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November 23, 2004
Why I look so tired, and why my fingers are wrapped in Band-aids
The dress is a little more than half finished.
She's looking a little lumpy, but aren't we all?
This WILL be finished by Saturday. I might have to wear gloves to the reception, though, to hide my battered hands from the sensitive art-viewing public. I'm developing calluses in the strangest places, and have had to put Band-aids on my thumbs and index fingers to keep from losing that last bit of skin I have left.
Time is running so short that I'm now dividing my days into hour-long chunks, and I'm going to have to spend fewer of those chunks sleeping, paying attention to my (very understanding) spouse and writing blog posts.
Here are the things I still need to do before Saturday:
1. Put a backing and binding on my 13 by 16 foot quilt, and machine quilt over the seams between the pieces. This should only take three hours (each quilt piece is bigger than me, so it's not as much sewing as it sounds like).
2. Trim the edges of and sew a casing into each end of seven sheets of vinyl (two hours, probably). Then go find some kind of rigid material to put in the casings to make the things hang flat when suspended from the ceiling.
3. Finish a dress that I made out of some of the canvas prints. Should only take 1/2 hour, all I need to do is take in the sides where I made it too big.
4. Finish embroidery on one canvas piece. In two hours last night I got two thirds of the embroidered lines done, but there's going to be some writing on it too. Probably another 3 hours.
5. Put grommets in five more big prints for hanging. Twenty minutes, tops.
6. Make one more piece that I can't talk about because it's a surprise for someone who might read this. But it should only take an hour.
7. Make a plinth to hide the stereo in and a framework to support the dress. Peter is going to help me with this, I'm estimating three hours.
8. Finish knitting the dress. This could take six hours, could take ten; right now it's impossible to say. Whenever my fingers, hands and forearms get too sore I'm taking breaks and working on the other things.
9. Drink many, many pots of tea. Fortunately this is something I can do at the same time as the other things, so I don't have to cut down on my tea-drinking hours.
Is that all? Except for the (*&^%$#@) wire dress, that doesn't seem so bad. Oh yeah, I forgot, then there's
10. Set up the lighting in the gallery. We're doing it this afternoon, and I expect it will take FOREVER.
11. Move all the furniture out of four drawing and painting studios, the art history room and the lunch room. Can't start this until Thursday night, when classes are over.
12. Paint the classrooms. I just found out that two of these rooms are in use by classes until 10 pm on Thursday, and they're the rooms that we absolutely have to paint that night so that the floors can be buffed on Friday. So we can't even start moving easels out of there until ten; what a pain in the arse this is going to be.
13. Install all the art. Shoot slides and digital photos while installing. I hope to spend all night Friday doing this so that on Saturday I can stay home and sleep. Will that happen? As if.
Today while torturing my fingers with wire I started thinking about making a fabulous new dress to wear to the opening reception. Somebody slap me. Hard.
Oh and did I mention that Peter and I are hosting a party after the reception, and that we have overnight guests coming from out of town, and that I arranged to meet Jennifer Angus the following morning and help her take her show down before I go take down my own work? The timing of that sucks out loud, but I really want to meet her so I'm going to try and not get too drunk so it will be easier to drag my arse out of bed on Sunday.
Oh! Here's some exciting news that in my deadline-addled state I almost forgot about: I found out that my secret sweater pattern will be included in the winter Knitty! Whee! This will be my first time published. As soon as the issue comes out, I'll be able to (finally) post a picture of the finished sweater.
After this exhibition is over and taken apart, I have a hot date with this:
Presuming my fingers are healed by then, on Nov. 29 I get to start Rogue. Oh, happy day.
Posted by jodi at November 23, 2004 12:18 PM | categories: art stuff