The Joy of Transitions

One of my colleagues back at Kaiser Permanente would describe moving and taking a new job as similar to the first moments of waking up from a dream. You don’t yet know what’s real and what isn’t real and there is a moment of complete confusion. That moment of fog upon awakening can last more than a few minutes when it comes to a big move.

During this move, my flat files were tipped sideways to enable them to get through doors. Everything in them shifted into a jumble. Soon after I moved, I decided to pull everything out of those drawers and begin to catalog the work. I’ve held various part-time and full-time jobs, often more than one job at a time, for more than 35 years. When you’re as busy as I was, some things get completely overlooked. One of those things was a sense of order for my art and documenting what I had done.

As I began pulling things out of the drawers, I realized, some things need to be let go. They either weren’t well done, were ruined due to a mouse infestation or stylistically they were unrelated to most of my art. Good editing is an essential part of any artist’s overall work.

Here I am, months later and I’m still working on this documentation project. It’s tedious and time consuming. A byproduct of sifting through so much art has been the revising of many works on paper. I’ve created a number of new collages using the old works that were made on high quality paper.

This piece used a collograph from the 1990’s. It gives me great joy to reuse older pieces in this new way. Art has endless possibilities for renewing our spirits and dispelling the fog of confusion. A new order is emerging!