My First Satisfied Bead Customer

Okay, I've been trying to learn the zen of beadmaking for about a month and a half now. Fortunately, I have an excellent mentor...and cousin. AND, I made my first sales today! Hope my teacher is proud and my client is giddy. I'm STOKED!

Of course, the beads are out of focus in the picture. Still, I just had to share! Sooooo long since I've sold anything!

O, My "Beading" Heart!

With gratitude to: i.factmonster.com/images/australian-student.jpg

For a bit over a month now I've been learning how to make lampwork beads. I will be learning this technique for a good long while, cousin Kim willing. Three-dimensional expression is not my forte. Nor is having an open flame in my painting studio!

It's really easy to get strung-out, asking molten glass to conform to a regular shape. Then there's the matter of some colors working with others and some making mud. But, at least I'm used to that in a quarter-century as a painter. Some glass is transparent; some opaque or translucent. The rules of the color wheel usually apply but not always. Goofs are more commonly grey than brown in the glass world.

I have filled my first quart jar of beginner beads. Most are primitive at worst. A few are acceptably coarse. Enough to please those with a taste for the earthy. After I filled the jar, on the instructions of my sensei, I inquired, " Master (rather 'Mistress' but that sounds kinda...you know...), what next?" To which she replied, "Grasshopper, get another jar." Sigh... Fifty-four years old and an apprentice again! I got another jar.

One thing I've figured out from all my down times and confused times is that something new always comes along. Maybe not exactly when you'd like it, but it comes. There's so much to experience, so much to learn. I would not be content ever to rest on my laurels (is that polite word for gluteus maximus?). I'm always up for the new and the unknown. In fact, that seems to be where I thrive. Not that I'm fickle. I just like to try EVERYTHING. At least once. Except for jumping out of a perfectly good airplane or foraging for wild mushrooms without a guide or some other arguably stupid pursuit.

I'd put up a picture of my bead children right now, but I'm tired. All that brain power going into the new. Maybe next time. For now, knitting. I'm making a beret for myself. Believe me, this is EASY!

Learning to Chill?

Photo by kimmiles.com

As Leon Russell wrote, "It's a strange world that we're livin' in." Always has been. Guess it always will be. So, we learn to chill. Or we don't.

I've been pretty chill for a while, sort of accepting that I live in a doo-doo storm, and that my best intentions, actions, thoughts, prayers, pleading, cajoling, begging, working, wishes, skills, desires, needs, wants, expectations, etc. have little to no effect on life's outcome. Believe me, I've tried it all: The Secret, Abraham, Napolean Hill, Bleep, God, karma, visualization, EFT, psychotherapy, blah, blah. All I can figure to do is hold on to the sides of the tippy canoe and go, "Whewwww! Dodged another one!"

I'm getting fed up with chillin'.

I want to punch something. I want to make a hole. I want to rip and tear. I want to fight back! Now, before you go thinking I'm talking about people here, I'm not. I'm talking about the "holding pattern." Breaking out of what feels like a backwater eddy that keeps me swirled into a nothing-happening state. I want an OAR! I want to move ON!

Pitiful little me wants it to be MY TURN!

NOW!

To steal an image usual meant for males, I've been spilling my seed on the ground long enough. I create and create and create, and then live among the piles of paintings and papers spilled on the ground, filled with beautiful words and images signifying nothing, I guess.

I'd like some ACTION! Heavens to Murgatroid, I'm an ARIES! I'm not meant to sit under the Bodi tree and wait for enlightenment. I'm meant to run around and jump and explore and fiddle with stuff to see what I can make out of it. But then the "stuff" needs to get a new home with a new family to love it and care for it. And homegirl wants to GET PAID.

NOW!

To me, the airy-fairy path looks pretty strewn with broke, struggling people still clinging to the promise of abundance if they only keep thinking abundantly. I'm not seeing many or any of them actually achieving it. But they keep affirmating and meditating and prayerating even as the electric company comes and shuts down their power.

I want to know what will work. No, I won't sell my soul to the Devil, but come on! Really! Can I get an "amen!". . .oh, and some cash?

So, it's 11 am. I'm in my nightie. Beautiful day outside. And I sit here bitching.

Ah well, when all else fails, go rake leaves.

Oil to Water to Las Muertas?

I've been learning to paint oils for the past couple of years and just switched back to watercolor cuz I hope to be teaching some classes. Don't know enough about oil painting to teach it, but after 25 years doing watercolor, I figure I've got that under control.

Anyway, look what happened! This is a transparent watercolor using no stix or white or black paint. Where did these chicks come from?


This is called "Las Muertas All Decked Out." It's 28 X 36 inches. It has a companion piece I did a couple of years ago. For the life of me I can't find an image of it to upload. I'll keep looking.

For now, here's these cuties!

Creative Greed

Borrowed the gratitude from www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth/archives/2009/09/

One time a friend of mine described those flair-up occasions of creative frenzy as being "creatively greedy." If you're going to be greedy, I suppose that's the best kind to be.

