loosening up

Barbara Kingsolver: The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof

-from Animal Dreams, a stunning early novel of Kingsolver’s I read till it fell to pieces…and I am a careful reader 😉

And I took this to heart, and I worked on myself, and sh*t kept falling down, and even so, within 10 years I had started painting, and had found my process and wrote this in the artist’s statement for my 2003 exhibition ‘No Such Thing As Empty Space’ :

I paint because nothing else calls to me the way the making of paintings does. To prepare a painting, to move paint over a surface is the most interesting, compelling, spiritually opening, deeply satisfying act I know…the best use I can make of my life, an act that centres everything and gives me a place to stand, just as I am. To pick up an oilbar or even a brush loaded with primer and to feel a momentum building until I simply have to explore what is possible in this moment, given the time, energy, ideas, feelings and materials to hand – what could be better? Paintings are both a space and a time, an object and a process, painting/s, noun and verb in one…the newer works are also love painting/s, paintings made for the love of paint, its materiality, physicality, presence…sumptuous surfaces dance, dazzle, drift…too complete to be empty, too active to be empty, too full of possibility to be empty…

detail Hsien/Celestial Dee Fairchild 2003

What do you do, when you can no longer do what made you most alive?

Cherise asked me what makes me most alive now. Getting lost in making, assemblage and embellishment makes me forget the chronic pain, and I do enjoy it. The best is probably making machine cords, creating amazing combinations of colours and textures and making structures and fabrics out of them. It’s not the same as painting though, it’s absorbing, but not as directive as painting was –  I used to floss my teeth because I was a painter! It was in everything! And working on the self promotion and marketing side of being an artist was hard then, but the last few days I have felt so sad…because it’s even harder when I don’t have the same backbone about my installations that I did about my paintings, I just ‘knew’ that they had followed process and come to resolution, and that this was how they were meant to be. I can feel the conviction of following process, but hard as it was to get respect as a painter, fibre art is so ignored by the conceptualists, it just feels twice as hard now… and I feel disempowered in how I’m handling it…

I hoped the Friday class would give me some …. confidence? some techniques to manage the stress? I’m not sure now, because it’s such a long time since I signed up. I did hope I would feel more confident tackling proposals and approaching galleries. And the class has been excellent in many ways, and I really admire Chris Lewis-Jones for juggling the different (hugely different 😉 ) expectations of the class members, but right now, right now, I feel really sad… I feel very reminded how judgemental and prejudiced I find the artworld mindset. I feel as ignored there as I did in my family. I feel no encouragement to be an artist, no welcome…the artists I would get on with are far flung round the globe, and have to fight their own corner…

I know that naming the problem is a vital stage of working through this, I know even writing this is already changing how I feel, that empoweredness is rising up and refusing to be drowned in negativity… 😉

I see I have already identified a shift I need to make in practice, the installations are needing to find a new form, and when I think of how I laughed for joy making this piece for my City and Guilds:

– then I can get a handle on what to do…this is so not what was expected by the tutor or examiner or visitors 😉

I do wish that galleries could be a bit more excited and a bit less dismissive, I do wish the originality of what I’m doing was more important than whether the Park keepers feel its presence in their lovely park is a threat to green flag status (tidyness?) but I can also feel the momentum returning…if galleries offer no support and cost lots of money to exhibit in, then…guerilla art and pop-up exhibitions are the way to go…

I return to the memory of a visitor to the 2003 exhibition. He came across and said, “Oh, I needed that!” He’d been standing for a few minutes in front of ‘with/out’, an abstract of yellows, oranges and golds while his grandson toured the other 47 paintings…”It’s been a long winter, I needed to remember it’s always summer really, somewhere…”

And a friend’s husband visiting  ‘Pushing Buttons, Ringing Bells’:  “Don’t tell me what it’s about, I see my own meaning…it’s all the lost memories, when the mind’s gone.” Yes, that is what it was about…dementia and memory and respect for what’s still inside someone, that they can’t communicate anymore…

Thread painting is still painting, inflecting the surface and playing with planes is still what makes me happy and I am lucky to still have this possibility. When I tune in to the process and follow it mindfully, I get the affirmation from the public, and the internet has made contacting the public directly so much easier. Galleries and those who love the jargon are not set up for the direct experience of vibrant, engaging work that invites touch and the unravelling of rules… so let that side go, set myself loose and go play 😉

nottingham contemporary: definition for recognition

We were working on the marketing side of being an artist at  last Friday’s class at Nottingham Contemporary. Traditionally most artists hate the selling side of things, but ever since artists like Tracey Emin have shown self promotion can be your art until you’ve got their attention, and then you can make some art and they’ll hopefully pay attention to your work, not your shenanigans, self-promotion has become an acknowledged part of the process. Sigh…I want to be recognised as the person who made the art, but only in the way Banksy is, I do not want any part of the spotlight on me…meanwhile I want the art to be seen, so I have to do my hardest thing to give my best thing a chance… thank goodness for tintanet!!!

