confederate rose, sunsets, rain

I have a bunch of pictures that I've been taking but haven't been posting so...

My confederate rose that volunteered last year mid-spring from the two weirdly diseased older specimens has been blooming beautifully. I have kept the two older ones cut to the ground since no one can tell me what the problem is, hopefully to prevent them from infecting the new one. Actually three volunteered but I gave two of them away.

This one has the flowers opening white and turning pink before they close at the end of the day (or the next day if the weather is cold) and although I have seen other shrubs that did that, my others never did.

Confederate roses aren't really roses. They are in the mallow family along with hibiscus, cotton, and okra.

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We have been getting some unbelievably gorgeous sunsets. The view, standing at the back of the property looking south and west over the 13 Acre Field, is one of the big reasons we bought this place.

And another.

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One of the reason for the sunsets is we are getting our fall rains. We are in a continuing drought with this year being worse than last but not as bad as the one previous to that. Even so, we have not had a hard continuous rain for a very long time. Until last Thursday. Heavy rain for half a day and if Frank's rain gauge is accurate, we got 3 1/8”.

Water in the ditch, something not seen for several years.

Water standing in the yard!

2 rag dolls and a sideshow attraction

I might have mentioned in a previous post that the three grandgirls came out for an overnighter last weekend and we worked on red yarn wigs for the twins' Halloween costumes of Raggedy Ann and how I didn't get a picture of them trying them on.

Well, it turns out I didn't get a picture but their younger sister did.

I think I also mentioned that I went in town last week so I could take the girls to the thrift center to find suitable dresses for their costumes but as it happened it didn't work out so I went by myself and picked out totally appropriate clothing except none of it fit...too small.

You think we are smaller than we actually are, Jade tells me.

So I busied myself making the aprons last Monday so Marc could deliver them when he went in to do a small job on Tuesday.

Got these pictures from their mother.

Jade had been more reluctant about the idea and decided not to wear her wig.

But Autumn totally rocks.

Robin, as always, walks her own path.

of pecans

The pecans have been falling in ernest the last several days.

I read somewhere, somewhen that walking in the dew covered grass barefoot was good for your circulation so I try and get out there between coffee and breakfast.

When we get dew on the ground and even when we don't and sometimes even before coffee.

Some of the leaves on the pecan trees are starting to yellow and fall.

I have finally, over a period of the past several weeks, picked up more pecans than I had left over from last year, ones that didn't get sold or shelled.

Three previous forays today filling up my shirt bottom held up like a basket and this last time I filled up a one gallon bucket and went out again a little later and filled up another one gallon bucket.

It's like the pecans all had this day earmarked on their calendar to fall.

I have totally abandoned my orderly criss-crossing of the yard while picking up pecans in favor of wandering aimlessly.

My neighbor Frank Of The Bountiful Garden is so frail these days, I wonder who is going to pick up his pecans.

A two foot long coral snake crossed my barefoot path while I was searching under my absentee neighbor's tree.

I think our tree that lost three big branches this summer is producing most of this year's crop.

Shelling pecans will be part of my evening activity for an unknown number weeks to come.

I wonder if my son will make me that terribly rich brandied fig and pecan pie again this year.

Lou Reed is really dead

Lou Reed is dead. Really dead this time and not an internet hoax. I wasn't a big fan of his. I associated his music with heroin use and my experiences with people who used heroin were all negative...eventually.

I did plenty of drugs myself but mostly just pot and hallucinogens. I learned early that speed and downers were not for me. Speed made me lose weight and I was far too skinny as it was, downers just put me to sleep and one time I almost didn't wake up and I don't even know what it was I took. Scared my roommate because she couldn't rouse me for classes.

It was a very stupid act on my part. I was 19 maybe and I was getting kicked out of college six weeks before the end of the second semester for smoking pot

which I was doing but they only caught me because they set me up using someone who I thought was a friend and she turned me in

and I had made the mistake of letting the Dean Of Women call my parents to inform them of the fact

apparently she lied to them about what kind of drugs I was taking

and I had recently gotten off the phone with my parents who were coming to get me over the weekend and I knew I was in for a world of hurt and I finally had a date with a guy in my Geology class that I was interested in and we went out that night and he gave me this 'downer', a pill he had got somewhere and I took it.

