Just Roll With the Changes

Despite being a Queen, I am not really in charge of anything except my own attitude. I haven't been super good at keeping that adjusted either. But every day is a new opportunity.

Virtual appearances are all the rage, as you know, and we are working on a recorded zoom for our performance for the Jell-O Art Show this year. Maude Kerns has added the capability to project  recordings in the gallery and have been having some movie nights in the last couple of years, so they are all ready for it. We'll show some of the old performances and you all can enjoy them again. They are relics of how it was before, with all that crowding together and eating Tacky Food and hugging.

I hung some stuff in my space so I will have an interesting background for the zoom, and tried it out yesterday for some other meetings, but it needs work. I like visual stimulus (what others would call clutter) in my life so it makes sense to me to create a rich background just like I would for the stage in a typical year. Making the set pieces is always one of my favorite parts. I won't be wearing full costuming most likely, but I don't know that for sure yet. 

I was working on a piece but I think I might just make it into a new headdress for the zoom and call it good. The hours of the show had to be changed to make it possible, and it's now 1-5 in the afternoon. I hate to say this, but I won't be attending in person. This will be the first time if you don't count last year when no one did.

I am planning to donate some fascinators from my vast collection to the gallery for sale, so if you go and you want one, you'll be supporting art in a big way. I still have the blank shirts from last year but I don't think selling t-shirts is going to happen...although the orange color tempts me to do some kind of Covid motif and I might succumb to that desire. Having the desire to create is a big change for me as I am one of those people who spent the last year mostly uninspired and not creating. Again, if I do, they will be sold for donations to the gallery.

I still find it fascinating that I haven't been creative and I can only think that I have been so over-productive in my life that I needed a very long vacation and some semi-retirement. I worked on what presented itself to make money and keep my Market retail going, and did some house repairs and things, but mostly read books and thought and journaled and sat on the deck whenever I could. Also I have a cat now so took a lot of time figuring out and catering to her many needs. She does anxiety for me so I don't have to.

Doing a lot of thinking and journaling and learning is a kind of work, scholarly work I guess, and it will undoubtedly not be wasted time. I got a handle on how to write about the Market, by starting with 2019, our 50th season, which was glorious and in retrospect, so priceless. Having a handle on it means I have started the process and the rest is just labor. That feels like some kind of success.

I have a couple of things I shouldn't talk about that will explain why I am going to Saturday Market for Opening Day instead of giving it all up for Jell-O Art, but that's my decision and it makes the most sense this year. Next year I might change back to prioritizing Jell-O Art. This year survival still outweighs having fun, so that's just the way it is. I can still put plenty of energy into promoting the Jell-O and I apologize to fans of the Queen but you know, if I went and hung out at the show, that would mean one less person could enter the space and that doesn't seem fair either. So I would be hanging out in the courtyard or something, which I trust some of the other artists and Radar Angels might do. 

So that's where I am today...still in the half-grieving, half-joyful mode of the pandemic era. Some things are lost and others gained. We're not finished yet.

At Least We Still Have Jell-O

Yup, that's our theme this year: At Least We Still Have Jell-O. Although the group has some enthusiasm, we are still in Covid-mode and will not write and perform a show as usually done. That's just the way it is.

Our current plan is to record a zoom where we all dress up and dance around...to be shown on social media and maybe projected at the gallery during the assigned time, Saturday April 3rd, 5-8 pm.

Plus some kind of compilation film I guess. I'm not in charge of that though it is in capable hands.

I'm in charge of doing a piece (though I'm uninspired) and figuring out a costume. And I will go to the gallery after I finish up my Market day as that is Opening Day of Saturday Market as well. My loyalties go to the Market for income purposes mostly, and for the survival of the Market. 

The gallery is still going to have a physical show of Jell-O Art. They will photograph and show it online and you can also go to the gallery though there will still be some restriction on attendance. Right now they are operating at the current limits for extreme risk but the County is down to High Risk so maybe a few more people can be in the room.

We've been meeting and are getting a little of the regular energy of irreverent cacaphony. Zoom meetings lend themselves well to everyone talking at once and no one being able to hear much or do much organization. I'm still stuck in the ennui of having a year to myself reflected back in my laptop screen. At least we have video filters!