DIS-INTERMEDIATION is a business-speak term Chris (class member) taught us. It means taking out the middle man / agent/ mediator and becoming your own broker, though really you tend to be substituting the internet and its market possibilities, so there is still a mediator, just not a third party, you are wearing two hats, the second being marketeer and publicist. A lot of artists are not great at this, with huge exceptions like Warhol, of course, but think of poor van Gogh who traded paintings for a meal and never sold a painting for cash in his life.

The internet is the saving of shrinking violets though!

A reflective practice both mirrors and confronts society – meets it where it is and shows alternatives to current norms, whether in a critical and challenging way, or a more invitational way, by engaging the viewer’s interest and creating ripples in the calm pond of apathy. (Yes, that second way is what I’m hoping for, like most longterm activists, I see room for many approaches 😉 )

So, if our practice is technically a commodity (service including experiences or object including goods for sale) why and how do we market it?

KATALLAXY (Chris classmate again!) is a community of exchange:  where economy is based on the idea of a single household or state or market, catallaxy as it is sometimes spelled, is based on the idea of a neighbourhood or group of households and states, negotiating in amity.

We need to market, because: no marketing – no market – no recognition – no sales/ no support for present and future work/ no exchange of barter vouchers to fund our everyday living expenses.

Or we can sponsor our work ourselves, by having a day job and incurring few expenses because it is released only via the internet. Doing this may be sufficient, but for the vast majority, the pleasure of exhibiting and seeing your work meet an audience demands more… 😉

In my case I want the work to be seen/felt  in person, because it has its own presence. Walking round an environmental intervention or installation can be a compelling experience, and with kinetic and spatial elements, extremely non verbal  and hard to describe, as well as being very individual. I also want all those slow patient hours of making  recognised!!! So I have slightly contradictory things going on there. As the installations and films are not for sale, and I want them to be seen without admission charge/on equal access, the costs of the exhibition have to be met somehow, and as I already find the materials and electric bill for stitching and laptop & camera battery recharging out of my benefits…preferably by a supportive community!

So: I need to use marketing  to create support that results in funding for my work and exhibitions. I need to introduce myself and my goals as well as my finished work to an audience, so I create the katallaxy/community of exchange where funds and support in kind eg lifts, printing, hanging work and taking down come easily 😉

We were asked to answer 3 questions

(Charlotte presented the most powerful piece of performance for this, I was blown away!)

who am I?

where am I (coming) from?

what do I want?

in artspeak:

I am singingbird.

I am a process artist making planet-positive installations and visual essays, which invite people to (continue) walk(ing) away from global consumerism, towards personal fulfillment. I use mainly upcycled elements to create components that can be assembled and installed as respectful interventions that surprise and delight the viewer, reminding them that joy cannot be bought and consumerism is draining the planet.

I have escaped from extreme suppression of my creativity and am at my most happy when making for myself or inviting others to release their creativity. I have worked as an adult education tutor, community artist, workshop leader and craft therapist. I have learnt dozens of skills which I harness to overcome disabling pain and fatigue in order to continue being creative in spite of severe fibromyalgia. I enjoy making beautiful and meaningful objects, including handmade artist books.

I want to make environmental installations and respectful interventions in mindful process, which are filmed to be shared by a wider audience. I would like to bring art to unexpected and non-commercial venues as well as galleries, and to extend my yarntagging to municipal foyers, office buildings and shopping centres as well as to be part of more community events, after the success of Gaia’s Guardians at Wovenfest in June 2012.

OR, for the wider community… 😉

i am singingbird, calling for creativity to bring life to the green tree in the garden…

i want to use the freedom and joyful ease making gives me to encourage viewers to pay attention to the small joys of life, and to live more and buy less.

i make short films, handmade books and large pieces of art from intricately constructed components, that use simple techniques and lots of upcycled materials, working by mindful process. i enjoy using  colour and texture to create pieces, some to console, some to delight, all hopefully to inspire others to make…

I need to create a comfortable/easeful way to be present/ share the work to a receptive audience.