Fortunately I did get back to my dorm room before I passed out and fortunately (or unfortunately) my roommate just let me be I was still breathing and eventually I woke up and had an awful hangover and had to face my parents in a few days.

So the day comes, and they barely speak to me and frogmarch me to the car and don't let me get in the backseat but make me get in the front seat between them and my father grabs my left arm and jerks up the sleeve of my shirt and checks my arm for tracks and then does the same thing on my right arm and...

I cannot believe he just did that

I am insulted to the core and after that everything he says to me falls on deaf ears. I am, of course, their virtual prisoner so I try and make all the sounds they want to hear.

That little act cleaved me from my parents for the rest of my life. That and the year or two that followed, before I escaped their house altogether and I married the Rat Bastard to do it.

Who I divorced 3 1/2 years later.

The next time my father tried to control who I was and, basically, my life, I stood up to him and told him I would do what I damn well pleased.

Actually, I think what I said was I would sleep with who I wanted and when I wanted and if he didn't like it I would move out.

I was living with them at the time.

I know, I know.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Lou Reed and heroin. My 1^st husband/ex-husband used heroin but not while we were married. I didn't put up with that shit. Last I heard he had got disability from his parent's company where he went to work after I divorced him because he didn't have anyone to support him anymore from an accident on the job site because he was probably STONED and hooked up with another junkie who got an inheritance and they were living in a trailer house somewhere in Florida doing drugs all day.

But that was a long time ago.

I had a friend once who did heroin, this was back in the Rat Bastard days, until he broke in my house when I was gone on vacation and stole from me.

Anyway, you get the picture.

I know I'm being unfair to Lou Reed. I know he was a very talented guy and very influential and I did/do like some of his stuff and we are poorer for his passing.

But I was never a big fan.

grandkids, Halloween, and work

My daughter brought all three girls out last Saturday to spend the night (we all need a break from each other, she says) so while the youngest lost herself in MineCraft, the twins and I worked on red yarn wigs for their Halloween costumes, (twin) Raggedy Anns. I'm sorry I didn't get a picture of them trying on the finished product. I hesitate to call them wigs as it's not a wig so much as a mop on top of their heads.

The grandboy didn't come this quick trip since because, as he is 16 and can get a job, he went out and got a job working at the neighborhood grocery store. He likes it. He likes having money in his pocket. Now if he would just like his schoolwork enough to graduate we'd all be happy.

I've started making some little things for the open house in December this year. I've got some pieces in the kiln forming over fiber paper to emboss the glass with the design for little garden sun catchers. Marc's going to make three of the plain small bowls and he's been working on the molds. I still have some of the little cast pieces from last year and I want to do a set of 4 tiles using clay for the models. Something quick and easy, a little less controlled.

OK, quiet out there.

I have a hard time doing 'a little less controlled'.

I also got the intermediate sized art for the next commission done and went in town last Thursday for an overnighter to get the enlargement and to help the twins finish getting their halloween costume so I hit the thrift shops and found some suitable (to me) stuff. They were supposed to go with me Thursday evening but it didn't work out.

The installation for the last etched glass job we did was on Friday morning. I forgot the tripod so my pics were all hand held and everybody was standing around watching me. I wanted to sneak a picture of the glass fronted cabinet with all her purses in it but both of them were hanging around during the whole installation so I couldn't do it.

Next week should be fairly busy.

PS. thank you everyone who commented on my last post. I do have confidence in the quality of our work. What I don't have is the thick skin or the detachment or the determination to find another gallery that does these shows...yet. It may happen.

SOFA approaches

SOFA, Sculptural Objects and Functional Art, is coming up the first weekend in November. SOFA Chicago is an international show for galleries to exhibit the works of their artists to a huge crowd over a three day period. There are actually three SOFA shows; New York, Chicago, and Santa Fe; but the SOFA Chicago is the biggest.

We were lucky enough to be picked up by a gallery that does the SOFA shows and in fact had our work shown there for three years; 2006, 2007, 2008. It was an exhilarating and demoralizing experience all at the same time.

