Stranded on the "Isle of Nothingness" or Why We Went To a UO Basketball Game

While I didn’t drink the bleach water, the momentary, well, despair if I’m maximizing and disappointment if I minimize my emotional response to the news, made it awfully tempting.

If you’ve been reading the last few entries then you know (and if you haven’t, here’s a brief recap) that Groom and I are in the throes of being creative on demand. Yeah, that always works…

The clock is ticking for us to design half a dozen pieces of jewelry to be professionally photographed for the 2011 art show jurying season which opened November 1st. Each day that passes puts us further behind.

We had until Friday (yesterday) to complete the mini collection and present them to our East Coast consultant. I wrote here a few days ago, that if we were given the green light by this expert, the next step would be to ship the artwork to New York for their walk down the runway. If we were booed off the stage, I might drown my sorrows in bleach water.

Thumbs down was the review. We don’t pay the consultant to be nice or to tell us what we want to hear. We pay him to be brutal, to view our designs with a discerning and critical eye, to play judge and jury while there’s still room to make improvements rather than having the actual art jury exclude us from shows and by default, our income.

While he did not like the direction our created-in-a-pressure-cooker-work was taking, we sent him photographs of things we had made over the summer, which, surprisingly he liked. He even went as far as describing several of them as having that “wow factor,” and used adjectives such as rich, heraldic and imperial. A sharp contrast to a few other adjectives that he used about our initial jurying pieces.

The outcome of this consultation was that he advised using a couple of older pieces (circa June or July) and selecting elements from them to design the rest of the aggravation, er um, I mean aggregation.

I just finished a book called The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin and she suggests that when “your creative flow has dried up, leaving you deserted on the Isle of Nothingness,” then go do something else unrelated for a little while.

We took her advice and nothing could have been as unrelated in our bruised brains as going to a basketball game last night. A friend of ours works in the steel industry and had donor tickets so he invited us to attend the tip off game for the final 11 played at the University of Oregon’s historic Mac Court before they move to the newly finished Matthew Knight Arena.

The last time I was in McArthur Court was way back when Groom and I were registering for our senior year, pre-computers. We had to rush around on the basketball court like athletes ourselves, running to sign up for classes needed for graduation before others filled them up. The sweat, fear and anticipation smelled the same.

However, watching a live basketball game was a completely different, and, a surprisingly wonderful experience. I never, ever thought I’d cheer, clap, whoop and holler for five guys running around in squeaky shoes throwing a ball, but I’m glad I can still discover new things about myself. Prevents getting bored being me.

While having a delicious pre-game dinner at The Vintage and then watching the exciting, close game with North Dakota State (tied 84-84 and then going into overtime to finally win 97-92), Groom and I completely let go of thoughts about forcing creation and have decided to play today, allowing the natural evolution of our ideas to emerge.

Lost in Folsom

Ignorance did not prove blissful this week. Groom and I just returned from a seven day trip participating in the Sacramento Arts Festival. Our best two shows this year were in Boise, Idaho’s capital city, and Salem, the governmental seat of Oregon. Our logic was that Sacramento, home to California’s beautiful capitol building, would round out the trifecta, making our last out-of-town show end with a big bang.

How about a less than impressive fizzle?

Fraught with tension just a few blocks away, Governor Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders were locked in a five-hour meeting spilling into Friday evening, October 1, 2010, attempting to end California’s record-long budget stalemate that has been continuing for more than 93 days.

Rumors of a hand-shake deal spread throughout the Sacramento Convention Center by 7:30pm. The show went until 9pm. In other words, a loooooooooong day.

Unbeknownst to us, government workers have been made to take Fridays off without pay, called “Furlough Fridays.” The trickle-down effect has been fast and furious.

In its 13th year, the Sacramento Arts Festival was unfortunately in the line of “friendly fire.” Without enough money to pay their bills, most people stayed home, choosing not to fork out the $15 per day parking lot charges and $7.50 entrance fees (and I thought parking in Eugene was an issue). As we were downtown four days in a row, we did not budget $60 to park our van so that stung a little. Blissless.

In its defense, the Sacramento Arts Festival is a beautiful show, one of the most diverse collections of artists and artworks under one roof that we’ve seen. With plenty of time to walk the show, it didn’t matter how many times we wandered about, there was always something new to see. The layout was great, the colors bright and the art complementary; but hardly a customer to be found.

The promoter, Warren Cook, is beloved. More artists told me that they do his shows simply because he’s Warren. He was a joy to work with and I can see why he’s so well liked and respected.

As happens at a slow show, there’s not much to do but visit with each other, so on a fonder note, we met some fun vendors. One couple from California boasted quite emphatically that Stanford was going to kick the University of Oregon’s, and therefore, our behinds during Saturday night’s big game. While he said it with humor and swagger, we kept checking the score. By 7 o’clock when the show closed for the evening, the game had not finished but Stanford was up 31-24, so the butt-kicking would have to wait until Sunday morning.

My cousin, who lives near Fresno, took a vacation day off from work and drove up to meet us. She booked a room next door in the same hotel, so we turned the weekend into a fun slumber party of sorts, staying up late, visiting and eating yummy food in our pajamas.

Perusing the Sacramento magazine in our hotel room, I noticed an ad for “the largest collection of antique shops in California.” So Cousin and I decided to play hooky from the show Sunday morning and go on the hunt for jewelry-making parts while Groom opened the booth.

What started out as a simple plan…

In spite of using her GPS, we still ended up lost, because the address given in the ad did not match the photo or the description. It was an empty building up for lease. I Googled the place on my handy dandy new Internet phone and we called the number listed. The message went to voicemail, a young girl wishing us a nice day.

While lost, we ended up in Historic Folsom, the city made famous by Johnny Cash and his 1956 trademark song, Folsom City Blues.

Early on Sunday morning, most shops were closed, but we did notice three different signs about karma, the Eastern philosophical concept of action and deed, cause and effect. Hmmmm….curious.

Walking back into the show, we encountered Mr. Stanford. As soon as he saw us, he covered his face with his hands. As the UO beat Stanford 52-31, he apologized for his arrogance and offered me a fabulous glass of wine to go with his humble pie. For you wine-bibbers out there, do I have a tip for you: Heringer Estates 2006 Petite Sirah. I finally understand descriptions like ambrosia or nectar of the gods. Aah, Bliss.

While the profits from the show were not what we were hoping for, we did get to visit with my cousin, see my parents and hang out with friends on the way home, so all was not lost.

Driving down I-5, we pulled into a rest area for a quick stop. Three nuns in full habit emerged from the vehicle next to us and proceed to amble toward the women’s room. Respectfully, I was not going to rush so that I could push ahead in line of three nuns, nope, wasn’t gonna do it. Turns out, there were four stalls, three of which had doors and the fourth one did not.

I giggled to myself, that here I was, the only other person in a room with nuns and my stall did not have a door on it. Whatever your belief, nun’s are a pretty significant symbol of religion and in the ongoing conversation with the Universe, it was not lost on me that I had an “open door.”

Hmmm, let’s quickly retrace. Getting lost in Folsom which is represented by a prison song, three signs of karma, a trinity of nuns and me with an open door. These things might make you nod off, but they certainly had the power to catch my attention, so while you’re looking at these photos, I’ll be a pondering.