Can’t say that I’ve gotten much accomplished this weekend other than laundry. I looked over this stitching project and realized that life is too short to be compulsive about doing all this when I’m really not thrilled about most of the pieces. I whittled it down to the long piece and the mostly blue piece and spent several pleasant hours stitching while listening to Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow, leaving most of my thoughts floating in the air somewhere, not a care in the world. It was good for me, because thinking about the world outside of this little house has been bringing me way, way down. When I didn’t like most of the stitching I did this afternoon, I looked at it as an applique opportunity. So maybe this will become a stitch practice, or a mood journal of sorts. One thing is for sure, it is SLOW.
I had some amazing news on Friday after I posted my blog post – I sold “A Place You’ve Never Been” at the Tapestry Weavers South exhibition. Now, here’s the thing. I put a high price on it and “Cathedral” because I didn’t really want to sell them. I nearly called the curator to tell her to put NFS on both of them. But I thought, nobody is going to pay that price for either of them and if they do, I’ll put the money aside for something really nice for myself. The gallery commission was 50% so I put $1,000 on “A Place You’ve Never Been” and $10,000 on “Cathedral” (I REALLY don’t want to sell it.). So that’s $500 coming my way for the deposit on Laurie Doctor’s workshop in Italy in September 2024.
I’m not interested in making art for money. It sucks the joy out of it for me. You know, I just need something to do with my hands. I will never ever sell my art for cheap. It undercuts the value of my time and the value of other artists’ work. I’d rather give it away than sell it cheap.
However, I kind of fucked up, because I never thought I’d sell it, I didn’t get a good photograph of it in its final setting. I had wrapped it up to send it to another show in early May in which I was going to put NFS on it, and then I found out that I had to put it up for sale. So I never sent it, and I didn’t unwrap it. And guess what, I realize that I didn’t get good photos of the other two in their final form either. I finished getting them hemmed and backed and hanging devices on them at the last minute, and I didn’t stop to photograph them – just jumped in the car and drove with them to Asheville. I hope that I’ll be able to do it when I go to whatever kind of opening we have, whether it’s just a get-together or public. What’s funny is that for a while I was sharing so many photos of it in progress that I decided not to share another photo until it was framed and ready for display. Lesson learned.
Here’s a photo of it when I was testing out different color backgrounds, and a photo of it that my friend sent me when she was there and noticed the red “sold” dot on the card.
I spent several frustrating hours searching for the best, most affordable way for us to go to Scotland in May or June, and it just ain’t gonna happen. Sandy and I went out to the used bookstore where I picked up a couple of travel books on Scotland and Great Britain, and when we went out to eat, I told him that he was going to have to pony up more money for this trip because I haven’t had time to save for it, and I keep my credit cards paid off. This isn’t like Portugal, when I had the airfare already paid from when I’d planned to go to Ireland in 2020, and the accommodations were inexpensive, and I had two extra years to save up for it. He is worried about his medical bills, so we decided to try to do it in September. I don’t know if we’ll be able to do it then either, but I’m glad to have made the decision not to try it in May or June, anyway.
This clears the way for me to go to Penland this summer IF and ONLY IF I can get a scholarship, which, since I am older, I figure is a long shot at best. But it’s only $5 to submit the application, so I’ve decided to put one together over the next week or two. The deadline is Feb. 15, just before my 62nd birthday. I will try not to be disappointed if I don’t get one. I’ll just need to find another way to have fun this summer. I’m sure some kind of workshop will pop up that I can do in person. Maybe I just need to knuckle down and actually get a body of work together – now there’s a thought. Actually doing art instead of dreaming about going to workshops to do art!