my week: my month

The past month at work has made it challenging to keep up with much else other than family shenanigans and basic housekeeping. I generally try to avoid using the expression "crazy busy" but life has felt a little like that over the past three or four weeks. Last week was, however, from what I hear, a bit of a grand finale around here, with final committee and board meetings and commencement on Saturday. The blow of a one-day weekend was softened a bit by listening, back-stage, to chills-inducing speeches from Joan Jonas, and mostly, for me, anyway, as amazing as meeting Joan Jonas was, Molly Prentiss. She talked about writing and making art and the kind of work artists must sneak in to the corners of their lives to get it all done, including something along the lines of "embezzling time" from employers. Which is not to say that's what I am currently or ever doing, but in that spirit, I wanted to at least catch this blog up on a few things that have kept me inspired at the end of more than one soul-draining 12-hour day over the past month.

ART:

Piet Mondrian-inspired cake, nails, and swimwear, via Design Milk.

Musings on footprints, a final blog post on Printeresting before they shake things up a little.

Ollie Wagner, getting a little love in what I assume is his local paper. The only person in grad school who understood my Kicking & Screaming references.

I recently checked out a possible studio space at Hive Artist Studios in Oakland's Jack London Square. I can hire a housekeeper or rent a studio, it turns out. But for now, I'm doing neither, since realistically I wouldn't even have time to move in (let alone much time to get any real work done) until after 4th of July. But I think the studio debate is not a question of if, but when. 

It's been awhile since I wrote about my mysterious obsession with The Last Unicorn and how it may or may not relate to my work over the past ten years, but recently I purchased both the DVD and the book, so perhaps she'll make an appearance again soon?

Adding this to the itinerary for my Boston trip next month: Janet Echelman's aerial sculpture over the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

CRAFT (and design and stuff):

Think you've had the best chocolate chip cookies? Think again. Leave it to the Smitten Kitchen gal to make a couple of delicious improvements to my personal kryptonite.

DANCE (and all the other stuff):

In preparation for Joan Jonas' visit, as mentioned above, I read this interview. 

QUAYTMAN: What was the downtown performance scene like that you entered in the '60s?

JONAS: I didn't really enter a scene, so to speak. I saw Oldenburg's happenings and dances by Yvonne Rainer, Deborah Hay, Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Trisha Brown, and also pieces by Rauschenberg. I saw this collaboration between dancers and visual artists. What attracted me was that you could be a visual artist and do something time-based. I think Oldenburg called his work performance, but there wasn't anything like performance art yet. There was a feeling, rather, among friends. There were sculptors, painters, dancers, musicians; it was all these different people working in different mediums. So there wasn't one, isolated scene. Everybody went to see everybody's work, including mine.

I'm intrigued by what she writes about the early performance art "scene" and the collaboration between visual artists and dancers and it makes me wonder if this is a thing to research, this shared enthusiasm for dance among fellow visual artists? I'll let you know what I find.

Finally, snakes in a park! File this under "oh Oakland".

my week: stay positive

I'm a couple of days late with my weekly recap. But Sunday is basically an extension of Friday, right? Anyway, I don't have much time - my daughter, a little under the weather today, is napping, while my husband and son are at Target buying Pokémon cards, so I better make this quick:

ART

8 things nobody warns you about art school. The nudity does get old real fast, I have to agree.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

On Friday, I posted this article about artist Jay Mercado, who makes paintings of donuts (sent to me by a coworker after I brought in two dozen donut holes from Dick's Donuts - best basic donut shop in Oakland). I love that he turned his morning routine - grabbing a donut on the way to his studio where he'd make still-life paintings of fruit - into the subject matter of his art. Sometimes it's right in front of you and you're actually working harder than you need to.

Later that night we finally watched Blackfish and I temporarily lost all faith in humanity ... until I remembered Jay Mercado and his donut paintings. Less animals for entertainment, more paintings of fried foods, okay?

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

Via Buzzfeed, I found out that there’s a campaign to send same-sex wedding save-the-dates to the Supreme Court Justices. I dig it.

Has the maker bubble burst? Handful of Salt seems to think so, read via Makers Nation, which I recently started following on Twitter. They post some pretty interesting stuff.

Image via thestreet.com

Anyway, Etsy clearly doesn't think so. The company went public on Thursday. Man, I could write a whole 'nother post about the wave of mixed emotions that brought on. As I tweeted, I alternated between channeling Bradley Cooper's character in Silver Linings Playbook ("I got nothin' but love for you, brother!") and Unikitty in The Lego Movie ("Any idea is a good idea except the non-happy ones. Those we push down deep inside where you'll never, ever, ever, EVER find them!"). Anywho, there are a lot more observations and links and such on my Twitter feed, if you're interested. And maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing about it here. Or maybe I've said enough about Etsy and will finally move on? Stay tuned!

DANCE (and all the other stuff)

"Soft, velvety" lawns make me cranky. And this is from 2008, when it still rained in California. It also makes me cranky when people don't think critically about the stuff they do by default. Y'know?

Dancing, however, makes me the opposite of cranky. I think that's called happy. Most nights, now that the days are longer and it's still light out between dinner and bedtime, I shoo the husband and kids outside while I clean up. But some nights we play music and on really good nights we all dance, even the two-year old (actually, I think she's the best dancer in the family). One such night last week, somehow the kids got hold of a screen of some sort, I can't remember whose, and watched other stuff while Neal and I put on a karaoke-style performance of Indigo Girls' 'Midnight Train to Georgia'. That led to watching this.



Obviously. Which led to me wondering if 6-almost-7 is too young to watch School of Rock?



