workworkworkethic

I feel like I've surfaced.

Almost as if when I go into a concentrated period of creative work that I go under....something.  Under water, under consciousness, under ground.  

I still have to cut the grass and deal with the a/c going out and try to play kickball with the kids and train the dog to stay in the yard, but when I go to "work", I go under and stay there as long as I can or until I am done.

I'm sorry of this doesn't make sense.  It's clear in my head.  

Summer is my prime creative time, especially for sculpture.  When school is out for me I have about one month before Blue gets out for the summer.  That month is precious work time.  I've had a few meetings and several other normal distractions like those mentioned above, but I've used my time wisely and I've made serious progress.  My goal was to make a few small things for the upcoming sale and to complete 2 new sculptures before Blue's last day of school.  I've made tons of things for the sale and I've completed 5 new sculptures as of a few hours ago.  And now I feel like I'm back in the world again.  


I found out I got into a couple of juried shows recently.  I'm pretty excited about that.  One is a national exhibit at the SECAC conference in Greensboro, NC.  I've been trying to get into this one for years.  I think the acceptance rate was something like 20% so I was really lucky.  That one is not until fall.  The other one is the Festival of Flowers exhibit June 3 - July 12 at the Arts Center of Greenwood.  A few former students also got accepted into that one which is pretty great.  Oh and I have a small drawing in another exhibit at the Columbia Museum of Art that opens June 7 or so.  I think it's called OneX100.  That little drawing has always been a favorite of mine for some reason.  

We saw the Avett Brothers again a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta.  I should put the "saw" in quotation marks because we were about a 1/4 of a mile away from the stage.  We saw them years ago at the Handlebar in Greenville where there were about 50 people in the room.  We also caught a couple of performances at the record store there on Stone Ave and saw them with about 10 other people in a tiny room.  Going from that kind of atmosphere to a giant venue with thousands of people is strange.  The concert was great but I long for the days of small shows.  Old Crow Medicine Show opened for them in Atlanta and it was my first time seeing them.  Great show.

The other big thing to happen recently is we ditched our TV.  That's probably not the most accurate way to say it, especially as it turned out, but that was the initial plan.  For the last 15 years we've payed about $12,500 to the satellite dish company.  For a couple of those years with crying babies to appease, the DVR was worth every penny but now we find ourselves not wanting to throw away $70 each month when we dont really even get to watch TV.  So we sucked it up and cancelled the service.  We talked about signing up for Netflix and I thought I'd watch zero TV this summer and just work all the time.  At night I could read since I'm a few books behind.  Sadly, Netflix is awesome.  Every night this week I've watched some sort of movie.  The inspiring movie still up top is from tonight's documentary on Gerhard Richter.  It might make me less productive eventually, but we're saving a ton of money each month.  

And dont forget the big studio sale on June 15.  Soon I'll post some images of some of the things that will be on sale.