She's a Regular Balabusta

Summer in the mid-section has been hot, dry, and a little oppressive. Other than a few wild thunderstorms, there has not been much to distinguish one day from the next. The garden mostly languishes without my tender care. A squirt of water is all I can manage. I try to keep the back yard fountain full and flowing for the sake of the birds, but I've spent little time lately tending the beds, enjoying our gazebo, or even cutting bouquets for the house.  The basil plants are liking the weather (at least the ones whose pots are hooked to the automatic watering system), and I need to set aside an hour for turning them into my favorite condiment, pesto.

The last time I picked flowers for the gazebo was in late June. After the vase blew over in four storms in three days, i decided to give up. Maybe it's safe to try again.

One plant that thrives in the heat is this gorgeous portulaca. The "snowball" bush behind it got decimated in the storms. Happens every July, and yet we love it!

I've even given up a standing invitation for water aerobics and/or "noodle" floating in a friend's pool. The first time I did that I wrenched my back from walking backward in the water, and got a rash from the sun. The second time, I got a headache and nausea from too much bobbing. I figure I am not cut out for water action. Instead I have been spending hours curled up in quiet concentration on the couch stitching my reverse applique projects, or at my dining room table, craft knife in hand, carefully cutting stencil after stencil. For the first time in many a summer, I wouldn't dare question the absolute need for air conditioning to keep me sane and productive.

One of the finely detailed stencils I have been cutting. This one is a template for ribbon embroidery.

Beside my obsession with balancing input (food) and output (exercise) "points" and weighing in at my weekly Weight Watcher's meeting, I am lately taken with the back-to-basics desire to simplify my expectations of what life is all about. Maybe the dieting has focused me unnaturally on food and clothing, but there has been a sort of "aha!" return to what is (and has always really been) important to me. While my human relationships with family and friends seem to grow more complicated and distant with the passing years, my relationship with my own life seems to find clarity and ease itself into something I can understand and hold in my hand. There is definitely less regret and longing, and more "just living". I worry less about making my mark or fitting anyone else's expectations of me and surrender to the day. Every day seems to be a new adventure, full of promise, even when the list of activities involves the most mundane of "housewife" activities of cooking, laundry, personal care, or sewing alterations.

Every Saturday (and sometimes Fridays, too) is coffee date with Dave at Starbucks. Lately, less drawing and more doodle journaling is going on. One week the heat made me "prickly", the next we got to try some great new cooling beverages. Like the "Where's Waldo" puzzles, Dave is usually somewhere in the doodle.

The other day as I was pulling a beauteous but simple dessert pudding from the oven, admiring its pockets of bubbling red berry juice amidst the golden dome, a long forgotten word came to mind: balabusta! You, Cheryl, are a balabusta! In case you are sitting there with a perplexed look on your face, this is a Yiddish term often overheard in conversations of my youth, from my mother or grandmother, while commenting on some woman of their acquaintance. It hadn't been a part of my life for so many years that I felt the need to do a little Wiki research. The written definitions and oral explanations on this resource page confirmed my thoughts: this term, basically meaning the female head of house (and there is a male counterpart) is meant, then and now, with no facetiousness or irony, as genuine praise for homemaking well done.

Both clafouti are baked puddings with fruit, eggs, dairy and flour. The top one is made from milk with mostly cherries and some berries. The bottom one gets a slightly different texture from yogurt as the dairy, and mostly strawberries. They are low fat, not too sweet and taste great when reheated slightly. A dash of cream on top never hurts.

Since childhood, cooking, sewing decorating, and entertaining--these have always come easily and added pleasure to my life. But in the late sixties and beyond as I came through college, a first marriage, and the work world, we were fighting to be liberated from gender defined roles and given the choice to have careers outside this "limited" scope of expertise. I felted less inclined at that time to make this my calling, even though I loved those things so well. Now, twenty years after retiring early from a brief teaching career, I realize this was my best career choice after all.

Two views of my first Alabama Chanin garment that is made with a complex cloth. This is stencilled, then reverse appliqued. As a poncho with one point, it can be worn front, back, or side for a variety of looks.

Another stencil design currently being worked in reverse applique to make a tied wrap. The bottom layer that shows through the cuts will be black.

The progression from stenciled to finished took about two weeks.

So with a life partner who joined me at those crossroad years, who is both indulgent and appreciative of my "Martha (Stewart)" tendencies, I am finally settling into who I really enjoy being. This "love of my life" who has had to put up with a steel mill career for most of his life, comes home from a hot, dirty, chaotic day, and puts up with my current dual obsessions of Weight Watchers and Alabama Chanin, never says an unkind word, and actually encourages and helps me with my goals in both. He recently bought me an air brush and compressor to paint my stenciled designs on cloth, and even takes patterns to work to enlarge for tracing.

 Most days, even though he has been out in the oppressive heat all day, he still comes home looking forward to a walk after dinner. So we do, and this has kept me on my exercise track, when alone, I would have made excuses. And then we come back to our very pleasant front deck, have a beverage and cool down as the sun casts lengthening shadows, and sinks to a cooler place in the sky. And some nights, after we return to our air conditioned oasis, I proffer a slice of that golden fruit clafouti with a bit of cream on top.

So, am I still striving to become an "artist"? Yes, I am still studying and exploring and practicing in different media. I am letting my imagination wander, I am not taking any of it more seriously than it deserves. I have no real expectations of starting a new career or looking for glory. But "balabusta"--that role in life I joyfully hold in my heart.

When Losing is Winning

(Just a reminder to new blog readers, or if you just forgot: clicking on the colored words (links) will take you to more info, and clicking on the photos will take you to an enlarged image, the better to view details.)

