Past Perfection

A timely talk with my friend Pamela reminded me that we are not working toward any type of perfection, but just on the ride. In preparation for the little panel at the Lane County Historical Museum this evening, I've been going through boxes looking into my past. While fascinating, I don't always like seeing where I have come from.

I wanted to gather some of the items I made in the early days of my crafts career, and it turns out I have a pretty complete archive, thanks to the nature of my early efforts as a signpainter. I took photos of every sign I painted, or at least most of them, since I knew I might never see them again. I saved examples of the paper things I made, probably because they didn't sell, or there were so many imperfect ones. When I de-fuse my inner critic, I find some of them delightful and original.

I decided to paint signs after reading Woody Guthrie's autobiography in the early 70's. I was floundering around trying to figure out how to enter the adult world, having graduated from high school as a pretty good girl in 1968. I was raised to be obedient but at the same time sort of an iconoclast. I got caught up in politics at school in DC in 1969, when I went to a showing of The War Game, a movie that showed the government spin on nuclear energy (It's Perfectly Safe!). I was instantly radicalized and that was the place to be. I switched my major to protesting and was tear-gassed, had dinner with Black Panthers, lots of excitement. One of my roommates in a big old house was the daughter of one of the Chicago 8 lawyers, so I touched upon some real revolutionaries. I was still pretty good, managing to lose my matching sweaters and skirts and my bra, but still retaining most of my Catholic guilt and lots of family stuff that I will spare you from for the moment. I do value that political awakening and the radical ideas I learned there haven't left me.

But my twenties were very difficult, and the signpainting gave me a vehicle. I went with a friend to Colorado Springs, where I worked in the botany lab at Colorado College, which fed my love of nature and plants. I followed that friend to the Lower East Side of NYC, where I took a calligraphy class at the Art Students League, and decided all I needed to do was to keep practicing. Woody was an itinerant signpainter, and after some more frustrating years in Colorado, where I lived in a cabin with my own hot springs, I set off in a Willys panel jeep to the Four Corners area to try my luck like he did. It was all very romantic. I met a cowboy and he convinced me to join him on a ranch in Carmel Valley, CA, and I then limped to Eugene where I could stay with my Aunt Lud (now in her 90's), and in the early spring of 1976, here I landed.

I painted a lot of signs, most of them slightly amateur in retrospect, and made many somewhat useful items like spice jar labels and greeting cards. I taught myself to screenprint and made calendars, better cards, and finally t-shirts. I've been making t-shirts for 30 years.

I would probably have given up art by now if it hadn't been for Saturday Market. I stumbled upon it with the idea of using it for networking, and my first big customer was Humble Bagel, which was just opening. When there was an arson under the Butterfly where all of SM's signs and info booth were stored (in 1982), I offered my services to the Board to replace their signs. I'm sure I did some for free and got minimally paid for the others. I still work for SM, doing their totes and shirts, although there were of course years when I didn't do that. Still, I have remained connected for all of this time.

Soon after I started coming to the meetings I was drafted to run for the Board and rapidly became the Chair. It was scary for me, and there are a few pages in my old journals about the various issues I dealt with, but I got the help I needed to stumble through it. We moved to the Park Blocks, we started The New Holiday Market, we hired and fired a few employees for various dire reasons. At one point we were deep in the red and successfully fund-raised our way out of that.

I was still a romantic, which fit well with my charter membership in the Radar Angels and the various relationships I got involved in. I don't see my twenties and thirties in entirely positive lights, but I worked hard always and in the 80's my partnership with Mike Martin was pretty darn productive. We lucked into the Fish Tie Phenomenon of 1986, which we started with our t-shirt of a printed-on collar and rainbow trout. It led to rapid growth and we had at one point a business with five employees, lots of wholesale accounts all over the country, the line of Fractal t-shirts, and much more. It was a good collaboration for a few years, but I was 39 and just had to be a mother, so I jumped into that.

The business suffered from me spreading myself too thin and the emotional changes that came with motherhood, and the next decade was spent raising my wonderful son, as a single parent, while remodeling my house from below the ground up. It is still not all the way finished, but after 15 years we moved into it from next door, switching houses with my shop, which is where all the equipment landed from Fibergraphics, and where I still work.

I have the skills necessary to thrive as a craftsperson, namely good self-discipline, an outstanding work ethic, and many loyal customers. I would have none of it without Saturday Market, and Country Fair, where I learned how to do it all and how to grow as an artist. Outside of the calligraphy class, I am self-taught. I learned most of my craft through library books, and practice, and mistakes. I made some memorable ones.

So looking back is a mixed process for me. I'm not that proud of all of my work, though I am proud of the courage it took to make it. I'm really proud of my dedication to it, and my persistence, and my curiosity and love of learning. Those things have to be cultivated, and I'm glad I placed enough value on my time to keep working. I'm relatively successful now at 60. I see the coming decline, but I'm not there yet. I just got a new spot for Saturdays, back near my old neighborhood, where I was next to Jeff Allen for a long, long time. I've stayed in the same neighborhood at the market and where I live, settling in pretty deeply over the years.

And I'm thrilled that I kept journals starting in the early 70's, though most of the ones written by a twenty-year-old romantic are painfully full of angst about love and sex. A few people appear in now surprising ways and there are a few explorations of other subjects, but one thing I found amazing is that I still agonize over the same damn things, in many cases.

One is isolation, which comes with the territory of working alone. I have always worried about working too hard and not being good with relationships. Despite years of therapy, which really did help, I remain much the same person inside. I found this disturbing and comforting at the same time. I can see my progress, but also still recognize myself.

So while I may be part of the living history we will look at again tonight at the Museum, I'm still emphasizing the living part of that. I'm still curious and live a deep interior life, still documenting it for my own education and still working hard and feeling like a beginner. I hope I have a few more decades to get it right, except I have the feeling that I will never feel like I have it completely figured out.

Life is a mystery, it's a wonder we all do as well as we do. When I turned fifty I decided that there were no more mistakes, that things we do are just that, the things we do. They're right as they can be. My choices have been as good for me as it has been possible for me to determine them. I've wasted a lot of time agonizing over whether or not I am doing it right or wrong.

Neither one, apparently. I'm just doing it, just making stuff and selling it. It's incredible, and at the same time mundane and nothing special. I hope it will be fun to share it a little tonight. I'm anxious about it of course, but one of my recent mantras is to turn anxiety into curiosity.

Wonder what new thing I will learn tonight? What will I rediscover that I had forgotten? What will I learn to value that I might have discarded? What great energy might come from all of this looking back?

Stay tuned. It's not over yet.