Connecting

Well, it’s done; the car is completely loaded and I am sooo tired; just a bit of apartment cleaning, then a long shower and packing my backpack with the computer and a few things left out for an overnight stay (either in Cleveland, or more likely, a motel closer to Chicago, to beat the returning-home-hordes after the holiday weekend. Yes, I am on the road on July 4th).

I loved it here at Women’s Studio Workshop; the studios, the entire atmosphere, and especially the people: Tana, Ann, Chris, Anita, all the rest of the staff and my residency-mates and both groups of interns.  They let me BE, everything I needed to be.  I’d have loved it anyways, but I simply could have been in no better place at this time in my life, in so many different ways, on so many different levels.

I’ll be back: not only will I absolutely re-apply, I’ll visit again after I-Park, maybe spend the night nearby.  I’m lending WSW the cool fabric-cutting machine I bought with the beater until I head back to the Midwest for the season.  I also hope to return to teach…or for any reason.

Working here, watching the whole place click along and comparing it to the past, and having some very fine conversations, as well as having some things basically fall into my lap, both in upstate NY and back at home through Paul, has given me a glimmer of a direction. Being at WSW has helped me begin to connect the dots.

I am so grateful, and eager to see Paul, too.

Adjustment

Once again, someone I love has passed from the planet while I am on a residency: Paul’s mom, Barbara.  She was in her 80’s and had been having sad difficulties since January.  She left along with Michael Jackson, the same day, which made checking e-mail, waiting for news about her, a bit more surreal than it already felt. Her memorial service was organized swiftly, and it was today (Sunday), and I am still here…even if I had packed up and left WSW a week early, as soon as we learned of the service, I would not have been able to make it back in time, driving. Paul talked me out of flying in; it would have been a 24 hour turnaround only to come back and pack up and drive back home.  So, here I am in that same strange place, mourning her alone, trying to honor her for myself and to send my comfort out to Paul, to the family, in some ephemeral way. She was a lovely, funny, petite, but enormously strong lady, and though we will all miss her greatly, I am grateful that she is at peace.

When Barb took a turn for the worse and I was waiting for news and expecting that I would leave momentarily, in a rather dazed marathon, I finished the big piece. But now that I finally see it installed on a wall (rather than bending over it, or looking down from the ladder), it needs a bit more work. There are also additions yet to come; it’s just a central grouping I worked on (and figured out how to make) here.  It’s an adjustable configuration, currently just under ten feet wide. I worked a little too single-mindedly, though, and threw my lower back out. Badly. One hip is painfully higher than the other. I’m heating it and stretching, but I may need to find a chiropractor. I doubt if I will make anything else new, and I will leave a little early to be with Paul. I’ll spend the rest of my time here prepping for the following residencies; beating fiber, making sheets, using the bandsaw, just busy-ness and practicality. That will suit my current limitations, emotional and physical.

Also Unearthly Earth (under all that somewhere)

This, too, is New York.

I had an excellent time meeting David Reina yesterday, and going over every feature of the beater with him.  He said that very few bronze ones were ever made, and that a sculptor fabricated the tubs.  Likewise, I had a fine time meeting Shannon at Carriage House; they are both warm, funny and wonderful folks.

The two businesses are now on Kent Avenue , and I was kind of sorry to not have seen David’s old shop on Guernsey, because I’d heard it was festooned with strange old toys and other things (not that  this one wasn’t still fascinating, because of the equipment being built.  I took no photos, sorry – I was working too hard to hear in the shop noise).

When I added my info to David’s client book, I knew (or knew of) every single person I saw on the previous pages.  Likewise, in conversations with Shannon, we already had a rich community.  The papermaking world is a small one; and bits of my story had preceded me, which was both comforting and odd.

Equally odd was being back in that part of Brooklyn, however briefly.  They’re not at all far from where my family lived in Greenpoint (they’re just a bit over the line into Williamsburg). I haven’t been there since I was in my very early twenties.  I wasn’t there for two minutes before I got into an angry shouting match with a cop, while I was banging on the shop door (Shannon was at lunch, and David, back in the shop, didn’t hear me; beaters were running, music on).  I had my car’s flashers on and I was obviously making a delivery, but the bastard gave me a ticket and a whole lot o’ attitude anyways. I instinctively, immediately returned the latter.

