It seems like once every year or so something has to be done about the mess I've made of my spinal cord, and the result is long absences from work, play, and yes, the web. But like a turtle, I'm ready to venture forth and stick my neck out again.
The three weeks away from any demands on my time have been alternately boring and delightful--who can say no to sleeping in every morning? But I'm now working again--only 15 hours a week, but very tiring hours--and I'm getting off the evil pain meds and the fuzziness they bring is almost gone. (I'm always mystified by people who love these drugs and become dependent on them, since they make life sketchy, slow, and hardly worth living.)
One thing I did manage to do was start another multimedia mosaic project. I'm a little ambivalent about the quality of my results, but I do dearly love the feel of the polymer clays, the stamps, paint, beads, glass, and paper. This is so-called hobby that is rapidly turning into a major obsession.
This book got me started but now I've veered off in a truly weird direction. Of course it's not at all like real art--my real art is about writing, but I now remember why I went to Pratt Institute out of high school, truly thinking the visual arts were going to be for me.
Our house looks the same as always on the outside, but over the past couple of weeks the inside has been transformed into a modest tile factory. I have no idea what I'm doing--if you know, please contact me right away.
This all began when I decided that a recent kitchen remodel wasn't really complete until I had some fancy-dancey bit of decorative tile as a final (if expensive) touch. We're both modern shoppers, so we turned to the web and, after a lot of surfing and squinting, we finally found something that we think will work. We bought it and it's coming, but apparently by slow boat from a workshop in Beirut.
But all that shopping--not a normal activity for either of us--triggered a sudden, overwhelming desire in your correspondent to make tiles of my very own. For the past two weeks, once my day job is over, I have started rolling, stamping, painting, glazing, and fooling around with polymer clay while I watch the news. This stuff does not require a kiln--you stick it in the oven of 15 minutes and tiles come out almost exactly as planned.
Now I've reached a stage where the tiles have veered a long way away from the square, straightforward norm and pretty much anything goes--I've been adding little bits of costume jewelry, glass beads, and any number of small household items whose usefulness is no longer obvious.
In case you're wondering, July 16, 2005 is the day Vince and I got married in our back yard by Barney Bloom, a local justice of the peace; Barney is an old friend with a very large beard. Our wedding cost $57, but it seems to have stuck. And maybe by July I'll be able to figure out how to use these tiles productively to celebrate a worthy anniversary.
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