It's hard to remember why that movie is rated PG-13. What do you think?

my week: shut it down

Today's another vacation day to round out spring break with both kids. But I'm feeling tired and uninspired. I have a little bit of Etsy work to do, which is just a drag after working a full-time job, family shenanigans, and all the other stuff. So I've deactivated all custom listings in my shop. Again. In addition to a limited inventory of ready-to-send stuff I'd be happy to exchange for cash, honestly, the only reason I keep them open is because closing them felt like not only ending that chapter of my life, but almost erasing it entirely. I need to figure out how to "archive" my 7+ years on Etsy before I officially shut it down. Shut it down!

In the meantime, here's some of the media I consumed this week:

ART

I finally decided what I want to be when I grow up: a philanthropist! Now to figure out the minor detail of independent wealth.

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

Handmade bags made from Lego bricks. I'm a big fan of color, but I love the more minimal black and gold one. My son would be #sojeals.

DANCE (and all the other stuff)

Did you learn the Michelle Obama/SYTYCD "Gimme Five" dance to Uptown Funk over Easter weekend?

And if, like me, you just can't get enough of the first lady dancing, check out the "evolution of mom dancing" she did with Jimmy Fallon.



If you live in Oakland, you probably saw this commentary on The Bold Italic, from an Oakland mom who had to, in her words, "hate Oakland before I learned to love it." It's the totally vaccuous story of a bougie white girl who came to appreciate the "character" of Oakland when really she would have rather lived in San Francisco. I wrote last week that I'd been feeling a little down on Oakland, too, but in reading this I realized for totally opposite reasons. Indeed, it's the increase of folks like this writer and their blue bottle coffee and $800 per week summer camps that's ruining the Bay Area for the rest of us, who just want to enjoy the nice weather and send our kids to public schools that show some evidence of the crazy property taxes we're paying every year. I mean, it's all relative, right, but seriously, read it. And then vomit a little in your mouth.

Anyway, I'm getting my hair cut tomorrow - first cut of the year - and Game of Thrones begins on Sunday so it's gonna be a good weekend. Same time next week? See you then...

my week: 10 years

We survived spending a night in one hotel room with a two- and a six-year old! My daughter proved that she has boundless energy just like her big brother, refusing to nap in the car on the way there and back, and staying up about two hours past her usual bedtime on Saturday. Yeehaw! In addition to Easter-related shenanigans we visited Sacramento's version of Fairyland and a nearly five-star ice cream joint, where I experienced mud pie, on a stick.

Yum. It was a short escape, but I needed every second (and calorie) of it (I've been a little down on Oakland lately, for various reasons I'll write about another time), especially considering I'm just about the only person I know not going to Hawaii for Spring Break next week (last year it was Legoland, this year it's Hawaii). I've had a bad case of the Mondays ever since. Thank goodness it's finally Friday.

ART

A children's book about Frida Kahlo, via Brainpickings.

I think articles like this only serve to perpetuate the stereotype that artists are these wild, carefree creatures who can't thrive in more conventional environments. On the contrary, I've known many artists in offices. And indeed, we should be encouraging employers to hire creative types.

Speaking of arts integration, this week I came across an article my boss wrote for Huffington Post back in December. In it he mentions the STEM to STEAM movement, which I feel like I've heard about but never really taken the time to investigate. STEM + Art = STEAM. I dig it.

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

Yesterday was my tenth wedding anniversary. I'll also be celebrating a ten-year blogiversary later this year. It's been almost ten years since I initially left Oakland for grad school in Boston. It's strange to have all this bubble up over the course of a few months, and because those ten years have passed so quickly, it's got me feeling very introspective lately, thinking a lot about my relationships, my definition of home and sense of place, and my goals for the future - personally, professionally, and ... geographically? I've called Oakland home for awhile now, and I've tried really hard to ignore my chronic itchy feet, but when the longest you've lived in one place is four-going-on-five years, it's hard to settle down.

So what does all that have to do with craft? Well, when you get engaged like this...

Yep, he hid the ring in an egg, emptied, sterilized, and filled with gelatin.

...you celebrate ten years later like this!

Eggs, Easter - get it?

I had no idea what one special thing to give Neal for this landmark anniversary up until about a week ago, when I decided to get him ten things instead, one token gift representing each year, based loosely on the traditional gift suggestions for each anniversary. Paper, cotton, leather, flowers, wood, candy, wool, linens, pottery, and tin/aluminum. I filled an aluminum tub (that we can use later for drinks when entertaining and such) with plastic, turquoise Easter eggs (our wedding colors were turquoise and red). All the little stuff I put in the eggs, with a few larger items left loose in the tub. The contents of those eggs come from the past, in terms of wedding details and things I know, after nearly 18 years together, that he likes, and reach into the future, in a sense. Zinnia seeds (our wedding flower and a native of Mexico, where we honeymooned) to plant this spring, a blank leather journal/sketchbook to fill, and wool socks to wear somewhere cooler than here (whether on a trip or a lengthier displacement is yet to be seen).  In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to slow down the next ten years. Ideas are welcome in the comments section.

DANCE (and all the other stuff)

This is so timely as we've been talking a bit lately about the lack of organized religion in our lives, particularly as it pertains to raising children. What do you do for spiritual guidance when you're more interested in, you know, how not to be a jerk, and less interested in God and Jesus and stuff?

Fairytale Town, Sacramento

Speaking of, will you be going to church on Easter Sunday? I was raised Catholic. Mostly a holidays-only Catholic (my Mom worked on Sundays for at least part of my childhood). I went to church for a few years on my own (tagging along with a friend's family) after my Mom died, finally receiving my first communion when I was in 6th or 7th grade. At some point, I stopped going, I think after realizing that communion was my favorite part of mass not because of those tasty wafers, but because that meant church was almost over. I may have fallen asleep once or twice, too. But my lack of religion is something I think about more the older I get. I'm not sure if it's the spiritual guidance or the sense of community, but it's interesting to think about finding that in other places.