So keep working on your pieces or your thoughts about them, and if you don't want to actually go to the gallery keep an eye on social media for videos or whatever shows up. 

We'll get it all back someday, we hope. For now, we do have Jell-O. At least.

Surrender to Jell-O

It's not looking good for a full recovery from Covid restrictions by April 3rd. It's definitely not possible to rehearse a show in the ways we used to in January and February and March. So for many weeks I agonized and wanted to not be the Queen of Jell-O Art and not have to figure out what to do for 2021.

It made me angry and shut down just to think about it. Also, April 3rd is Opening Day of Saturday Market and I really hate to miss that to play Queen...I need the money and Market needs me. For the last several years the calendar has favored me with end-of-March Jell-O Art Show dates and I've gotten too used to it. But April Fool's Day does not negotiate.

Plus, nothing is normal or even predictable and that has been true for a year (or a lifetime, depending on your perspective.) I'm worn down by it. 

I have a box of unprinted t-shirts and an unfinished design and an unfinished script from last year that was all pre-pandemic. So innocent and unuseable now.

 

There was actually some Jell-O Art. We kind of had a show on FB and that counts. So this I think will be our 32nd. Or 33rd, I have lost track.

Excellent piece by Kari Berg, and I made some props for our song Jell-O on the Grits by Nan. And go over to Instagram and see the multitude of photos by David Gibbs, who has done it year round in style.

But the thing that always works is some level of surrender. We had a zoom where I got laughed at, which generally happens at our first meeting every year since they know me and I am always this way...reluctant and in need of some kind of adjustment. While it is pretty hard to find anything amusing in the zetigeist, there has to be something. There are plenty of songs to parody. I'm kind of obsessed with

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdZLi9oWNZg 

and there's always making a 2021 version of this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZj8lrSZHsE

So I laughed at myself, and recognized that as Queen, while I do have some impulse to serve the public and the fans, and the troupe, I am not required to be a superhero. This Queen is vulnerable and human, and also old, so I could indeed cut back and do less in response to how much harder it is.

The Radar Angels are working on a YouTube video idea, for this and for the absence of Fair, which is also not happening, but I opted out of performing on that, so far. The performing is still not all that much fun for me, though I like to sing. And now that I am fatter from all the stress eating, lots of my little costumes aren't that fun either. So I checked that requirement off my list. I can still do it if the fun quotient improves.

Since it is likely that attendance will still be restricted at the gallery, I could maybe not show up that day and go to Market. I'd have to do something, but maybe I could make a video too. I could make it as professional as possible with a little advice from some new techy friends I made by volunteering for the Virtual Fair, OCF in the Clouds. I might have to leave the house to do it, but that hurdle is small enough.

And the workshop I had planned for last year, where people help me use up all my tubs of dried gelatin pieces by making things, might also be possible in some limited form. A small group could do it in person, as indoor gatherings are almost happening now. That would be in mid-March, and could be videotaped to show at the Jell-O Show or online. Not overwhelmingly difficult to imagine.

So, I got out all my stuff and made some Jell-O. I made some colorful blendy pieces to be cheery, and had one idea for a sculpture I'd like to do, so I collected some branches and sticks because everything's better on a stick. I was inspired by an Art Beat show about a floral designer who makes incredible wearable and displayable natural sculptures with flowers. Anything you can do with flowers I can generally do with Jell-O. 

So I'm launched the tiniest bit. No promises. If it isn't fun, I'm not going to do it.

Make some yourself! The dried recipe is 6 ozs gelatin in two cups of water, stir well, let bloom, melt in the microwave and pour out in thin layers. After 8 hours or so, peel it out of the dishes and flip it over. Flip it and tend it for a couple of days as it dries, then glue it together with more molten gelatin. Try stuff. 

There are lots of other possibilities. David Gibbs, the Knight, is making edible stuff mostly with agar agar. There are incredible instagrams that show video of wobble and jiggle, masterfully done. Look around the internet and you will find tons of inspiration. 

If you have kids, make it science and art at the same time. Play! 

That's an order from the Queen. If you want to, that is.