lessons learned, blessings earned?

It’s been a long time since I blogged. Months and months. Yes, I’ve been busy with shows and work and doctors. But I’m thinking the demon between me and my blog is Facebook. I spend creative time replying, sharing, liking, pontificating, LOLing. No time for creative writing. Enough.

So..Let’s review the Summer show season this way: rain, rain, wonderful, lousy, wonderful, heat, pretty good, frustrating, wonderful and wonderful. I would like to share words of wisdom about making a living as a show artist, but since I haven’t figured it out for myself yet, I would be a false prophet. I’ll put it like this…you have to love the life, love what you do and be willing to eat pasta 4 nights a week. We are on a month-long road trip right now and my show money pretty much is paying for it, so I am content.

What did I learn this year? Well, I learned that it is a balm to the soul when people respond to your work. Since moving into more collage work, what I am showing and selling is part of who I am and that makes acceptance and rejection more personal than I would like. I get a lot of incredible feed back from potential customers, but it is hard for me to close the deal on a purchase, no matter what the price. And, trust me, I am underpriced. As a fellow show circuit artist likes to remind us: we don’t  make anything anyone needs. Well, I think people need art, but I know whet he means.

I love making collage. I do. When I started out, I was a papermaker. That didn’t last long. I liked it, but it was labor intensive and messy. When you can get a beautiful Thai marble 2 X 3 ft sheet for 5 bucks you not only get better paper, you get time to make stuff with it.  So I became a book maker. (Who knew you could make books??) I was unable to part with even a scrap of the papers left over from making books, and so I worked them into collage, starting with cards, then magnets and, finally, large pieces. I work quotations  in because I believe words are art and people respond to them. 

And so, here we are. Another Summer show season “in the books”. Another holiday season on the horizon.  And, in between, a road trip. It’s a good life.

Oh, and speaking of that, Doc says he sees no new cancer and what he does see is apparently scar tissue. He’s been watching it for a while and it has been stable so it seems to be “inactive” or some such thing. So, no more chemo. We are just going to watch it. He smiled at me.  My joints already feel better, my nails are growing back and we are on the road.

As one of my quotes reads: “nothing is worth more than this day”.