artist in residence...

it's 4 a.m. and the wind is kicking up outdoors.  The fire has been lit, the animals have been let out, in and out.. I'm wearing two sweaters and a tee-shirt, a pair of jammy bottoms and a pair of thermal pants, socks and slippers, a long knitted cap, over which there is another sweater.. We've had a blizzard and the snow is now melting.  The girls at the gallery are at Lake Quinalt having two days of turkey and spa.  Foster boy is with his real parents.  I've been home alone, keeping the fire warm, trying to complete some creative projects for a show and sale at the Community Center in Neah Bay on the 7th of December.
Yesterday I woke up dreaming about Kenny, which I thought meant that I should start writing.  Well, I didn't.  Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  I planned to go to the Sekiu Community Center for the turkey dinner there.  I would meet my mother and brother.  The guy up the street came down and ploughed out the parking space in front of the gallery next door and left a big pile of snow in front of my car.  I got out the snow shovel and tried to clear a path to back out of where I was parked in front of the house.  I did manage to get the car out but when I went up to put some gas in 'er, the gas station wasn't open.  I didn't want to get over to Sekiu and find out the snow was bad over there.  I thought I would run out of gas trying to get unstuck.  I didn't have enough left in the tank to risk it.  I had made a great big sweet potato, apple, carrot dish because the dinner was potluck, with volunteers cooking turkey.  Never heard from my mother or brother if they made it there or not.  I called them when I got back from the gas station but got the answering machine (it didn't play a message, just clicked on.)  I saw Ted Muralt and his daughter walk by with backpacks.  I figured they must be headed to Sekiu.  I thought about joining them but I wasn't ready to pick up and run.  I had my casserole in a brown crockery bowl: it wouldn't have traveled well walking. 
What I did was put the vegetable dish in the fridge, put some more logs on the fire and watch the snow start to melt.  I fried a steak a little later on, added a romaine lettuce salad and a baked potato with sour cream and bacon bits.  For dessert, I had a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream that I had been given.  I made a fresh pot of coffee and drank that with the pie.  No one called to ask if I were going to the turkey dinner or why I wasn't there.  It was a very quiet evening.  I watched movies on Sundance.  My son called from Maui and asked how Thanksgiving Day was going.  I told him that I had been marooned in my own home due to circumstances.  (Time to check the fire.)
The dog is barking, no doubt at the paper girl, although I think it's a bit late in the morning for that (5 am now).  She's usually around by 3, which is about the time I woke up this morning.  Wondering how to manage the rest of the day on 5 hours sleep..  The studio is a wreck and has been for some time.  Every once in a while I get it tidied up but I haven't painted since last winter.  I really miss that I think.  Something inside me feels blue and sort of abandoned when I don't paint.  I do get some good drawing time in when we meet on Tuesdays for our painters' circle.  That's not why I came to the studio though.  Here I intend to give full rein to my creative processes.  I think what's holding me up is building new stretchers.  That's probably it.  I have to take apart the table saw a little bit so I can push the wood through and slice it to size.  There's the jig of course, but it's all dependent on getting things so I can move around in here.  I use the studio as an office among other things.  The basic elements of painting are all here.  It was much simpler without two desks and the cupboards that hold the paint.  Last spring I made a series of containers for ponytail palms that were used at my daughter's wedding. I collected shells and lacquered them with white enamel.  I brought them to the wedding and they were used for gifts to the people who came.
Since that project, I haven't been all that creative.  I've been working on a portrait of myself and my oldest son.  He is 5 years old in the photograph I've been using.  I did a series of drawings and the canvas is still in progress.  I'm not happy with the skin tones, they look a little bluish, so I might just paint it over and begin again, or start a new canvas.  One chair in here is draped with fabric that will be stretched and sized.  Getting up at 3 am doesn't make me feel terribly energetic to get the stretchers built but just thinking about it starts the process, I believe.
We've been having a series of women's support group sessions at the gallery.  I don't know that I'm any sort of mediator but it seems as though I take on that role.  Usually the therapist from the Neah Bay Clinic has a series of comments to make about her staffing issues, patient situations and her coming to the area.  She was last in Colorado so the climate is taking some adjustment.  She was living in a FEMA trailer at Neah Bay and has moved here to Clallam Bay to a very nice modular home on the hill above my house.  I can't see her place for the trees but she has a spectacular view of the Straits of Juan de Fuca whereas here where I am, I can hear the surf but don't see much of the water, just the twinkling lights of Sekiu at night.  When we gather, there are at least four of us, more often five.  We talk about general subjects like what we want to do with our lives, where we think we are at, how to be positive and direct our energy to the achievement of the goals we set ourselves.  It's definitely a consciousness-raising session.
Right now the dishwasher is running.  I could go out and get the paper and climb back into bed and read for a while.    I could go out and get more wood for the fire...I could CLEAN UP the studio and get started building stretchers which is what I really ought to do.  Having moved into this house and started my life here, it's been a challenge to stay on task because so much needs done.  In addition there's the foster kid, who is autistic and a teenager.  Wonderful combination, hehe.  He's fine though, not really many issues there other than it's just the two of us and he is, after all, a teenager.  I find life with him has settled into an expectable routine.  There's another clean up pending in his room, while he's visiting.  Like to just take everything out of there and shampoo the carpets, see if I can find where my dustruffles went off to, if they're lodged somewhere in the bins under his bed.  We painted the room before he settled into it but we never quite got finished with it before we were in.  I could do some finishing up in there, in addition to getting the studio more functional but I do feel a little bit tired from getting up so early.  It's not even time for Bob Mackowitz, who starts his radio show at 6 am. 
