Basketweaving, leather tooling, drugs and other therapies for staying sane

Ah, the good old days at the Funny Farm. But that’s another story. No basketweaving, these days. No therapeutic leather tooling. No drugs (damn)! But I did spend this weekend on other mental-health therapies.

To wit …

You recall the birdpoop-adorned end table I salvaged from the woods a few months ago?

Yeah. That table. Uuuuuugly.

I spent this weekend taking it apart, sanding it down, and getting a good start on a paint job.

That’s not a very good picture. You can’t really see that the decorations involve silver and gold foils and glued-on green glass gems. The main thing is that it’s going where I wanted it to go. Well, that and where it wants to go.

When I first saw that table on the trash heap I knew it was so very, very ugly that there was no way it was ever going to be beautiful. The best it could ever be is funky. So now it’s on its way to funkiness and I got to spend most of a whole weekend not thinking about work or the sad, sick old state of the world.

—–

The creative process is a funny thing. From the first moment I pulled that table out of the heap and tossed it, wet and leaf-covered, in the back of the XTerra, I had a rough idea what I was going to do with it (assuming I ever got around to doing anything with it). It was like the table itself told me; no actual thinking involved.

I had a general concept of the colors. I knew it would have colored rectangles. And dots. Lots of dots. The idea of gluing on faux gems came along shortly. But what else? The table didn’t tell me that.

As I started painting, I got a high ambition to paint cats in each of the colored rectangles and finish off with a giant, Laurel Burch-inspired cat on the tabletop.

As I kept on painting and got tired and lazy, my ambitions lowered considerably. At one point I considered eliminating hours of work by simply gluing a tray to the top of the table instead of painting a design. You remember. That kid-made mosaic tray I bought at a thrift store in a futile attempt to bring meaning to my bleak, purposeless existence.

The colors were harmonious and the tray covered the four large, inconvenient holes in the tabletop where the legs bolt on. (I have three of the wooden buttons to cover them, but they’re so large the fourth would be a special-order item and I’m determined to finish this project solely with materials on hand.)

But nah. Using the tray would be cheating. Wayn e did that, not me. In any case, it would break up the tabletop real estate in an annoying way. Bag that notion. I’ll think about the tabletop later. Right now, what to do with those 16 rectangles on the legs?

Still lazy. So what’s cool but doesn’t make me have to work too darned hard? That’s when I remembered my box of Chinese joss papers. Tear them. Cut them, apply them with some Polycrylic varnish. EZ-peazy. That’s what’s going in all those colored rectangles. Muuuuuch easier than 16 tiny cat paintings!

Then, seeing how brightly those foils shone, I knew the tabletop design had to be a giant sunburst, created with both paint and applied paper (tissue and joss).

Haven’t gotten that far, yet. Probably won’t for a while. But it’s gonna be nifty. 🙂 Also, I have some nice, glittery pieces of copal (the immature form of amber) I could use to cover those bolt holes.

At least copal seems like the brilliant idea right now. But the great thing is that the work itself will tell me what it needs as it develops. Might be something else altogether.

That’s the thing about the creative process. So interesting but so nervous-making. It’s what one of my teachers used to call “controlled accident” from start to finish. You have to know what you want to achieve, then be open to allowing the thing itself to tell you otherwise. And (the hard part!) you have to have (or get) the skill to go where you need to end up.

Applies to funky weekend projects as well as Great Art.

—–

I’d also forgotten that I picked the birdpoop table up on the day I banged my toesies so hard. Man, I was barely walking that day! Nearly four months later, those toes still sting when I go out on the logging roads (though they quit being colorful about two months ago and I barely notice the pain around the house).

I think you guys were right that I broke something. Oh well, I seem to be recovering. But recovery sure is taking its good old time.