Scrapbooking?

Alright.  I don't know what I am doing yet.  I've created a bunch of new presets in "the tool" that I am using.  Or it may be using me.  Whichever, I have only begun, so my abilities are not refined yet.  It is going to take some time.  Right now, I am making reference images for things I might like to make 3D.  What I am imagining right now isn't even taking solid shape.  It might.  It could.  But then. . . what will I be making?  Will I be one of those "crafty" people?  Collage and assemblage are art forms, but holy shit, look on YouTube and you'll see my fears.  Stamps and dye transfers and bits of paper and ribbon. . . and I may use them all.  I've written several times about seeing the Peter Beard exhibit in SoHo.  I even bought a gel plate yesterday.  I went to the art supply store and looked around.  It is always both overwhelming and inspiring going there, but then you mingle with the folks making Star Wars cartoons and the bottom seems to just fall out.  It'a fine line, you know.  

I'll tell you what is really scary.  There is only one art supply store left in town.  There used to be many.  What is one supposed to make of such a thing?  

I'm heading into unfamiliar territory with a head full of half-baked ideas.  I plan on using some of my old Polaroids to make images.  Haven't a clue, though, how that will turn out.  And from what I've read, it takes a lot of experience to make good prints from the gel plate, and as I confessed yesterday, I've taken workshops with both famous and not so famous people using different mediums, and every time, I was the lousiest artist in the room.  Once in a local workshop with average people, I was sitting next to a teen girl who was making fantastic collages.  I told her so, and she said, "You are too careful.  You need to just loosen up an put things on the page."  

Ha!  She was right.  My pages were all 90 degree images.  I was afraid to "make a mistake."  I was simply a tight ass.  But I hadn't grown up a little girl which I think is a disadvantage in collaging.  I've always wanted to do a photo series of girls' bedrooms.  Oh, you bet--I know what you are thinking.  But here's what I'm thinking.  The walls of little girls' rooms are always collages.  They make the loveliest things from an early age.  Boys put up a poster of an athlete or later a sexy girl or a beer commercial.  I was of that ilk.  But girls put up cut up magazine ads, photos, bits of lace. . . I don't know.  If I knew, I would do it.  

But yea. . . I know what you're thinking.  I know I've led you to such conclusions.  But try a little self-reflection, O.K.?  It says much about your filthy little brains.  

All in all, I have a lot of work to do and frustration to work through before I make a 3D image that I like, I'm sure.  

And then what?  

Beats the hell out of me.  It will go into a drawer with all my other prints.  

Brilliant!  

Selavy.  

You're cold this morning.  I am, too.  Temperatures dipped to freezing and below here in the sunny south.  I have to admit that my mother's house stays much warmer than my drafty 1920's home.  But the days will warm up quickly here and we will be in the 80s again soon.  I am a lazy southerner who does not like to get dressed.  Oh, I like to visit the cold, or at least I used to.  But putting on and taking off layers of clothing to go in and out seems like a horrible lifetime existence to a lazy southerner, about as horrible as you feel about living in a humid swamp half the year.  

If I win the billion dollar lotto this week. . . . 

This is to say, I got a bit of distraction yesterday and was out in the world of shadow and light.  I had a whiff of the old feeling again if only for a moment.  The world seemed technicolor in the later afternoon. 

And then. . . it was home to mother.  I have a lot going on, but I have a fantasy creative life, too, and maybe that will be enough to keep me going for awhile.  Don't hate on me.  I need the distraction.