Something about that roused some bad, vague, creepy memory-emotions, and I didn’t want to stick around, once I was finished. My theme became, as it did decades ago: Escape From New York. Getting out of Brooklyn was intense. Yeah, I remembered the street names, but not where they went.  Fortunately, Abby had lent me her portable GPS.  I’d have been dead without it, probably still driving in circles in the (admittedly interesting, vaguely remembered) Hassidic neighborhood I got stuck in…though it refused to take me back to the Taconic and my relatively pleasant drive into town, and sent me through freakin’ Paramus instead. Traffic was every frustrating thing you might imagine.  There were no fewer than six ‘disabled vehicles’ blocking lanes and jamming things up on the various freeways and bridges (including a bashed white stretch limo festooned with pink chiffon on the Kosciuszko). I had to keep the windows closed to hear the GPS (which I only heard enough of to tell me to look at it).  Bleah.  It was a ten-hour round trip to go like 90 miles in each direction. Bleah!

But my beater is now in the excellent care of its creator.

Segue: Unearthly Earth

It’s a dreary, drenched grey Saturday, and my work is at a standstill.  The next stage on the piece I’m building involves the band saw, which is in another building, and apparently I missed Chris (the studio manager) this morning, to see about using it. My car is still loaded with the beater, which is rattling alarmingly and blocking my rear view when I drive, so, other than a short trip earlier into town to buy food, I’m not inclined to go anywhere.  And the studio is all set up for a production run of WSW paper that didn’t get finished Friday, so I can’t really start much new till that’s done.  I straightened up my stuff, put two kinds of flax and some kozo to soak for later in the week, and right now I’m beating a half-pound of abaca and recycling a half-pound of flax and kozo sheets in with it. (I made them last week, and didn’t like them after they air-dried, though the sheets mixed with abaca were great and I kept those. Already the green and brown-dyed kozo fibers have disappeared into the pulp).

So, I thought I’d show you more of the ‘hood, though it’s hard to photograph.  It’s kind of eerie around here, even when it’s sunny.  Right across the road from WSW is one of several ‘rail trails’ in the area, walking paths where old railway lines used to be during the area’s cement-production heyday.  The other two trails I’ve been on are more like park paths, wide and well-used; I haven’t seen anyone else on this one. It’s a narrow cinder line cutting through wild growth, with lots of deadfall and a small, dubious bridge midway that has a couple railroad ties missing. You’ve got to tick-proof yourself before venturing in (and I must be getting good at that; I’ve been regularly leaving the trail to tromp through the woods and so far, haven’t picked up any at all, thanks to the fact that I’ve reconciled myself to slathering on deet). The trail is a narrow, artificially level pathway; the mountain rises steeply on one side, and drops just as sharply down to Route 7, the road into Rosendale, on the other.

What’s eerie is what you pass: the old mineshafts hacked brutally out of the small mountain’s face, a great many of them, all overgrown and filled with water.  You suddenly realize the mountain must be hollow, that the thick woods and great huge tumbled mossy boulders are merely a sort of skin on a honeycomb.

At one place, there’s a low line of mist that crosses the path, no matter the time of day.  I first saw it at five in the afternoon; it’s not like the early morning mist in the Smokies; it doesn’t rise, just whispers past, keeping to a level height, then tumbles slowly down to the roadway.  It’s quite, quite cold when you walk through it.  I followed it a short way to its source; it’s emanating from a deep fissure in the rock, maybe another shaft, collapsed.  It’s as though the hollowed mountain is emitting a sigh of lament. I’m both disturbed and fascinated by it, and that, eventually, will be good for my work in some way.  Likewise, the rape of the mountain is so apparent, so absolutely violent, but now, a hundred years on, it’s softening, rounding, being taken back by the flora. It’s beautiful, horrible, interesting and eerie.

And, though they must be as plentiful as the ticks we’re sternly warned about, I haven’t seen a single deer since I’ve been here.  Not one. Just a few big-winged hawks floating silently through the trees, and this guy:

Oh, and on another planet (Chicago), I’m in this show, paired with Jen Thomas.  It opened yesterday. (Many thanks to Regin Igloria, curator).

When one door (to the beater room) closes…!

The NEA bought me a beater today! 

Well, not really, but yes really: my NEA stipend from the WSW paid for an early Reina beater. Tomorrow or Monday, I will drive it down to David Reina’s shop in Brooklyn, and he will have it retrofitted with a roll height counter, and ‘dial it in’ for me, as my old friend Ed would have said.  I’m thrilled!