Sometime last winter, while enmeshed in endless preparations for a quilt show, a large and complex embroidery project, and another embroidery challenge,  I dreamed of having the free time to return to a bit of creative clothing construction. Clothing sewing had been my main type of artistic self expression for most of  my life. I had wanted for many years to go to art school and become a clothing or textile designer. Unfortunately the dream of a professional life as such had been thwarted, but in recent years I had returned to a selective set of projects that might be called "art clothing." Generally these involved using articles of clothing as a base for textile surface design explorations, and the body as the gallery for displaying them.

While I loved the idea of being able to show off my "art" wherever I went (I now can do that by whipping out my phone and pulling up my Flikr photo steam), there was the small issue of middle age spread making me an unsuitable longterm gallery for these pieces. I gradually decided it was a better use of time and money to shop for clothing that fit me now and make art that always would. The funny part about that idea is that as I have matured into my "be here now" living style, the longevity of the interest I need to have in my finished pieces of creativity has diminished no matter what the medium. I get the pleasure in the moment of creation, and generally have less interest in long term ownership. Also, the concept of digital storage of images has made it easier to catalogue, revisit and reuse the art when desired.

So when I recently decided it was time to go back to making my mark on interesting portable art, I didn't feel the pieces had to be mine forever. I did decide, however, that I needed to provide them a great looking gallery. I finally bit the bullet, rejoined the new and improved Weight Watchers (mostly improved because the online tools make tracking everything a breeze), and now I'm watching the daily shrinking me show, where I'm weighing, measuring, trying on older, smaller sizes until by the power of will they finally fit, and waiting for the time I deem the mannequin "just right." But while this has become my major summer project in the category of "just do it!", I am beginning work on a fabulous new wardrobe of someone else's inspiration, but my joy.

For once, I decided I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, that I would give myself permission to use patterns and ideas from another designer. That would be Natalie Chanin and her fantastic layered mix and match wardrobe of totally hand sewn, surface designed and embellished pieces made entirely from comfy cotton knits. Bam! The perfect combo of simplicity and excess! Any piece in the basics wardrobe can be made totally and utterly plain, or encrusted to the point of body armor. Your choice. And for your own satisfaction (aside from having a wonderful piece of clothing to complement your lifestyle), when people complement you and say "what a lot of work you did" or "how much do you think that is worth?", you can point them to the retail sales side of her company and say: this little poncho would set you back $1,235, but I made it for a yard of material and the joy of stitching.

Before I move on to my summer of show and tell stitchery, I thought I would share with you the rest of the projects from my five week course, Flower Crazy, with Carla Sonheim. I was so captivated by the techniques she taught us that for once I completed every assignment, including the "extra credit"! 

In addition to an overall inventive, personalized floral theme, the course centered on the creative combination of gesso and watercolor as the media on a variety of substrates. This is watercolor paper with gesso "last".

Here we created a textured painting with gesso "first" then watercolor and Carla's "patented" rub and buff technique.

The idea for these pod flowers came to me in a waking sort of dream. Here the same texture first, then color, but on birch plywood.

These next two pieces are my pride and joy from the class, and involved birch plywood base with wet on wet paint (and many layers more). And yet there was almost no planning involved and the two pieces took under two hours to do.

This piece and the next are the surprising base layers for the two painting to follow. Surprise for me, because I had never worked with collage before as a first layer, especially when the notion is that you will cover most of it up.

This is what the orange, green and blue papers inspired in me after adding layers of gesso, watercolor, charcoal and white acrylic ink.

And the wild black and white polka dots (left over from making journal covers for a previous class) served to give punch to this fun graphic celebration of petal power.

The "final exam" of sorts was to take a children's board book, remove most of the paper from the pages and convert them into a smorgasbord of our favorite flowers and techniques from the class. I used a great deal of collage as the base for these designs, and added water-soluble markers as well as colored pencil and water-soluble ink pencil for punch. There are a total of ten paintings in this book. Check them out here.

One of the "extra credit" assignments was to make more flowers on watercolor paper that could be cut out and arranged as a wall installation.

This collection is above my television on the main living room wall.

These are on the closet doors above my sewing machine. All of them made from scrap paper, cardboard and tape, but the key ingredients are whimsy and color.

In addition to starting the Alabama Chanin designs, I am currently a member of  Jude Hill's class, Contemporary Boro 2, in which we are exploring a variety of philosophies related to clothing ownership, use, repair, and design. It is, as always, as much a community as a class, and populated by a fascinating circle of caring individuals. I showed you the dress below back in the May 7 blog entry. The reason it is here again is to share the label. One of the first projects suggested in Jude's class was to think about the alternate uses of clothing labels and how they can become part of the story of the mended or redesigned (or newly created) pieces we are making. This label is a miniature print of a quilt block from a very special group piece I did with my Designing Women friends a few years back. The image is the first "creative" portrait I ever drew of myself, and the sentiment, "I Am One of a Kind", speaks of both the dress and me.

Here is another label I made using an old stamp that was that has been the symbol for years of my sometime craft business, "Hippo Productions". This garment has been "Infused With Hippo Love," the label printed on tea dyed muslin.

A very simple but fun style from the "Alabama Stitch Book" that makes use of recycled logo t-shirts. The brown one was a prize from an Oregon hops grower for photos submitted of hops plants growing in my garden. And no, I don't brew my own beer. Not yet, anyway. I'm too busy trying to decide which  stitchery project is calling me the loudest this week. Can't wait to show you what's on the worktable now. But hopefully, hanging from my "new" body.