The Miser...oh goody.....

The first time I designed Molier's "The Miser" for my costume design class 3 years ago it was kind of an unprecedented disaster. Okay, it probably wasn't but in retrospect I feel like it was. I look at those sketches (and while there is a distinct possibility that I am seeing what I'm seeing now because I know what was going on in my life at the time) and I see a designer who is sad and small, and afraid of their own shadow. When I see the sketches I did for the first year I was a costume designer I don't see fearlessness, I don't see someone who is on the brink of an awfully big adventure. Cramped, small, ill proportioned figures wearing not the best researched clothing stare back at me lifelessly on the page and apparently everyone was always wearing the same kind of fabric. Ideas of velvet and lace and deep silk taffeta and bright shinny ribbons and exotic furs all come off as looking exactly the same weight and transparency. My skills have grown, and I am in a considerably better place as an artist, and as a person then I was when I began this insane path all those years ago. But I'm not satisfied.Over the last few months I've allowed myself to slip into some bad habits, old inherited ideas about studying when there's no pressing need to, and I'm tired of being satisfied with where I am.  I want to be better than I have ever been. But maybe this time I can be better than I've ever been with a little more sleep and a little less nausea.

I believe that trying to separate who you are as an artist and who you are as a person is about as futile as asking a violinist to play the violin without a bow or strings. To be one you truly need to be the other. I've survived break ups, fights with friends, fights with lovers, moving, starting over, and a smorgasbord of emotional frenzy for the last 18 months over what the hell I'm going to do with myself from here. I like to think of myself as bold, free, daring, original, inventive, independent, thoughtful, introspective, possibly a little crazy and driven.

NONE OF THIS IS COMING OUT ON TO THE FREAKING PAGE. 

I can sew it, I can drape it, I can SEE it...but I can't draw it. And that is immeasurably frustrating.

A friend recently asked me why I'm so hard on myself. I gave him a simple and honest answer. I don't want to get complaisant. I don't want to be satisfied with "good enough."  I want to keep growing, I want to keep evolving. I want to eventually get the thoughts that are in my head on to paper. When you aren't in school, and as I am now unemployed, it's easy to find other ways to fill your day. It's easy to get distracted by busy nothings. And when it's hard, when it's frustrating, when you aren't getting the results you want it's easy to put priority and importance on other things. But, there is an artist in me who still yearns for a sketchbook and wants to put pencil to paper. Sometimes I try and talk her out of it, sometimes there are other things that need doing, but the artist in me pokes me as I'm falling asleep and I feel an ache in my hand that I sometimes would feel after holding hands with someone and the habitual cold that would sink in when I had to let go.

My head screams "I can't!" Of it's own accord my hand reaches for a pencil and the artist says "Let me try again." I look at the old ideas and renderings that I had the first time I designed "The Miser" for class. I'm afraid that when I put pencil to paper the same stale ideas will come out again, and as opposed to risking the pain of seeing that I have no new ideas I ignore the impulse to sketch. Instead these fantastical living breathing fabulations float through my head in silks and laces that I don't think I can replicate. My head says "I can't!" The artist says "Let me try again." My head and the artist have been in twelve round knock out fight about this for days if not weeks now. I can't afford to let either one loose. So I look though costume history books and scour the internet for images, I analyze the play and make notes in the margins. I scribble furiously if I have thoughts in the middle of the night about what each one should be wearing in a pivotal scene. I open my sketch book (having firmly set aside the smaller one that I've used for months) and I see an 11 by 14 inch piece of snowy white paper. And all the fears and the doubts and all the worry that I don't have what it takes bubbles up inside my mind and suddenly these light floating insubstantial images are covered in stains of anxiety and doubt. All the nasty things I've thought about myself, the things that I've been told about myself as an artist by other artists start ringing in my ears. There is a part of me that doesn't think I have what it takes. There's another part of me that knows I do. The artist and the head are at war inside of my brain and all I really want is a mini baseball bat to get them both to shut up long enough to let me work. Then I realize, I should let them bicker. I should let them fight, and while they do I'll start putting pencil to paper and seeing if I can do better than before. Maybe I can't. But it's a far greater sin to not try at all.

Day One

I love to make things.

I do, I love to make clothes. I love to knit hats, scarves, blankets, sweaters, you name it there's a good possibility I've knit it.

This love affair with creating things goes back to the days when my mother used to do costumes for a local theater company. I blame it all on the movie "Shakespeare in Love" which was almost always on when she was sewing. It was the first costume drama I saw when I was a kid, I'm pretty sure I watched it till I wore out the VHS tape. The second Lady Viola hit the screen in that fabulous gown she wears during the party scene where she meets Shakespeare for the first time I was hooked. From then on I was drawing Elizabethan Renaissance looking dresses everywhere, the inside of my paper book covers that covered my text books, bits of computer paper, sketch books, whatever I could get my hands on. Around the same time my mom would take me and my sister to the Renaissance faire in Northern California, and we would dress up in bodices and skirts and roam the seemingly endless grounds and have a ball. (Respect the nerd cred people!)

But eventually, as all teenagers do, I started to think it was lame, mostly do to some even lamer judgmental people. Between that and the fact that as my sister and I got older weekends became consumed with homework and other outside activities, and the fact that the economy took a swan dive, tickets and gas to a Ren faire just wasn't an option. Fortunately as that left my life, theater found it's way in. At first it was performing which I loved, but it was also for the costumes which I still loved. Inevitably I found myself organizing the stock room during rehearsals when I had a long break. I even occasionally organized while wearing one of the fabulous little fur stoles that every stock room seems to have.

I went to college and studied, you guessed it, performance and design. After a year performance faded away to Costume design and Construction. And for two solid years (and a little extra at the end of my freshman year) I devoted myself to becoming a Designer and Technician. And after hard work at the end of two long tumultuous years I was...2 years older.

That's not to say I didn't learn when I was there, I did. I learned a lot about myself, people, relationships, and the craft that I love with all my heart. But it became obvious to me that we were no longer on the same page in terms of what they hoped I'd achieve and become. I think it's a simple as saying that there are as many different philosophies on life and design as there are people on the planet, and while you find something that may work for you, it won't work for someone else. I left at the end of my junior year, feeling a little bruised and came home to California. I tried to figure out where I wanted to go, if I wanted to stay in theater, designing, fashion, you name it I probably considered it for a career or school (this list included pastry chef and mail man, in addition to applying for and getting in to 2 different fashion schools in Northern California). For two months I wallowed, simmered, stewed, was angry and bitter, and down right grumpy.

But then a funny thing happened, I heard about a theater that was attached to the local community community college and that they needed volunteers. One October morning I showed up with my portfolio and samples of my work. 8 months later I left. And I am forever grateful for their hospitality. What this shop full of amazing women did for me wasn't just teaching me and filling in the gaps in my knowledge base or making me feel like I was part of a team, they helped restore me as an artist. How do you thank someone for that? "By going out and finding your niche and being successful in your life," my boss told me. I was fortunate to find them when I did, and my gratitude is beyond expression.

So where does that leave us?

Well I left them in May when the season was over, now I'm back in my home town. I've designed and built 2 shows, and have the next 2 lined up. And for the moment at least it looks like I'm sticking around here for awhile. While I'm not immediately thrilled by that prospect I know it's where I need to be and what I need to do (especially till I start driving). In the meantime I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my fridge, a work space (that used to be my grandmother's dining room), a brand new sewing machine, and a DVD of Shakespeare in Love. Life could be worse :)