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In a week we will begin our first real exhibition here in Mexico and the third joint show we’ve had together. We’ve busied ourselves over the past month with putting together all the promotional materials – postcards, posters, an article for the Atencíon as well as an ad. We found a caterer to pour the wine and refrescas we’ve ordered to be delivered to the gallery from one of the local liquor stores, and we attached labels to our postcards with translations of their copy so that their message is appropriately bilingual. Did I mention we’ve also been painting since we got here in May?
It’s a different story doing the art thing on a full time basis. The show is just one of several balls we have in the air right now. We’re in the midst of applying to about 8 different art fairs in Florida for the months of February and March 2006. That has required us to make slides for most of our new paintings as well as slides and duplicates of our tent and displays of our art. Because we’d never taken slides of the tent with everything displayed, it meant that we had to put up the tent and some of our art work to take slides of both Dave’s and my work separately when we were in McAllen in late August. Texas summer heat made for an early morning start on the task and bucking a not-so-gentle breeze that started up soon after we got things in place. Our to-do lists have expanded and shrunk depending on what next big project has loomed on the horizon.
I don’t mind juggling multiple “balls.” All my past professional life has served me well in that regard. One learns to simultaneously manage a dazzling array of tasks as a nurse, that is if you’re to stay effective. But ferreting out the shows, designing promotional strategies, seeking grant funding all must happen alongside the act of inspiration, the thing that makes and keeps us doing the art in the first place.
I admitted to Dave not so long ago that I had come to realize I hadn’t anticipated that part of being an artist full time. The part that requires that in spite of show rejections, gallery rejections, grant rejections, and low sales I still need to find inspiration. Painting is a breeze when things are coming your way. All that positive feedback by way of sales, acceptance into shows, and other accolades serves as a magical lubricant to the creative juices. I’ve not had the happy experience of this phenomena regularly, but the sporadic sales and elation of getting into a show have always tantalized me with their heady possibilities. But when “no” is the more common phrase one hears it’s easy to get caught up in the questions that buzz around your brain attacking your intensions, your efforts, and finally the work itself. Is it good enough? Will it ever be? Am I up to this? Do I have what it takes?
Being successful as an artist is usually equated with regular sales and consistent acceptance into shows, and most times gallery representation on top of all that. While there may still be rejections from time to time they are fewer and less frequent. For now we’re still struggling to achieve that height. So until then, we keep buggering on, as Churchill and his fellow Englishman are famous for saying. Keeping up the good fight with faith that what we have is more than enough, and that with effort we’ll finally get to that happy place of recognition and all that it entails.
Posted by sgraves at 11:46 AM
(On the eve of the World Series, I just had to include this letter I wrote to my dad, a life-long Cub fan, from his son the White Sox fan. I answered his e-mail which offered up some kind words of support just after the Sox won the American League Pennant.)
A very generous interpretation of events from you, my dear lifelong north-sider. I'm still not exactly sure what went wrong during the pedagogical phase, maybe nascent rebellion (at ten?), maybe it was the performance of the two teams in my formative fan year of 1964. Maybe I was just following the hype (Sox missed the pennant by one game that year, Cubs were 17 out). I do know that brother Pete went to a Sox game in '63 or '64, so I can remember being eager to do like my big bro'. My case was thoroughly hopeless in short order since modeling tends to fix permanently at that stage (if I got my "Child Psyche" right).
And hopeless was certainly the word for over 40 years, lost in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey (many locusts with small spoonfulls of honey in '83, '94 and 2000) until Sunday, October 16, 2005 rolled around. Stefanie and I were curled up down here in Mexico around the softly glowing computer screen watching the updates flash on our play-by-play scoreboard screen, all the while listening to ESPN Sox Radio chime in a half-beat later with the audio accounts (all via mlb.com). When it came down to two outs in the ninth and the scoreboard on our screen read "ball in play, out(s) recorded", we both went over to my desktop where the audio had been cued up and cranked the volume for the words I've waited to hear since I was ten, "The Sox win the pennant! The Sox win the pennant!".
Hours later after soaking my long-abused loyalties in the sweet balm of victory, I went to bed repeating those words. I tried them out again this morning and they still sound highly unusual.
