Rusty
My studio is officially under attack.
It started with piles of dead spiders, appearing overnight around the edges of the room. Then live versions started popping up everywhere. At this point, I can pretty much count on at least one spider running across my bench every time I sit down to work. It’s horrifying and hilarious all at once - and now, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I jump every single time a hair tickles the back of my arm. So let’s just say I’ve been jumping a lot.
My mom’s advice was to remember that there are fewer creepy crawlies living in the spaces we inhabit fully. It’s been an exceptionally cool and rainy spring, meaning all the insect and arachnid populations are booming and there’s no way I’ll be able to completely get rid of them, but I’m trying to just keep spending time in the basement. I have to bring the vacuum and, usually, a dog to protect me - but I go.
And I’m making new work there, even with all my added jumpiness and some unexpected rustiness. Last week, I left the pickle on and boiled it all down to nothing, just salt crystals climbing the walls of my old crock pot like I was back in 2016, trying to figure out how to run a little studio of my own. I feel so slow, slow creaky, but the only way to get moving again is to keep at it.
In process right now are a couple more inlay pendants, minimal and simple to let the stones shine. Both are still in that ugly duckling phase, wild and wildly unfinished, but after a delivery of some new epoxy I should be able to get them done. I think they’ll turn out? If not, I’ll have learned something.
When they’re done, I suppose I’ll also have to find something to do with them. That’s a little trickier. I’m thinking gallery representation is going to be a better fit for me then re-opening my own online shop. But who knows - I like to change my mind.
Which leads me to the overwhelming feeling of sheepishness I’ve been sitting with, coming back to the idea of selling my work at all - in no small part because I made SUCH a fuss about how much I’d been struggling before closing the shop and basically going underground last summer. I’m trying to remember that it’s been almost a year, and that I’ve done a lot of healing and changing and growing, cleaning out the dark mental corners of my own mind in that time (creepy crawlies don’t just live in the physical world). I’m not backtracking - just going in for another try. That’s allowed. That’s ok. I am human, not perfect.
While I wait on epoxy, I will be spending every minute of Remi’s nap times outdoors. All that rain? It means that the grass and the weeds grow back faster than I can cut them. It’s a jungle, and absolute JUNGLE out there. Unless it’s been pouring, I spend an hour every morning manhandling our ancient, corded lawn mower. Or wielding the weed whacker, hacking away until my arms are noodles. Or digging trenches in an effort to drain the horse track. Probably we should have started with a smaller property - five or ten acres instead of forty. It’s an abnormally difficult year for keeping everything under control, but still - maintaining the land is relentless.
For the second year in a row, I elected to join a CSA instead of having our own garden. This has been a bummer…but I’ve got plans for next year. And this year, trees to plant! I’ve already put two more bare-root apples in the ground and now need to tuck two cherries, two clumps of aspen, and a plains cottonwood into the earth. Seven trees should about do us for awhile - especially after the fifty we planted last summer. Wish me luck. Or cool mornings. Or more rain (but not TOO much!).
And one last, slightly random thought, just in case you find yourself having a hard day in the near future - a song, actually.
Sing it with me now -
“I’m alone…”
“No you’re not.”
