Here’s another in the new collage series – this one is based on the view from the yoga studio at Miraval in Tucson, Arizona. I’ve had photos of this view for years, it’s such a striking vista – I usually meditate with my eyes closed, but this view always tempts me to keep them open and just get lost in those mountains and that sky.
All those new collage papers I made in Paducah set me off down the rabbit hold of fodder techniques. Time to put the big stash of new goodies to use – this is the first in a series called All My Dreams Flew Out the Window – in the best possible way. It’s the scene from the balcony window at the condo we’ve visited for the past few years in South Walton County, Florida. We go in November, when it is still relatively quiet and we get to enjoy beach walks, sunny days, and spectacular sunsets. The high top table on the balcony is my favorite place to create while I’m there.
Two of the most common questions I hear, or hurdles people seem to anticipate, center around time.
The first challenge is finding the time. There is no question about it, I’m fortunate in the sense that I have space and I have opportunities for privacy. That takes away for me a lot of obstacles that many other people face.
I first wrote this piece in 2020, so the challenges that people had at the time with sharing space exploded, trying to accommodate work at home and school. Maybe, though, it has also led to more explicit negotiation around time and space for a little privacy if you live with other people. In a perfect world, it’s nice to pick the same time every day, and the same place is nice too, but if that’s not possible, there are a lot of people that jump in the car, drive to the edge of a parking lot somewhere, and just sit there. Or walk outside and sit under a tree. Or literally disappear inside a closet.
The real issue is setting aside the time, giving it a priority. It isn’t really that different from finding time to work out, and for some it is just as painful, but like any other habit, if you can just stay with it for about 30 days, you will probably get a pretty good imprint. You can find the time for at least five minutes, you know you can, just decide.
That leads to the next issue, how much time? I started at 15 minutes, I think, then moved to 20, and a couple of years ago to 25 minutes a day. There are a couple of other things that are part of my personal ritual that make it about 30 minutes start to finish. But there is nothing magic about that, no specific time that makes it successful or not. You can start with one breath, then three breaths, then five minutes. There is an Arthur Ashe quote that comes to mind: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can”.
As May began, the boyfriend and I had just returned from a road trip to Atlanta where he was doing some teaching and I was doing some visiting with friends and remote working (is that a think when you have had a home office for over 25 years?). On the way back, we stopped at Dancing Bear Lodge in the Smoky Mountains, using up a credit from a pandemic-cancelled trip – beautiful scenery, great on-site restaurant, iffy weather. We also realized that we are less “nestled in the woods” people and more “wide-open vista” people.
A couple of weeks later, over in the Kate McEnroe Consulting side of my life, I had an opportunity to speak to a conference of women in econoic development in Austin, Texas in mid May. It’s spring, we have a car now, flying in a pain in the but and unreliable, and this is a season of our live when we are experimenting with pushing at all of the voices that say we have to be in a hurry, so we decided to make a road trip of it.
We settled on a slow roll, staying in Cape Girardeau and Texarkana on the way down. In Cape Girardeau, the Courtyard Marriott is tucked in to a few blocks of charmingly restored downtown, located in an old bank building with great architectural details. In Texarkana, Ed has a great time smoking a cigar and drinking Walgreens wine out on the patio next to the interstate.
Austin was delightful – got to have dinner with friends I’ve known forever and haven’t seen in just about as long.
On the way back, first night was in Arkadelphia, but the treat was the next couple of nights in Paducah (see the Paperpalooza post).
It has felt like spring was a long time coming this year, but let me tell you, this route it was new green growth, bright yellow fields, and generally beautiful scenery the whole way – glad we didn’t hurry through it.
I finished it! One of those 100 day Instagram projects done and dusted. I decided to use this project to experiment with gouache – one of those things I had in my stash but had never used. As you can see on the left, a little gouache goes a long way. I started with full tubes, and 100 mini-paintings later I still have most of it left, so while it was a success in term of experimentation and persistence, it didn’t do much to empty out my art closet.
Part two of the stash busting mission was also kind of a bust. I have a huge stack of report covers from back in the day when every consulting report was printed out over and over again. The paper quality is great, and one side is blank, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to recycle. The printed sides were all painted purple, my numerology color the the year 2022, and I cut 100 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 pieces. It worked great, but the stack of report covers doesn’t seem to have diminished by much.
As a learning experience, though, the whole thing was a great success. Working with the size and medium and color scheme parameters I set myself allowed me to learn a lot about what I feel drawn to create and how to work with the gouache – not nearly as uncontrollable and more luscious colors.
Having said that, I’m not inclined to keep going with this one, but after a break I think I’ll pick another goal, maybe a 30 day one this time, starting in June.