The End of the Ulysses Gloves Being Mine

Before the pandemic I asked the R.I.S.D. Museum director, John Smith, if the Museum would like to own my Ulysses Glove Project, as a gift from me.
It would have been nice to sell them but even before COVID 19 took over the daily news it seemed unlikely.
They didn't cost much to make but they didn't cost nothing. They took me 2 and 1/2 years to create. I don't know exactly how much I spent on yellow rubber gloves but each pack cost around $4.00 and came with 2 gloves enclosed. There were 310 gloves in all and some extra packs for weird glitches and very wrinkled inventory. So, let's say 4 x 150 which = $600.00. Then, I paid for photography and for installations in NYC and for special bug prevention envelopes so add another $600.00. I had to buy countless packs of black retractable sharpie pens which were around $6.00 a pack. Maybe 100 packs? So, another $600.00.
We're up to $1800.00 + trips here and there for installations. So let's say an output in money of around $2200.00 which might include the fancy dress I bought for the Rosenbach Gala (which I gave away because the friend who helped me pick it out stopped talking to me and it just made me sad).
And shoes I only wore once. And a pair of stretchy turquoise jeans (what the hell was I thinking?).
And a bus ride from Philly on the day the Newtown shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School happened. I was so so so happy as I had felt like a real artist, hanging with curators and installation people all day. On my Go! bus trip to NYC someone was weeping and that was how I found out that 20 children, 6 adult staff members, the mother of the shooter and the shooter himself were killed.
After an exhibit of the Gloves at the mighty and beautiful Rosenbach they were installed at an art fair in NY called Cutlog which had some nice moments and I hopes of attaining art stardom but instead that installation led to the dissolution of my relationship with my dealer at the time. That's a whole other story, not pretty.
Last they were exhibited at a wonderful antique shop/concert venue called POP Emporium, in Providence, RI. My husband presented me with t-shits he made as a surprise which were remarkably hideous. He'd planned to sell them to make a little money but oops.
And the Ulysses Gloves poster which was beautiful and cost me another $700.00 or so to print and lots did sell but I never made back my money which is also another long story.
Anyway, I didn't create the Ulysses Gloves to make money.
For a few years all the Gloves lived in my bedroom closet in sturdy translucent plastic bins (from Staples or Office Max. Another $500.00 or so). They were not hurting me or anyone but I felt like the time had come to find them a forever home.

Back to John Smith and the R.I.S.D. Museum which is one of my favorite places.
He said he would need to ask the curator, Dominic Malon who loves the novel Ulysses and had seen the Gloves at POP Emporium.
And yes they said yes.
So, now they are in storage but in Museum storage.
I hope someday they will be exhibited at the museum which would make me very proud and happy. It would be a nice coda to the circle of the life of this particular work of art.
Maybe the Museum would make a nice t-shirt to sell.
I dream of a book being made that shows each glove. The gloves would be yellow (of course) and the background of each page would be turquoise. It would be a smallish book and fat, my favorite sort of art book. But that's up to the Museum.
Right now people are busy trying to stay safe from an invisible deadly virus and a very visible sociopath who happens to run our country.
But I thought this blog should have an ending and so here it is.
Thank you to all the people who encouraged me, the Joycean scholars who accepted me, the friends who came to cities to celebrate with me, my friend and mentor Judith Tannenbaum who threw a party for me.
I would thank Yaddo except that I never was accepted there for a residency.
Thank you so so much to the R.I.S.D. Museum and to John and Dominic and poor Ingrid Neuman who has to catalogue and protect each of the 310 rubber gloves from drying out.
By the way, the price for labor, as is often the case, was $0.00.
It was and still is for my late dad and for all the people who love Ulysses and Bloomsday and for my husband Andy and my son Noah.
It was a labor of love.

July. The world has gone mad.

July, 2016.
I do not know how to change the name of this blog from Ulysses Glove Project, which it is not, to Stitching Mona, which it is. But, I am just going to go ahead and post the thing, because what does it really matter?

My label gown is finished. I finished it last month. I have been working on this gown, and the project, for around two years now. No one (except me) has seen all of the pieces. I haven't had input or criticism from anyone. I am listening to my own voice, for better or worse.
This has been the most creative and solitary project of my artist's life. I keep thinking of ideas for this installation, of pieces to add. I have one finished gown, and another that is a work in progress. I have drawings, photography, embroidery, collage. I have spent money on supplies...real money. It is the first time I have ever spent money on my work.
I gave myself a week off from my job so that I could sew for hours at a time. It is the first time I have ever done that. So, a lot of firsts.

The date for my solo show, when I will present this work to the world (well, the limited world of people who want to see and are able to come to my exhibit at the Yellow Peril Gallery in Providence) is October 1, 2016.
Half the show will be Stitching Mona. The other half will be my Manuscript/Word drawings, which are being framed, beautifully. I spent money on those too.

In the last months, there have been many innocent black men, and at least one black woman, killed by police officers. There have been police officers killed in retaliation. There was a slaughter of 49 souls at a club in Orlando, of mostly LGTB Latina patrons, and their friends, and family members. There have been horrific terrorist attacks throughout the world. The news come like labor pains...too quickly to breathe through them.
Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
Lin Manuel-Miranda has become a household name, at least in my house, where he has provided us with a welcome distraction  by providing an uplifting soundtrack and a few precious video images of his creation Hamilton, the musical.
I am thin. Too thin to donate blood, which I had been doing on a regular basis for the past few years.

