A Breakthrough!

I'm back at work today after my first long weekend of many. What do I mean by this?

I have begun my NEW WORKWEEK! I have finally conceptualised and negotiated this after a long time (years) of feeling burnt out, not coping, always behind and dissatisfied with my life. As I've mentioned in my profile, I feel as though I am in "wage slavery" and wish I could be an artist full-time, but there's that little money/survival issue, not improved by my single-parent status. A multitude of things that have to be done add to the stressors, and I find I often have the feeling that I am just not coping, but being pulled on a rope behind a big truck going too fast.

I've also found that contrary to my expectations, my teenagers need me a lot. They don't need as much physically, but they need emotional care and a lot of *listening*, and I need to be relaxed enough to do that listening and around when they get to talking. My parenting is a big part of who I am and occupies (voluntarily) a lot of my thoughts and hours. While they are little you dream of all the time you will have free as they grow up and 'need you less'. Hahahaha. Not so. They need you less in many ways, but then need you more in other ways. (Perhaps we need that illusion while they are small!) They are very companiable at this age, I am finding that I WANT to spend time with them, since I'm aware that time is fleeting and they will soon be gone.

So a while back, I sat and did the exercise of "If I could have whatever I wanted and money was no object, what would I want?" I found that what I wanted most was TIME (to do all the things I really wanted to do). Ideally I wouldn't work and just have unlimited money etc etc. but then I did the next exercise, which is "Which of these things could I have *right now*, with just small modifications to my life?" Think compromise. And what I wanted was to reduce my working hours from full-time to a little less, but not part-time, which I cannot afford to do.

I sat and did sums for working 4 days a week, 3 days a week etc. I worked out that I could probably manage on a 4/5 salary - we will miss some things, but my quality of life will improve, to make up for it, and as I am happier, I will be more available for my girls. Happiness isn't in having more stuff anyways.

I first tested out the feelings of my boss by enquiring whether the option of a 4/5 workweek was available and he didn't think so. Then I said "So it's either fulltime of half-time?" He answered interestingly, I thought. He said "well, 4 days out of 5 would be better than half time".

I mulled it over for a few weeks until a number of things all piled together and convinced me that I HAVE to change something or I will be heading for an early grave. (I already suffer from underactive thyroid, high blood pressure and depression and landed in hospital last year with uncontrolled high blood pressure and uncontrolled headaches). And then I went to him (last week) and said "I *need* to reduce my working hours *somehow*". I put together the possible options and we discussed it and then -

-he accepted the 4/5ths!!!! I couldn't believe it!

I will take a 1/5 pay cut. We have yet to work out how it will impact on my benefits (medical aid, pension etc) but I have asked that they cut the housing subsidy first and the medical aid last. So I should be able to retain most benefits. My leave will also be cut by 1/5.

I take off fridays, which gives me a long weekend, EVERY weekend! I've only just begun, but coming in to work this morning, I just felt SO good. I got lots of backlogged stuff done on the extra day and even had time to just sit and blob a bit. We'll lose a few luxuries, but with both my mental and physical health at stake, I'm ok with that. I've noticed that both girls are getting a little overweight (we won't even talk about the body that I currently inhabit...) as I'm too tired to provide proper food, so I'll be able to give that some attention.

I think just one extra day a week is going to go a LONG way.... without landing us on the street.

I've thought for a long time that there should be more flexibility in our working lives, especially for mothers. Women should be able to job-share, where 2 people cover one job. We should be able to work 3/4 time and other permutations. This kind of thing is well recognised in Europe, but we lag behind here in South Africa. We need to set some precedents, so this kind of thinking becomes more accepted. Then both our jobs and our families can be accommodated and we can adapt to different stages, going back to full-time when less is needed at home.

I think I also realised that jobs come and go, and if I fall over dead they'll have me replaced pretty soon, but my girls will not replace me that quickly. They are what really matter to me. So I really hope this works out for us... and I am feeling a whole lot more positive about my job now (it allows me to indulge in my art AND still eat!)

Plus, I'll keep buying Lotto tickets - hey, *someone* has to win! I know that statistically it won't be me, but... dreams are free.

