Oh yeah.....I ALMOST FORGOT!!

You know you may have too much on your plate...

when you are worried that you might forget a show --

That's right, it's the  

American Craft Council 

St. Paul Show  

this weekend!  

That means set-up is tonight and tomorrow, followed by the big champagne kick-off party tomorrow night, and show days Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 

Normally, I would be running around like this:
  

trying to survive framing week and get things loaded up to go.

Instead, I am running around like this:
  

getting a whole house full of new carpet today.  The truck is already loaded, and has been since Sunday, as my trusty booth-hand now lives in Phoenix but does drop by to help sometimes on weekends....and so I am going to be doing this show solo.....

WHAT???!!!!

Whatever would possess me 

to agree to something like that?

Only the desire to participate in what will almost certainly be my last ACC St. Paul Show.  I want to say goodbye to old friends (and new!) and enjoy hob-nobbing with my fellow wizards one last time before I pack up the studio and work on developing some more lasting relationships with cacti.

Consequently, I have a whole lot of mixed feelings today.....

terror

sadness

excitement

an overwhelming desire to go upstairs and turn down

the carpet-layers' REALLY LOUD country music

fear of forgetting something --

like my booth, or my work, or how to talk about art

If you are in St. Paul this weekend, I sure hope you'll come by Rivercentre (Booth 1103) to say hello/good-bye!  

And if you aren't, I sure hope you'll come back 
for the Show Report 
(sure to be the last one for awhile) 
when Small Works returns on Monday, April 23.

Either way,
hope to see you soon!






   
  

 

Magpie Monday.

Red Roofs, Marc Chagall, 1954 

Red

I don't know quite what

to say, there is too much

under the moon

to tell just one tale, stories

of street sounds, flowers

of memory, things seen

or just imagined, places

where it all has happened

and at night everyone slips in

a doorway of his own, I will cover

everything along my way

with one big color, paint

that beats a pulse, a pattern

we share, a word to spread

make us appear whole, each

on the same path though

we talk and walk 

our thousand different roads

-- smh

Who can resist a little Marc Chagall on a Monday?  

Certainly spices up the chore list a bit!  

Click your way over to The Mag for more . . .

  

"If I could only ________________......"

  

I got an actual laugh-out-loud -- 

(which involves making noise, as opposed to an LOL which is really just more of a smile) when I popped in on Facebook this morning to see what was happening in my friends' worlds.

In my notifications it said that a friend had mentioned me in a comment, so I clicked on it to see what it was about.  She was responding to her own friend's post showing a needle-felting project she had completed.  After complimenting her friend's success, she said, "I know a FAMOUS felt artist . . . Susan M. Hinckley.  Google her.  Seriously."  

This is a friend I don't know terribly well, but we've had lunch together a number of times.  I certainly know her well enough that she should realize I am NOT a famous felt artist nor anything else.  It just reminded me how funny and flawed our perceptions are of others.

When I was younger and just starting out on my art journey, I spent countless hours poring over magazines and books.  I used to think, "If I could just get in a magazine, THEN I would be a real artist.  THEN I would have it made."  Well, I first made it into a magazine a good 15 years ago and I can tell you that it hasn't changed a thing.  Sure, it was always cool standing in the check-out line at the supermarket wanting to tell everyone, "Hey!  I'm IN HERE!" And my mom always seemed to get a kick out of buying a few extra copies.  But that's pretty much the extent of the life-changing that occurred as a result.

"Happiness is the absence 

of the striving for happiness."

-- Chang Tzu 

Aha.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a member of the

"If I could only __________, 
then I would be happy..." 

school of thinking.

Right now it's taking the form of, "If I could only sell this house and get this move over with, then I could live my perfect life in the desert that I've always dreamed of.  And be happy."



Silly me.

I think Norman Lear had it right when he said:

"Life is made up of small pleasures.  Happiness is made up of those tiny successes.  The big ones come too infrequently.  And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything."

Tiny successes like finally having white woodwork in my house.  Even if I'm going to sell it to someone else.  Like having my bathroom finally look like the bathroom I always knew it could be.  I get to live in it for a few weeks, anyway.  And it does make me happy every time I walk in the room.

