Time On Your Hnads

So what have you been doing with your time?

I took a trip up the road to Reedsport to check in on my Newport pal Bad Bead Babe Nicole Campanella and all of her great work which she happens to have had on display and for sale in Reedsport this past weekend and that was a good thing cause the Chainsaw championships were also there and you could if you so desired get chain-sawed right out of your mind and pickup some excellent Fine Art jewelry all at one time.

I did see our own S.L. Donaldson there, doing something important, cause when you are the Boss Babe of BAAA everything you do is important.

And I do have to admit I did not chain saw anything nor did I pick up and of Nicole’s jewelry, which I would have if I had the Long Sufferin’ permission to crack open the vast Miranda holdings and part with some of our Golden Year fixed income, but I didn’t so I didn’t but I could have if I had been so inclined and if you didn’t you missed your chance to see and fondle and hold Nicole’s work cause usually she’s way up in Florence and only comes down this way once or twice every two years or so and now you’ve gone and missed your chance but you can still go to her web site and get almost anything you want, except you won’t get to talk to Nicole which is a shame and will create a huge hole in your social calendar, but that’s what happens when you don’t take full advantage of your opportunities.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/beadwright

So there’s her Esty site and now you can buy, buy, buy.

Which brings me to the topic of our conversation today, what are you doing when you aren’t doing your art? Are you out making contacts, meeting people, talking to other artists, blocking out sketches for future work, creating scenarios to propel your imagination or just sitting at home sucking in oxygen and waiting to be run down by a bus?

Okay, let’s be fair, the last one eliminates all of the others but it is a terrible way to avoid doing the drudge work that they require.

Sure I’m right with you, I hate root canals, IRS audits, housework, and anything else that’s good for me. Don’t believe me just ask my doctor.

But you do have to do something. I know, it would be so much easier if you could just hang around like a sea slug and let the cafeteria of the ocean bring all of your needs past your door, but for humans it don’t work that way. That’s the problem with having a brain.

See if you didn’t have a brain none of this would be necessary, you could get from dawn to dusk just by sitting. Rats! Who knew being born into one of the higher life forms would be such a hassle.

But it is and that’s an end of that.

So what are you doing?

Sure if you have work lined up for the next six months you can skip the rest of this piece and go eat ice cream. No, then let’s talk.

Sketching isn’t just for keeping your skills in trim. It is supposed to be a quick way to document the things you see which would make good future images.

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Yeah, I love old City Hall and I’ve taken a dozen or so pictures of it from a bunch of different angles. I’d like to know who owns that Z-car so I could tell them to park somewhere else so I could get a really good picture of the building, but maybe I should be glad I don’t so that I don’t get punched in the nose for being so bossy.

I’ve mentioned this girl before, but it never hurts to come back to it. They poor old girl sank once before and was resurrected and then she went down again and nobody’s bothered to do anything and now the sea is claiming her and soon there won’t be a thing left to see so if you don’t want to get left out to sea you’d better go and see before it is too late and the sea claims this ship for it’s own.

Take a look at this. This is my latest attempt to mock up a book jacket for my novel about thirties gangsters and guys and dolls.

No it isn’t exactly what I had in mind but it is getting there and when I have nothing immediate on the grill I keep coming back to this and you know it gets a little closer each time.

But the point is even though I am not doing something for instant release, I am doing something which works both my imagination and my skills so that I get a new image and some new brains cells and having lived through the 60’s I probably should do anything I can to grow new brain cells having in all likelihood killed off more than my fair share, even though I never did anything that would come from a chemistry set and only smoked things with a real-live government issued tax stamp I might just have been around people who were not so careful and you know what they say about second-hand smoke so building new synapse is a thing which I work at in spite of a sneaking suspicion that no one really needs to know that Perry Mason’s creator was an Erle and not an Earl like a real red-white-and-blue-blooded normal American kind of guy person instead of some kind of Scandinavian descendant with funny spelling customs and a deep-seated fear of yellow things. Oh come on that’s got to be the only reason why a person would put mayo on a hamburger when everyone knows mustard is the only thing you put on a real hamburger!

So cross-word clues and hamburgers aside I try to keep my mind working on new projects and learning new skills so that I never have the problems which seems to haunt television retired folks of being so bored that they go off and have to start robbing banks to afford their meds when if they’d just take up art they’d be so frustrated and busy that they wouldn’t have time to rob banks in the first place!

Say maybe that’s what the Syrians need, a coupla dozen packs of pastels and some sketch pads and maybe they could stop all the noise and bother and do something peaceful for a change?