Somewhat related to all this spiritual pondering, I finally read Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question", which you can read in full online. Neal sent me the link over a year ago. I can't remember exactly why. I think we were talking about entropy and stuff, as we naturally do from time to time.

Phew, that was kinda heavy ... let's lighten things up a bit!

Did you create a "dance attack" to the song Ryan Gosling posted from the Lost River soundtrack?

Cheers to a great weekend, however you spend your Sunday (you should definitely incorporate some dancing, either way).

my week: 6.2 and a stomach flu

Between a sick day on Tuesday and a vacation day today to chaperone my daughter's preschool field trip, it was a 3-day work-week for me. We're going on a short road trip this weekend. Man, am I ready to get outta Dodge for a couple of days. So I should be spending my daughter's nap packing but I wanted to let you all know how my week went first.

ART

I was sick on Tuesday, taking the first sick day for actually being sick (I've already taken two sick days to take care of sick kids, which is actually not bad considering I've been working for a little over two months now). I was bummed because I'd planned to check out Lorelai Linklater's paintings after my other work obligations on the San Francisco campus that day. If you don't know, Lorelai Linklater, director Richard Linklater's daughter, plays the girl in the film Boyhood. She's a senior at the art school where I work. The exhibition is open through next week, so maybe I'll have a chance to see it yet.

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

Look who showed up on Zulily this week? It's Three Bird Nest! Your average Etsy seller can't really afford to offer 70% discounts, folks, FYI.

Gorgeous coloring books for adults! Not that you can't color in kids' coloring books, or vice versa. Actually, the thing that bugs me most about coloring with my kids is the crappy quality of the paper and crayons. H/T to my friend Jennie for sending me this one.

DANCE (and all the other stuff)

As I've mentioned in past posts, I once again participated in the Oakland Running Festival, this year tackling leg one of the marathon relay with three mama-runner friends. I hadn't exactly trained for hills of any kind, but the incline in leg one is gradual so I did pretty well, only stopping at the water breaks at miles 2 and 4. I love leg one, running from the uptown area of Oakland through Piedmont and Temescal and ending at Rockridge BART. I especially loved being done, home, and showered by about 10 a.m.

I'd like to tackle the 1/2 marathon next year but consistent training and long runs in particular have been challenging between work, winter colds, and inconsistent toddler sleep cycles. For now, I'm enjoying my "easy" 3 miles around the lake, with no guilt over skipping strides or speed work, and I most definitely will not be running tomorrow morning, thank you very much.

The Cinderalla-is-a-girls-movie nonsense continues. A friend shared this with me after last week's update. Ridiculous.

Did you know the new animated movie Home had an official choreographer? Isn't that funny? And that choreographer's ex is Jennifer Lopez, who performs a song for the film. Are they back together again? Do I care? (No.) Ironically, there's absolutely no dancing in that American Idol performance. Nice dress, though.

my week: kindness is for boys, too

It's been one of those weeks, now that it's Friday, that seems to have gone by really quicky but at the same time Monday feels like it was ages ago. Do you ever have weeks like that? And I was thinking I didn't have much to share, but looking back over my photos and twitter feed, I've collected a few things to archive here.

ART 

Weekend reading that I didn't exactly read last weekend. But Lisa Congdon's Art Inc. is next in line, just as soon as I finish Rebecca Solnit's Field Guide to Getting Lost.

Some California schools are using art to get students engaged. I dig it.

Earlier this week I spent an evening going through a few pre-grad school portfolios. You can check out my Instagram account for more samples from my undergrad days.

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

I created save-the-dates for my brother's 20th wedding anniversary vow renewal ceremony and party this summer. Did I mention my shop is still open? Subject to change at a moment's notice. I'm obviously still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

How to become a designer without going to design school. I'm skeptical but there are some good tips here, nonetheless.

DANCE (and all the other things)

This is super cool. I love StoryCorps. And Maria Popova, aka Brain Picker, is the source for a lot of stuff I'm digging lately.

Finally, "have courage and be kind." I took my 6 year old son to see Cinderella this past weekend. The trailer looked pretty good and the dreamboat from Game of Thrones plays the prince. And seeing matinees with my older kid is the only way I see movies in a movie theater these days. I've been pretty bummed, however, to hear my son tell me, all week long, about how his buddies have been telling him it's a girl's movie. I thought about writing a separate post about this, and maybe I will one day, but in a nutshell, let me hop on my soap box for a moment to suggest that this gender equality thing is not just about encouraging our daughters to get into coding and play with engineering toys. We should also be taking our sons to see Disney princess movies and buying them Dora the Explorer potty seats if they want and painting their toenails red every once in awhile. Let them grow their hair long and if they want a glittery St. Patrick's Day shirt like their little sister, that's okay, too. You know?

Speaking of luck, I'll need it this weekend. I'm running leg one (just 6.2 miles - three friends are running the other 20) of the Oakland Marathon on Sunday. I had a good 6 mile run last weekend but I've run very little since, fighting off the cold my daughter likely passed along to me after coughing in my face for a week. I'll let you know how I fare in next week's update.

my week: forward sprung

I can wrap up this week in two words: daylight savings. Here's another one: sucks. Especially when you have kids. Young kids who seem to take about a week to recover from that one hour lost. But it's Friday! The weekend is near, and as we near the weekend things seem to be settling down on the home-front. And I did manage to sneak in a mid-week blog post, so #ICYMI, be sure to read the latest installment in my "burning bridges" series, where I write about the various jobs I've had over the last 18 years or so. This latest post is about longing solitude, something I share in common with a painter I worked for circa 2002.

