I have a deadline—be it a self-inflicted one—to finish everything for my show one week before installation. Good thing I do not foresee that being a problem. I’m pretty sure I’ve been well ahead of schedule for a while, even with making the promo packages.

I’m crazy organized. Some might say to a fault. Maybe I am, but a part of me enjoys it. It keeps me sane. It keeps me in control of my life. My brain. If I don’t write shit down or schedule my days, I become a bit of a mess. It also doesn’t leave me any downtime, and I need a lot of that. It’s self-care. Besides, I’m too old not to do self-care these days.

My To-do list (the one for the show, anyway) has been dwindling, but these past weeks have been busy. I wound up missing a different deadline to turn in paperwork for a college show at the Foster Gallery in Wisconsin. Luckily, or hopefully, I think they’re going to forgive me. I’ll be showing many of my hand-cut works on paper there, and some of my Specimen sculptures. I think I’m giving them a Medicine Dan book to show as well.

So, while scheduling and marking my calendar with the programming for the show, I see that I have ten weeks left to do everything. That gives me ample time for promotion and any last-minute details. I say “last-minute” because there’s always something that comes up that you forget. Always. And you always have to make more work than you actually wind up using in the show. That’s just a given. Ya gotta leave room for editing.

The last two pieces I’m working on are the floor sculpture and a smaller painting on raw canvas—the one I mentioned before that I wanted to try staining. Well, I tried that with gouache, and it didn’t work out how I’d hoped. Now, I’m trying to salvage it with acrylic. I’m not a fan of acrylic painting, but I don’t have a choice unless I gesso the exact parts where I want to use oils. That’s a possibility, but more planning would have to go into it then, and I didn’t want to do it that way. There’s always the possibility of some collage, too. All I can say is, “we’ll see.”

Other than that, I’m working on the curriculum for a multimedia workshop I’ll be leading during the show run in the afternoon of Sunday, January 5th. We are debating on making it a free event, or if we’re charging a fee, but it will be limited to fifteen people. It involves music and drawing during the first half. The second half will either be a type of bookmaking or mixed-media textile collage. I haven’t yet decided which. Over the last couple of days, I ran budgets for both, and they are virtually the same, so it doesn’t really matter which way I go. I’ll have to flip a coin.

Once I hone that down, I have to write and print a bunch of promo ephemera. I haven’t made all those soup can invitation labels yet because I’m not getting the cans until tomorrow. Then, I’ll have to carefully tear off the original Campbell labels and stick the invite labels on. …There’s also a secret thing I’m doing for the show that I can’t mention, which has required my time and continues to. It will take up even more time as I inch my way to the opening. Sorry I can’t say what it is, but it makes me tired even thinking about it when I’m not working on it.