Tiny successes like having the OPPORTUNITY to participate in the ACC St. Paul Show next week.  Even though it's terribly inconvenient for me. And lately I just haven't been selling at shows the way a FAMOUS felt artist ought to sell.  It's a pretty big success just to be invited to the party.

And my crab apple trees are in full blossom.  And I've succeeded in being here to see it yet again.  Sure, Russ is living in Phoenix calling me every day to brag about the Mexican food and the sunshine, but then I have to remind myself that he's missing the crab apple trees.

Life is good. Right now.  Whether you are famous or not.  Probably even better if you're not, come to think of it, but only as long as you bother to notice it.

Happy Friday!







  
    

I love words.  

In fact, I would include my love of language on a very short list of my distinguishing characteristics.

An article I read this week by Jeremiah Whitten posited that, "Twitter is at the forefront of the decline of America's patience for prose."  I am not on Twitter.  I love ideas and the words used to express them too much to reduce them to 140 "characters", subjecting them to a formula in which letters and empty spaces carry equal weight.

One of our local school superintendents said on the news this week that, "To today's youngsters, a book or magazine is an iPad that doesn't work."  If that is the case, I certainly hope SOMEONE is helping them understand the value of print -- the power of words on a page, ideas committed to paper.  Ideas made more tangible than they can ever feel in the always changing world of "virtual." 

Not that I am promoting wordiness.  In fact, the quest to say a thing succinctly is one of my passions. The best ideas expressed precisely, using the best words . . . communication perfection.

That's why I savored the book I just finished 

more than anything I have read in a long time:

Short Takes, edited by Judith Kitchen

In the years since I studied writing in college, they have invented something called the "short".  And the creative non-fiction shorts in this collection were like pieces of delicious candy to me. Some were by well-known writers, such as David Sedaris, Sherman Alexie, Amy Tan and Terry Tempest Williams. Others were by emerging voices.  And each told a story in what seemed to be the best way possible.

I handed the book to Hannah to read one of my favorite pieces that was just a few paragraphs long.  After she finished, she let out a long sigh.  She said, "Wow. That was amazing. I know everything about that family -- their complete story.  HOW DO SOME WRITERS DO THAT?"

Simple.  By using the best words.

The editor explains in the introduction that by dividing their longer pieces into many connected segments, contemporary writers have embraced the short as a means of reaching an audience.  "In the century of the New York minute and the Internet (not to mention Twitter, I add, which was invented since this collection was compiled) the short has come into its own."

The pieces range from a few paragraphs to 2,000 words and are described on the cover as inviting us to "experience the power of the small to move, persuade, and change us."

The power of the small....yes. 

Little things, like words.

On pages. 

To which I intend to hold tightly. 

 

Why...Hello! Fancy meeting you here again!

 
I got up this morning 

and put on actual clothes . . .

It was exciting! I've been living in painting-clothes-exile for so long now, I almost forgot how to put on anything that isn't elastic-waist sweatpants.  But more exciting still is the fact that we've painted our last stroke!













Make no mistake, the house still looks very much like it did in the photos I shared with you before I left...but that's okay.

Because the great clean-up is about to begin . . .
And I'm actually looking forward to it!

Sure, it's a bit like I might actually look forward to asparagus
if I'd been eating only broccoli for a month.

After as much painting/caulking as I've done, cleaning sounds downright fun!

So I took a little walk at the dog park to celebrate before getting down to work.  It's a beautiful morning -- a chilly spring wind but the sun warm on my back -- and everything alive.  It's as if the whole world just stepped out of its egg and is blinking in the sunshine.

Everything is covered in the most indescribable green....the color of new. Feels like a perfect day to be alive.  And wearing actual clothes.


Feels like someone has finally moved the pointer to possibilities.  Things to look forward to.  Buds on the verge of their burst. A delicious period of waiting for something even better.

Mmmmm.  Spring.

(and now, spring cleaning...on steroids....
BUT NO PAINTING!)

Happy Monday!


  

Here's the thing.

We need to talk.

I'm pretty lazy, by and large.  

