EMBROIDERED REALISM: THE ART OF RUTH MILLER
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The uses of weather

9/28/2014

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It's raining today and too overcast for stitching.  This past week I began a new embroidery.  I try to stitch the beginnings of my tapestries when the sun shines indoors brightly.  Sometimes, I'm really picky and won't stitch too early in the day when long shadows are cast or too late when the sunshine has a rosy tint or there's just not enough of it.  Artificial light just won't do; not even a fluorescent on the left and an incandescent on the right.  They're just not as full-bodied.  A vitamin A pill is not a carrot.


I'm careful in this way because much of choosing the right colors and values of threads depends on what color the thread will be placed next to.  Yellow looks more dynamic when it's next to purple than when it's next to beige.  If there aren't many (or any) threads already placed, it's hard to determine if the thread is light enough, bold enough or washed-out and subtle enough.  As a result, I usually start by guessing badly and have to pick the first threads out when progress makes mistakes plain.  At Cooper Union, I took a class called "Psychology of Perception" that provided invaluable lessons on the effects of colors placed next to one another.  There, colors were all compared in rectangular formats with no representational elements.  If you read about the work of Josef Albers (Bauhaus), you can find out the mechanics of it.  But nothing takes the place of experience and experimentation.  Sort of like love; you can imagine how it should be but even the Buddha had to work hard and long to achieve an understanding.


Anyhow, it's raining; a beautiful, noisy rain that forms puddles on bright green grass and Mississippi red earth.  Aside from Rascal (the cat) and Puppy (the you can guess who) and even though I have relatives and neighbors living on the same block, there's not a soul in sight right now.  And it occurred to me how useful rainy solitude can be.  I love to work; there's nothing like having something concrete to show for the passage of time but since there's not enough light, I've decided to use this time to rest, if only to be more efficient and creative later.  Yep.  There's a future art piece in here somewhere.  Maybe it'll be colored a warm gray.
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When is the right time to start an art career?

9/28/2014

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You guessed it, I was about to say "NOW".  But, realistically speaking, you might not want to drop everything.  I knew for a good two years that I would drop everything (day job) one day.  However, having been a grownup for several years, I knew that when the job stops, the pay stops too.  And, while it's really true that we can put our faith in God, it helps to have an emergency stash.  (In my experience, God sometimes operates on a different time schedule... probably based on a higher set of values that don't take into account rent payments.)

Anyway, once I acquired the desire, the will and the courage to start down the art road, I had to acquire a stash.  Notice that desire is first on the list.  In my opinion, once you've settled on your desire, Life/God is put on notice.  Not that a desire is a demand but more like, the macrocosm is present 24/7 in the microcosm, and notices a new necessity, if you will.  Or maybe, the macrocosm feels it's time for a change in location X10 of the microcosm and arranges for a situation that will ease or cause the necessary change. (It's been 13 years and that memory is somewhat fuzzy.)  Anyhow, whatever the order was, I found this great book:  "Your Money or Your Life" (YMOYL) by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robin.   Even though I didn't follow their plan completely, it changed my life.  The otherwise thrifty (cheap?) person who could never manage to save more than $500, post-YMOYL managed to save $5,000 in two years.  That's the benefit of YMOYL-clarity.

More money might have been better but that was the amount I set my mind on.  Anyhow, the person who has planned out his whole life has not yet been born.  So my advice is, once you're sure of what direction you're headed (and you're free to change your mind later), decide what amount will keep the heebie-jeebies away.  Then go for it.  Step 2 will present itself soon enough.

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