, the personal, the individual, the emotional, the right brain.  Self-taught artists, especially those that are working through their own demons, particularly attract me.  My left-brain knowledge of the therapeutic effect of art creation is extensive.  I read reams of journal articles on art therapy, particularly as it applies to PTSD, performing research for a former client. Their project was to create an art therapy software program for combat veterans.  The user’s final product for that software?  Graphic novels.  Yes, comic books, that “low” art form currently enjoying a renaissance of reevaluation.  The MFA recently held a panel discussion with some of the leading comic artists, a sure sign that comics’ inherent “artiness” has been clearly established. 

These are conversations I seldom have at work though; I work in Development, not Programs or Curatorial. On our end of the hallway, our mission is to keep the financial wheels turning.  We speak eloquently, but sometimes vaguely, about the importance and relevance of art.  We seek to open eyes and hearts through museum programs, but also pocketbooks and wallets, as without those donations, the doors close, and Curatorial down at the other end of the all will have no opportunity to choose who among the many are worthy of display in the next exhibit.  The give and take between serving the community and being supported by the community is a tricky line in the art world.  There are days where I yearn for the purity of academics, where you get to dig into the meat of your chosen issue without thought of how it will affect funding.  [pause]. And here I recognize the naiveté of that idea too – if you, for instance, take your thesis advisor’s work to task, you may find your academic career brief; if your research and grant applications hold interest only to you, be prepared to fund them yourself.

The humanities always work within that strange context of trying to tease out, in a logical, left-brain way, what our right-brain just “knows.”  Minor keys sound sad.  Bright colors evoke strong emotion.  Short sentences spike up the action.  Humanities seek to quantify the techniques that raise some people’s art to, in some people’s eyes, exquisite levels. An art museum is but one forum, albeit at times a stodgy one, where that conversation takes place. 

And there are times where that conversation is just the rambling of young men and women wondering about their place in the world.  I’ve no idea what happened to Jonathan, if he still paints or sells water-filtration products or went on to do something totally different, finding ways to feed the hungry or shelter the rich.  I work part-time at an art museum and ruminate on art and emotion and wrestle with my odd paintings while trying to keep my geriatric cats alive.  Amedeo Modigliani died of tuberculosis in 1920 when he was ten years younger than I am today, leaving behind a body of work that continues to move people in ways they can’t fully articulate.  

Pink Elephant Parking

Pink elephant parking, Inverness, FL

What I've Been Working On

After a distressingly long absence from painting, I'm putting in a little time at the easel.

Various paintings in process:

Heartbeat - This piece was a less-than-successful portrait I started in a class months ago that I put aside until recently. I changed a lot of colors around, added shadows, background texture, etc. I may never love it, but it's significantly more appealing than it was. Her face is based off a magazine photo, although since, ahem, representative drawing is not my strength, it only looks somewhat like the original person.

Floral - This painting originally had a watery base, that I've since added on some more impasto effects to give it more oomph and depth. It's still essentially abstract floral and light. I may try to emphasize where light is coming from more, or I may just leave it suffused - I'm not sure. I'm also not sure which way it goes; it may end up with a landscape orientation. The balance is not quite where I would like it, but for now, it's pleasant, simple nature.

Voices - This quick painting came out of one damn bad day.  I had a swirled background canvas, and staring at it, I started seeing cartoonish faces, so I pulled those all up to the surface and added in more color; this is how it landed. It's a not-pretty representation of the inside of my head on a rough day, conflict voices orbiting an angry center.

Recycling an Old Article: So What Do You Do?

Birds, and one man, in flight

Because the old version of cynthiadaffron.com is now dead, and the domain temporarily redirecting here to the Artful Mistakes blog, it's a fine opportunity for me to slap some old work up here. And so I will.

For a time, I wrote the back page article for a magazine for beginning computer users. I tended to have a hard time staying on topic, but the editor gave me a lot of latitude (thanks, Susie), so I often managed to work in what was on my mind if I at least, as in the case here, alluded to computers.

This article (below) was written in the winter of 2005, after I had finished a masters program in creative writing at UMiami and moved across the country to get rained on in Portland, Oregon. Oregon set records for the number of gloomy, gray days records that year, and my quest for employment was slow-going, leaving me to reflect on career choices. Not every point holds true to my current thinking, but I'll let it stand as is, a marker of that time.

