Saturday in the Studio and in Denial

I am back in the groove. The Starbucks Barista Barcelona mug waits patiently beside the coffeemaker for it to stop gurgling. The music is the morning hum of the furnace on this dark, wet, winter day (my mother is still sleeping upstairs and I am sure does not wish to be woken with "Marry Me" by the Drive by Truckers). Dave is off to supervise parent Workday at Jessie's pre-school in my stead. I am the chair of the Buildings & Grounds committee, but I have the Buyer's Market of American Craft next week. Into the breach, Dave. Then he is off to NTB to get new front tires for the van for me. True Love.

The coffee steams by my side now, and we officially enter the final leg of the race. The book contract is firmly Pushed To The Back Of My Mind. There is no room for it this coming week.

Today I do the last fusing for the show, tomorrow is a client fusing, Monday is the show slumping, and Tuesday I will slump the client pieces. Or I will wait till I get back and slump them then ship them. I have never had a relay go on a kiln, but there have been some really horrific stories on warmglass.com recently that have me nervous. I can just see setting the kiln for a regular slump cycle and heading off to the BMAC only to find a burned out kiln with puddles on the bottom on my return from it having gone to full power and having stayed there all week. And then having to sell my child to pay the electric bill. No thanks, I have enough unlikely things to worry about without adding one more.

Also today are postcards up and out, pick up a replacement glass shelf for a display, pick up all relevant work from two local galleries (the best reason to do some consignment work is because you have an emergency back-up supply of pieces for times like now), build and paint the hanging panel stand from pvc pipe, make the catalogs and pay the bills.

Tomorrow is the website and I absolutely, positively MUST get it done! I am in a visual business. The majority of people who are in this business--as artisans, buyers, customers, what-have-you--are visual people. If you don't have many visual reinforcements for your work--business card with a picture, color catalog, website with photos, brochures, etc.--to remind the buyers and customers what you do and how much they like it, they will buy from someone else.

I believe a website to be a business essential, and a complete website is critical. It is not enough to have a few pics and a bio up. I am at the point where I need to have up a list of the galleries which carry my work. It serves a dual purpose: to show prospective galleries the long list of other galleries which consider my work worth carrying and to show if there are other galleries in their areas which already show my work, avoiding overlap. I also need to keep a list of retail shows up so clients know where they can find me in the upcoming year.

This is where DENIAL comes in.The chance that I can get a website almost completely done in a day or two when I haven't been able to get it done in Months is seriously fill-in-your-own-preferred-word-for-completely-insane. But I am flawed. I am not wrong about the need, just about the probablility/possibility. Check back Monday.

So off to get through today--the actual making of work--so I can get to the more important task of displaying the work... Is this a skewed world or what?