The level and quality of work there, that the big guns in the art world; artists, galleries, and collectors; are there is intimidating. Our first year, the biggest question on my mind was how the hell did we get in here though everyone assured us that our work was definitely worthy.

The first year we didn't sell anything. Not unusual they told me. Collectors want to see how your work wears over time. Your third year is when things take off, they told me. The second year, we sold one piece.

The third year, 2008 (which started out really good for us with our one person show at our local gallery), is the year the bottom dropped out of Lehman Brothers, with the stock market following soon after, just a few weeks before the SOFA Chicago show. Needless to say, it was a fairly dismal show for everyone and a lot of the galleries lost money.

Also needless to say, we did not get our third year bump though we did sell two very nice pieces in the following couple of months to collectors who had seen the work at the show.

I was demoralized. The gallery that had been showing our work at SOFA basically dropped us like a hot potato, stopped taking our work to the various shows around the country, which I understand. They had to scale back and focus on artists who were known sellers. And while it was not the only gallery that was showing our work, it was the only one that does SOFA and the other shows.

The economic climate that persisted for the next several years was not conducive to the sale of art. Galleries closed, some artists quit trying to make it, many artists fell back on teaching at the studios that brought in guest teachers.

We were fortunate to have three very good commission jobs in the latter half of 2008 through early 2010, work that had been funded before the crash, so I didn't have a lot of time left over to work on the pate de verre and it was just as well, as I had no interest.

And it hadn't been fun for a while, it had got us in some serious debt. Once I had decided to get in the galleries and aspire to the shows and collectors instead of doing it for my own enjoyment, I was having to work on it all the time and get the work out there, applying to all sorts of exhibitions, going to the conventions. And once in the shows, they weren't good for me. It was emotional turmoil, and like I said, demoralizing.

It was two years before I actually got in the studio again after 2008 and started to play around. I had to let go of the desire to be discovered by the galleries and sought by the collectors. I had tried, gone into the studio several times, standing in front of my model making tools thinking I should probably do something before I just turned around and walked out again.

It was a long process for me. Letting go of that desire. I had chosen at the very beginning to do commission work and I had made my living at that all my life. Now it was just too late, I think, to switch. Too late to start over.

And I also realize now, that there is no way to make a living on this obscure, difficult, time consuming, and detail oriented technique unless your work sells for stratospheric prices. I don't want to do production work therefore every piece is one of a kind and they take a long time to make. But I'm having fun with it again. I have one gallery willing to take the few pieces I make.

But that's OK. When the commission work allows, I work on the cast glass and I'm usually content with that. Except for this time of year, with the SOFA show approaching.

This time of year, I still yearn. This time of year I sometimes feel like I failed. I got my foot in the door but didn't have what it takes to stay in the room. 

short stories 13

My new confederate rose, the one that volunteered last year and is now 8' tall has started blooming. The new flowers are opening white! They turn pink throughout the day, darkening to dark pink by the time they close up. I've seen bushes around that did that my my two that were so gorgeous last year and totally diseased this year never did that.

The pecan trees started dropping mature pecans several weeks ago. So far I've picked up about a gallon. Last year was phenomenal, the best year ever, with several hundred pounds of pecans. I don't expect too many this year though as the trees are not very laden.

The 13 Acre Field behind us is looking beautiful with the fall grasses blooming and waving in the wind. I expect they'll be around to hay the field soon. They always do every time it starts to look really good.

We went to see Gravity this week. Go see it. Just...go see it if it's not too late. In 3D. There's a scene where she sheds a few tears in zeroG and the tears oozed out of her eye, balled up, and then drifted off.

I've almost finished the current model. Not best pleased with it, not through with it, still have to do the stamens and maybe that's what's wrong. Maybe it will somehow come together when I do that part. I usually do it all together but for some reason I thought it would be easier to do it separate and add it in. I'm mostly just settling. It'll do, like the pig. I really liked the picture though. I wish I could have done a better job of it.

We finished this panel last week. 47” x 23”. This is the panel that I previously wrote about that goes into the had-been-window that now looks from the bathroom into the closet. I have to schedule the installation now.

We've been getting some pretty awesome sunsets now that we are getting our fall rains. The clouds were looking like the tendrils of jellyfish the other evening (on max zoom and enhanced).