What I like about this piece is that it hints at things that I would do in the future. I did, in fact, become a property caretaker, at two different places in New Mexico, in 2006 and then in again in 2012. I did end up taking painting classes, and sailing lessons. My interest in visual art was starting to bubble up a bit, before I was aware of it. And I still have itchy feet, prone to long walks and longer road trips.

I also still very much believe in the importance of dreaming.

------------------
So What Do You Do? 

Like the roots of plants growing in the same pot, identity and career are deeply tied and tangled. It's difficult to know where one plant ends and the other begins, even though on the surface, the different leaves and stalks appear distinct.

Here in America, "we are what we do." Politician or police officer, librarian or lawyer, musician or mortician, the answer to what we do (a verb) is usually announced as a noun: "I am a ____." We don't say that we politic and police. If we are trying to be a bit more evasive, we may say we are "in the __ industry." For example, you might say you're "in the film industry" when what you really do is drive a golf cart all over the set relaying messages and taking coffee orders.

These issues are on my mind because I'm unemployed and having an identity crisis. I'm pretty sure the two are related.

Technically, as a writer, I am not unemployed. I am "freelancing." Writers are either employed by a company or self-employed and freelancing. Of course, some writers are financially successful at freelancing. And then there are others, like myself at the moment, who quietly draw from savings and solicit loans to tide them over through lean times. (As the old saying goes, there's a fine line between self-employment and unemployment.)

Many of the efficient and gainfully employed around me have wondered, subtly and not so subtly, enviously and/or disdainfully, exactly how I've been spending my days. Here is the scandalous truth: courtesy of the Information Age, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time playing Internet dress-up with wildly diverse careers and the lives and personalities that might accompany them.

Over the last few months, I have looked into graduate programs in art, art history, library science, psychology, speech pathology, journalism, nursing, communications and business. (In a fit of confusion, I even read up on law school!) I've also pondered certificate programs in massage therapy, computer programming, and driving a semi. I investigated teaching English in Japan, organic farming in Maine, and permaculture in Costa Rica.

Under the idea of cutting expenses, I've looked into caretaker and housesitting gigs. So I've corresponded with a writer in Rhinebeck, NY, a graduate student in Cantonsville, MD, an artist/retreat owner ten miles from nowhere in Mississippi, and a very polite man in Portland, Maine, who didn't realize we were talking about two different Portlands (I live in Oregon, not Maine).

My surfing exploration has netted international opportunities such as volunteering at a yoga studio in Costa Rica, a fellowship in France, and sailing as crew on boats in exotic locales. I've learned surprising new facts, including of the existence of a country named Palau (1000 miles away from Guam, it is a tropical paradise devoid of any poisonous snakes).

Domestically, I've researched rents and yoga studios, universities and job markets in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Wilmington, North Carolina, Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and St. Petersburg, Florida through bestplaces.net, craigslist.org, findyourspot.com, and a whole lot of Googling.
Locally, I've inquired about positions in painting, jewelry making, working with an autistic child, and fruit basket assembly. Although none of those folks responded to my queries, I did interview at a health and wellness medical clinic and an upscale watch and jewelry store. No luck in either case, but I didn't mind because once I was inside, I couldn't see myself happy there for long. (Apparently, neither could they.)

Of course, if you've gotten this far, you may have noticed that the vast majority of this frenetic research has nothing at all to do with what I say I do when people ask. My actual stated career as a writer, excepting sporadic but enthusiastic work on my novel, ranting and researching e-mails, quarterly columns and rare blog entries, has been largely ignored amidst this uproar of possibilities.

So if "we are what we do," what does all this Internet research and dreaming and dress up say about me? That I don't know who I want to be, and I don't want to be who I am? Yes, in part. But in a larger sense, what does it say about our society that most people will no longer have just one career, but several? Amid the end of company loyalty and pension benefits, the Internet offers quicker and broader exchanges of information than ever before. It sets the scene for career switching to blossom as quickly as hothouse flowers.

Consider one of my friends, who went from seven years as a librarian, and then retrained to be a psychologist. Or my cousin the graphic designer who is now studying accounting. Or another friend who went from repairing Persian rugs to working as a computer guru, and is now starting his own business as a photographer. Two other friends both worked as lawyers, and then quit. Neither is sure what is next on the horizon. But then, another friend, a former caregiver and vet tech, is in her second year of law school, and loving it.