Otherwise, here's some stuff I was digging this week:

ART

On a work-related outing on Tuesday this week, I got a behind-the-scenes peak at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco, home to City Arts & Lectures (and many local college graduation ceremonies). I can report that the green room is, in fact, green. And there are massive radiators on the back walls of the stage that are easily 20 feet high. Actually, maybe I should file this under "dance" because that's what I felt like doing on that big, empty stage.

I walked to Bittersweet Cafe during a coffee break on Wednesday. While I waited for my choco thai, I read about the owner, previously co-founder of Ask Jeeves, who is also a painter. Okay, I got it now - start successful dot com, make millions of dollars, open artisanal food shop, turn that into a local chain, and then you can devote your day to your studio practice. I'm on it! 

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

If you were late to the rumor that Hobby Lobby is closing all of its stores, sadly, this seems to be an urban legend. Why is that bad news? Here are just a few reasons you should hit another craft store instead.

DANCE (and everything else)

I actually have something dance-related this week: So You Think You Can Dance premiers on June 1st! I'm skeptical about the new "stage vs. street" format, but I'm still pretty excited for the show to begin.

This BuzzFeed list actually made me miss Boston a little. You know, now that spring is (theoretically) around the corner and those 100+ inches of snow are starting to melt. But number 19 is truth, yo. Good Mexican food is a rare find pretty much anywhere in New England.

I'm running again, did I tell you? The Oakland Running Festival is just around the corner. You may remember I "ran" the full marathon in 2012. This year, I'm just tackling leg one of the relay with three friends running the rest. I'm only up to 5 miles but I only need to run about 6.2 on race day next Sunday, so I think I'll do just fine. Now if I can just stay healthy for another week and a half.

See you next week. I'm going to try this weekend to whip up something crafty for the kids for St. Patrick's Day on Tuesday. Wish me luck! (Get it??)

burning bridges: leave me alone

Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? Not an earworm, exactly, but a song that's easily triggered or a tune you hum doing a particular activity? For example, I have no idea why, but I often find myself launching into "Singing in the Rain" each evening while cleaning up the kitchen. Is it the water from washing the dishes? I have no idea. Lately, though, I've been repeating this little mantra over and over again:

Leave me alone, leave me alone

All alone all alone

All by myself

Those are three lines from They Might Be Giants' song "Fingertips", off of their 1992 album Apollo 18. Yes, I’m craving solitude while I’m almost never alone. Maybe because I’m never alone. Like craving chocolate when you're on a diet. The closest I get to alone time is running at 5:30 in the morning, which is why I do it at that time. When randomly presented with the opportunity to run on a weekend afternoon, for example, I’m all, “the people! the sun! my backside in these running tights!” No, before dawn is much better.

It's okay, studio spider. You can stay.

But there’s more to it than that. I don't consider myself to be a shy or quiet person but I don’t mind being alone, either. In fact, I like it. I think I need it from time to time. And I think it has something to do with being an artist, having a creative mindset that demands some space and time and distance from everything and everyone else in my life. This all dovetails nicely into thinking about picking up on my "burning bridges" series and the work I did toward the end of college for painter and professor Katherine Sherwood.

I first met Katherine in a mixed media class at UC Berkeley. I don't have a lot of memories from that class other than creating crocheted "bills" with the symbols for various stitches embroidered on them in response to her assignment to create a currency thinking about value. I did and still do very much value my time in the studio and the time it takes to craft something. Anyway, I went on to take a painting class with her and an independent study in my final year. It was during that semester that she asked me to work as her research assistant on a new class she was developing titled Art, Medicine, and Disability. And when she first taught the class during the first semester after my graduation, I stayed on as a sort of post-undergraduate teaching assistant.

I loved it. Easily one of my favorite gigs. In addition to helping compile and continually tweak the class reader, I checked out slides for her lectures, helped coordinate visitors, and gave a couple of presentations over the course of the semester. It was also during this time that my caffeine addiction began since she'd give me enough money each of the two weekdays I worked for her to run across the street from Kroeber Hall to Cafe Strada to buy her coffee (a half-caf latte with whole milk, if I remember correctly) and treat myself to a white chocolate mocha. Might as well start with the best, right? 

Anyway, after that semester the work passed on to other current undergrads. Katherine wrote recommendation letters for my grad school applications but other than that we've lost touch, even though I've been back in the Bay Area for almost six years and have visited Kroeber Hall several times (which in itself is such a strange experience, how things can change so drastically and yet stay almost exactly the same). But I've been thinking of her lately because of something she said in an interview she gave during the time I was working for her. I came across my hard copy of works + conversations a few months ago, flipped right to this page, and her thoughts on solitude have stuck with me since. You can read the entire interview here. Editor Richard Wittaker is discussing the idea of seeing art in the studio.

RW: You mentioned earlier that you wouldn't want people to see your art here in your studio, that it's such a private space, and there's something about the privacy of art making, that's...

KS: ...that's very essential for me. I long for that solitude that I can get in the studio.

RW: Is there anything more you can say about that?

KS: For me, that's where art is made. I love the fact that I get to go to my studio and work by myself.

"Long(ing)" for "solitude". "Work by myself." Yes. Me, too. One day.

my week: 6 to 7 per cent me time

In some ways having a day job is easier than staying home with my kids, especially since one of them isn’t yet in school (I haven’t experienced this yet so I can’t say for sure, but being a SAHM with school-age children, i.e. children who are gone 5 to 6 hours most days, seems like it might be a slightly different sort of gig than what I’ve experienced thus far, especially for creative types like myself). While I do miss having a little more time with my kids and certainly the flexibility being home provided, I’m enjoying hanging out with other grown-ups and having my own little quiet office nook, even though the work I do there is not my own. 

