Leaves about 0 time to work in my studio.
Hi everyone. I’m tired. Really, really tired. It’s been about 5 almost 6 weeks since I have set foot in my studio and worked on paintings. I have been working, working, working everyday in the costume dept. for Cirque Du Soleil’s Chicago show called Banana Shpeel. I’m not making the costumes that happens at HQ in Montreal. My job is basically to maintain the costumes and help the performers get in and out of them as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s a three month job that is paying me well and shall support me for January and February while I go paint in the mountains of North Carolina with David. Hopefully after that, I’ll find another job. However despite the nice paychecks, I have about 0 time to work on my paintings. This makes me feel withered and sad. I have discovered, which I kind of new all along but know even more now, that I need to have studio time by myself very often in order to function normally in the world. Is that selfish? I wont get to be in my studio again until January. I have a big sketchbook and some gouache and colored pencils to work with at night when I get home though arriving home around 11pm by then i am just plumb too tuckered out to work.
So many complaints I seem to have! Well there are some good things too. I do have little moments and beautiful bits to look at from time to time. The stage scenery and costumes are exquisite, very rich, complimentary colors, not true colors but warm hues and cool shades and deep tones that I ache to replicate with paint. I steal short seconds and whole minutes to let my eyes rest on them and memorize them. I let my brain relax a sec and then go back into work mode.
I have secret hiding places in the theater too! It’s nice to wander off through the regal Chicago Theater on break times. I have found little cubby’s to crawl into and nap or a balcony to hide by myself and read and have a snack. There is a hammock underneath the stage that is a great place to nap if there is no rehearsal onstage. The ceiling in the lobby changes colors from blue to green to yellow to orange to pink to red and every shade in between. I found a soft, squishy bench in a hallway that no one ever goes down to stretch out and rest. From the house the stage looks grand. Sometimes I sit in the house on the second level when only the stage lights are on and where the seats are not regular theater seats but booths with tables! It is there that I write little bits in my sketchbook and like to let my mind wander and fantasize about January and February when I will be in Asheville, North Carolina. A place I hope to call home someday. I steal every second I can too to read my book, The poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It is an an amazing book about a baptist family that travels to Montreal in the sixties to be missionaries. It’s beautiful and heart breaking and funny and horrific. Sometimes I can’t get my thoughts out of it after I close the cover.
Well right now that is how things are. Stealing moments and working hard to be able to be an artist later on.
More soon!
dee