I had lunch today with a very dear friend of mine, who incidentally also reads my blog. She commented on me slipping into the deep and meaningful at the moment. Ah well, I am still on the search where the puppets came from. But I guess I have to ease up a little. My post yesterday didn’t go down too well :). This morning I was thinking of writing about what I call “emotional cross-dressers”, but I give it a miss. I have to think about the subject for a little longer anyway.
A few years back I attended a training course for a volunteer organisation. One could describe the course as psychology for lay people. Most of it was common sense. But there was this one diagram describing the basic mental attitudes, which I found very good. I re-drew it this morning; something I wanted to do for some time. Yep, I know representatives of each and every one of those four catagories.
Personally, I am oscillating between the two left images (as I guess most women do!) When I am in the top left, everything is honky dory. I strongly believe in win-win situations and I work hard to achieve them. When I am in the bottom left, my soul mate comes in very handy :). Thank you!
Problems arise, when I come across someone who has the mental attitude of the top right quadrant. Often I simply walk away, but I can also turn into a lioness, particularly if a third party is involved. Lioness mode, believe me, is not a pretty picture and it is very exhausting, so I try to avoid it… Unfortunately I am not always successful.
First a warning: Most people actually don’t want to be happy – as truly happy people are so, so boring. What makes life interesting are the spikes, not equilibrium.
I have learned to embrace my ups and downs. I have learned that the proverbial brick wall stops me only temporarily. I don’t have to force my way through it, there is always a way around it. Finding this detour often requires a pause, to sit down and ponder.
On my personal list of happiness there are only two items, and they are by no means fame and riches. On my list is one item you should have and one you shouldn’t. Not too difficult, is it?
The item you absolutely need to have is a soul mate!
What you need to get rid of are any personal expectations you have of him/her, so that you will keep this gem for a long long time to come!
As easy as…
Funnily enough, most of my friends seem to think the first part is the difficult one. In fact it is the second, the working on the relationship, trying not to re-model the person you’ve found to fit your ideas. Without expectation the ideas will grow together in due time :)
Then when you hit the brick wall your fall will be cushioned!
…The complete Like – What? installation. The figures are looking outwards and the connections at the modems form a pentagram. The heads are sitting on clay balls at the top of aluminum tubes and when somebody walks past they sway ever so slightly. I will leave the rest of the interpretation up to you…. you know the characters already :)
I wanted to make new puppets last weekend, but got side-tracked with revamping my blog. I updated the Home page and the About page and added the Milestones menu, though I haven’t added the installation characters to the Character page yet. This will have to wait until next weekend.
I am now in my seventh month of writing this blog and I do notice a gradual change from the initial difficulties of sharing my art with an unknown audience. It has become easier over time. The biggest hurdle for me is seeing how many gifted people are out there, and I wonder who should read all this…. I personally would like to have more time to spend reading the other blogs and discover new ones. In the end it is no different to real life is it? You have a couple of blogs you always check up on. You hang out with some more than with others, but it changes over time until you suddenly notice that you haven’t seen one for a while.
A big fat Thank you to all the people who check regularly on my progress. I really appreciate it!
I will have to concentrate on my book for a while and I was going to check out LULU last night, but then I skyped for ages with the other side of the world, so this didn’t happen. I came across a German self-publishing site called Tredition, this could become plan B.
Reading today’s post again, I notice it is all about what I wanted to do but didn’t … I guess I will have to start on my Procrastinator puppet soon.
This is an image of the Hokianga Harbour taken last weekend. Yes, we do have an amazing scenery in New Zealand – It is particularly pretty when the sun is shining :) Hope the weather lasts over the next weekend.
I just came back from the Pah Homestead, where I set up my installation for judging. The artwork is finally out of the house on to the next stage. Now, it’s two weeks of nail-biting until the winners are announced on the 3rd of September. In the meantime I have so much catching up to do, not just with my blog. I feel like a Pukeko (that’s the bird shown in the image). They try to fly, but they can only go a short distance and they look even more awkward when they are running…. Very lanky.
First of all I would like to have a good night sleep.
Two weeks ago I learned that I am a finalist in the Wallace Art Awards this year. It took a week for it to sink in, but now I am really savouring the moment. For a New Zealand artist it is not dissimilar to winning lotto.
They give you two and a half weeks to get the artwork to the exhibition space and I can assure you, you need every minute of it. My artwork is an installation made up of 30 individual pieces and this has to be packed in a way that prevents if from getting damaged in transport. Of course it has to be easily packed and unpacked as well as it might be included in a travelling exhibition.
The box ended up being an artwork in itself, but it is finally finished. Originally I had bought a bag of off-cut foam and I wanted to stuff everything in the empty box we had built to size. For a night I sat on the floor packing and unpacking the box, scratching my head and getting increasingly frustrated. Nobody would have been able to make sense of all the bits and pieces, if they indeed found everything hidden between the pieces of foam. Some of the parts are very small. So the choice was either to write a hundred page manual or continue on the design of the box to make it more accessible and tidy. Everyday there was a little addition to the box and finally after two weeks we are finished, just in time to send it off.
Does anybody ever have a deadline with some time to spare? Certainly not me.
So tonight I will be packing it again and this time it will be a breeze.
On Saturday there was a really good article in the local newspaper about How the Web messes with our minds. I should be careful when I say really good, as we tend to like opinions that fit with our world view. We can remember things that support our own ideas much better than conflicting ideas.
Anyway, the article talks about first emerging research that the social networks can make us:
not just dumber or lonelier but more depressed and anxious, prone to obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, even outright psychotic. Our digitised minds can scan like those of drug addicts.
It is very gloomy, more than one in eight people supposedly show an unhealthy relationship with the web. I guess this can be added to the list of alcohol, cigarettes and pain killers…
The article was in the NZ Herald, July 14, A24. Reprinted from Newsweek.
I find this image typical of my childhood. The sign, right wham bang in the middle, says “Betreten Verboten“, which means KEEP OUT. This sign turns everything beyond that point into a living picture, just like a stage or TV. It is the lushest most beautiful landscape, but… all you can do is sit and watch. Over in the distance at the edge of the trees, the little white spots is a group of grazing deer. It is a very peaceful living picture. Of course, I know now, without the sign there would be no lush and beautiful landscape. It would be trampled all over and the deer would be scared deeper into the woods.
There were a lot of Betreten Verboten Signs scattered around my life and I believe this is one of life’s great lessons: To learn which ones need to be obeyed, which ones can be safely ignored and which ones need to be fought against.
I found these notes littering the place. They all said the same: “I wish the Dedes had an Agony Aunt. I soooo desperately need a confidant!” (Gee, the writer certainly won’t win an award for neat hand-writing. It took me a while to decipher them.)
Finally I caught the culprit in the act: It was Lou, the love-sick puppy. I had my suspicions, but I am not one for asking directly. I am a bit miffed though, I always thought they could confide in me…
… to be continued
dedepuppets 