A Good Year for Art Afterall

2007 in a nutshell
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I often have felt like I wasted a lot of 2007 due to my rather difficult pregnancy. First I was tired all the time, followed by some sort of flu that lingered for a solid three months. Then about two or three good weeks before the horribly puking up acid reflux got out of control. Then the pregnancy induced hypertension and finally going twelve days late.

But last night I was inspired by a printmaking group I am a member of to go through my images and pick my five favorites. And I ended up with ten. About half of them are before the birth during the pregnancy and the other half came after as I was making art again a month after she was born. I didn't do so terrible after all. And I really see a lot of artistic growth at the end. I never believed it when people told me that being mother could actually grow my art instead of holding me back. But it has proven to be true. Sure it is really hard to keep up with the business side of things now, but artistically I am exploring and taking a lot more risks than I ever have before. I've jumped into mixed media and collage and am really excited to see what is next. I even ordered my first Wacom Tablet tonight. And I have always been so afraid of getting into digital art. But I have some ideas on mixing it up with my Gocco and collages and after mulling it over for a couple of months I decided to go for it. If it doesn't work out I either have a really good mouse or could make most of the money back on Craig. I'm excited about it.

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We just finished watching the movie The Business of Being Born and I highly recommend it, especially to women living in the United States such as myself. I gave birth with a nurse midwife at a hospital, but this still opened my eyes up to some pretty disturbing stuff. I never planned on going drug free, never planned to get so into babywearing and I certainly didn't plan on cloth diapering even a little. When I found out that I was pregnant I was terrified of giving birth like most women in the US and I wanted to be drugged and have it over with. But it didn't quite work out like that for me because blee had other plans about how she wanted to be born. And I am grateful to her because it is a memory that I now treasure. Now I know that if I have another at the very least I want to go natural and even look into home births. Man, I never thought I would find myself saying that one!

Anyhow, it is almost time for Lost and we still haven't eaten dinner so I am going to try and find something to eat while we wait for TIVO to get ahead of the show. Everything has been really great for me since Monday being not so great. Today was the best day we have had in a long time. She didn't cry for a single moment the entire day. She doesn't tend to cry a lot usually but I usually get something. And I finished the outside line carving of a new pattern block. But I am putting it aside for a few days and working on something else before getting into the hard part, the clearing. It is hard in the sense that it is monotonous and therefor boring and slow.