Life around the Quilts

A recent storm in our area. After torrential rain for days and days, many trees were unstable so when the strong winds hit, several trees cracked under the strain. (Fortunately my great oak is very, very well rooted and suffered no harm). We saw this as we drove home from my daughters' school:

Several homes have only had intermittent electricity and repairs are ongoing. Much worse off were some areas in the townships where homes were flooded.

And this be our precious ball of fluff. Cassie is the youngest addition to our very female (and moderately feline) family. She is 4 months in this picture (now 5 months) and a cheeky little delight, full of teeth and claws. We acquired Cassie after Claws (our other black cat) was run over by a car outside our house. I cried buckets, as did my daughter, to whom Claws "belonged". Our older cat, Abby, who is around 3 is totally unimpressed with this cheeky squirt and hisses and boos every time Cassie goes past. Sigh.

Another design exercise done

This was another of the design exercises. I didn't do much to it, just outline quilting and the couching of the yellow to focus on the main spiral.

More unfinished things

These are samples of 'made fabric', made from offcuts and bits of thread etc etc (I keep a huge jar by my sewing machine and everytime I snip a thread, I pop it in the jar). When there are enough, all the bits are sandwiched between 2 pieces of net, or sheers, or even net grocery bags, and then one free-motion quilts all over to hold it all together. I wish this was my own idea, but I saw it in Arlee Barr's brilliant tutorial, where she calls it 'leaf hair'. Making this makes my recycling heart jump for joy, as well as being supremely easy on the budget... :) I am convinced that one day I will make a masterpiece with this, that will leave people gasping and running after garbage trucks, rummaging through public bins etc.

Holey, moley! I'm not quite sure why I did this. It's not finished and I don't know what to next.

These are a bit cryptic and it's hard to explain but they are pieces which will all be sewn together to make a 3D model of the HIV, except it's not as much biological as social comment. I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait until I finish it and take photos.

This was an attempt at the stained-glass technique and I think I made all the possible mistakes with it. Sometimes I think I tend to just make stuff that is the perfect example of how NOT to do something! (which reminds me of that .sig I read once that said "Just think: your sole purpose in life may be to serve as a warning to others!") It is also the first (and only, so far) in a Goddess series which I have more ideas for. I am currently trying to rescue it and then I will border, back and quilt it after which it may well go back into the box from whence it recently emerged!

African Mandala. I have totally dried up on what to do next with this one and it needs so much more! I think it has great potential, but I also feel quite stumped. I guess it's a good example of how one needs to do some sort of planning before leaping in.... So this mandala is waiting for inspiration. I LOVE the idea of doing circular works and I can see I will have to invent a way to hang circles, so I can do more.

These photos spread themselves around the page, but strangely, everytime I delete one photo, ALL the pics I have already uploaded vanish. Eventually I gave up and left it. These pics are parts of a curtain I made for my daughter. It's just the top, no batting or quilting. One day I should do something with it.

Past works 5

"View from Shanta's window" 1994.

Shanta was my therapist during a bad bout of post-natal depression. I gazed at this view so many times trying to sort out stuff. It was so restful and soothing. This was also the first time I machine-pieced hexagons, following instructions from Marie du Toit's book Machine Patchwork. I later had the thrill of meeting her at a quilt show and was able to tell her how great her instructions were.

That said, I think my days of intricate piecing are numbered....!

I'm blogging so it must be Tuesday

So... I promised pics of the design exercises when they were finished. So far only two are done, but here they are.
The first is the rectangles covered with sheer fabric.
Before: After:
Next is the plain rectangle design that wasn't very successful - I think I improved it quite a bit! Before:
After:

It may take a while to get to the others since I've gone off on a couple of other tangents and... well, it's the usual story: Work all day, one child sick, the other hectic with school activities so needs support there, their father away so not even the usual few times when they go to visit him.... so things are proceeding at snail's pace. SOME is done every day, but that some is not very much some. (but it's the sum of it all that counts! ok, stop groaning now.....) ;)