Easeful refers to the issues of agoraphobia and fibromyalgia, and the solution, finding the flow where things like to happen 😉 and comes from daoist practice. So…

SINGINGBIRD

@ birds sing artblog (x = you are here!)

@ youtube   https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCECC6gzAkchoiZ0KxQYMIDg?feature=mhee

@ vocational links, eg Disability Arts Online carry a link to my blog

to be developed:

@ facebook – as a professional site to give details of xhibs etc, links to utube, latest blogpost, pledge listing etc

– needed to be able to join TAFA [textile and fibre artists association]

@ KICKSTARTER and equivalent sites

@ textilearts networks/blog rings/ web rings for surface decoration, altered art etc

also: contact cards (blog and artist email, done!)

to be developed:

standard exhibition proposal pack for each of: fibre art/ installations/ process art/ disabled artist/ book artist/ visual essays and animations

– I am some of the way through this, for some of the strands!

pledge rewards for kickstarter etc – progressing well (that, my friends, is cos it’s making art! 😉 )

looking with new eyes: ghalib

“it’s the rose’s unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see –

in every colour and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes…”

counting pages

It was a lively session at Nottingham Contemporary yesterday, and deserves a full post, so for now you have a progress report on pages building up for the mixed paper journals I’m making as pledge rewards. The idea came out of making the handmade books and the enormous fun I had. Why not share that fun, be a possibilitarian for others wanting to art journal, perhaps on a holiday or for the first time? I am making headway in reducing my massive stash of materials, and while too much stash is a really limiting problem, too little can be too.

So these A5 books are going to have a variety of pages/surfaces to work on/with, that are easy for me to pull from my overstocked shelves but would require a stupid amount of money to make from scratch. I’m not going to put too much of my art in, but I have prepared pages specially too, because having been taught so many lovely techniques on City and Guilds Machine Embroidery and been a craft tutor and craft therapist, I know a lot (really a lot!!) of ways to make paper interesting 😉 One thing I’ve suffered myself, and have seen countless times with others, is how hard it can be to start on a ‘perfect’ white surface…perfectly terrifying! So lots of the texturising and splash techniques are great for ‘breaking’ the surface when you don’t want to collage or draw directly into a journal. They give you a visual prompt, a non-threatening place to start patterning/doodling/playing, and before you know it, a theme is emerging and you are freewheeling with lots of lovely momentum…oh, yessy! Happiness happening!

So far, each journal is planned to have (yes, remember it may yet change 😉 ) some very plain pages, that everyone gets:

then there are themes, upcycled calendars mainly, from which each of the dozen journals gets a single spread:

Hopefully, these found images can stand alone, be worked on or over and if they really don’t work for someone, they can be gessoed or collaged over, as long as a buffer sheet is inserted to not warp the sheet behind (unless that’s what you like!!)

So then there are spreads that I have prepared, with simple techniques and child friendly paints (I’m getting very aware of how many people are now allergic to acrylic paints) but which add colour and or texture and sheen (mmm metallics, mmm glitter paint 😉 ) and again one per journal adds interest without dictating a colour scheme or theme.

So, I have a very satisfying basket of stacked pages and a list of what to do next, I haven’t even got the branding iron/ pyrographer out yet or the pretty punches, and then there are the food dyes to try marbling with, and the other pressprint roller stamps… 😉 It’s snowing again so I have a very cosy warm flat to dry papers in quickly and few distractions… which is just as well as I seem to have lost the ability to count to 12 or to cut an A4 off a roll…the first task is more bubblewrap printing, as what I thought was enough, wasn’t and I can’t even figure out where the fibro fog came in ??? But this way I get to try different colours, I chose red, black and gold on brown packing paper because I have lots of red cellophane and red and gold sweet wrapping film to upcycle, but the effect isn’t my favourite…reminds self : these are NOT for me…;)

book box: immersed in the making

Now it’s safely arrived, I can show some more images of a book/box I made as a present for the lovely Soraya of  this blog http://sorayanulliah.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/everything-shapes-us.html

You know how you make something and as you make it, you figure out how you should have set about it? Uh, huh… I have plans for how to make more book/box/houses without needing three hands next time 😉  But for me the joy of making things as gifts for special people (and Soraya is a dear person, a brave woman, a beautiful soul) is I can take a lot of trouble over it and learn so much for me as I immerse in the making….

