Sulphur Butterfly Collage

6x6 inches, paper collage

I've been having a difficult time lately working up enthusiasm for two projects that I both need and want (I think) to do.  I've been amassing a stack of these small collages, something that I find to be both interesting and entertaining.  But other things keep steering me toward detours on my road to getting enough of these small collages finished to restock the galleries that carry my work this spring. 

I promised my weekly art group, which meets at a local senior center, to demonstrate a technique for creating imaginary animals using scribbles and photographs of cracked asphalt and concrete.  It is fun, a good way to play and get the old creative juices flowing, but preparing the materials and demonstration samples is taking time away from my primary art goal.

I also am writing a first person talk for a local group of local history enthusiasts about a local woman whose family has been very influential in town.  This project is also a major detour away from my studio, since it requires hours and hours of reading, library and internet research, and writing.  I finally started composing the actual script, which will need editing for all sorts of things, accuracy, time, narrative interest, and then of course will need learning.  

Then, surprise! A mental pothole in the road toward completing this program.  Recently I joined a group of long-time retired friends for dinner, and in the middle of a nice glass of cabernet one of them started in bitterly complaining about a title her local book group chose to read.  Who the h--- wants to read about HER?  Guess to whom she was referring. Yes indeed, the very woman about whom I am researching and writing.  I can only hope the folks who asked me to prepare the program will be more enthused.  But my motivation for continuing the work is significantly diminished. 

I know that I should not take a casual comment tossed out over cocktails personally.  I know that she did not intend to shoot down my enthusiasm for my work.  I know.  I keep telling myself to brush the comment aside, but dang it, I would rather do almost anything right now but sit down and write about a person who inspires such contempt.  

I think I will head upstairs on this gray and snowy day and do some cutting a gluing, a process I find very therapeutic. Then I promise I will sit down for at least an hour to write.