San Antonio, Texas is rich with history. You can spend days exploring the Alamo, the Mission district, and the River Walk. When you've had enough history vernacular house designs and their gardens gladden the eye. I've long had a fascination with contemporary Texas house architecture, and in 2007 I discovered that the small older homes in the Mission district were equally well-designed.
Another highlight of San Antonio was the Blue Star Contemporary Arts Center on the edge of town. During my March 2007 visit, work by Austrian artist Heimo Wallner was on offer in the University of Texas San Antonio Satellite Space. The postcard shows a detail from Maotsetung. Walking into the space was like walking into a cartoon -- the walls were covered floor to ceiling with drawings by Heimo Wallner. Being in this space was a lot like standing in front of a massive Dorothy Caldwell quilt where you feel like you've become a part of the artwork. Intimate artwork does the opposite: it enters you. Just a thought.
"Genius makes the obvious seem interesting." -- Tom Allen (Host of CBC Radio 2 Shift, heard August 3, 2011)
"Nothing extraordinary is ever achieved through ordinary means." -- Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen, p. 214
At the recent Leamington Mennonite Community Sale, I spotted this vibrant ode to John Deere tractors. It reminded me of a family friend who was such a staunch supporter of John Deere that he had only John Deere tractors, a John Deere lawnmower, John Deere farmer caps, a John Deere mailbox, and a green pickup truck. Had my sister-in-law not scooped this quilt for my brother, the farmer could have completed his collection. What is your obsession?
A few weeks ago I had the bus ride from hell. What normally would have been a one hour commute took two hours... and the bus had no bathrooms. I had enough to read to entertain me for the first hour, but after that I became bored and this turned out to be a good thing. With my grey Tombow marker I held the tip just above the surface of the page of my sketchbook and recorded the bumpy ride. I was fully present, fully in tune with each pothole and lane change, and the last hour flew by.
Lately I've been thinking about the benefits of boredom. Long bus rides, riding my exercise bike, sitting in church, and long waiting room visits are boring, but important. While I'm stuck sitting still, my mind wanders, ideas form, connections are made. On a good day I have my V7 Hi-Tecpoint pen and a sketchbook to jot it all down or to draw. I confess that the only way I can listen in church is if I have pen and paper in hand and my mindfully mindless drawings are often the starting point of new designs. In his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King writes about the importance of boredom to pull him through a rough spot in the writing. Illustrator and Wunderkind Mike Perry credits the boredom of growing up around Kansas City for influencing his work. In Drawn In, he says "the biggest effect it had on me was that I was pretty bored, so I made my own excitement, which equaled a lot of work (Rothman, 151)." As a former country kid, I can relate. In the right hands, boredom can be a good thing.
Cousin Edna moved recently and gave me two bags of textiles, patterns, and notions all neatly labelled with notes of where each item came from. In the stash were patterns and notions from my Oma and from Edna's mom. In January I wrote about my Oma's poppies needlepoint that hung on her dining room wall. To my delight, the catalogue containing the Basket of Poppies pattern was in the stash. It comes from Jean McIntosh Needlework Ltd. and was designed in 1959. Since the price list is from February, 1966, I'll assume that Oma stitched it the same year. I did an internet search and the company is still in business and the Basket of Poppies pattern is still available. In 1966, the pattern cost $17.95 and today it is $220.00. Although I likely won't stitch the Basket of Poppies, it is nice to know more about it and that Jean McIntosh is a Canadian company formerly based in Winnipeg and now based in Calgary. Over the next few weeks, I'll show some of the other gems from this stash.
Time has flown -- it's hard to believe that this is my 200th post. I've written 5 posts a week for the past 8.5 months. When I began this little blog on November 24, 2010 I didn't expect that so many people from 60 countries (some that I had never heard of) would read my words. Thank you all for accompanying me on this journey. I have learned a lot and am still learning. Thanks to you all!
s m a l l
"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."
- Confucius
"There is a clear asymmetry between the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution. Big problem, small solution. ... Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades." -- Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, p. 44.*
*The Heath brothers Switch, along with their Made to Stick are high on my list of favourites.
