WorldCon Nerves
So, it's just one week until we leave for WorldCon and have I ever got the jitters. I've spent a ton of money getting new art together for this show: the cost of business cards, paint, canvas, paper, printing, mats, glue and varnish for pete's sake!, plastic bags... now it's down to the wire. I've got to get the stuff finished, matted, framed, wrapped in bubble wrap and off to UPS by this Saturday at the very latest for two day delivery directly to the hotel. I'm doing it this way because, not only is a box of art awkward, and not only do I not trust the airline baggage handlers not to destroy or lose my artwork, but this latest terrorism scare would just make it too difficult in any event. The art is too big to take on the plane, too delicate to put under it and I'm not going to unwrap and rewrap it just to satisfy some undertrained, bored security guard. But it also means sending tools and equipment and extra wires and pens and all kinds of stuff. I didn't go to WorldCon in Scotland last year because I thought it would have been too expensive and difficult to send everything over for the art show there. This year is just as difficult and I'm in my own country -- if one can say California and New York are in the same country.
Aside from the money anxieties (no! no new camera. no! no haircut -- that's just going to have to wait!), I'm way, waaaay, behind schedule, of course. I planned to have at least 12 new paintings done. I had brilliant ideas based on fan culture and ideas from sketches I had made at previous conventions. But I never found my missing sketchbook, and everything takes longer than you expect, and a couple of the prints did not work out as I'd hoped, and, as my father always said it would, going to work cuts into my whole damn day!
Yes, I guess I could have skipped a couple of movies (but, really! miss Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribean?), or not gone to see my Aunt Roberta's new house, or failed to spend the day at my friends Liam and Nilda's on City Island (one of the nicest days I've spent since last year when we went to their house in the Hamptons!)... or put aside Friday nights eating chinese food, drinking wine and watching the StarGates, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica with my best pal MaryAnn -- but quite honestly, I guess I'm not disciplined, or driven or anti-social enough to do any of that. I have a short attention span and I'm easily led!
So, I'll have 7 new pieces of artwork and I'll take a few of the newer old pieces and maybe only 3 new prints... and break the bank when we get out there on wine and food for parties -- while scrounging around the con suites and green rooms that MaryAnn can into as a guest of the con for free food (food at the cons has gotten quite good the past few years -- aside from ever-present chocolate, you can find cheese, crackers, crudites, fruit and other "healthier" items). And hope that I sell a hell of a lot of art -- because trying to live the creative life can bankrupt you!
Aside from that -- everything's fine.
Comments
It's true -- I'm a terrible influence on The Bonnie, forcing her to eat Chinese food and watching pirated *Doctor Who* DVDs when we both should be working...
Posted by: MaryAnn | August 15, 2006 7:01 PM
As I always told you. I never have enough hours in my day to do everything I set my mind on. Oh, but if only I had Bonnie's busy life, which compared to mine is full of leisure than anything else, except of course for the damn task called "work". Good luck at the convention. Have a great time, girls. I miss you. Olga
Posted by: olga mulligan | August 15, 2006 11:48 PM