I have wanted one of these for a long, long time, and I began saving for one last April when the chicanery began to become truly transparent. But, my ‘beater fund’ was only a little over half full when I was cut off from the studios I’d spent fifteen years helping to build. For most of the year, I’d also been asking around, fruitlessly, for a lead on any kind of used machine capable of over-beating fiber. I knew I would be able to process what I need for the rest of the summer here at WSW, but I wasn’t at all sure what I was going to do afterwards, and that was disturbing, to say the least.

Then, late one night a week or so into the residency, while I was tediously researching grants that could help me obtain the equipment I need to make my work, I spontaneously took a very, very long shot.  I didn’t expect anything to come of it; these machines are hard to find used, because they’re such total workhorses and they go on forever.

Unbelievably, in two days, I had the e-mail address of a lovely painter named Leslie, with the caution that the beater she wanted to sell might not still be available.  I sent off a two-sentence inquiry, and got a reply from her right away, with photos, and a price that exactly equaled my stipend. I shot back: “I’m interested. Where are you located?”  She named a NY state town a ways northeast of here, and incredibly, added: “it breaks down and fits into the back of a Subaru; that’s how I moved it when I got it.”

So: here I am in NY, with exact change, so to speak – and though Leslie didn’t know it, I drive a Subaru Forester. I knew this was my machine.

I just spent a very pleasant day driving the Taconic Parkway and back roads through verdant hills in lovely, mild, sunny weather.  Though the beater’s been stored for many years, it was amply greased before it was tucked away, and it fired right up.  I also bought a mini-tablesaw-type thing used in the garment industry that instantly cuts up fabric to pulp (and sharpens itself to boot), and 36 pounds of abaca half-stuff, at great, generous prices. And the beater is in my Subaru.

Just under one month from having a door slammed in my face, another permanent portal opened!

And ain’t it just beautiful?  The tub is bronze! 

(Thank you, David!  Thank you, Leslie!  Woooohoooo!)

Flourish

Dyed kozo, flax and abaca

I am bad at the blahgin’ right now, mostly because I’m so, so utterly absorbed here, so here are random images.  Tonight is unique in that I reached a natural stopping point and came up to the apartment at 11:30.  Most nights, it’s been well after 1 am., sometimes 3 am, but today flowed so well I had forgotten to eat dinner; just did that.

The fiber stove on a roofed side porch outside the paper studio.

My two residency-mates, who were printing when I arrived, are now just finishing the sewing marathon stages of their editions, soon to be replaced with cover-printing and binding marathons, and I am all fiber-y, wet-footed, building and thoroughly happy, looking forward to my soon upcoming times of color (my dye order arrived today) and bandsaw and assembly.  I have three pieces going, currently, and little experiments here and there.

Chris and Amanda begin sewing Amanda’s edition…

…Amanda’s edition a day later.

Abby’s edition of 35.

And even when I am not in the studio, things are flowing, flowing, flowing towards me. For instance, three shows came in, in as many days, and another enormous possibility to have along-held dream realized, and more, more, more support. I keep thinking of Aimee’s “abundance is real.” It is, for me right now, incredibly so.  It’s wonderful, it’s the golden time, the flourishing.

Well, that was fast…

I’m deep into the studio, into my work, making manifest something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and it’s going slow but well (it always goes slower than I’d like, but then it’s my attention to detail that causes that, and is worth it). 

I’ve had some excellent conversations, getting others’ perspectives on the situation in a micro-and macro sense; unbidden support (some even international) continues to pour in, some of it from surprising, unexpected sources…and I’ve even had a couple of offers.  Healing may be quicker than I thought, as quick as my body usually bounces back from trauma (and is now, as without much conscious effort, I begin to shed the insulating weight I had put on during it all).

There may be other bits of backlash, or unforeseen obstacles down the road, but right now, I’m in my element, and even the most ridiculous news from afar just rolls off, as I realize: It Is Not My Problem any longer; another, even greater weight shed.

I’m thinking of Marilyn Sward daily…every time I tip a bucket of water into the great floor drains (she loved, loved, loved floor drains), I feel her smiling; every time I share a meal, or freely give or receive a bit of knowledge, it seems as if she is here (and she was here, during her time on the planet).

Now, I’m off on the obligatory residency Home Depot run…here’s a nice & kinda funny review that came in earlier this week.  I am both ‘unidentified artists’ at the end !  And, in another show, I also rather like being ‘borderline creepy’.

a gift that appeared next to the first prototype, and, though I don’t usually post work-in-progress, here is that prototype:

the ‘hood helps

Today is the last day that I have health insurance. Here at Women’s Studio Workshop, I’m pretty much acclimated and somewhat recuperated now, though I’ve had certain chilling clues that an extensive healing needs to (and will) take place (and time).  It was fifteen years of my life, after all (and I gave it my all for most all of it).  I am, thankfully, in a fine place to begin that.

