The Second Wave

Yeah, I've totally let this blog slip. It's symptomatic of my indecisive life right now. Am I an artist? Do I really want to spend my days doing art--for why? I'm too chicken to open my studio and try to sell it. I went to the American Craft Council show two weekends ago, and I had such a range of emotional experiences.

• Wow. These people are good.
• Except for some--who had nothing different. Their stuff looked like everybody elses.
• I'll never be this good.
• Wow. That's a lot of capital they have sunk into jewelry raw materials.
• My stuff doesn't have high enough quality to sell, and I don't really want to spend thousands and thousands of dollar on gemstones and precious metals.
• Well--maybe I could do something like that.
• But so what? If I did it--would I show it or try to sell it? No.
• So, there's a lot of stuff here it's clear to me I wouldn't even try. What would I like to do?
• Am I really a visual person? Maybe I should just concentrate on the writing and finish something already, damn it.

So, I left that show feeling like I really didn't need to be spending my time in a studio. I needed to buckle down and finish some writing. I started planning to close my studio when my lease ended in June.

Then, last weekend, I went to the St. Paul Art Crawl, and "crawled" through two buildings out of about twenty. And in those spaces I found people doing things that really weren't better than what I was doing--or could do--and they had the courage to show it.

And I got inspired again.

So today, the sun came out after some cold and rainy days, and I signed up for a silver fusing class, and I went back into the studio, where I've not been in Quite A While. I meant to do some reverse glass painting--easy and silly stuff, just glass pebbles for my sister-in-law's birthday. And I didn't do that, because I forgot to bring the pebbles, and I didn't have the right paint anyway.

But I did do something. I made three pairs of earrings and a book mark. And I took pictures of the earrings. And I decided that the hell with it. I make whimsical jewelry using base metals and glass--which is pretty enough for costume jewelry AND I can sell it at very very affordable prices.

So I will be making some earring display screens over the next couple of weeks, and as I make things, I can put them up where I can see them and be proud.

So I am going to try again and see if I can resurrect my belief in myself as well as the blog.