I made something--other than students crazy...

 But the truth is, these are likely to be my last portraits for clients for quite some time. This poor, lovely woman on the right hand side has been incredibly patient as I figured out that I just cannot be a full-time professor and sell custom portraits through etsy (unless some of those Christmas-style cobbler elves show up to feltify in the night). Boo.

The semester's over in a couple of weeks, and I'll have time to think through the ins and outs of my life as a maker + worker, but for now, enjoy these bright faces! And wish me luck wading through the pile of that-which-must-be-graded.

Zombies in Candyland

 I fell into a hole, folks. An Odyssey-of-the-Mind shaped hole.

 My girl's team, representing the Asheville Homeschool Co-op, advanced to the State level--and won that thing--WON IT. First place. I was so excited that I cried--and peed my pants a little. (TMI?)

Only now we have to raise thousands of dollars in less than three weeks... so we can go to the World Championships, which are in... Michigan. Huh?

Because I'm not on Facebook anymore, the blog is where I can share this news--and the link to our fundraising page--with all my peeps far and wide, so if you're one of those peeps (or if the sight of Candyland characters vanquishing zombies just makes you feel generous), click and give. Click and give.

(Folks, she wrote a song about zombies to the tune of "Don't Stop Believing." For real.)

Beach Boy

 This beach boy--and the fact that it's been snowing off an on for days in our little NC mountain town (just puffs of snow like soap flakes that melt on contact, but still)--is making me yearn for spring--no, summer. I want to be too hot, people. I want to seek out bodies of water like a sweaty hippo. (Do hippos sweat?) I want to wallow. And drink frosty, fruity drinks. And picnic. People--I want to picnic!

Instead, I'm preparing. I paid for my share of a Gulf Shores beach house where we'll meet Mark's sister's family and his cousin's family for a week in July. I joined an organic farm co-op that will provide our produce--and flowers!--starting in early spring. I've started a new (and hopefully sustainable) health regimen that will put a spring in my step before long. (Forgive me. I think the puns are back. Back?! you say? Shush! :-))

And there's still the pleasure of a little smudge in the fireplace. A cup of hot chai. A doggy sleeping on my chest while I snuggle under a blanket with my sweetie. Now first, right? Later... later.

Makeovers

 I've always been interested in transformations--when I was a teenaged girl, I loved any movie with a makeover at its core: Love Potion #9, Can't Buy Me Love, yes, Pretty Woman. Fast forward to my twenties and see me glued to the TV any time I stayed in a hotel with good cable, watching reno shows on HGTV. And you know I love to find some ragged, tarnished, hard-loved and long-forgotten object at the thrift shop or on the side of the road and bring it home and shine it up. It's about reinvention. It's about rescue.

So I like when a little reinvention is necessary when I'm working on a portrait--no, I do. Especially if I believe I can get it right--especially when I find, finally, that I have gotten it right, as with this piece. Lots more flowers in the garden? I can do that! Fluffier pup? Yes, ma'am! And now Murphy and his lush front garden and his house full of kitties are on their way home.

And my life, too, is a work in progress, a hard-loved object I am constantly shining up. Honestly, I've been sloughing off dead layers for the past few years, trying to get to the core, that still-golden under layer waiting to be revealed. FB was a layer of crud for me (like broadcast TV before it, like shopping for "fun")--and it's gone! It took a long time for me to realize that a goodly portion of the noise and crowdedness in my head that had been building up was coming from FB, a place of so many voices always clamoring (many of them beloved, saying lovely things) that I was struggling again to hear my own voice, to even recognize it. I'm shooting for slow relationships with those who will still have me--handwritten letters, phone calls, yes--email. (My sister, on the phone last night, said, "I just emailed you like it's 1995.") This is going long again--I feel like I have more to say, and maybe we can have more dialogue about this issue? For now, suffice it to say I have staked out for myself a bit more silence and space, rescued a bit more brain. It's good. 

County Girls

 So, some stuff has been happening. I was invited a while back to contribute work to an exhibition called Vera, to be held on the campus of the University where I teach (you know, not where I teach, since I teach in North Carolina, but I teach for the University of Maine...oh, complicated internet life...), organized by artist/art prof Heather Sincavage.

 The exhibition (and an accompanying literary magazine, also called Vera and also featuring my work, written in this case) celebrates the hidden histories of Aroostook County women, and we could interpret that theme however we wanted. I knew I'd do portraits of County Girls--this is what you're called all over the state from the Canadian border to the sea shore, if you come from Aroostook County, a place of startling and pristine rural beauty, of poverty and hard, long, cold winters, a remote, gorgeous place of gifts and privation, and for me--home.

 The one at the top--that's me, drinking kool aid on my third birthday. One pigtail has apparently come loose. Must have been some party. ;-) Below that is a picture of my sister with her high-water skirt and her glasses and her lazy eye, as she appeared at, I'm guessing, five years old. It's worth noting that she is a lionhearted girl these days, a nurse, a feminist, a poet, and--no joke--a beauty.

The last portrait is of my mother, based on a photograph that's always captivated me. I'm guessing she's eleven, and she appears to have had the same dark circles under her eyes that graced my skinny face at that age. There's a slight smile on her face, but her eyes are sad, staring--disappointed? I think it's a beautiful, striking, slightly-troubling image, and I can't stop looking at it.

All the images are paired with snippets of my own poems. I'm proud of this work, and I wish I could go home to see it hanging among the work of other County Girls on March 1. I'll be there in spirit and in felt.

The other "thing" that happened is that I quit Facebook... but I'm feeling like there's enough to read in this post already, so maybe I'll say a bit about that choice next time, which might be sooner then you think, since I have more time to blog post-FB. ;-)

Kitty House

And a dog.

House WIPS and Happy Shoes

 Working on a house-portrait canvas--about to critterize this thing by adding five cats and a dog!

Am periodically distracted by my new sneakers, which I purchased partly because I needed shoes to wear whilst doing my very unrigorous exercises and partly because I knew that the sight of them would fill me with timetraveltype joy. I was not wrong, folks. It's like I'm dressing for 8th grade gym every time I put them on, only nobody's going to make me play dodgeball. I win!