Growing Up

What a week!

Happy New Year.

Happy new day. It's Saturday and I've cleaned my bathroom and made breakfast and lunch. It's funny how nostalgically I make food. Peanut butter banana sandwich, one side peanut butter one side butter. It's changed a little as to what the peanut butter is and what the butter is and I mostly drink almond milk. Though I did make my almond milk chocolate. 

Even how I clean my bathroom: I always start with the mirror, then the sink, the toilet, the tub, the floor. then i have a shower to get the cleaning supply lotion off and christen the new clean room with a shower for myself. Like a good job shower. 

Then I mailed a letter! 

The whole experience of this is funny to me because it's like playing an adult. In many ways I am an adult, pretty self-sufficient, I have a business, I work hard, I do my best to pay my bills as on time as I possibly can even though I often forget and I'm really sorry... it's like I'm seven with a t-shirt on my head, playing Cinderella, playing house, playing whatever. It's  fun most of the time. But then there are situations like this week in which I was working on updating my resume and realized I had no idea what I was doing.

I have done a lot of work, but formatting it into 2 pages to put my best foot forward or even just document things in a way that makes sense is really difficult. It's really adult and I realize I'm just not that comfortable with it.

I like to draw and paint and make things for people; how do you tax that?

This blog is right now a means of procrastination against completing some of these tasks at hand. They get so big they don't happen which makes things worse. Like even writing a blog entry. I write a good one and then the pressure to write another one just as good worries me to the point of not writing at all. Then there's a block because I'm not even practicing, making the next round that much more difficult.

But with a big deep breath and a break down into steps and particles and just fucking doing the thing even if it's under the wire of a deadline is better than nothing. Fake it til you make it. Or just fucking make it and then it's done.

I had a deadline on Thursday for a collection proposal. I am so excited about it. I'm excited for this new direction and I'm excited to take a more adult approach to producing it. The catch is giving myself the openings to be the creative spirit I am, where there is no pressure- just honest art making. It's that playtime that makes the adult game more fun and less stressful. 

So I've set up some tricks for myself which I hope you enjoy and they're mostly on lovemattersfacebook so here are the links:

One fun one is posting Love songs. I love music, I live by it, so I'm sharing what I like in all their cheesy trashy fabulous poetic glory. The first was this Whitney gem:

The other is I've decided to draw my hand every day for the year. The album is 359 hands (I decided this on Jan 6). Check it out :)
359 Hands

There's more social media stuff to come!

Take a moment to play everyday.
Love.

Sometimes it takes a year...

...to write a blog.
...to get used to a city.
...to say goodbye.
...to say yes.

2013 has been a retrograde year.

One step back, two steps forward.

Of course this step back has been very large and rather all encompassing. It's amazing how long it takes and how fast time goes at once, separate and whole. 

Defeat, deflation, infiltration, inflation, success, repeat.

Sunrise, sunset, sunrise.

We just don't know what will happen. What it will mean, how it will play out.

This year for me has been full of great love and great challenge. 

At the end of 2012, I moved from Provincetown to New York, and began work with Izquierdo Studios.

Here's a really quick point form summary of things I built/was a part of building (not design): (pictures are gonna be later, sorry)

Dresses for an Estee Lauder commercial.
Jacket for Mary J Blige in Black Nativity.
Clothes for Redken's promo shots.
Various knockoffs for photoshoots.
Dresses for 'Comedy of Errors' for Shakespeare in the Park (Designed by Toni James).
Broadway Bares: Road Strips of America- 'New York State' number
The Killer Queen costumes for the touring production of 'We Will Rock You'
And some other things recently that did not get worn for their intent, but I was really proud of what we'd made just the same.

For my own work designing and building:

Pants, vests, shirts, dresses, and most recently some fabulous gloves for private clients.
As well as children's wear which was so fun, and costume oriented
My cousin's jacket, for her children's show (more on that later too).
An upcoming rock star.
Blankets for the Ring Girls for Glory International Kickboxing
And a few things for myself which is really rare.

And personally, some of the great moments of the past year include:
Brooklyn friends
Harlem friends
Chelsea friends
Canada in the summer
My Best Friend's Wedding
Vancouver
Portland
Regina Folk Festival
My Grandfather's 85th Birthday Party
My family's cottage in Saskatchewan, one of the most beautiful places ever
Thanksgiving in Provincetown
Christmas in Vermont

So in calculating this list and recalling all the blurry late nights of sewing projects that have seamed themselves together to a thready quilt of a memory, it feels like an awful lot. Yet not enough as the unsatisfied artist in me is also the critic and the devil on both shoulders and on top of my head. The work definitely (as it has always) kept me in a forward motion. In touch with whatever is my core sense of self: my hands, my art.  In my move, there was so much running involved, as there always is, running toward, running from, so sweaty and impatient, catching a nap on every train ride to stay caught up, yet not knowing the destination, or even caring about it, or able to care, just throwing myself toward whatever was to be the next thing. Eventually, in throwing oneself toward whatever, searching for whatever, one will just fall flat, and discover that the answer is within.

Here is the step back, my trip home to Canada was the break, the stopping point for me to realize the running I was doing, the habits I was relying upon, the traps I'd been setting my feet in to and with that pause I returned to when I was seven and drawing. I returned to when I was 14, distraught about my sexuality, my place in life and the voice inside said 'ART.' My drawings of people went back to when I was 16, and my sketchbook assignments were for characters, people with story. The return to my family and friends, the roots I grew up with were also imperative to finding this part of myself again. 

Upon my return to New York, I was scared of falling back into that race that had no finish line. I consequently met someone, and of course put all the hope of the future into that relationship which basically doomed said relationship into a fate of repeated circumstances.

Does any body else notice how when Carrie from Sex & the City shows up late at night, drunk to her boyfriend's house, he's not only home, but they let her in? and he calls her back???

I digress. 

Well, I digressed and was depressed.

And then what I thought was rock bottom became a net which I cut a hole through to fall to rock bottom. Probably there's a deeper rock bottom which I could hit if I dig myself a hole, but there are forces and friends and friends with force that have thrown proverbial ladders down and I'm climbing with gratitude. It's here which we find the gooodbye, the no and the yes. 

Goodbye to the patterns, the past, the year, the clutches of what was thought to be. No to that which one does not need, and YES to what one does. Close the door, open the window. Pull up the blinds. 

I'm reading my Christmas present from Alice's mom. 'Hyperbole and a Half' by Allie Brosh. Go buy it. My favorite line so far is 'ALL THAT MATTERS IS CAKE.'

This is my motto for the new year.

Now as far as photographs go, I think that the direction of this blog is going to maintain itself as wordy. Words have always been very good friends of mine and this is going to be the outlet for which I honor that. There are other social media outlets for visuals. But I what I will show here, now, are some pictures of the paintings I started when I first moved to Provincetown. I had to put the painting away to focus on the clothes. Then I realized I had to put the painting INTO the clothes. And now I've realized that the paintings need to exist WITH the clothes. 

Separate. And whole.

Happy New Day.

6'x8' oil on canvas

4'x4' oil on canvas

3'x6'oil on canvas