I made this little collage for Eric Adama's drawing challenge; the theme was "time". So much fun to play along - I'm really enjoying this! Please visit Eric's wonderful blog to see how other artists interpreted the theme.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
~ Albert Einstein
You can't change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future.
1) Where have I been?
Well, not here in blogland, obviously. This is the busiest time of the year at work, trying to write new IEP's and get all the paperwork together for my eighth-graders' high school transition meetings. But I promise, I'll be around to visit everyone's blogs soon. That's all I'm going to say about that; otherwise, you might have to call me a wahmbulance.
2) Why can't I leave well enough alone?
I think I've addressed this before. If I'm not quite satisfied with a piece, I will sometimes just keep messing with it until I've overworked it into the ground, if you know what I mean. I hope that's not the case with Don't Forget to Breathe. While it looked alright before, it was really pretty boring. Nicely boring- but still, boring. After giving it way too much thought, I decided that the problem was "a failure to communicate". Art, at its most fundamental level, is an attempt to visually 'say' something, whether it includes actual written words or not. To see the earlier version and read the accompanying text, go here. To me, it just didn't 'feel' the way I felt when I made the piece. I considered a few different possibilities, and decided to add water.
After I did that, I realized the blue of the water was too bright and cheery, so I covered it with mica, and stitching... I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it now, but I refuse to do anything further. I do, really...
3) Can I use raw, un-melted beeswax in artwork - and if so, how?
Sadly, my husband's bees died. He took the wax out of the frames and threw it away, but I quickly rescued it from the trash, because... there must must something I can do with it, right?
4) If you change the name of your blog will the search engines be confused? Or is it better to retain the old name for official purposes, but just leave it off the header? I know the url will still go to the same place, but are there any problems I should know about?
I received an email from Seth apter saying that "your response to the question 'what is the one thing that you know now that
you would have liked to have known when you first started to create art?' will
be highlighted in my blog post on Sunday, February 24th as part of the series Tell All. In case you do not remember,
this is part of the series of questions you answered for this project way back
in June 2011." Since I don't remember my response, I'm curious to find out what I said. I hope you're curious, too; just click on the 'Tell All' banner above.
And don't worry- if you're waiting for 'Dressing Up, part 2', I haven't forgotten; it will be posted soon!
I just noticed yesterday that I've only done 2 posts so far this month. Time has raced by so unbelievably fast, with the end of the school year (only 2 more weeks- and only 1 of those with the kids!), mountains of special ed. paperwork, and general exhaustion. I feel like I've been working so hard, and with nothing to show for it! I've even forgotten to welcome my new followers, and I sincerely apologize. I'm so grateful to all of you, and hope you enjoy coming along on my adventures.
Just so you don't think I'm a total slacker, here's a little hors d'oeuvre. I'm sorry about the blurry photo, but my scanner does not like lumpy things. Also, I couldn't think of a good title for this one. The best I could come up with was "Ashes to Ashes, and Dust to Dust in the Wind", but that just didn't get it for me. Feel free to make suggestions.
Time has become somewhat of an issue with me lately. To put it bluntly, I've been very stressed out about it, or, more specifically, about a lack of it. When I'm doing anything, particularly artwork, I feel guilty about the 400 other things I should be doing. A lot of these things just don't get done. For example:
Cleaning the house - I mean really, doesn't it just get dirty again almost immediately? There's practically no reward in it whatsoever! Yet it must be done- again and again and again.
Cooking - The same thing only worse. It takes at least four times as long to cook something as it does to eat it. Then you have to clean it up!
Errands - Do I really need to go to the post office, get the car washed, or buy laundry detergent? I'm willing to bet no one ever died from not doing any of those things. Which reminds me-
Laundry - Ugh! Can't I just throw the dirty clothes away and buy new ones? No, wait, which takes less time, washing clothes or going shopping? Maybe I could just order them online, yeh, that might work... but it would be awfully expensive. I'd have to get a second job, but then I'd have even less time to do what I want. Aaaaaaaaaghh!!
Of course, the things listed above are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. I think you can see my problem. I just can't seem to find much time to make art. It can literally take me days to do a blog post! And the business side of it, well, forget it! I have to choose- I can do art, or do the business, but not both. Without the art, business is beside the point, and the art without trying to sell it is...well, not getting me any closer to doing it full time.
All of this results in me feeling pressured and nervous, always fretting about something I don't have time to do. Not very Zen, eh? So, since I can't get this time thing off my mind, I thought I'd use my blog to do a little exploration of time. I mean, what is it, actually? Why does time seem to zip by when we're doing something we enjoy, but crawl so slowly when we're, say, sitting through a boring class, or waiting in line?
Salvador Dali
Timothy Ferriss, Four-Hour-A-Week Entrepreneur, states: "Conceptually, time is the framework that allows us to put experience on a continuum. Practically, time is a non-renewable resource that determines the redeemable value of almost all renewable resources on a personal level. Income, for example, cannot be traded for experience without the requisite hours or minutes. Time is the master limiting factor."
Oh yeah, I hear that, Timothy!
Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel Duchamp
"Time is the fourth dimension. The passage of time is an illusion."We have this illusion of a changing, three-dimensional world, even though nothing changes in the four-dimensional union of space and time of Einstein's relativity theory."If life were a movie, physical reality would be the entire DVD: Future and past frames exist just as much as the present one." - Max Tegmark, Cosmologist. (MIT)
I like this idea better, but how do I make this work for me? If all moments exist at once, why can't I just move to another spot on the DVD? Maybe Carl Sagan can help me out:
Okay, I'm not so sure that was helpful, but I do love Carl Sagan! I think I'll have to continue my time exploration later, because, yes...I'm out of time.