I had to get it through the post to America,  two postal services and customs, so I figured out how to send it flat, but easy to assemble…that’s where the three hands come in, cos I sewed it together from a template like a cross with extra wings, which was upcycled from the buffer lining a very posh tin of biscuits (ahem, bought on approved foods, of course 😉 ) and let me tell you…DON’T do it that way! Make each side and lace it together! When I say lace, I mean punch holes and put a ribbon or fancy machine cord through, like lacing shoes. I think it would look great with pelmet vilene as the base and free machine embroidery for script or decoration, but I know Soraya is a great fan of Brene Brown’s ‘Daring Greatly’ and the late, great poet  Audre Lorde, so I started with that quote and built up the idea from there. There’s no way I could write all that on the machine in the space, maybe 10 x 12 cm on the biggest side (3 1/2″ by 4 1/2″) so out came the letraset and I had some beautiful aqua and gold brusho paper, and even so, it was touch and go fitting it in 😉

Virtue is definitely its own reward sometimes! I felt I really took in these quotes by having to focus on the letraset (dry transfer lettering) and I think I have been more daring recently, an assertive letter to a demanding in-law; sending my proposal for exhibiting Gaia’s Guardians in a county park/arts venue in spite of the department of wanton persecution (DWP) re-assessing my claim for disability benefits. (Part of the British Conservative  party make-over of the benefit system/ National Insurance Scheme, not a personal thing, but you are put through the wringer by the process and they could save 50 times the money by going after tax dodgers)

Chris Lewis-Jones, the tutor for the art class I go to at Nottingham Contemporary made a really astute comment about the DWP issue: “Artists are never really unemployed”. It’s true, because so much of what we do is unpaid/underpaid/made without any expectation of making a living from it, but we make it anyway, because otherwise we’d shrivel into husks of ourselves, all the pith and juicy bits gone, we CANNOT not make. There was a lot of focus and effort put into this gift, but it took me about 6 WEEKS from idea to posting, because I could do so little at a time, and I did a lot of change and change about, trading off easier and harder parts. I also traded off some spoons, living in the same clothes for 3 days at a time with wet wipe washes (TMI, sorry !!!) so that I could keep making. Because making is a lot more rewarding than having a shower, and it is snowing again here, so not much sweat happening 😉 But I really doubt that the powers-that-be can imagine that having a shower is harder/more tiring than crafting a beautiful thing, I expect some of you able-bodied readers are struggling with that too…but it’s true, having a shower takes me about an hour if you count getting out of bed to put the shower heater on through to back in bed to ‘recover’ and then be ready to do anything other than fall asleep…and then I’ve used up major spoons and forks (pain!!) out of my weekly ration…to think I would hop in the shower, in and out, un and redressed in 10 minutes after the allotment…fibromyalgia is such a life changer…

I feel I make the right choices FOR ME, and they would not be right for non-artists, and there are plenty of makers who couldn’t live without a daily shower/bath, even with chronic fatigue/pain, but for me, life is not what I make it, it is what I get to make, because then I am glad to be alive! And that links to the van Gogh quote “One must work and dare if one really wants to live”…

bundles make magic

“The proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us” Ursula le Guin

found with a much longer quote, here: http://windling.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/elucidating-the-world.html

– well worth reading, the full quote and the whole post from Myth and Moor, lovely photographs too…

I have bounced from being in a very happy, post-chiropractic tired but cheerful and optimistic place to a post- letter -from- the- Benefit- Centre, heart in mouth place…Knowing how badly these civil servants handle tricky don’t fit the boxes claims, and how upset I got in 2007 when I had to fight for a year to get my DLA back, my first instinct is to cower with fear…but an alternative thought is playing on the edge of my mind…it will be what it will be…so you might as well make art 😉

I have a lot of components sitting on the table in the studio from a piece I wanted to make ages ago, called cradle for stones. It involves papier mache shells (think grapefruit to large cabbage size) cut in half with bundles inside, like fibre art geodes 😉

Remembering that art objects are also texts, that can be read… maybe it’s time to make some power bundles to help me through the trial by ordeal, trial by endurance that standing up for your rights with the benefit system can be. I paid into a National Insurance scheme to cover me should anything awful happen to me, and guess what, it did, and guess what, I feel entitled to the service my contributions paid for…I am not a scrounger, I live with chronic pain and fatigue, but knowing the humiliation they feel entitled to put claimants through, I feel my adrenalin rise…and then the pain follows…

yes, better go make art!