I love pouring that first little cup of coffee from my Copco thermos after I get in and get settled at my desk. My best days are the busy ones, the ones dotted with meetings, when I feel most productive and, frankly, do less of this dreadful sitting thing. I’m good at supporting other folks’ work and appreciate the sort of bird’s eye view I’m getting of the college by working in the president’s office.

But the past couple of months have also sort of intensified the kind of soul-searching I feel I’ve been doing since last summer, when I made the decision to, first, be a full-time stay-at-home-mom, no longer capable of supporting the cost of childcare through my Etsy shops, and then, shortly thereafter, seek outside employment. This week, during a lunch break at work, I started to list all of the different things I need and, more importantly, want to do in the 168 hours we have each week. It’s kind of stunning how little time I have to tackle the “other/me” portion of my to-do list.

Sigh.

But! I’ve found much inspiration and amusement this week, too, and I wanted to begin sharing/archiving that stuff on a regular basis. Since I’m a self-described "visual artist, crafty generalist, dance enthusiast", I thought I’d categorize my findings similarly.

ART

If you saw my thesis exhibition back in ’07, you’ll understand why I’m digging these “cinema snowglobes” designed by faculty members at the college where I work.

I’ve followed fellow Oaklander (for now, anyway) and artist Lisa Congdon for a couple of years, ever since I learned about how Cody Foster & Co. was ripping off her illustrations.  Potential downside to reaching your tipping point, perhaps? Anyway, for some reason her work and advice have really resonated with me lately, including this week’s interview with Monica Lee of Smart Creative Women.

RIP fellow painter and dance enthusiast Helen Frankenthaler.

CRAFT (and design and stuff)

Early this week, a bunch of puff pieces celebrating the “handmade” success of Etsy seller Three Bird Nest went kinda viral. Abby Glassenberg wrote a post that digs a little deeper (and gained a new follower!). Three Bird Nest aside, Abby’s got a great blog, newsletter, and books for creative freelancers. (Between Lisa and Abby, I have a lot of reading to do…)

Oh, and Etsy is going public. Here are 9 things we’ve learned about the company this week.

It was a busy evening of following links and checking out tutorials on Makezine a few nights ago - turn your handwriting into a font plus a deceptively simple surface design hack.

No baby? No problem! Carry your small dog around in a hand-crocheted carrier. For realz.

When life gives you snow, make typographic messages on strangers’ cars?

DANCE (and everything else)

A conference call in real life. Funny because it’s so accurate.

This article is like the Delaware scene in Wayne’s World but I have to post it here because it’s oddly relevant to the introduction of this particular post. Yep, I’m a clean freak and while I appreciate well-intentioned advice to “let it go” or hire a housekeeper in order to find more time for myself, it’s unlikely to solve my dilemma entirely.

A quick glance at the Lean In Together campaign with Getty Images appears to be setting the same unrealistic expectations on working dads. If you’ve been reading my blog recently, you know how I feel about mixing work and parenthood.

Finally, the dress is blue and black. Obviously.

See you next week. And maybe in between. Have a great weekend enjoying your, if you’re anything like me, 6-7% of you-time. You deserve it.

Quit Your Etsy Shop: I got a day job!

In July 2009, a few months after my husband took a 50% pay cut and I wrapped up a two-year teaching gig, a perk of my very expensive graduate art school education, we shipped the cats home with the mother-in-law, stuffed one Pod full of all our belongings, and hopped on a one-way flight, one-year-old in tow, back to Oakland, California, where we'd met and eventually married four years earlier.

The daunting task of starting fresh in a city so familiar to us was a small comfort in a time of great uncertainty. My husband continued to work for the Boston-based start-up company remotely from his desk crammed into a corner of our bedroom, while I performed the duties of default stay-at-home-mom. I began the process of applying to teaching gigs anew (following a first round of applications that seemed to evaporate into the digital ether), while simultaneously sending résumés to more traditional office jobs at art schools, in art museums, etc. Earlier that spring, I, like so many other creative types at that time, opened an Etsy shop. Then I opened another one. Business started to pick up. Wedding invitation orders trickled in. My Android phone cases were featured on blogs like Mashable, GeekSugar, and Apartment Therapy. Wow! When my son began to flip his toddler switch, I investigated part-time daycare, eventually securing 3 days of child-free time most weeks to focus on my budding business. By our one-year anniversary back in Oakland, the start-up company my husband worked for had been acquired, his full pay restored, and Color Bird Studio (previously RBG Color Design) was a legitimate sole proprietorship. After a second round of unsuccessful teaching applications, I happily embraced the phrase "accidental entrepreneur."

That same summer we bought our first house. Even though we felt a bit "house poor" at times, having a home meant we could stretch out a bit. Over time, we converted the third bedroom into an office/studio. My son eventually transitioned to preschool, giving me even more time each week to run my micro-business. I bought a YuDu screenprinting system (and wrote about it here and here) and incorporated custom-printed wraps and envelope liners into my designs. I added a fancy new printer to my studio and extensive storage options for all my paper and envelopes and twine. I worked on overall organization, efficiency, and daily workflow. I investigated eventually hiring an accountant and maybe even an assistant to help with assembling orders. In September 2011, I attended the Hello Etsy conference at CCA in San Francisco. I finally felt like I was really a part of this amazing community. I ran a marathon with Team in Training the following spring, and during training reached out to fellow Etsy sellers, many local, for fundraising donations. I ran a a really fun series on my blog, timed perfectly with the season of holiday promotions.