It was quite a run. How can this team that was gasping for air down the stretch turn on a dime and run off twelve out of thirteen? And against the Indians, Red Sox and Angels, three of the four strongest Al contenders in September? My only regret is that we couldn't mangle the Yankees a little bit while we were at it.
I'm glad you can enjoy, crazed Cub fan I know you to be. I know I'd be on your bandwagon if the roles were reversed. As for those Sox fans who still are inclined to freeze out Cubs fans for enjoying this, I say just let it go. At this point in time we're supposed to be patronizing, not CRUEL! This one's for the whole city! Getting to the World Series is a battle in the trenches. Once you win the pennant I say, pitch the big tent and invite everyone in.
I've been e-mailing back and forth with a pathetic (but comparatively more rewarded) Cardinals fan friend of mine. He has been warning me about the obstacles presented by Astros pitching for several weeks now. I would dearly love to see those Cards win tonight and get on a roll so we could face them in the World Series. Maybe beating them would pour us a dram of sympathy from the those supplicants to the Wrigley Shrine. Then "my enemies enemy is my friend" can be the pivot as long as Cub Fans can remember who the real pains in their keester are.
You're right about the personalities on this team. A nice ethnic mix. No superstar hydocephalia (yet). A heavy current of ice water flowing in veins of guys that give every indication they don't realize what the fuss is all about. And Ozzie. My favorite player in the late 60's was Luis Aparicio. In the 90's it was Ozzie. And now this inflection-impaired goof returns to Chicago and promptly dumps a World Series in our lap.
If I'm dreaming don't wake me.
Dave
Posted by dlucht at 12:42 PM | Comments (1)
Where do I begin with all this? Of course this Katrina situation calls for somber appraisals and a good deal of finger wagging and shaking of the head. Believe me, I’ve tried chastising but I come off as someone firing from the hypocrite. I’ve tried the philosophical route but I keep seeing old Hegel back there with a megaphone shouting, “You’re taking on water!”
Where do we start when it seems like the whole world could basically use a good spanking. Me included. I’m no big fan of corporal punishment but maybe just this once it might be justified so that we’d all WAKE THE HELL UP! I don’t think we’d suffer any lasting emotional scars.
Yes, we’ve been naughty (some of us more than others of course). Some of us have skated on our responsibilities as citizens. And sure New Orleans is a Party Town. But that doesn’t mean Katrina was some big ham-fisted house-frau bringing a willow switch down across the Big Easy’s bare bottom. I mean she struck Biloxi too! Most of those folks only head for the riverboats on the weekends.
So that’s not it. I noticed even Pat Robertson kept his mouth shut this time.
Maybe it’s a wake up call then (the people down at the desk are usually pretty darn good about doing that). That’s a much less punitive image for me than that old proverbial lightening bolt from heaven. Too incomprehensibly arbitrary. More like that friendly little phone call from the hotel’s computer where you pick it up half asleep and know you got your wake up call just about the time you realize nobody’s there.
Let’s hope we’re all in the shower by now. I could’ve used five more minutes.
I heard it was “just one of those things” and indeed it was, if by that you mean, “I have absolutely no clue”. I really wish I knew why some of “those things” happened but if I did I’d probably have a whole lot of explaining to do to some very pissed off people. I’ll understand it a lot more when I watch the Hurricane Katrina special on the Nature Channel. They can break out the old “awesome power of Mother Nature!” and “nature’s fury” to help me capture the moment.
I prefer to think of it as “One of life’s little Category 5 mysteries.”
The whole inept response by the designated governmental agencies was painful to behold. But then they were caught off guard. Maybe our expectations were too high. You know its one thing to be screwed slowly over the course of a lifetime by faceless bureaucracy. Its another when the whole thing happens on a weekend.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to minimize the suffering. My attempts at humor here can be read strictly as survival mode after a very traumatizing experience. I’m only just now re-emerging from a dark bunker. While my eyes get adjusted to the light I’m acting kind of giddy with the thought of having survived. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you suffer (I think that’s right…). Anyway, I heard some really stupid things while I was down there. Come to think of it, there was a bit of an echo…
Posted by dlucht at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)