Summer Solstice
Spring has been springing. New Leaves, flowers, snails, cleaning, finishing, documenting. Finding old things and being distracted. What a world!
Hello! Happy Summer Solstice!
While cleaning up my art studio, I sifted through some old sketchbooks, from when I was in my thirties.
I ran across something I wrote in one of them that seemed to fit so perfectly with what I’m currently doing but when I went back to document it, I was unable to find the sentence. Essentially I wrote a note about my art process and trying to get two worlds to sit together and play nice.
Instead, I shared a photo from 2004 where I wrote two different dates on a polaroid for a reason I can’t remember.
Above, you can see the blue-lidded bin that holds my old sketchbooks and 3.5 inch floppy disks and tiny tapes for video cameras that no one uses anymore. You can also see what feels to me like a more organized section of my studio.
Below, you can see a different corner of the house and the stages of my plant “giving birth” to a new leaf! It was very cool to watch this process.
Geranium.
My partner and I moved a little over a year ago. I didn’t choose the place. As a matter of fact, the first time I saw the inside of it was the day we moved in.
I knew it was a good idea, not just because we would gain more space- but it had the very same pink geraniums near the front door, that my mom maintained, outside of three of the four homes I lived in as a child.
You can see a closeup of them below, with the little white rabbit in the middle.
I was reintroduced to the floral bushes when I first moved back to my home town. I saw them around nearby neighborhoods during walks and realized they were no longer for sale at nurseries or garden sections of hardware stores. I tried to grow one of my own from a cutting in a pot, on our apartment porch, with no luck.
So when I drove by our soon-to-be new home and saw an entire bed of my beloved geraniums, I knew it was the place.
Snails and Nasturtiums.
I wish I had a photo to share with you of the way the garden looked at first, compared to now. The yellow daisy-like flowers were there, as were the geraniums and that thick, iris-like bush and a few signs that nasturtiums grew wild in the area.
To “tie things together” we decided to plant some succulents near the door, in some tall planters we got a deal on. Once that happened, we learned the new succulents attracted snails we were initially charmed by. They lived in that iris-like bush and seemed to travel to the daisy-like bush at night. Our succulents were apparently very good snail snacks and it was difficult to keep up with the slugs’ surprising appetites.
Early in the morning, before driving to work, I’d pry them off and place them back into the bush they seemed to live in, but it wasn’t until the nasturtiums began to grow and grow stronger that I realized the snails loved to eat them and the nasturtiums seemed to not mind at all!
They were doing so well, I began to lead some of the nasturtium vines up and around an ugly box that houses our sprinkler controls (we unplugged it, immediately), and the area is now looking so nice. I was worried that the snails would climb the vines, but that rarely happens.
We had a lot of rain this winter, and the payoff seems to be flowers, all over the place. It will be interesting to see how summer changes the whole scene.
Below you can see a video I shot during late winter or early spring, of our happy snail habitat.
The art.
Now (summer) is the time I have a much-needed break from teaching and dive back into my work.
I have a lot of “behind the scenes” things to do, meaning that I have a lot of art to make “hangable” in order to document and show it all. Of course when I do this I find this part here, or this piece there that needs something I hadn’t even thought of, in order to be complete. So, I’m touching a few things up and will soon have a portfolio of works begun at the start of the pandemic and it’s the strongest stuff I’ve made in a long while.
I’m about twenty years older than that woman in the Polaroid you saw at the beginning of this post and it’s taken all that time and more to get to a place where I can know what is “strong,” and what is complete.
So far I’ve cleaned and I’ve organized. I’ve gotten back into the stuff that life and I neglect for the better part of the year. I have other plans, as well- there is sewing to be done. An updated wardrobe is called for and I’m too creative to be super wasteful and buy a ton of new things. (Of course I am surely as wasteful as the next guy, but I’m working on it.)
That said I’ve got to be careful of the “distraction demon” that so often rears its ugly/delightful head when my goals are my own.
As well, there are life-responsibilities and some new work opportunities that seem to be presenting itself. I will allow myself to be distracted by that. It’s good.
Oh, and I’m planning on reading some prose poetry at a local open mic soon. I’ve written some things about dreams and time and want to see how it all lands.
Thanks for reading!
Links to things I’m currently into:
I’m currently listening to the audio version of Roberto Bolaño’s masterful novel, 2666
I've been listening to The Story of Leonora by Toxe who I discovered from a Christian Dior fashion show I watched with a fashion student, earlier this year. Songs from her/this project were used in it. I’m discovering that I like her music! Here is the fashion show and the incredible Octopus-like sculpture by Joana Vasconcelos is amazing, as well.
The show, Somebody, Somewhere