After the marathon, we decided to go for baby #2. During that pregnancy, I really mulled over the future of my creative efforts. I felt so grateful for a robust business. I loved having the opportunity to be creative every day and truly valued the freedom and flexibility it allowed me to be a work-at-home parent (whose kid was not at home, but at preschool most days, I might add ... important detail). But to be honest, I was starting to feel a little burned out. Partly pregnancy-induced, but following a month of intense preparation for the Patchwork craft fair in November 2012, I suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome so painful I eventually opted for cortisone injections in my wrists. By the time baby #2 was born, my plan involved closing up shop indefinitely while I mentally and physically recovered from a very busy 2 1/2 years. I wanted to be home with this one a little longer, maybe all the way to preschool age, and thought, after the first few months, surely I could manage a one- or two-fifths equivalent schedule during naps, post-bedtime, and on the weekend when my husband could help out more with the kids, right?

Wrong. I got very little done in 2013, other than keep two young children alive, healthy, and, usually, happy. If only I could get paid for that. Shortly after baby #2 turned 1, I utilized the skills of the same daycare gal who'd watched my son and once again enjoyed 2 to 3 days of child-free time each week. I went on afternoon adventures with my older kid the one day of the week his school gets out early. I caught up on projects around the house while I waited for business to pick up. It was fabulous. Until I accepted the sad fact that business might not just pick up on its own this time. A lot had changed at Etsy while I was away. International sellers were being featured much more frequently. There was this huge push to move into wholesale, not really an option for a shop that specializes in personalized products. I felt stuck in the middle, between so-called "fresh" shops and buzz-worthy, top tier sellers with wholesale accounts at Nieman Marcus and Nordstrom. Then there was chatter in the Forums about a big change to Google product ads. Good grief! By the end of last summer, sufficiently stressed out by my inability to cover my daughter's childcare expenses, I decided to pull her from daycare, performing the duties, once again, of default stay-at-home-mom. Let me try this WAHM thing again, I thought (that's work-at-home-mom, by the way, an elusive myth perpetuated by articles like this one and images like this. Lean in, my chewed up nipple! Come to think of it, though, maybe she's the nanny?). 

Anyway, it didn't take me long to remember how challenging that would be. Instead of trying to figure out how to revive my Etsy shop, I instead began spending naptime and post-bedtime polishing off my résumé and coming up with clever ways to address the series of detours (not a gap, per se) since my most recent, relevant professional experience which was, pre-grad school, almost 10 years ago (for example, my six years of "freelance" work had allowed me to focus on "personal projects"). After a month of focused job-hunting, I worried I had become unhirable, hearing nothing from positions I felt perfectly qualified for. "Not even an interview?!" I exclaimed repeatedly. But just as I had written off one job in particular, having been almost a month since I applied, I got an email request for an interview. I used daycare drop-ins that week to prepare for this interview uninterrupted. I solicited help from friends who'd paid lots of money to get advice from career coaches, something I was starting to consider for myself. I spent way more time than I should have staring at my closet, trying to figure out what to wear. I was so nervous I barely slept the night before. But at the end of my first interview, I was asked to return the next day for a second interview. And then a third. And then I got the job! I was admittedly torn about taking it. It's a bit of a personal (and creative) trade-off, to be sure. But it's a pretty posh gig in a lot of ways (decent pay, short commute, 7 1/2 hour work day, laidback office culture, generous sick/vacation time, some flexibility, oh and did I mention it's at an art school? Same art school that hosted the conference mentioned above. Funny full circle detail there...). 

And in a weird way, I'm cautiously optimistic that having a day job will allow me to refocus my spare time on more personally fulfilling creative work. I've genuinely enjoyed creating wedding invitations for couples, don't get me wrong, but I miss making my own work. You know, the kind that might never make money or even be seen! In the beginning of this adventure, previously used to spending money on art projects that might have zero financial return, I was seduced by the idea that people would pay me - in advance! - to do design work for them. But eventually that part of my creative life took over completely, leaving me little time to develop my own practice which, after all, is why I went to grad school. As Austin Kleon recently tweeted (love his advice for artists and writers and other creative types, by the way), "The work you do for pay supports the work you do for love and you should be grateful for both." That's from this Forbes article by J. Maureen Henderson. Great advice. Advice that I took. And I'm looking forward to seeing what opportunities this next chapter holds, whether or not it actually involves closing up shop.

reverse sweatshop

About a week ago, cozied up with my smart phone after both kids were in bed, I was struck by a sponsored ad in my feed from Minted, urging me to check out their "unique" wedding invitations by pointing me to this design, a truly classic example if ever there was one, featuring a mix of script and block font in black ink on white paper, taking me back to my grad school day job days at Crane & Co. (more on that one-year gig in a future "burning bridges" post). Lovely though that design may be, "unique" it most certainly is not. I fired off a couple of cranky tweets about it, even engaging with the person who runs Minted's tweets a bit, and upon more digging, discovered that the designer, Cheree Berry of Cheree Berry Paper, formerly at kate spade, was the lead designer on that company's line of stationery, which was a collaboration with Crane & Co., a couple of years before my time. So it's not surprising that my first thought when I saw Minted's example of a "unique" wedding invitation was the same company that has printed the "the stationery, invitations and announcements for the White House."

Am I jaded and bitter? Sure. After all, Cheree Berry is living the independent designer's life I've wanted ever since giving up pretty much any dream of my own art practice and/or teaching. To go from working at kate spade (I love kate spade) to successfully running her own design business and custom stationery line is pretty impressive. And I should be happy for others, right? Good for her. But there's part of me that's genuinely disgruntled with companies like Minted, who have managed to create an online shopping experience one notch above Costco Christmas cards, but with the added guise that you're directly supporting an independent designer. You are, kind of. Designers are invited to submit designs in response to specific design "challenges." If those designs get enough votes from the Minted "community", they'll be included in the site's offerings. In addition to cash prizes for 1st place, 2nd place, and so on, designers get a 6% commission of sales. Wow, 6%. Makes the standard gallery commission of 50% look pretty damn generous.