Just life stuff

I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while - a week, I see. But hold on, this is a private blog so who am I apologising to??? I guess to myself, as I really would like to do this more often. But there was so much other stuff to do: I had to make bath salts and cards for the Craft table at Jessie's school Fete (I had promised) and then I had to make munchies for Media fundraising for the school and that HAD to be sugary, so I made caramel popcorn. And.. and... I don't know, a myriad of little things, like sit in the traffic dept queue for about an hour to renew my expired car licence. Oh, and work and make food and house stuff....
But I have a few pics in the camera of the graphic design exercises that are complete, and I am working on the HIV model that I have wanted to do for a long time. Maybe I can take some pics of this during this coming weekend!

What's happening?

Not much has been written, but much has been stitched! Ideas seem to come at the rate of about 3 a day, and every few days I just can't resist the impulse to begin on an idea as it is JUST so CLEAR in my head and I badly want to see it "out there". I've lost count of the number of unfinished tops I have lying around at home. I do seriously intend to finish them all, but since my main goal is this entire activity is to have fun, relax, express myself and play, I don't worry too much about all the unfinisheds. I shall leave that concern to the Quilt Police and just hope they never visit my home!

I'm trying to set up sewing (or crafting) dates with eachone of my friends at a time, so that I can get to see them again - it's been so long!

And I have to, have to, have to have a clean-up of my work area soon. Piles of stuff are several layers deep on the tables. Bought some nifty rectangular plastic boxes recently to sort my fabrics into colours, but I have so much it is actually quite obscene and I will need many, many more. So I will probably just sort the materials that I use by colour the most - the rest can be loose in the lockers.

Graphic Design Workshop exercises

NOTE: All of these are unfinished - we had to do the design in the workshop, but it was left to us to finish them off later.
We had to use hands in this design.

Rectangles, in three different colours, covered with a sheer, which was then cut away in places.

Rectangles again, in one colour only. Try to use the spaces as well. This wasn't very successful - the very orderly part of me did this one and it's very static. I have since added to this design - it's *almost* finished, and then I'll add the pic to the blog.

Spirals. Why does this remind me of those ads in magazines for children's worm remedies? Ew. I have not got to completing this yet (but I'm working my way through all of these littlies, so I WILL get there.)

I struggled with this one and still don't like it. We had to do long wavy bits and then cut organic shapes around them. Maybe all of the colours are too strong and I need to emphasize one of them more. I just dont' know. I don't relate to this.


Circles. I enjoyed this one. Circles are such a satisfying shape! I definitely tend towards busy-ness in a design. There are many different textures here - and the brief was to keep to one colour and close tonal values, but to emphasize texture.

Past works 4

I do knit too, although not very much. I've mostly knitted up (or woven) the wool I spun and dyed, so I don't have too much of a stash left.b This is a scarf I knitted from some bought hand-spun and -dyed cotton.















These two, are bits I did and then later just put them to use, as a curtain and as a tablecloth. They are a bit too chaotic, but they'll serve their purpose for now.







This next one is actually a weaving a did back when I used to spin and dye wool. The background is white, handspun, undyed mohair and the embroidery was done with dyed, handspun mohair.

This is an old one that I got stuck with and still haven't completed. It has to do with my attitude to living in Africa - the exhilaration and the despair of all the situations we get ourselves into. I'm sitting watching, sometimes, puttibng my head down in despair, sometimes cheering. It needs something - but it's already so busy (my life!) so I haven't got to what, yet.

Past works 3

Escher's Temptation:
I apologise for the lousy photography, once again. This started as an exercise in working in just black and white, but at the end I just could not restrain myself! I wonder if MC Escher did not ever feel this way in his print medium, and feel glad that I have the entire rainbow to work with.

Detail of the bottom, the 'temptation' part. I succumbed, did he ever?

Past works 2

This one, still untitled, is complete and I had meant to enter it into the 2006 Nathional Quilt show, but the deadline came and went and work was so crazy that I missed it completely. Darn. Typical of the way my life is. I want to title it something like Afro-Optimism: the beat goes on or something to be opposite to all the afro-pessimism there is around.






