So, I just gave an informal talk at the informal meeting of an informal group of women who are also artists and who are hoping an artists group will inspire them, help them make more and better work, and give them an excuse to see themselves again as artists. Jen nicely asked me if I'd start them out with a talk, with a little drawing, with some stuff about myself. And I prepared myself to inspire. I gathered some sketchbooks, I brought in some show and tell, I practiced my talk and even made a handout. I made sure I thought of everything and packed the room with pens and paper and slides.

Only, I didn't prepare to be inspired. But see these women are smart. And these women talked about the things they have made, the babies they have, the ways they already manage to juggle family and work and various degrees of art making and as we all sat around a room in a safe space with cookies and comraderie, I remembered that I don't have all the answers (I don't have any answers really), I don't have a failsafe plan, I definitely don't have a baby.

But I do have a driving passion that tells me that everyone who feels like they have to make art and feels like they have to find ways to create and feels like they need to be in a room with other artists...oughtta make some art, oughtta find ways to create, and oughtta find ways to get into rooms with other artists.

I feel more inspired than inspiring and definitely excited about my new sketchbook and some new friends.

take care,
Rachael

Since I typically work Saturdays, I have Mondays off and so Tuesdays are my first days back at my desk, my work-day reality, and the normal-ness of routine. I like my work and I tend to miss the place a little when I'm not there but the back-to-it-ness of a busy week is so busy, so full of details, so disorganized, and so phone-ringing and problems-to-solve that I needed cookies when I came home. So a couple of chocolate chip cookies later, I'll sort it out in a somewhat helpful way (I hope).

The more I read about other artists making at times they shouldn't be able to make (when in exile, after learning their father had killed himself, when they couldn't eat), I realize that I have no good reason not to let myself make the artwork I need or want to make.

I'm supposed to give a talk on Thursday about balancing work and painting and so I'm thinking I should work on balancing. The women I'll talk to have kids. I don't. I went upstairs and visited my attic studio tonight. I was surprised by the stuff on the floor (paintings in a first stage of mess and muck), by the big brushes I could have used yesterday, by the magnetic pull of potential energy.

Ten hours of work and 30 minutes of painting isn't much of a direct balance but I will sleep better an dtheoretically when I wake up tomorrow I will head upstairs and pour more drawings, marks, and meanings out of my head.I'm still chewing on Kozol's ideas, scary that there is a rubric for walking in lines. Especially since all the kids I know and live zig instead of zag when they're in lines. It's the teachers I work with who tell me that they love their noisy kids on a saturday morning because they know those kids are learning as they draw, thinking as they talk/tell a story, getting excited as they get creative...
So, maybe there is some balance here...
sleepy me, headed upstairs to fight the good fight in paint and pencil...
Rachael

We need an educational revolution. We need to treat kids better and wake up to the unbelievable segregation of our current public schools. When a kid like me hears two amazing and inspiring critics of our current educational system speak in a span of one week, she is (I am) inspired and ready to fuel the revolution. I walked about 4 miles today and my feet are blistered but I am still ready to walk 25 miles in my bare feet if that will help stop the stupid testing, the unbelievably racist assumptions, the number of kids we are ignoring and warehousing and refusing to respectfully educate...If someone walked into your office tomorrow and took away your toys, told you what to do when, made you take tests and had you take your lunch in a crowded, smelly room (oh yea and took your lunch money away), you'd be pretty angry, right?

Well, my sketchbook is half full of drawings and notes from these two lectures, one by Geneva Gay (who has written and researched multicultural education ), the other by Jonathan Kozol that have refired me up about educational advocacy, child advocacy, and the call to action.

I have a new set of heros and some reading to do.


But also time to rest my feet for a longer march ahead.
goodnight,
Rachael

Today the sun was shining and the sky was blue, tree branches are still bare but boldly they starkly stand out against a now almost setting, almost settling sun. It's all making me think about life and death and old friends I oughtta call.

We wandered around today and spent some time in the bookstore when I bumped into a used book of the collected poems of Frank O'Hara.
Now, I don't know much but good old Frank O'Hara was an amazing poet. His words tripped off his tongue and the images in his poems make me smile and think and dream. His poems made him great . It's the way his language flows and his colors glow and his friends and all keep hanging around with the right amount of smart sophisticated subversion in black and white pictures with tee shirts and cigarettes...Nothing makes me think more about the New York in the 50s I missed than O'Hara's poem about Lana Turner.



Damn the dune buggies that kill America's best poets...

Rachael

This one's gone.

It's ruined. It was a fire casualty and as we are doing our taxes now I'm learning (like a bazillion artists from the gulf coast I bet) what I can and cannot deduct as an uninsured loss. To sit down and write up an art obit (but now I can't find that project!) would be a really good process for me because I still find myself pissy that the painting is gone. It's been blurred, and wet, and worn and is so different that it won't again be the Vermont painting I made in a month of serious thought as the world went to war and I made breakfast for a group of strangers that soon became friends. It won't again be the painting that was as much about being where I was as missing where I could have been (with my aunt, with my husband, with the marching protesters). Color. That's really what's mucked up in the painting now. But then lots of things aren't around anymore.
Ms. Mabel Dwight is gone and her portrait of Roderick Seidenberg strikes me as stronger, more passionate and important as I read more about her life, her loves, and her social convictions.
I have more of the busy and less of the loose time to relax and create but I ought not to complain, so I won't. goodnight,
Rachael