It's hard enough for independent wedding vendors, you know? It's an incredibly saturated market of indie designers alone, on top of competing with sites like Wedding Paper Divas. And don't even get me started on Etsy. Have you seen that Portlandia sketch called "Reverse Sweatshop"? Season 4, episode 7 (I've been on a bit of a Portlandia kick lately.)



That's how it feels to be a seller on Etsy (or, I'd imagine, an "independent" designer with designs on Minted). There's this weird evolution happening, where it began as a forum for independent designers but ultimately followed the path of any big company, where I find myself trying to figure out ways to mass-produce my previously handmade products, now considered prototypes, so that I can attract wholesale accounts that will charge twice what I earn directly from my customers. Wait, what?

Anyway, just as things were starting to pick up toward the end of summer, after fully reopening my shop just about a year ago now, views, favorites, and sales plummeted. Crickets. Seriously. There was much chatter in the Etsy forums about what might be causing so many previously successful shops to die overnight. I'm still not sure. Things picked up a little as summer turned into fall, and I quickly wrapped up a handful of save-the-date and holiday orders, but by Thanksgiving I was polishing off my resume and applying to "real" jobs. Fast-forward a couple of months and I'm now three plus weeks into my latest office gig. I'm not sure what I'll do with my Etsy shops. Business is so slow that it doesn't really matter. I'm working on another post that digs into this six-year adventure a little more deeply. Stay tuned.

mommy blogs killed the SASE

Remember my SASE project? Well, I got a response from Kikkoman pretty quickly, actually. I was waiting to blog about it until I had another self-addressed stamped envelope to send out, thinking I'd format the posts for this series in a to/from fashion, reporting on anything I'd received and ending with the next SASE to go in the mail. But, man, SASE requests on product labels and elsewhere are hard to find! There is usually some contact information, of course, but the closest I've found to anything like Kikkoman's label are websites for more recipes. Bo-ring. I want actual stuff in my mailbox, people! I don't have time to peruse your website and pin my favorite recipes!

And the grumpy part of me that reads too many mommy blogs, meanwhile, has to wade through countless "reviews" of free products that these successful bloggers receive EVERY WEEK! It's not that I want free stuff, per se, and I like my project in that there are really no strings attached, right? Kikkoman is not expecting me to blog about what they sent, though it is a form of outreach and advertising. But I do wonder if companies have directed those efforts to folks who are likely to write a fairly glowing review and reach a greater audience. As a reader, let me tell you, it gets old after awhile, reading about your free wardrobe service or the cruise your family took, like watching celebrities walk the red carpet in multi-thousand dollar gowns and accessories they're given for free. It's just thinly veiled advertising.

Anyway, enough of my grumpy old man impersonation. Here's what Kikkoman sent, a lovely little recipe book with some tasty snack suggestions. I put Neal to work right away on the Aloha Trail Mix.

That's it for now! I'll keep looking for SASE requests. In the meantime, in a continued effort to get stuff in the mail, I've re-started a blog project that never really got going back in my Boston days. It's called Check Your Gauge and if you like to knit or crochet and have a little bit of extra yarn laying around and a wee bit of change for postage, you should check it out!

PS - I've also resumed the Makery but under a different guise: geeky beaky, the "softer side" of Color Bird Studio. Felt phone cases for Android + Mother's Cookies inspired products for now. Stay tuned for more projects in 2015!

burning bridges: artists in offices

There's this book called Artists in Offices. It's been on my Amazon wishlist for awhile now. To be honest, I'm not totally sure what it's about. I suspect it may not actually be about artists working in offices, although I know so many creative types, like myself, who've found their professional way through a series of cubicles. There is a book about that. It's called The Artist in the Office. I should probably read it. It took me awhile to reconcile my sort of stereotypical notions of who an artist is with my obsessive-compulsive tendencies (and truth be told, I've met many a fellow print designer who defies the messy, disorganized artist stereotype). Nearly a couple of decades, actually.

I was 19 when I got my first real office job. Okay, I was about a month away from my 20th birthday, but still. Technically, I was a mere teenager. After only three months, the bakery gig was wearing on me. And that afternoon eclair snack habit was doing me no favors.

I liked the idea of working in an office, you know, wearing nice clothes, spending time in an elevator on a regular basis, complaining about rush hour traffic, taking coffee breaks, that sort of thing. I worked 32 hours a week in a group of law offices in the now trendy uptown area of Oakland. A few months after I got this particular job, I resumed my undergraduate studies at a community college. How I managed that workload while attending 4 to 5 classes each semester is a bit of a mystery to me now, but I think part of what made this work was that about 20 of those hours were spent answering phones. When the phones weren't ringing, I was free to study, do homework, etc.

For the other 12 hours, I assisted the office manager - updating the law library, helping her with bookkeeping, running errands, that sort of thing. I loved it. Eventually I was recruited by the immigration firm to spend some of my hours working for them. One of the partners in this small firm would later offer me a full-time position, one of two times I turned down a full-time job offer in order to pursue a mix of other, some might say more creative, certainly less lucrative opportunities. I don't regret that decision, per se, but I do ponder the sensibility of it from time to time. But I was young and fresh out of college and, anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

This position is also where my love of dance began. Well, other than dabbling in just about every dance genre as a kid. One of the lawyers in the office was on the Board of Directors for Savage Jazz Dance Company at the time and occasionally he'd offer me free tickets to their local performances (poor college kid that I was). My mind was blown. Watching these particular contemporary dancers was like nothing I'd ever experienced before - athletic, sensual, beautiful. All that good stuff. And in a, I don't know, sincere way that has, over the past 17 years or so, proven to be pretty rare.