Here are some images of components from the  installation ‘Gaia’s Guardians’, it took me a mere 2 years to make 😉 and is based on freeform crochet and other fibre and textile art elements about the use of gorgonian corals in climate change prediction. I’m hoping to get it out in a public space in a couple of months, it’s a site-specific installation so hanging it outdoors would be amazing…it includes freeform crochet in nickel chain, yarn, fabrics, machined cords and the funkiest pompoms you’ve ever seen 😉

marching papers

I have been amassing papers, so far: brusho in purple and green, also blue and brown

Then bubblewrap pressprint in red, gold and black glitter paint with red stamps on top, I wasn’t at all happy with how blah the hearts turned out, so I kept at it and was pleased when adding spirals made for a much better effect

Then I played with wax resist, using latch hook rugging canvas and lego base board

again in blue  wax and brown paint and then purple  wax with maroon paint with glittery gold leftovers mixed in…

the wax is quite subtle, but will affect what gets through to the reverse…

I also played with folding effects, pouring paint onto a sheet, pressing a second sheet on top, then cross folding each to get patterns…mmm 😉

Not everyone was happy with three days of paper play…

playing with picasa

I’m having an upside down time, struggling to keep my eyes open in daylight and then awake in the small hours…in lots of ways it doesn’t matter, though I feel a bit guilty running the tumble dryer at 10pm. So far today, I’ve done very little or lots, depending on how well you can scuffle along in my slippers 😉  a shower, washing up, loading the washer and sorting out a drawer of yarn is enough even with breaks to make my legs shake… And I hope to get some bubble wrap pressprinting done when the tumble has finished, but for now you get to see some playing with picasa editing suite from a few weeks ago. I’m wondering about printing these up and free machining on top…

The bottom three images are the same shot, but the final two have been neonized too… would make a lovely vlisco/batik fabric… It is amazing how far technology has come in 25 years… 😉

guest artist: poetrysue

Thursday is the new Wednesday at the nest of singingbird…meaning that the mahjongettes gather for dinner and spiritedly and lively play. (Actually meaning I sit, jaw dropped as those two make faces and gestures unseemly in a lady, if play is not going to their satisfaction… 😉 )

Before this rowdy and laughter-filled event though, Poetrysue and I craft, admire, and set the world to rights. In the last couple of years she has been fighting free of the prison cell known as “the pattern” and learning the joy there is to be had in free falling…yes, this is the same PoetrySue who coined

“I’d rather be off-piste than p*ssed off”

– she is a very witty wordsmith and famous in local circles as the author of ‘Men are like bras’ and ‘Angels in Asda’; a queen of quick fire puns 😉

Anyway, I was so impressed when she brought her new art journal round, that I asked if I could share it with you. I really love what she has done on this page, the cascade/waterfall in oilpastels with over stamping is just great, and the collaging of the ‘life on the edge’  full of expressive movement. This is a close up, it’s actually on the edge of the full page, so that increases the effectiveness.

I’m doubly impressed because she has been trying various crafts and what attracted her most previously was embellishing/decorative felting, she has made beautiful commemorative pieces, little witness pins and dream dolls, folk art inspired with a healing or mystic twist, if that makes sense. Having worked so hard on faces, (which she does really well) this leap into abstract and collage is stunning!

Those of you who art journal know how hard it is to work straight onto the page and she has been really bold with her drawing/ doodling/ wordplay/ stamping and collage, also leaping from style to style in a few pages – it’s all too easy to feel inhibited because you stuck to one style or colour way/palette or font  and then want to change – she can go anyway/ anywhere now, she could copy whole poems in there, make pastels, stamp card designs, think out witness pins or worry dolls…as long as they have her stamp on them, they will fit because she has made these first pages so lived in and personal…well worth taking a leaf from her book, whatever your style/approach, if you ever get hit by the what next blues, this is a good way to beat them.

Mind, you see plenty of faces here 😉  Oh and the jewelled letters read sing the blues, the flash has blurred them…

She has a great sense of style by the way, the only one of my friends to take care of her manicured hands (hmm, that may not last now she’s discovered oil pastels!) and look at these, her ruby slippers 😉

with matching hair and glasses!

