me. i’m the stupidity.
i thought i’d be clever, see, and start the laundry early. then i went out into the living room with my coffee. an hour or so later when i went back to the kitchen to start the bread, i encountered this:
doesn’t look so bad does it? but i had forgotten all about the machine needing manual shutoff now, and who knows how much dribbled away somehow, before i encountered this at-least-inch-deep pool in the northwest corner of the kitchen? there used to be a drain under there so the floor cants that way and, although the tiles setters paved right over it, in their infinite wisdom, when i put in the Saltillo tile some 15 years ago (something i didn’t find out for years!) the tile and grout must somehow be porous, as water spilled there has continued to disappear somehow i know not where.
but not this much! i spun out the brimming washer (manually, mind you) removed the clothes to the dryer as a holding tank, poured some white vinegar into the pool, and bailed ten (10 ) of these one gallon pails full, using only the broom and pan set above, before i got to the point where i could pull out the washer and bail under it.
true, the floor severely needed cleaning, not to mention shifting the water stash and that damned huge microwave i replaced and have been tripping over since august waiting for my niece to deign to come and get it, but…. still, it was repairable and only took about an hour. and it could have been sooo much worse! thank god for canted terra cotta floors, even with paved-over drains, and for only 41% humidity today, the first of the fall.
eejit.
on the spur of the moment, i bought some fabric the other day. i know, i don’t buy things. but reading kaffe’s book and thinking about interiors must have inspired me to drive the mile or so to boca bargoons, where interior design fabrics are sold for a tiny fraction of their regular prices—try eight bucks a yard?-- with the idea of, maybe, finally fixing the wimpy commercial curtain panels on the front windows, which i left off working with a decade or so ago…
(the fiber space, aka living room)
the idea was to use those ordinary closeout sale ones as liners for my own panels of fabric, which i might change at will (they are stationary) but i never got there.
i got there.
thank goodness i’ve learned to trust myself, because obviously i unconsciously was manifesting this, although i did not realize it until i started taking these pictures just now…
…while i was there wandering around the towering, floor-to-ceiling displays of horizontally bolted fabric. what i did realize was that i probably should consider, at least cursorily, some attempt to tie together the good-color-but-badly matched plaid, french, linen window panel in the painting space…
with its admittedly eclectic surroundings…
(the painting space, nee dining room)
and the only way i would ever do that was just to throw more colors and patterns at it until i got there.
i got there.
i came up with--went right to them, pretty much, on opposite parts of the store--these:
i especially love the apple green weft on the red check taffeta, it’s what tripped my unconscious into my conscious and screamed “that one!”
yeah, trust yourself. couldn’t really have done better if i’d tried. who knew i needed to wait a decade to find the perfect thing? i’m thinking the fuller, lined flowerdy ones on either end of each window, and then a flatter, unlined hanging of the red/green to take the place of each center panel. cut down the middle, unfinished edges, the better to take advantage of that weft…already have the stepladder out…
these were the only examples i could find on the web, not kaffe. but…
the line drawings, contours, remind me of mine at osfa a dozen years later in that journal i made there in 1974. seem to have a great deal to do with our subsequent works.
and here i am teaching 21st century children how frida’s are put together, proportion, contour, balance with imaginary imagery, emphasize with intensity, or contrast, or negative space…when i don’t do it that way myself, nor do i believe—or was ever taught—that’s the way to do it, or even the way she did it, but because the curriculum says they’re to be tested on identifying proportion, balance, emphasis, things that can be named.
art that can be named is usually fairly inert. but what do i know? i never had an art class, until i went to art school in 1978. perhaps that’s what they were like. kaffe dropped out of his, after all. i just got lucky, as usual…
when i mentioned to him that i wanted to do mosaic with elementary school kids, he looked at me as if i were out of my mind. perhaps he was right, i don’t know.
begin with kaffe…
…just to take me home.
not doing all the readathon interruptions today, though…
1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? florida
2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? the next one
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? snack?
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! i’m an artist
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? i will not try to keep up with the infernal interruptions; i couldn’t get anything read!
off to read now…
