Here's a preview of my piece, too, which I expect to complicate but has a gorgeous simplicity at this point. I suppose I can always return to that, but I have plans for feathers and such. I made a beak/eyes for it too, but will wait to attach them after I have handled it. I wouldn't want to break the tip of the beak. Dried gelatin is incredibly tough, and this stuff on the net carrier is pretty strong too, but I can moisten it to bend it and shape it, plus I could sew it onto the stick, which helped a lot. I promise it will look more like a bird soon.
And I seem to be working on a few headpieces for the show as well. We have this one song that just cries out for Jell-O on our heads. I have practically none of these left, having abandoned for the most part my plans to sell Jell-O. I plead Artist on that one. I just can't sustain interest in some aspects of my art, and selling it is one of the most problematic. People's tastes change so rapidly, and I am completely burnt out on trying to be fashionable, a big challenge for me to begin with.
I hadn't been making these for about a week, discouraged by that place I can get to where I know my imaginary sculpture is not going to be met by my physical results...I was afraid it wouldn't look at all like a bird. I am over that!
I blame the Babes With Axes. I forced myself out of my hermitage for the evening to see their reunion concert, and the rewards were great. I felt like family, and a part of the history. When I first met Debbie, she was not making music publicly. She was a single mom with three kids and was just starting out here, seeing what was possible, seeing if it would fit with what she had to do to survive. She could sit down at the piano, though, and not only play well, but sing while she did it, and when she applied her prodigious sense of humor and appreciation for life to the mix, she wowed me. She wasn't new to music, but it was new to me to watch someone work through the challenges of putting oneself out there. I was sure I could never do it, and wasn't sure it was worth the emotional risk. Debbie never stopped moving though. Indi related that during that time the Radar Angels, always hungry for talent with a twist, asked Debbie to play with them for a couple of shows, and this helped her gain confidence locally. She didn't exactly "get her wings" through it, since she already had some giant, fluffy ones, (picture that) but it is nice to think of her as part of that family too.
Debbie said when she first heard Katie and Laura sing, she prepared a third part and went to them, scared, to propose singing together. They all had moments when they thought "Oh, they will never want to sing with me." I suppose these are common thoughts. I remember when I won the shower curtain prize at one of their shows, I got to go on stage, and blabbered something about always wanting to be on stage with the Babes....I was studying them at the show, their stage presence (stellar), their techniques for working together, their well-practiced arrangements and harmonies. I would so love to be able to sing harmonies like that.
I always wanted to be on stage with the Radar Angels, too, and now I am. Wonders never cease. And all through Jell-O. Thanks for the shout-out, too, even though they almost forgot to thank their t-shirt printer. (Indi hollered out from our seats.) Then Debbie, I think, said something about a Jell-O Brain...and I had just been thinking that very day about borrowing a brain mold from someone to use as a prop. Synchronicity and the magic of Jell-O Art, I say!
