The last five!

It took me a while but I finished the last five figures.  I got caught up in everyday life a long to do list that needed to be conquered.  Art requires you to show up, but sometimes it has to wait until the baby falls asleep, the laundry is folded, the garage is finally cleared out enough so that you can actually find what you need.  The break was good.

Before Elliott I could sit in my studio for days, I would just ignore the outside world and get lost in making.  I liked the discipline, getting up with the sun, working all day, making deadlines easily, feeling productive.  I liked getting up at 4am with a great idea and locking myself in until I got it right.

With this little guy I can only make stuff in little spurts, sometimes grabbing a measly 10 minutes.  It's frustrating and it means I have to work faster, smaller, and my projects can't be grand but I like it, I feel like I am learning something important.  I am thinking more, planning, considering. instead of making and making until I work it out.  I am also being sure I engage with the what is going on outside my studio more, keeping a balance.  It is very easy to get lost in a world you are creating.

I have some dolls on my workbench that need painting, limbs, bodies, clothes...they are waiting patiently for me to get to them and I will.  There are two deer sisters, siamese twins, and an upside down doll, I am excited to get to work on them, then I am switching gears.

I studied large scale sculpture in college.  My interest was public installation pieces, my medium of choice is clay.  My first love is ceramic, the vessel.  I have been away from it for too long and my dusty kiln is calling to me.  I woke up one day thinking about nesting bowls...

When the sisters are complete and listed on Etsy I will put away all my tiny bits and go outside, sit under the warm sun and begin where I begin, my hands in a mountain of cool clay.  I am not sure if I will sell what I make at first, I am mostly doing it for myself but who knows where this will go.

I visualize watching my little guy run through sprinklers, play in a baby pool, nap under our big apricot tree, while I build bowls next to him.

[To those of you collecting my littles no worries, I will never stop making them, I have making dolls since I was four, it is a part of me, I will always do it. ]

I think people are made up of lots of parts and pieces and all of those parts need nurturing, it can feel like juggling; friendships, parenting, the work you love, the stuff you have to do to keep the wheels turning, trying new things, and sometimes just being still.  Maybe balance is just revisiting all the parts of you as often as you can, honoring them as you do.