I haven’t “blogged” in a while now, not because I didn’t have anything to say but because I haven’t been able to put my thoughts into words or focus. It’s because I’m still in a funk after getting over a month-long upper respiratory infection. If you didn’t hear me, I said a month.

At the beginning of June, Hannah and I went to Bainbridge Island, WA, for our 25^th anniversary. It was beautiful, relaxing, serene, and awesome.

However, a few days after we came home, I had migraines, more-than-usual fatigue, body aches, and a fever. That’s how it all started. I thought to myself, This has got to be Covid. But it was not. I tested three times!

I got sicker as the days went on. I thought about going to the doctor, but I couldn’t even get out of bed. I took over-the-counter medicine until the third week, when I just couldn’t breathe anymore. I finally wound up in the ER for breathing treatments and hard meds. Luckily, it wasn’t yet pneumonia.

I was sick for so long, I got unbearably sick of being sick. Believe it or not, this is my first week feeling better. My cough has finally subsided, and I’m working again: a productive human being, because what good are we in this country if we aren’t productive, right?

Now I’m trying to finish the second half of those forty-eight embroideries I started last year. I’ve finished twenty-four of these pill bottles:

And now, I have three left of these to complete all twenty-four:

When all forty-eight are done, I’ll do my best to iron out the hoop ring marks. Then, I think I want to pull a few threads out of each embroidery with a seam-ripper. I want them to look a little messed up. Or something. They are in no way perfect, but I don’t want them to look “tidy,” either.

Here’s a mockup of how they might look on the wall:

After that, my To-do list for the show will finally be much smaller. But now the gallery and I have been making elaborate plans for a VIP dinner, which will take place the first week of the exhibit. I’m making limited-edition promo packages as invitations for the event. Each invite package includes a bunch of unique items packed into a first-aid pouch. They all depict the theme of healing, of course. So, we’ve been working on that—brainstorming and budgeting it all, etc.

And soon, I can return to my floor sculpture. I’ve been intermittently working on parts of it. I’ve had to sew the animals to each other in sections, piecing them together for installation purposes. And, I still need to stabilize the inner armature to ensure it won’t fall over. I’ll also be tattering the entire sculpture with threads pulled out here and there going every which way.

There will be embroidered word tags hanging from some of the animals, too. I’ll attach them with more threads, ribbons, or both.

I’ve made a few changes to some of my installation plans as well. For one thing, the sewn triptych I planned on making is now out of the picture. I stitched through most of the first canvas and used the visual to mock up the other two pieces in Photoshop. Once I saw how it was going to look, I did not like it at all. I really did think it was going to be a compelling piece. Instead, it kinda bored me. I had to nix the whole idea. Bummer, but that’s how these things go sometimes. DELETE! Oh well.

At least the biggest piece is finished, and I’m satisfied with that one.

And everything else is still rolling forward.

In other news, my issue of New American Paintings finally came out, Vamp & Tramp sold a number of my Artist’s books to special collections at Baylor, USC, UC Davis, Scripps, and Washinton & Lee, and I sold another piece to Beth DeWoody (one from my Discarded Snapshot series). So that’s all great news!