Crossing the Line
A lot can change in five minutes, five seconds, a moment. It’s mind-boggling to think about all that’s passed in the last week and a half.
Am I even the same person?
On the farm, I’m in the process of creating my biggest artwork to date - it’s like a giant canvas upon which we’ll all live and grow. I’ve never really been a fan of big installations that immerse you within the work itself, and have been known to do a big eye-roll when faced with such “experiences,” but I’m kind of getting it now. There’s something magical about the whole concept - the way that horses and house and trees and prickly pear and wind will play off of one another and hold us safely in the middle.
Largely, our time has been spent chipping away at the horse specific infrastructure - even still, I’m a week behind where I wanted to be which means probably two weeks till the ponies come home. This feels both exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time.
We’ve got fence posts and electric insulators and a little solar panel ready to keep the whole thing hot. Gates that swing in the breeze and a growing collection of interesting slow feeders. We also got our first, tiny load of hay (which, note to self - do NOT try to get hay in May again, when everyone is out of last year’s stock and you’re still a month out from this year’s first cutting). Unloading those first bales was such a win.
The biggest project we’ve been working on, though, is a small mud-free pad around the horse shed. We set it up by putting groundcloth under a geotextile that we then filled with crushed stone. Basically the whole setup keeps the dirt from coming to the surface, meaning mud can’t form in wet conditions. This is something I’ve long dreamed of playing with (because I think it’s so cool) but I initially put it on the “nice to have, but not necessary” list for my someday horse set-up.
Until we moved, that is, at which point it got pushed over to the “gotta-have-it” list. Because the clay mud here is miserable. It is simultaneously thick and fluffy. Deep and only at the surface. It’ll rip your shoes off and slide you onto your butt all in one go. Having a small place where the horses can stand that is NOT a mud-pit after every storm is going to make the biggest difference for both us and them.
It’s been a big job, though. And it ultimately required adding a new member to our mechanical family (because, as it turns out, moving thirty tons of rock by hand was where Eric drew the line).
So we now have a tractor, who I have named Gino (which is short for Orangino, because…well…look at him). He was the smallest tractor we could find and he’ll be our savior when it comes to mowing and lifting and hauling this summer. Hopefully he’ll also allow us to plow our ridiculous driveway when winter again comes calling, so we don’t get stranded again. He’ll help us dig holes for trees and holes for fenceposts and give us the biggest mechanical leg-up when it comes to taking care of this land. For the record, I really did think we could get by with shovels and the back of our truck. For the record, I was very, very wrong.
In the studio, I have been finishing up a few custom pieces - one that was started last year and put aside (like everything else in 2020) and two for a friend. While there is such joy to be found in creating custom pieces for people, I expect these to be the last for a long while. Part of this decision is based in the time commitment - custom pieces take at least twice as long to craft, between the design process and the stone hunting and the checking and re-checking throughout the making to be extra sure that everything comes out right. But part of it is also that I have SO MANY of my own stories that I feel I need to tell right now.
When I first meet people and they ask what I do, I say that I’m an artist - and the usual reaction is that people blankly look me up and down seeking something, anything to say. So, I tend to follow up with saying that I make jewelry as a way to help them out.
What then follows has become predictable. There’s relief on their faces, at having something to grab onto, and then a peppering of questions - do I make rings? Necklaces? Bracelets?? They always seem to know someone else who makes jewelry or someone who needs jewelry made and they ALMOST always also show me a piece of jewelry that they’re wearing.
And I always want to say WAIT - stop. Let’s go back a step. YES the finished product of my making is usually jewelry, but the point is not the jewelry itself - it’s the story, the why, the how.
In this way, my art is pretty selfish, at least in it’s creation. It’s just me sorting out all of my troubles and questions and observations. This means that when I’m creating for others, I’m not working through the things I need to be working through to keep myself sane - and the result is that I’m left with a backlog of stories that still NEED to get out before I can feel ok again. This is where I’m sitting now - all itchy on the inside and ready to dump all that pent-up creativity FAST. Not the best feeling for someone who typically focuses on slow art, but I’ll make do this one last time.
I’m still reading Women Who Run With the Wolves. It’s still giving me little keys and lightbulbs and slowly but surely untangling some very tangled things I’ve been carrying. It’s made me realize I need to leave the social media scene for a bit, which feels a little like falling off of a cliff into…I don’t know what. Maybe paint. Maybe stained glass or lapidary or more bandanas. Maybe selling just through galleries or getting another job and not selling at all. It’s all sort of unclear.
Except for making. The way forwards is always through making, that I know.
I’ve just gotten so tied up in trying to BE someone that I’ve lost who I am, constantly composing posts in my head, stringing the words together only to critique them so harshly that they never actually get written. I’ve realized that I do all of my imagining in third person, like I’m outside my body watching myself like a movie, as a way to keep myself from feeling too deeply, moving more slowly, doing the healing I need to do.
I’ve walked up to this decision many times, and I’ve always stepped back in the end - too afraid. But today I think I’ll try crossing it, just to see. One slow step at a time, but no turning back. If I can make peace with myself, I may just return to that world of little squares - but if not, maybe I’ll just make a new world somewhere out in the great unknown. Maybe I’ve already started crafting it here.
Soon the horses will be running out back. Plants will be in the ground. The sun will blaze and the grasses sway in the breeze. Soon I’ll be changed again, too. That makes me a little sad but the time for arguing with myself is past and it’s time to go. Time to shift. I’m on my way.