Americans, in particular, tend to ask that dreaded and dreadful questions, "So what do you do?" and then slot you into whatever category and status your profession allows. But we are not only that. We are also what we dream about doing even if we never do it. Because in those aspirations and explorations, we are trying to find expression for some part of ourselves that we want to expand and allow to grow.

We want recognition for characteristics not usually associated with our primary profession, or we yearn for something in our lives that the profession doesn't necessarily foster. The librarian realized it was the people he wanted to help, not the information he wanted to find, and so psychology was a reasonable switch for him.

Many people find a livable compromise in deciding that their hobbies outside of work can reflect other facets of their personality. Another friend runs a fashion design company, but I met as a classmate in a poetry class in graduate school. My aunt, who by day deals with bankruptcies, by night is ballroom dancing or quilting or otherwise doing something completely different.

We are not just what we do for work now, but also what we have done before for work, or for fun. Changing jobs does not change who we are. The librarian still lives in the psychologist. But even that history, the total of our actions in and outside of work, with friends, family and loved ones, this is still not all of it. We are also what we have thought about, what we have dreamed about, what we've wanted to do and might (or might never) do in the future. We are also what interests us, by which I mean, what we remember, what moves us, what motivates us, what we admire, what we care about, what makes us curious, what we want, rational or not.

We are not just actions. We are not (only) what we do.

The Internet makes it easy to let our thoughts wander. Wandering helps our dreams evolve, sets the scene for that serendipitous stumble into new connection. Without wandering through caretaking ads, I'd never have heard of Palau or ever corresponded with a literary archivist. Not that it may ever be important. But then again, it might be. Without the dress-up, without the random reading, without asking the questions, without exploring and e-mailing of experts and amateurs, how will we, in the present moment, continue to step forward onto increasingly authentic paths?

Preferred career: cat pillow

And yet: a caution. Many eastern religions stress the importance of being present in the moment, and there is great wisdom in that, in paying attention to precisely what we see and hear and smell and taste, enjoying, or at least noticing, the life we are living right now, rather than always daydreaming or researching an invented future. As much as I try to put myself in other shoes, I only have my current self. No matter how hard I imagine, I can't ever so completely envision my dream life as a dream lawyer or sailor or best selling writer so to determine my next move small with certainty – I can only expand the possibilities of which I am aware. Until I, or you, are in a place or situation or job, with all of its real life complications, until we are in a moment, actually doing something, we can't entirely know how we will feel.

In the end, every choice in life is a gamble on an unknown. We can't know if what we choose will be better. We can only know that if we choose change, it will be different. And even if we choose to stay the same, life changes every moment anyway.

Still, I'm pretty sure the next place I live and the next job I find will be perfect. Everything I've read on the 'net, and everyone I've asked have verified an idyllic world where I am magically transformed into a much, much better person than I am right now. It's all out there, just waiting for me to make the leap into becoming the person I've always dreamed of being.

Whoever that is.

Stonehenge, Treasure Island Style

Many days, usually around sunset, I walk from my home to the southern end of Treasure Island where it ends at a rocky canal.  One day I found someone had spent some time erecting their own mini-Stonehenge, beach-style.  The beach brings out the artist in people.

Chihuly Collection: Shine, Shimmer & Wave

A garden of glass, weirdly festive in a Dr. Seuss sort of way.

Gorgeous floral
-themed sculpture

A few weeks back, I did (finally) slide into the Chihuly Collection presented by the Morean Arts Center. Viewing the collection is free for Morean members, but for whatever reason, it took me a while to actually get myself through the door.

The stunning collection contains enormous complicated gardens of glass interspersed with more moderate-sized pieces.  The collection is housed in a warm wood-beamed buildings and gorgeously well-lit, but felt thin on information to me (unless I wanted to buy a book in the gift shop, which I am way too cheap to do).  Perhaps I missed the signs while ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the glass.

The scale of this isn't apparent in the photo, but it takes over a whole room - that boat is the size of a real rowboat. 

The Traditional Antler Pictures

Merry Christmas from the kitties (who, the other 364 days of the year, are not required to dress up).

"Merry Christmas.  Can I return to napping now?"

"The indignity of the holidays never ends. Ho ho ho."

