February, you saucy minx.  If I could enter a room the way February entered 2011, I wouldn't need a website to advertise my work. That minx dropped snow so thick I had to sleep at the American Gothic House Center under the copy machine. Okay, not really. I slept next door on Beth’s couch. But when you have to close the bathroom curtain so you can’t see your office from the shower, that’s basically like being at work. Naked.

In 2011 I am keeping a sketch diary. Nightly, I reflect on the day and choose what's worthwhile or funny enough to immortalize with one sketch. I make a point not to limit myself to positives. If something awful happens, and I feel like including it, so be it.  For someone who spent the last few months of 2010 in tears, I’m happy to report the first five weeks of drawings are shockingly pleasant. There are lots of pictures of food (pies, my new crock pot, steaming mugs of tea, a jar of homemade yogurt), a guitar, a turtle shaped loaf of bread (oh wait, that’s food again), a big fuzzy chair. Maybe this little project, which takes only a few minutes a day, is actually improving my outlook.

At least it was...
                          until February.

A couple things happened to downshift my mood.

One: I rediscovered this music video of John Mayer (my guitar idol and new boyfriend) playing Slow Dancing in a Burning Room. This song makes my soul hurt. It’s a great torture device.

Two: February covered up all the blades of grass that were starting to show beneath January’s leavings. There’s just no way I can keep pretending it’s mid-March when my car is stuck in the driveway.

So I’m back to battling my wanderlust. I made a playlist called Sea Songs, which consists completely of stylistically unrelated music about the ocean, the beach, or sea creatures. It didn’t help. I baked and gave away a couple of pies. That felt nice, but then I went back outside and February confronted me by immediately freezing the insides of my nostrils.

I don’t know what it is about the ocean that's pulling me. I haven’t spent much time there—a few weeks or months in total, spread out over years of vacations. Add a couple more days if you count transatlantic flights spent holding my breath in fear of crashing into my big soggy friend.

I remember meeting the ocean and knowing without a doubt it was the best thing I’d ever encountered. I was 11, staying at Clearwater Beach with my parents and my sister. I feel still when I think about watching the water, listening to it, getting in it, breathing the air around it. It’s so vast, so powerful, so eternal—I forget my ‘individual human being’ issues and become another grain of sand on the beach. No memories of the past, no fears about the future. Just a tiny, inconsequential piece of something much larger.

It's February in Iowa, but I have the leftovers of our brief meetings. I find them in the deep pockets of dark suitcases, or in a shoebox in the back of a closet. Or on my easel.

In 1930, Grant Wood sketched a little white house in Eldon, Iowa and made a painting more famous than… umm, I'm not at work. But here I am blogging from inside the American Gothic House. While Beth is in Chicago passing out free slices of pie for National Pie Day (at Soldier Field, this Sunday… is she insane?),
I’m sitting in her chair, at her desk, with her dogs munching on their dinner at my feet. My disc drive is humming away, importing selections from her vast CD collection that I couldn’t wait to get my fingers on—Tom Waits, Coldplay, Michael Buble, Joni Mitchell, Scala (an all girls a capella group that covers classics like U2’s With or Without You), and some really old Third Eye Blind. I’m even branching into the slightly unknown with a couple of instrumental albums, Buddha Bar, and CDs titled Bellydance Superstars and Salsa Around the World. Hey, I have that Dancing with the Stars workout video with the salsa section. This could inspire me to use it. And maybe become a little less clumsy.

At my right hand is a glass Aldi’s finest red wine, courtesy of Beth’s obsession with the German grocery store. The tub, featured in a recent painting (which, as a matter of fact, is hanging in her bathroom), is gently calling my name. As I walked over here after work I flashed back to my days as a babysitter. What’s more exciting than being in charge of someone else’s kids? Being in charge of their HOUSE! And what’s the first thing you do? RAID THE KITCHEN! Beth, I just want to say: I can’t believe you left me alone with a box full of those dark chocolate stars.

Beth is generous to a fault. While she is broadening my musical wisdom-osity with her taste, and giving me blog love, and bringing me lattes during long winter days at work, she’s also giving me real life love. She moved into the American Gothic House shortly after I started work at the Center, and as the two new girls in town we immediately bonded. She has taken risks that awe me, traveling and living all over the world, leading a life of true courage. I read somewhere that a happy heart is one that still feels pain. This describes her perfectly. She has a huge heart, and despite the traumas she’s endured she doesn't hesitate to share all the love she has brimming from it.

We exchange the occasional hug (Human contact: One thing I’m seriously lacking in my life as an independent young woman.) and more importantly, we exchange daily discussion. I don’t mean “Hey neighbor, how’s the weather?” talk. I mean life altering, follow your dreams, heartbreaking conversations that keep me coming back to work day after day. It’s impossible not to connect with her raw honesty, her sarcasm, and her go-getter attitude.