Not a bad gig.

burning bridges: I made a margarita for Will Patton

When I wrote about my second gig in baking, I skipped over a couple of other part-time jobs I had during my year in Bend, Oregon. At some point during my tenure at Fred Meyer's bakery, I got bit by the waitressing bug (the bug that precedes the acting bug?) and decided to apply as a food server at Cafe Rosemary, which has since closed. I primarily worked the weekday lunch shift, which wasn't as busy or tip-lucrative as dinner but I loved that I neither had to get up crazy early or stay up too late. I can't remember how well that worked with my class schedule but I'm assuming my off days were my school-intensive ones. In other words, I had no real time off, especially considering I was still working a shift or two at the bakery during this time.

Anyway, all went well for a few months. With tips figured in, I averaged about three times what I was making at the bakery. The guy I worked with most days - I think his name was Scott? or Sam? - was really cool. A very tall, blonde, handsome, down-to-earth snowboarder ... with a fiancee. What, I had a boyfriend, too! Sheesh. The restaurant was owned by an older couple - the guy cooked while the gal managed the floor. I think their adult son was involved in some way as well. The food was amazing. The daily soup was always incredible (and I'm not even a soup person!) and there was this salad we made with fried goat cheese ... holy cow, it was tasty. For Thanksgiving that year, I bought a pie that came with a large to-go cup of brandy-spiked whipped cream. It was the star of the holiday dinner that year, let me tell you, no offense to my Grandma's turkey. But the gal-half of the owner duo, unlike her husband, was, well, difficult to deal with after awhile. At the end of a shift my tall, blonde, snowboarding co-worker and I would count up the tips - and she'd take a third of our total. Kinda messed up, right? Then one day we had an argument about a female diner who asked about the day's soup. I'd been told at the beginning of my shift that either we didn't have soup or we sold out really quickly, I can't remember now, and somehow I missed the memo that this diner was given special treatment because I basically got as close as I've ever been to fired over telling her there was no soup. It was mutually agreed that I should take the rest of the shift off. Sensing that I was quite possibly on the verge of being fired, I called later that evening and quit. It was also mutually agreed that a two-week notice was unnecessary.

I walked straight from Cafe Rosemary to Baja Norte, across the quaint downtown area of Bend, where I applied to a front-counter position. I loved working at Baja Norte, which was owned, at the time, by the same guy who owned Mexicali Rose (both restuarants are closed now - such is the restaurant industry in general but in Bend in particular to the point that it's kind of a local joke how often restaurants come and go). My Grandma loved Mexicali Rose and we'd been going at least once every visit since I was 12 or so. They had one of the best margaritas I've ever had and their carnitas was to die for. The recipes were the same over at Baja Norte so I now know what went into that carnitas and I'll take that secret to my grave.

Other than delicious discounted food, I enjoyed working there because the vibe was way more laidback. Everyone who worked there was either a student at COCC like me and/or a total ski bum. The tips were okay. Definitely not making three times minimum wage here but it was enough for laundry and gas (because gas was $.99 a gallon at the time).

And when the Kevin Costner flick The Postman was being filmed at nearby Smith Rock State Park, Will Patton came in one night. I poured him a margarita while he waited for his to-go order. And that true story concludes my brief career in food service.

friends who like pictures of cocktails

I've been on Instagram for a little over a year now. I like it. Despite using Facebook primarily to stay in touch with extended family, I tend to self-censor just a bit, limiting the number of photos I post of my kids, that sorta thing. But since Instagram is just images and captions, I feel like I can post whatever I want in any quantity I see fit (similarly, I reserve my less, shall we say, diplomatic posts for Twitter). If you don't want to see pictures of my adorable offspring, don't follow me there. You know what I mean?

Anyway, it's been interesting to observe what images different followers "heart." I have a few friends who seem to like just about everything I post, which is cool. But most friends and acquaintances tend to "heart" the same kinds of things over time. Here's how my small following breaks down:

Friends who like pictures of my kids.

Friends who like pictures of my cats.

Friends who like pictures I post when I go running.

Friends who like pictures of my crafty pursuits.

Friends who like pictures of food.

Friends (and total strangers) who like selfies.

And of course, friends who like pictures of cocktails.

Am I missing anything? How does your social circle compare?

burning bridges: advanced baking

Actually, I didn't really do any baking at this job, either. But having worked at a bakery before helped me easily land this food service gig shortly after relocating to Berkeley following my one post-high school year in Bend, OR. I worked the opening shift, meaning I got there at the ungodly hour of 5 am or so, but the upside was that it was just a couple of blocks from my apartment. I put out all the baked goods the bakers had been baking for a couple of hours by the time I got in, did some prep such as cleaning and cutting strawberries for the cake gal (every bakery has a cake gal), and finished some products like the black & white and yellow smiley face cookies. By the time the bakery opened, I was already an hour or two into my shift! In addition to getting up super early, relatively low pay, and not the most flexible schedule (eventually I picked up on my community college studies at DVC before transferring to Cal), another downside was being allowed to pick any item to enjoy during my break. It's just not a great idea to eat chocolate eclairs every day, you know?

Anyway, I took my son there one afternoon last week and other than the girl working there at the time (who was probably my daughter's age when I worked there!) and the absence of the fro yo machines I vividly remember in the back left corner, nothing has changed. The cookies they sell by the pound are exactly the same, as are the decorated cookies, pastries, breads, and several of the cakes (mmm, chocolate fudge cake ... I also remember the pink-colored white chocolate flaked "champagne" cake). Having moved around so much in my life, it's a pretty novel (and kinda cool) thing to be able to return to a place that hasn't changed much at all.