I was thinking that I have done my multimedia thing with the art process by getting ready for this craft show.  When I see something that I want to make, I take the materials I think I will need and create it.  For the past few months this has been alternately the garage...oh you should see the nice doors I built for the front of it...the siding, which has been long cedar boards and donated shakes, along with the lids from tin cans that have been nailed to one bottom edge..I'm also painting a mural on the street side.  We stored wood underneath the garage because the little storage area I built got flooded.  I see now that the snow has caved the roof on that little shed, along with the plant place I made that was intended to become a greenhouse.  More carpentry there to be done.  My intention is to create a driveway behind the garage with covered parking and a deck off the back of the house.  Probably won't get to that until summer, in meantime am storing likely wood for that project.  Besides the garage I've been doing the portrait and drawing birds for the mural on the garage.  I haven't tacked in the molding in my bedroom, which was left undone when I put my bed and dressers in there.  I have put up the curtains several times because the cat likes to climb them.  When I was in Maui he brought one of them down.  I've tried to keep organized in the bedroom because it has plenty of built-in cupboards and closet space.  It's hard to do because I'm downsizing from the four bedroom house I was in.  My piano isn't here yet but I think it will be before long.  I practiced for several hours at the last painting session at the Sekiu Center.  That was very fulfilling.  I didn't feel as though I was challenged by not playing at home, rather I enjoyed the sound of the music.  Since there were only two of us that day, I played in the downstairs room and my drawing partner said she enjoyed the music as well.  So I haven't not been doing art, I've integrated it into my daily process, which is what my intention was, just like this blogging exercise.  What I haven't done is read any books.  I haven't been to the library since I moved here.  I can't say why that is, other than I'm not sure what I want to read.  I spend a lot of time watching movies, catching up on the films I've not had a chance to see.  I think I've seen most everything current, including a lot of the popular films of the last several years.  Of course, the library has them available for rental as well but I haven't gotten to that yet because I can see most everything on television, other than the pay per view, which my phone isn't hooked to as yet and probably won't be.
I haven't spoken to my brothers this Thanksgiving.  I wanted to go to St. Louis to visit my brother's new place in the suburbs.  As it turned out, I probably couldn't have made it even if I had gotten the reservations because of the weather.  (Need to check the fire..)
Fire's going well.  Haven't spoken to my other brother in Port Orchard, either.  I guess, according to my mother, that Kitsap County got hit pretty hard with the snow.  We're now into the melting part and there's a slow drizzle, which I expect is coming there way as it passes through here.  We wouldn't have been able to get down there or meet them in Port Angeles as we have done other years.  My mother and brother did well to get to the Sekiu Center, if they did make it there, which I don't know because they didn't call and I haven't heard from them to know if they got there ok.  I would have thought the brother in Port Orchard would have called but he didn't and I only heard from my oldest son.  My daughter called the day before Thanksgiving to tell me what she was up to, lots of people coming for dinner Thanksgiving day, heading to the gym to work out in anticipation of a big feast.  She's starting a second job today.  She'll see how she likes it.  She works as a nurse in a clinic attached to a hospital in Phoenix.  Since my neighbors next door had gone off to the Lodge at Lake Quinalt, there was only the couple across the street, who as it turned out, evidently went to the Sekiu Center for dinner.  I probably could have hitched a ride with them if that's where they'd gone.  She came out while I was trying to shovel out the car and called out 'Happy Thanksgiving' in her pink bathrobe.  It was around noon at that time.  Her husband was piling wood into a wheelbarrow.  They got ready and left around two fifteen.  I didn't know they were going out for supper.  I had a little feeling that I could have dined with them because the girl at the gallery says she eats with them sometimes.  They've never asked me though.  I invited them for a turkey dinner this summer but neither they nor the girls at the gallery came.  Only my brother came and I think he thoroughly enjoyed it because Mom was in Minnesota at that time.  He was batching it.  It occurs to me I could have called my brother in Port Orchard to wish his family a Happy Thanksgiving and probably that's what I should do but I just haven't gotten to it yet.  I'm too busy at the moment keeping the fire going and making things for the craft sale.  That and watching the snow fall, which it did quite a bit of up until yesterday morning, has been the sum of the last week.
I've got some minutes to do for an economic team I'm a part of here.  I should probably get those out of the way and then go read the papers for a while.  I think maybe I wanted to make some observation about life in general but I don't know exactly how to put it.  I'm hustling along, baking bread, keeping the house as clean as I feel like, thinking about rearranging things, getting the bed nice and comfy for when I land there...that's been the sum of my days up to now.  I had a nice trip to Maui in September for my 60th birthday but that seems like ages ago.  Winter really set in which they said it was going to do, but it doesn't feel any more harsh than in previous years.  I was able to trade my windmill frame for manure which I mulched around the transplanted rhodedendrons I brought here.  With this snow and ice we've had,   I think that will probably help them out.  There's a couple of piles of branches to be burned at some point and the creek needs rock where we cleared out the debris that was clogging it.  I got a line on a guy that hauls dirt but I haven't spoken to him about that.  I want to get the rest of the brush out of the way and see what I've got there before I go layering it with fill.  As far as observations go, it's all about staying with the processes of being creative and where that leads.  I look forward to each day and the new things that come with it.  Also cherish the past as the golden opportunity it was.  I find myself referring to my days back East as a continuation of what I do now.  I'm not in a major metropolitan area here and the ability to think clearly about a specific process I want to explore is very easy to do.  As I said above, the phone doesn't ring all that much even though it's a holiday and I've got a couple of days all to myself with lots to do, once I get to it.  Writing at the blog was probably the first task.  The rest of the day awaits!