I made this after borrowing a Nancy Crow book from Sally Scott, so I guess this is also a "Channelling Nancy Crow" type of work. Just the top is done, not yet quilted and I'm not yet certain how I want to quilt it. I'll put Nancy Crow's name in the title somehow.

Current works-in-progress

Working title of the one above is 'Drained' - mainly because that is how I felt/feel. It has text embroidered onto it, which you can't see in the pic, but which I may add in here sometime. I think the function of this piece was just to do a brain-drain, just to get everything out that was stuck in there, so I could flow again. I'm not sure it will ever be for public consumption. The embroidered letters are so skew and mal-sized, I've considered ditching it several times, but kept working. This is one of those that has to be done, not because it has much merit, but so the next one can come out! I had felt dry and empty for so long that I decided to go back to the colours (blues/purples) and pattern (log cabin derivative) of "Windows" and see if perhaps I could recapture something of the previous success? I was 'cashing in' on what I had previously thought out and merely reproducing it, hoping it would make something happen.

I have higher hopes for this one, currently titled "Hi-Tech Biology: Stem Cell Hopes". (Titles change over the course of working on something, depending on which direction they take!) This piece started as a fractal (a graphic representation of a mathematical function) but as I ad-libbed onto it, it became more and more biological. Below are two more pics taken closer (I've only been operating the digital camera for about a week!) although you still can't see great close-ups of the beading detail. I am currently hand-quilting this piece at tea-and lunch-times at my job and in the evenings before the TV.

I'm planning to enter this one for Innovative Threads 2007 where I hope it will stand a chance of being accepted. It is entirely handmade, unusual for me, but all the curvy pieces would just have been so difficult to manoevre on the machine. I have a lot of hope for the therapeutic stem cell technology that is being worked on so hard, especially for what it may be able to do for people with conditions and disabilities such as Diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and many others. Of course it would be even more wonderful if it were to become usable in my daughter's lifetime (she has diabetes, type 1).

Past Works 1

The details pics were meant to come after the full pic, but I've not yet learned how to make that happen, so this will have to do.

I'll start with the one that was accepted for the Innovative Threads exhibition in 2005. I should add that this is the first (and only) piece I have ever entered into an exhibition and my beginner's luck in having it accepted was one of the most affirming experiences in a very long time. Here is the catalogue description.
"Windows of My Eyes":
It is said that ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’. Both without and within, the world is rich, but so very chaotic! New horizons inspired by Sally Scott. "
(I want to thank another two people at this point - Elisma, who nagged me for years to enter things for exhibitions, and Mariss, without whose insistence I would not even have got this shipped off. )
These are pics I took at home - please ignore the very inauspicious background!

Channelling Melody Johnson

This is what I had fun doing last week. I've been reading Melody's blog for about a month now and been SO inspired. This is not typical of my work at all, but I had fun trying out the fusing and enjoyed how quickly it all came together - I began one evening, worked on it the following evening and finished it the next morning, hanging sleeve and all!

But the fuse does not hold it without stitching. I quilted over this, quite densely, but I can see it will fray over time - and the whole point is the very clean lines. I'm working on a pebbles piece and will probably stitch around every pebble to hold them down. Since the fuse doesn't even come with a brand name - it's just sold as 'applique paper', I will have to make do until I can buy (and afford to buy!) the American stuff.

Welcome to my blog

My condolences on your having stumbled upon this little corner of the WWW! I'm really only doing this because I enjoy reading the blogs of others (especially those of other art quilters!) and I am trying to nurture a little artistic self that is rather timid and needs encouragement and practice in being and doing. I did not initially think of this as a public exercise and having others actually read this feels very intimidating, so for now, the blog is not public. Maybe sometime my little artist soul will have the courage to make it public (or, more likely, she will do so impulsively!)

The cryptic name 'ArtErgoEst' is a (poetically licenced!) mishmash of 3 words in 3 languages: 'Art' (English), 'Ergo' (Latin) and 'Est' (French). It seemed shorter and less unweildy that 'IArtThereforeIAm', although now, when I look at 'artergoest', I wonder. But there it is.