Anyway, I didn’t intend to gush in this post. I suppose I should get to the point. The most recent gift I received from my new friend (besides one night of free reign over her CD collection) is her guitar! She offered to let me borrow it last weekend, after I confessed I’d spent the morning searching for one online.

I’ve been enthralled by string instruments for years. I can’t remember how long ago I fell in love with the upright bass, which lead to falling in love with a bass guitar player, which lead to many musical discoveries. A few years ago I decided I wanted to tackle the acoustic guitar. I’m finally getting around to it, and the fingers of my left hand can attest to my exuberance.  I don’t remember ever being this excited to practice for my piano lesson or get up for 7 am marching band.

I’ll never claim to be an expert listener or flaunt my musical taste. What I will say is that there are a few voices, a few songs I could repeat word for word, bar for bar. Lots of them have sunk into my brain while I was distracted, engrossed in brush-to-canvas action. You name a band, I’ll name an art project.

Spoon = Darkroom. Intro to photo with John Freyer: Frustration, triumph, and more frustration, but always excitement about what might come out when the fixer was fixed.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows—I smell turpenoid! Nasty crap in a green tin we were forced to use during Painting I in the now flooded ABW.

Weezer’s Blue Album: Painting of the 1878 Steinway Grand in Old Capitol Museum’s senate chamber.

Horse Feathers: Instant Art Farm.

There are others, of course; the list could go on forever. And then there are the bands that remind me of absolutely nothing. They’re completely mine. I don’t have to give in to some overpowering memory when I tune in. Blink-182 (my very first obsession), Jack’s Mannequin’s Everything in Transit, anything Jack Johnson, Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, or MGMT. Oh, MGMT. Electric Feel. I cannot be held responsible for the way I move when I hear those familiar chords. In fact, since I’m home alone, I better turn it on.

Each morning my alarm goes off at 7 am. I press the snooze twice. If it’s a particularly blah day, I press it a third time. At 7:15, I feed the two furry beasts. I stand in the steaming shower until my skin is bright red, inhaling the coconut scent of my shampoo (insert tropical vacation daydream). I read while I eat breakfast. I listen to the news on my way to work.

At the American Gothic House Center I’m in contact with volunteers daily: somebody scheduled to help out for a few hours in the gift shop or just checking in. Most of the time, these people are on their way to volunteering somewhere else. They’re retired and busier than ever, committed to restoring historic sites, developing programs for the community like SHARE or senior meals, visiting friends who can’t leave home or headed to a meeting of committee X Y or Z.  

One eight hour day later, I get in my car and plug in my iPod. I turn the volume up as high as I can stand it and hope the good people of Eldon don’t judge what they see—eyes squinted nearly shut, mouth open wide, singing and dancing around in the front seat like a maniac on my way out of town.

I turn off the car, unlock my back door, and am greeted by those two nuisances. I feed them again. I open my computer and make dinner for myself—probably spinach salad with almonds, craisins and tomato basil feta. Maybe salmon or mandarin oranges on top if I’m feeling frisky. I read while I eat.

Then, I have the choices. Practice yoga? Do something to further my artistic career? Rest my brain in front of a screen, clean my apartment, go for a walk, keep in touch with friends and family.  If I’m lucky, I might do two of those things with my 4 free hours before bed. Am I attending committee meetings? Not unless I’m on the clock. Do I mow lawn or shovel sidewalks? Nope. What, exactly, am I handing back to the communities I live and work in?

I feel guilty that I’m being paid to further a cause which so many people (about 30, as it turns out) are willing to give away their time for. And I certainly don’t give my free time away. I use it up on myself. I am alone in my apartment, making paintings no one has seen or will see for months. It is a completely selfish act.

Right now, for instance, I’m working on two pieces. This one, still unfinished, started as a way to confront one of my (many) recurring nightmares—losing my teeth. Maybe now it’s about aging, or secrets, or whatever. The meaning changes daily. But is it meaningful to anyone other than me?

And this one, becoming a plaid washing machine with a seashell inside—what good are all these colors and marks doing for the world?

So here I am, wishing to spend more time painting, thinking about graduate school and becoming a professor so that I can surround myself with art, while the people around me give hours and hours to improving their communities and getting their hands dirty to help their neighbors. I can see them out my window if I peek around my oh-so-personal painting of a bathroom, which may or may not be useful even to me.

I asked my writer friend whether she ever feels selfish in her work. She responded with stories of relationships she’s developed with strangers who have felt a connection to her through her blog. She pointed at a painting of a sunflower done by her sister and said, “That painting makes me happy every time I look at it!”

I started writing here with the hope that maybe the right person will read my words and find relevance to their own life. I made a website so that someone, anyone, might see what I’m doing and might hear it speak. In the mean time, I guess I’m just painting because it makes me happy. That’s going to have to be good enough.