I am hard at work constructing things that look like pillows, but are actually sculptures. (Yes, they can be used as pillows and if you come to City Wide Open Studios in New Haven on the last weekend of the month, you'll be informed of all the many uses...) These (admittedly soft) sculptures all bear the now iconic WTF motif. I am making a brilliant pile of these sculptures so as to function as an irresistible heap of jewel-toned eye candy. We'll see how well this works. I have warned Bob that we will no doubt become the permanent custodians of many "sculptures" and lucky friends and family members know what they will be getting for Xmas this year.
Which leads to my historic sad-sack pillow story. When I was 14 or 15 years old, I made a quilted pillow in an art class. As my mother (aka Mommy) was a seamstress, we had boxes and boxes of fabric remnants in our attic and I thought to fashion several more pillows from these scraps. A bit later, I thought to be enterprising, and I produced a slew of these laboriously hand made quilted pillows to try and sell at our local fair. My sister Beatrice and her partner John made stained glass objects and we decided to share a table. Beatrice and John cleaned up: they sold tons of their lovely stained glass pieces and bought a large color television with their profits. Guess how much I made? How about nada? I didn't even sell one (at a bargain $20 each!!!!). People looked at them and complimented me but couldn't even pony up a lousy $20 to help a kid see that her hard work and gumption paid off. *1. Great lesson learned! WTF!!!!
And this story gets even worse as I further attempted to find an outlet for all that entrepreneurial energy and talent. I had Mommy drive me to a store in Guilford that had specialty items and one of a kind hand made niceties and I presented my pillows to the owner. This man dismissively commented that "they had pillows for sale made by blind people".*2. Well, that put the kabosh on my early efforts to "follow my bliss"; so much for "do what you love and the money will follow". Hahahaha.
So here we are, almost 48 years later, and I have a sudden sense of deja vu all over again. Didn't I already go that pillow route? Am I being set up by fate? That's where I come to the time travel part. I want to go back in time and help that young artist (ME!) rewrite her her-story and sell ALL the pillows- now "sculptures" (as art is obviously more expensive). I want a parallel universe to provide an entirely different outcome: I want success and to be rewarded for all my sweat-shop emulating, bloody finger-tip inducing, third world mimicking hard (American!) labor to pay off. Please, please just let me sell even one...*3.
*1. And here's another peculiar detail... I still have most of the pillows. No kidding! Our living room chairs sport many fine example of my childish sewing efforts. I guess they wore well... and were worth the measly $20 price!
*2. I admit the irony of me having damaged my left eye so that I now have limited sight and probably could get away with marketing my work as "having been made by blind people".
*3. The weirdest thing is that even if I bring all of the sculptures and tee shirts (yes! I'm doing tee shirts, too!) home with me, it can be said of me "she persisted". Let's face it: artists just don't give up and admit defeat easily.
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