Here’s my domain, as well as it can be shot.  The Reina beater (in another small room) is sweet (and much, much more efficient than the one I’ve used these many years). For the first few days, I shared the studio with Pi, a delightful person near my age, who spontaneously showed me how to braze steel, and also left a small bucket of gut (pig intestines, i.e. sausage casing) in the studio fridge for me to mess around with.  She left Saturday, as did the three interns who have all been here for a year.

Later on Saturday I moved from the Atwood House, two doors down, which I shared with the interns, to a small apartment on the third floor of the studio building, which I’m sharing for the next three weeks with Abby, a printmaker and future book conservator.  The studio’s now mine until July 4, and I’m settled in till then as well. I quickly learned to stop hitting my head on the eaves up here, and it’s very nice to have a semi-private space.

My work’s all at the testing, testing, testing stage.  I’m building something I’ve been thinking about for nearly a year, but I also have a strong urge to just play, like maybe to make sheets of paper for fun (imagine!), and I’m going to take some time to do that.  For the next week, it’s just myself, Abby and Amanda (who is editioning a mighty fine book she just finished printing today: 80 copies). And of course, all the WSW staff and founders.  Next week, three new interns arrive to begin their year.

The area’s really gorgeous; my kind of place.  I love all the old eastern US mountain areas, and I remember how truly surprised I was last year in Catskill to find that this part of NY is indeed so rural.  NYC is under 100 miles away, so I guess I’d expected amplified suburban mall ‘n’ sprawl, like Chicago’s surrounding areas.  Though it’s still pretty populated, it’s also all twisty hilly narrow roads, gingerbreaded old buildings, abundant lakes and streams, views of the Catskills, and tiny towns.

Rosendale is that.  Tiny, old for the US, funky, but with everything you need a short drive away, and a two-hour train ride to Grand Central (yes, of course I’ll go in at some point).  Apparently, the Shawangunk mountains, where I am, are made of a limestone that was perfect for making cement, and the WSW building is the old headquarters of the Rosendale Cement company. Its product was used to build the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as many other historical structures contemporary with it.  In the woods just up the road and in other places in the area are rows of huge old overgrown cement kilns; and there’s a towering solitary smokestack, just visible through the dense foliage, like another of the tall trees that grow right up to it, only made of red brick.

About 2/3 of Rosendale.

This place is for rent. I like the shelf-bracket porch supports.

I like it, a lot.  It isn’t quite Vermont or Asheville or Black Mountain, but it would do.  And that made me wonder, and then made me realize something I didn’t even want to think about: about the kind of cold, hard ambition that would spur anyone to leave a peaceful place like this, to go and systematically set out to trash several people’s lives elsewhere in order to feed it.  And that caused some truly disturbing, explicit dreams, and brought the realization that healing was needed, and that it very well may be a long, slow march.

And now, off to the studio, to the future, to the best part of the process: my process.

Catapult thru Catskills

I’m here in Rosendale, NY.  I was supposed to get in on Memorial Day, but getting fired too close to the holiday put a damper on that; too much to do before businesses closed when I should have been packing. Not to mention dealing with some delayed reactions, my own and others’.

So I packed all day M-day, got a few hours of sleep, left early Tuesday morning, stopped in Cleveland for a couple-hour late lunch break with my dear old friend Sin De (who wouldn’t let me take her out but fed me great leftover M-day party cookout food) and then drove late into the dark rainy night.  (Unintentionally a couple hours later than I had planned; I took a new route through NY state (which will forevermore be my favorite) and suddenly, after I shunted past the biggest town, there were no motels to be found; the road before the town was littered with them). Finally a clean little mom & pop place appeared just after midnight, where mom & pop were still awake to check me in, slept a few hours, and got here at about 10:30 am.  Have met people, unloaded, met more people, semi-unpacked (I move to a different home in three days for the rest of my time here), met more people, figured out the internet situation, written an online letter of reference that was waiting for me when I did (still!), gone food shopping, took a walk, and put some unbleached abaca to soak for beating tomorrow.

Now, dinner, a book for a bit, and more than a few hours of sleep. I’m so glad to be here. The future’s now.