This is the pause before my life becomes hectic again. Tomorrow I have my first seminar–Urban Insights: St-Henri–a seminar that looks at the history of St-Henri, a well-known burrough of Montreal that has a rich and seedy history. That’s followed by three more days of classes. Studio on Wednesday, the class that requires first and second year students to gather in their department to talk about art and stuff. Thursday is my TA class–Intro to Print & Dye–and it’s a stupid early one at that. I’m so excited for that class because not only do I feel like I’m actually going to learn something about teaching at a post-secondary level but I’ll be able to get my feet back into the print and dye saddle. I’m already coming up with a ton of ideas for dyeing and printing both on fabric and wool. Plus, it will be good for me to adjust to an early schedule (I’m always more productive in the morning hours than in the evening). On Friday I have my second seminar–The Art of Eating Things–a class all about food and how food can help us look at art. In that class most of the assignments revolve around making food and tracing the origins of it. I think I’m going to do a project all around food that terrifies/disgusts me which will probably mean a lot of custard and mayo.
Things are a lot different this time around. When I think about my frame of mind from this time last year, I feel like I am in a much better place. I wish it didn’t take a year to get a handle on things because in a way that feels like it was unnecessary use of time and energy. However, now I am at a point where there are too many things I want to do and I have to be careful not to burn myself out.
Just for fun, I’m going to list all the things I want to do so I can laugh at how unrealistic I am being:
- The epic 9 person sweater
- Requires to-scale model and written pattern
- Metal armature to be built for display in the gallery
- Dyeing of 6-strand bulky “buffalo” wool (think Cowichan sweaters circa 1970)
- Figuring out of shipping crates and such for travelling exhibition purposes
- The ever annoying but equally obsessive knitted buoy series
- Complete writing about these bad boys for exhibition proposal purposes
- Build killicks for the “hard” sculpture component
- Get increasingly complicated with construction–Next up? An aran buoy with stranded colour details.
- Resolve balloons because balloons always run out of air and that’s annoying
- Turn drawings into weavings
- Which means doing the workshop at Hexagram for the jacquard loom, whenever it is they start offering that
- Building soft sculpture around the Pond and Lake drawings
- Including printing and dyeing cloth and embellishment (embroidery/beads/etc)
- Wooden armatures for structure
- Writing, writing and more writing
- Artist Statements
- Thesis shiznit
- Creative writing
- Writing for the sake of writing
- Research
- Archives of the Twillingate Sun
- Geological maps of St. John’s and Twillingate
- Newfoundland folklore
- Ancestry and genealogy
- Newfoundland history
- Submission packages for exhibitions, residencies and grants
- The Rooms residency in Terra Nova, Newfoundland
- Residency in Dawson City, Yukon
- Artist-run centres in Calgary, Halifax, St. John’s and NB
- Oh yea. And think about thesis work.
Sigh. That’s about all I can come up with right now. And it doesn’t even take into account all the reading and writing I’m going to have to do for my seminars. I am going to be spending all my waking hours in the studio and when I’m not in the studio I’ll be home making dinners/lunches for the week so I can spend even more time in the studio. Goodness. But don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited about the amount of work I am putting on my plate. I thrive when I’m busy, when I have a set schedule and a strong feeling of productivity. I like being useful. And in the end, this will all be useful for something–an exhibition in St. John’s, maybe? A teaching job? Artist-in-residence? Grants? Maybe, baby.
But today is still a lazy day. I have plans to go for drinks and eat Indian food, matched with sorbet for dessert. I’ve got to enjoy this pause before I run headlong into the storm.