But I tend to forget that it's also terribly draining to push out so much stuff at once. I tend to work myself into sleeping all day or crying uncontrollably or just being plain ole cranky.

I try to guard against really going over the edge, but the problem right now is that my studio has a watercolor space and a beadmaking space at the same time. Hence, Fire and Water Studios.

Went out there today and tried to stay interested in the painting I'm doing, but the lure of fire and all that pretty, un-screwedup glass would get the better of me. I spent the day bouncing back and forth between torch and paper (never the twain shall meet!). Switching hats like that all day was really tiring.

Finally burned myself. Finally stuck two things together in the kiln that weren't supposed to stick together ever. Ratz! Didn't keep me from trying and trying and...

Now I just want to lay here and watch baseball. Alas, there are clothes to fold and floors to sweep and blogs to write and dinner to cook. My creative greed doesn't often lead me into those areas! I exhaust myself and then have to come up with more energy for stuff I put off. And for the husband who deserves my attention for his hard work.

I had a blast, though! Just gobbled great gobs of creative input and turned it into gobs of creative output. Too much output. Sigh...

But I can't WAIT to open the kiln tomorrow! There's gotta be something cool in there, even if it's wonky!

Fire and Water=Fuel!

In the two weeks that my cousin Kim has been here, I have been on fire creatively in a way that I haven't experienced in many, many years. Her very presence has breathed new life into me. She's blown my sputtering artistic spark back into a flame. I can barely keep up with the ideas that are flying out of us.

Is it that I feel we're making up for lost time? That I know these phenomena are precious and not to be ignored or taken lightly? With all that gypsy in her soul, am I just aware that she could take off at a moment's notice, and I'll have to go back to trying to keep my own fire burning?

It's all of that. But having her here is like. . .like. . .getting to eat spaghetti for every meal. My favorite, and maybe not the best of similes, but you get the picture.

For the time being, we are Fire and Water Studios. I'm going to say--with as much confidence as I can muster--expect great things!

I'm learning to make beads, I hope. She makes it look easy, the brat. Today, though, I get my revenge: I'm going to teach her to paint watercolors. The hard way. Transparent! We're also making "boneheads," who will be starring in up-and-coming little films from Cheezee Vision.

I'm excited. I'm exhausted. I'm renewed. I never want this to end. Sounds like love. And it is. For her and for art and for the people we'll be cracking up with the boneheads. For beauty. For challenge. For fun and--dare I say it?--profit?

Could be.

When the Universe Speaks

Thank you spacetoday.org

An interesting experiment has begun in my multitasking, drafty, gritty garage studio. My world-famous beadmaking cousin Kim is currently in gypsy mode, so I offered her a place to set up her torch. Currently, I am in watercolor mode.

I have paper and water; she has molten glass and fire. Sounds potentially combustible, which is always stimulating!

We're wondering if we're crazy or onto The Next Big Thing for both of us. We never in our wildest dreams thought we'd be sharing a space. And here's the thing: we are Miles women! Any single one of us is hard to handle--get two or more together and WATCH OUT!

Since the Universe tends to chime in at such teetering-on-the-brink moments, I'm pretty sure It contacted me yesterday.

I went to the Y for a swim. Rode there on the little scooter we're babysitting (a blast in itself). Therefore, I was cold when I arrived. Seventy degrees is nice if you're just sitting; add a 30 mph windchill factor (a factor I forgot to factor) and you'll get a bit nipply, as we say around the Kubota ranch.

I get all swimsuited up and realize I've forgotten my towel. Drat! Oh well, I decided to swim anyway and dry off with paper towels as I did on the one other forgetful occasion I swore I'd never repeat.

But, ahhhhh, I could jump in the spa, warm up, then hit the lanes.

I had the place all to myself, which made me happy. Went over the the wall and hit the bubble button. Another guy showed up. Oh well. We're enjoying about 2 minutes of our soak when the bubbles became extra strong. I was like "COOL!". . . until we smelled the electrical fire and the alarms went off!

The expert Y staff hustled all of us old farts outside. (At 10:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, that's who you'll find in the pool: raisins and gray whales.) There weren't many of us, but we were all wet and guess who didn't even have a towel? Yep. Just my too-small red swimsuit and my flipflops.

The aforementioned expert staff braved the "danger" to go back inside and provided us with space blankets: huge sheets of thin mylar. Now we are soaking wet old farts glittering in the sun like David Bowie! But we are warmer. And fully covered.

The Y cleared the whole building--everyone, including the bodybuilders, marathoners, and anorexics. We silver-clad aquafolk tried to avoid eye contact until the firepersons said we could slink our blubbery bodies back into the somewhat camouflaging pool.

I was the person who caused all of that. Could have been anyone, I realize, but it was ME, with this momentous change presenting itself in my artistic life at home. Fire and water. Kim and me. The Universe.

When I told Kim the story she said, "Do you take that as a good sign or a bad sign?" I thought it was all good cuz it was darned coincidental and really, really funny. I think the Universe was approving of our collaboration: artists of fire and water.

But, like I said, it could have happened to anyone. Or. . .?