Love in the Wild: Creative Loafing Tampa Fiction Contest

Happily, my story "Love in the Wild" (JP and the bride with the alligator costume head), made the first cut on the Creative Loafing Tampa Fiction contest. Read & vote here: http://cltampa.com/dailyloaf/archives/fiction-contest/#.Up-6ksRDuSp.

Bea’s River

Found the following snippet floating in an old file, so played around with it today.  It's a creative response to a The Cowboy Junkies song, Bea's Song (River Song Trilogy: Part ll). Lyrics to the song follow the story snippet. 

For those that were following my recent attempt at re-booting writing, I did finish a draft of the story for the winning story start.  I'll post it here in a bit.  

--------------------------

Bea’s River

I stood by that river in Colorado for a good long while, listening to the rhythmic burble of it: up and over, up and over, up and over the rocks, on the rocks, on the rocks, up and over the rocks. A bird of prey circled overhead.  When he caught the highest loft and disappeared over the scrawny pines, the music ended and I leaned over to untie my hiking boots.

An old Peanuts cartoon has Charlie Brown telling his sister before a big game that he always puts his right sock and shoe on first, and then his left sock and shoe, for luck. His sister pauses for a minute, and then asks, “What kind of luck?” The last panel shows shoeless Charlie Brown staring at his feet.

My first barefoot step into the water (up and over, cold! cold!) forced an inhale, but as my reddening feet settled into the coarse sand at the shore, the shock fell into numb.

Behind me, John swore under his wheezy breath, closing the car door not quite hard enough, so it clicked only once, not twice to latch.

“My keys, you have them?”

I wiggled my toes. They responded, but as from a distance. I felt the gritty texture of sand, but nothing else. Up and over. Up and over. The rocks. The rocks. On the rocks.

I held out my arm and dangled the keys from my hand, rattling them maraca-like.

“Why didn’t you say so?” The clawing crunch of his footsteps approached steadily until he slid slightly at the two-foot drop off near the river’s edge, the stumble marring the beat.

“You’ll turn blue,”

“Color me Neptune,” I said, and turned from the waist to toss him the keys. They flew up and over light slanting through trees, skipping rope with sunbeams.

“You look at the moon and the stars more often then you look into my eyes,” he said

He was right, of course, but I didn't want the conversation or the life he wanted to have. And so I said nothing, cradling our illusions in simple rhythms.

 ------------------------------------

Bea's Song (River Song Trilogy: Part ll)

Songwriter: TIMMINS, MICHAEL EDWARD.  

Speed river at my feet running low and flat
I'm sitting here burning daylight,
Thinking about the past
And that distance out there
Where the earth meets the sky
The slightest move and this river mud
Pulls me further down
John's at my side, but he's sitting on firmer ground

John says I look at the moon and the stars
These days more often than I look into his eyes
And I can't disagree so I don't say nothing
I just stare on past his face at venus rising,
Like a shining speck of hope hanging over the horizon

With each passing year that I sit here
That horizon seems to inch just that much nearer
And all that appears on it seems as clear as spit
But if there's one thing in my life
That these years have taught
It's that you can always see it coming
But you can never stop it

Speed river at my feet running low and flat
I'm sitting here burning daylight,
Thinking about the past
And that distance out there
Where the earth meets the sky
The slightest move and this river mud
Pulls me further down
John's at my side,
But he's not noticing that I'm drowning
The slightest move and this river mud
Pulls me further down
John's at my side,
But he's not noticing that I'm drowning

Catch Up

A month evaporated quickly, thanks in part to a new part-time job at an art museum.

In some ways, working at a museum is like working anywhere else.  The server is sometimes slow, the new database quirky, free food brings everyone out to the reception desk, and parking can be tough some days.

And in some ways, working at a museum is totally different. For instance, I can take a 5 minute break and run downstairs to stare at a Georgia O'Keefe painting if I feel like it.  I get to peek into rooms and see the exhibits going up.

Plus, the art by the copy machine beats the heck out of that at any other office I've worked: an enormous Impressionist oil painting of rocking chairs, complete with fancy gold frame.

Unable to get a decent photo of it (light streaming through the window left it dark and sickly yellow) I had a little fun photo editing.

In my head, the copier station now looks like this:

Disco pink photocopying!  Get your glitter on, and I'll see you by the rocking chairs.

In other news, I acquired a bag full of golf tees from a museum fundraiser that I'm trying to turn into an art project.  So far, no substantial progress.  Suggestions welcome.