What an inspiration she is, and a very good friend 😉

favourite words: integrity/integral

Discussing paint rapture and music making with a friend yesterday, we got into some interesting stuff, how sometimes your best thing becomes super difficult/impossible and what tangles that makes in everyday life when you try to make it still happen…First, doing the favourite thing at a lesser level is ok when you know and it is understood that this is your best thing but at a lesser level, but how painful it can become when other people mistake this for your best thing. Thereis the personal pride in what you do well – NOT to be confused with ego/grandiosity ( everything I do is fantastic)  or the elitist/ snob/ put down merchants and the ouch of people taking you for one of those ego maniacs. But we decided that was a red herring a lot of the time, that the real cause of the discomfort is the gap, that you are missing what is integral to you, what makes you,YOU (if you see what I mean 😉 ) and that going against your integrity is what causes the friction. And being out-of-integrity with yourself can make you really vulnerable to more tangles! Getting manipulated into doing stuff you don’t really want to do, because it has an echo of the lovely thing you miss most, and surely a slice of bread counts when you are so hungry…but that is the tangle! Is this a slice of the loaf (ie a smaller portion of the same thing) or is it a piece of cardboard with bread written on it?

It’s really important to know the difference and to have a place, where, in whatever percentage of previous output, you still have that slice of bread.

And then the tangles dissolve, because the cardboard is fun cardboard, but you don’t try and eat it 😉

So how to find the thing that is the real thing, NOT at a lesser level, but still possible in spite of….compromised energy spoons/ physical disability/ society still expecting (and remember you are an individual of that society, with the same expectation internalised in you) the real thing to be presented in loaf form, not slice form? (still with me, peeps? phew! you’re good! 😉 )

Some things may just not be possible, but lots more just require thinking round in a new way…be very careful before you dismiss a situation as impossible. From my own life, in 1988 I fell over and broke my wrist in two places (Colley’s fracture, medics still ask to hold my wrist when I tell them ) and after 5 plasters in 6 weeks and 3 months of physio I was told there was nothing more to be done unless I wanted them to re-break it, with a 25% chance of improving it…and I was left with a wrist I couldn’t lie flat on a counter, I couldn’t put my palm out flat enough to safely take change in a shop…and I had to leave the printing for textiles small business course I was on, because I couldn’t hold a squeegee for screen printing. End of story. Er, no actually…I went to North Korea to speak on prevention of ‘sexual’ violence (World Festival of Youth and Students for Peace, Democracy and Freedom, in North Korea? ahem…) and because I had an allergic reaction to the treatment for the allergic reaction to the treatment for (no, that’s NOT  a typo!) the cholera jab I didn’t need getting infected….I was given electrical acupuncture at the Hospital for Foreigners, she spotted the Colley’s fracture, said oh we’ll treat that too, and got me from 10% normal range to 40-50% normal range of movement. Then in 2001 I broke some more bone cement and then in 2007, fell on the allotment (I am a much fallen woman!) and broke yet more bone cement and now, I can use a squeegee. Well except now I have fibro, but there was a window where I could 😉

But you know what? You don’t have to do it that way anymore.

They’ve invented technology so you can design a screen and print it via your computer or have such a short run of a design that you don’t need to hand squeegee anymore.

So…that forever death sentence to my screen printing was…wrong.

So now I can’t paint the way I loved (it puts my collarbone out every time…sigh) I have looked for the essence of what I was doing within [painting] and I think it’s [using my creativity to awaken people to pay attention to unexpected beauty] and that is my slice of bread. And as I have gone with learning new skills and staying open, I can see I [paint] most days, it is integral to my life…I definitely have much more of a loaf than I ever thought possible, I have a bakery(!!!) compared to what I feared after breaking my wrist. And it occurs to me, writing this, that it’s theoretically possible I could one day earn enough to pay for a chiropractic treatment after every painting session 😉 or get over the guilt of deliberately doing something to require a treatment when the chiropractor gives me the treatments for free…

And it’s definitely worth taking the time and spoons to plan out how to have an exhibition on my terms, rather than the pieces of cardboard with bread written on I was accepting till 18months ago and am possibly being tipped towards again…no a taste of honey is better than none at all, but a taste of white sugar beet invert sugar is just…not…

And I hope that the music maker will find the sound scape composition or computer technology or whatever shape [music making] will take while tinnitus and chronic fatigue prevent music making…so that cardboard can be fun, not frustrating 😉