A twofer

That pine sheet I showed you in the loft, one of the dumpster finds, I mentioned at the time that it had served several purposes including headboard.

Writing that blogpost reminded me of the headboard idea again. And yesterday Handsome Son, when I mentioned it, said, well why don't I bring it down while I'm here?  Which we did, he doing the heavy lifting, that thing is heavy, and I sort of acted like a tugboat, guiding the other end. Down a flight, round two corners, across the room  slid up the bed and upended into place behind it.  Now you see it's a headboard again.  It dresses up the platform bed pretty nicely.

The bed is a favorite of mine. Craftsman made by a small shop long gone, it's completely collapsible.  The base is solid sturdy members which slot together to receive the base, two parts resting side by side. Then the hinged surround that keeps the mattress in place rests on the lot.  It's a firm as a rock in use, but I can literally carry the parts about and assemble it myself, as I have on a number of moves.  In fact some of the parts have formed shelves and worktops in the studio at times when I was using a different bed.

And the twofer?  I realized you might not have seen the artwork above the bed, a handmade paper piece in the form of a quilt, with Fibonacci numbers embossed into it, using a kid's counting toy. This piece got a feature in the regional newspaper, back in the days when there were newspapers. It's abaca and cotton linters fibers, mounted on a foamcore back.  It looks hefty, and weighs maybe a pound tops.

On exhibit, quite a few nice people came to see that and other paper artworks.  One little boy really liked this one and studied it for a while, before saying, well, there's no number 4 on there!  I guessed that he was four and was looking for his age.  So I explained to his mom about the Fibonacci numbers and why there wasn't a number four.  Then other people started to examine it looking for exactly which numbers were to be found.  That little boy was a very good art docent.

Speaking of which, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, is one of the few novels I've ever read which understood what art is to the artist, and what a driving force it is. I really recommend it for any number of reasons, aside from the depiction of Mia, one of the artists in question.

On the subject of a driving force, sometimes it's not lifelong.  My son used to compose music around college age.  I'd given him a good portable keyboard, and using it as a base, he created an entire MIDI system, composed a lot of work on the keyboard, recorded onto cassette and shared with his friends. 

A while ago I asked him if he still made music.  He does go to a drumcircle, but doesn't compose on the keyboard.  He explained, no he didn't do that because now he doesn't need to.  Which I thought was such a healthy response.  He did some really good work, but once he no longer needed to, he moved on. Never felt the need to give in to pressure to continue just because he did good music that people admired. This is great.

When the art impulse in one direction moves on, you need to let it, not just keep forcing yourself on and on because it's what you've always done, and people think that's what you do. Let it go and other wonderful forces will come into play. But first you have to let go. I know some sad painters who keep on keeping on, and it's really not art, but they need to feel they're still painters improving their skills, despite evidence to the contrary. When perhaps they're now some other form of artist, really.  Oh, the youth of the heart, and the dew of the morning, you wake, and they've left you, without any warning.  Beautiful song, you might find it on Google.  But it's not really sad if you look beyond the moment.

Anyway, that's today's Deep and Important Thinking.

And tomorrow I see an allergist to discover if she thinks there's a safe way to get a flu shot this year, since my primary doc is very concerned about this year particularly.  She says they might be able to determine whether this year's vaccine is safe for me, after the excitement of a few years ago, the one that nearly did for me. So we'll see.  Other than that, I'm trundling along just fine for an old lady..

My neighbor is sending me pix of the plants I gave her, now all potted up, and the others she's just acquired. She's thrilled with her new indoor garden.   I am too.