At night, it often goes something like this:

Susan: (from her comfy chair) You know, we should paint the woodwork in this house.  White woodwork would make me really like this house.  It would make a whole lot of difference in my daily happiness.

Russ: (from his comfy chair) Yeah, white woodwork would be a world of improvement.  You're right.  We should do that.  Someday.

Susan:  What shall we do now?  Let's watch Perry Mason.

Russ:  Great.  What season are we on?  Season six?  Again?  Awesome.  I'll fire it up.

Susan:  Thanks, honey.  Because I'm pretty comfortable in this comfy chair.


That's pretty much any night of the week at this house.  Although sometimes it's Mad Men or Glee or even Mary Tyler Moore.

Anyway, the point is, it's never painting woodwork.

Until one day....we got a WILD idea.  We were ordering new windows for the house due to some hail damage.  New windows for the whole house!  Exciting, right?  It was.  In fact, it was so exciting, we decided to order white.  Because it would FINALLY FORCE US TO PAINT THE DARN WOODWORK.  It was a big step.  In fact, I'm not sure I could have done it.  Russ finally took a deep breath and placed the order while I was hiding out in the deserts of Southern Utah when I ran away from home last fall.  And from my vantage point there (in a different comfy chair), it sounded like a GREAT IDEA.

Cue ominous music.....

enter CORPORATE MOVE, stage left.

Yeah, between the ordering the windows and the painting of the woodwork, Russ decided to take a new job.  It was cause for celebration!  Except.....

4000 sq. ft. of painting to be done.  Because when you put some spanking white enamel on the woodwork, it's a little like moving your old sofa to your new house -- you notice just how RATTY your old sofa looks.  Everything in the house needed to be painted.  From the baseboards on up.

Doesn't it make you angry to do all that work 

to sell to someone else? 

This is the question I have been asked continuously since I first put on my paint clothes nearly 3 weeks ago.

Of course it does.  ANGRY AT MYSELF.  And a little angry at Perry Mason, for being so gosh-darned entertaining, even all these years later.

It's going slowly....but coming surely. 

However -- we're still living in this:

There's a dining room table in there somewhere...

But no worries, because no one's going to be cooking anything anytime soon!

(And don't expect to be entertained in the living room either. )

And we will be in this mess for awhile yet....because new carpet comes next if the painting ever stops.

Every morning I wake up intending to fire up my computer and come here, where it's always clean and tidy and just how I like it.  And every night I go to bed saying, "maybe tomorrow."

So it is with tremendous sadness that I announce a little hiatus for Small Works -- just a few weeks, until I restore a little order around here. 

I will miss you all, blog buddies -- already have!  For too long!

But even if I could think
of anything to say
that didn't involve paint . . .

I wouldn't be able
to remember it long enough
to say it.







So be good.  In the meantime, I'll be lurking.

And I'll look forward to seeing you . . . and talking about something else for a change -- soon!

The Great Hinckley Home Improvement/Preparation for Selling Marches On...

 
After 10 days of wearing only paint clothes . . .

I decided both my mind and my body needed a little break from all-things-woodwork.

So I threw some favorite real clothes in a bag, cashed in a few frequent flier miles, and took a little trip.  The purpose of the trip was to savor fine baked goods, watch stupid movies, and enjoy a great cheeseburger.

Mission accomplished, on all counts.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitis (of whose writing only fragments remain) said:

The rule that makes

its subject weary

is a sentence

of hard labor.

For this reason,

change gives rest.

Sometimes a little bit of doing nothing and thinking about nothing for no reason is just what the doctor ordered.

I put on my same running shoes and went for a run, but I looked at snow-covered mountains instead of 140th street.  I listened to the same music on my iPod, but did it in a sleek and small black rental car instead of my minivan.  I went to Target to buy something I forgot to pack, but it wasn't my Target and there was no grocery list in my purse . . . no thought of whether or not there was milk in the refrigerator.  Not my problem, if only for a day.

There are times when thinking
-- or not thinking --
about whether there is milk 
makes all the difference.  

Hello, paint clothes.
I have not missed you, but now I will gladly put you on again and go back to work . . . for a bit.