So, to boldly go where I have never gone before, I claim a wee corner of the Web for the musings, ramblings and pics of what I should have devoted far more effort to, than I have in the past (but am now hopefully compensating for!) -my art.
(and, as evidenced by that last sentence, boldly taking the English language where it has never been before either.....!)

Good post on creativity

OK, I did a pile of real work - and then i WABbed a bit again. (WAB - Work Avoidance Behaviour). I found this great post: Danny Gregory. It was good. I am still waiting for my copy of Art and Fear and it will be another 2 weeks before it comes, so in the meantime I am having fun surfing the 'Net for inspiration. Take a look at this link: also great! Fabric Art Journals

Progress?

Yes, some. Slower than I would like, but not insignificant. (If you're confused, I'm talking about progress in my fledgling "career as an artist".)
1. I dashed off a design yesterday at work (work-avoidance-behaviour is my major activity these days) and enlarged it on the photocopier. Got home and was itching to start so fused lots of little bits of fabric to a large sheet of applique paper, got the stucky fuse all over the ironing board, iron, fabrics, fingers, clothes - all because I try to use the ittiest bits becuase the darn paper is so expensive and hard to get hold of, the quality is extremely variable and none of it has a brand name, so I have no clue if it is my technique or the stuff that isn't working.. Anyways, where there is a will there is a way - and I managed to fuse and cut all the little bits until the (small) design was all done, except for 4 pieces, which I had to leave because it was late and I HAD to sleep. Tonight I'll fuse just a wee more fabric and complete it, and then batt and back it and maybe even quilt it! I may even try the escape hatch finish! - although I'll have to modify that too, since I don't have cotton batting and the synthetic stuff tends to flatten and gummify when you iron it. So I might fuse the top onto a backing and then sandwich it and close the escape hatch with a whipstitch and cover that with the hanging sleeve. Scarcity of resource makes you inventive!
2. I actually plucked up the courage to speak to my boss today about a reduced-hours contract! It won't happen for a while, but at least I have brought up the topic. I NEED more time for my art.

Ideas are coming way faster than they can be processed and I grab scraps of paper and scribble and sketch. It's fun and I am happy, but having dreadful back-, shoulder-, neck- and headaches from the tight muscles of excitement. Might have to go and take another painkiller right now.

But it's all good. I'm working it and that is all I have to do - show up and work it.

Plans for this blog

So, now that I have committed myself to this blog, I am starting to crystallise what it is I want to do here. I'd like to go back and ferret out all my works and take some photographs of them all and post them here.
(abrupt end to post as work called!)

Recent Workshops

Just came back from Sands of Time 2006. I attended 2 workshops - Jutta Faulds' Transformed Textiles on dyeing/printing fabrics every which way, and then Odette Tolksdorf's Major Minors on making small works that are either complete in themselves or serve as a way to test an idea for a larger piece.

Both were very, very useful and I thought I had chosen well for where I am at this point. I am raring to go in both areas, with more ideas than I can feasibly accomplish. Having to spend 8 to 5 otherwise occupied is frustrating; this day-job, having-to-earn-a-living thing is really most inconvenient when one has other plans!

Made a few decisions: 1) I am going to keep up this blog, and when I have the courage, make it public. BUT, 2) I am not going to commit to updating it very often, as the scarce free time I have is going to go to making art, feeding my muse and keeping myself and my daughters alive and well, possibly even in that order.

And 3) with my daughter's marvellous digital camera, I shall take photos and upload them here. Photos are very interesting in a blog.

4) I shall email Melody Johnson and tell her how much I enjoy and have been inspired by her blog (again, when I have the courage). Especially her pep talks and quotes on being an artist.

5) Next workshops shall be with Sue Akerman and Macky Cilliers. Very talented women. I may just have to make it a priority to get to Joburg in 2008!

Also did a few things: Ordered the book Odette mentioned called Art and Fear from Kalahari's most convenient 30% off book sale, ordered some dyes and made enquiries about buying larger amounts of dye from various sources online. I feel like I am moving.

It's a happy day today. It's lunchtime and I'm about to sit down on the floor in my office and work on my current piece :)