When I am not working at my job, and on Stitching Mona, I am doing paintings of bricks.
I had never thought of bricks as a subject matter until I did. They have invaded my waking and sleeping hours. They won't be part of this show, but maybe, in the future, I'll have enough for another show.

I wish I had a crystal ball. But not one that would see years into the future. I want one that will show me my life through November. Aside from wondering about the reception of my work, we will have a new president.
There is also a personal matter of great significance, which will turn out one way or another in the coming months.

My mother, Mona, who is the subject of so much of my current creative life, will not see my show. She won't know about it, or care. She can't be disappointed or proud. I don't need a crystal ball to know that.

I looked up the meaning of bricks in dreams, and I have to say, it hit the nail on the head.

Brick
/B /Brick

To see a brick in your dream indicates that a tough experience may have hardened your emotions and thoughts.

To dream that you are building a brick wall, represents an emotional “wall” that you are putting up to protect yourself against getting hurt.
It may also indicate that you may be hard on the outside but still sensitive on the inside.

Mother's Day

I did not realize that I have not posted any progress on Stitching Mona in more than two years.
My mother is still alive (I wasn't sure she would be, last I wrote). Her brain is fizzled to a large degree. Today I called to wish her a happy mother's day. In her opinion it was always an idiotic and fake holiday, meant to make idiots buy cards and flowers, and she had no idea that it WAS mother's day. She was cheerful however, as she was drinking her daily scotch "drinkie".

In the more than two years I've been working on the various parts of this project I have lost my way in so many aspects of my life. All I can do is keep going. I am completely unsure as to whether this nightgown, onto which I have sewn hundreds of labels with my mother's maiden name...Mona Lenore Udell, is worthwhile. When the label part is complete (I am on the last row) I am going to finish sewing cloth daisies along the sides, and a variety of cloth flowers on the breasts. The labels are imperfectly sewn. I am aware of every gap, every loose stitch. I am torn between wanting it to be perfect, and accepting that it is the imperfections that make it mine. It is the same exact struggle that is an ongoing theme in nearly every work of art I make.

There are other components to what will be an installation all about Mona. I'll start updating more regularly for my 9 followers. This nightgown is the centerpiece.

Yellow Peril Gallery will show it this fall, if I feel it is worth showing. I think it is. Maybe it will be an epic fail, but if that's the case, at least it'll be epic.

I was reading e mails from 2012 when I had just completed the Ulysses Gloves. That project came with a built in fan base of Joycean scholars. There was a buzz around it.
This project is so personal, I just can't see it clearly. I don't know if anyone else will find it compelling, or if it is so personal that it will only make sense to me. There is no buzz.
I am going forward. At the moment it's all I can do.  I think it's too late to turn around and go back.

The Next Thing. . . At Last.

I finished the last Ulysses Glove on June 16, 2012. It has taken me nearly two years to decide what to do for my next long term project. I had a few ideas,

but when I thought them through, they dissolved. I was frustrated.

All through the process of thinking thinking, as Pooh would say, I kept drawing and stitching. I have come to love doing small embroideries of mostly words. There is something liberating about stitching a word on cloth, rather than writing it. It's almost childlike...learning to write in a new medium.

I hoped I could come up with an idea that incorporated stitching. More important, I wanted this project to be about my mother, as the Ulysses Gloves were about my father. My mother is alive, but her mind is so debilitated now, that I can work on something to do with her without her caring a whit about it.

I knew she had notebooks. I brought them home with me. They are filled with short stories (the beginnings...she never followed through), diary entries, and lists. Some of the covers have sketches of the female figure she drew again and again and again.

In one week I'll be at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, for ten days. I can work and work, with no day job, dog walking, carpooling. I am bringing her notebooks and I'll edit them so that there is some order to them.
And then, I shall stitch her words.


At first I didn't know what cloth I would use for the embroidery. Not the small handkerchiefs or doilies I've been using for my current pieces. One night I remembered I had a box of her nightgowns, from when she was a young married woman. I thought I knew where they were and I ran to see if my memory was true. They were there.

And now I have my project. To stitch her words, onto the clothes she wore when she was young, and had a life ahead of her. Her stories, her night clothes. The gowns she wore when she dreamed.

In a perfect world these would be an a room that would also include paintings I make of her room now, including the dresser covered with pill bottles, cigarette ashes, books, envelopes, and New Yorker magazines. There would be a carpet with a flower design, because though she is an epic slob she always loved any textile with flowers. There would be a bookcase with multiple copies of Proust, which she read again and again and again.

I don't have the art career to get that kind of real estate. But I'll start editing, and stitching. I expect that part alone will take me two or three years. Maybe by then someone will want to help me realize this vision I have. I don't know if my mother will still be alive. But I know that this is the project I want to do, and even if she can't appreciate it, it will do her proud.

The Show Comes Down.

10:00 a.m.

10:30 a.m.

smaller. . .

and smaller. . .

and fewer. . .

two

one. 

 The end.

What's Next?

Ulysses Glove

 So, in what my husband called The Summer of Jess, I had two art openings.

The first was for The Ulysses Glove Project, in Philly at the Rosenbach Museum in June. It was splendid. I had a fancy dress. Lots of people came. There was a newspaper article. 

The next was a month later, on a very hot, humid day in July, at the Museum of Art R.I.S.D.

People came, but it was a group show and it was more about the show than about me and my work (The Election Gloves). 

And that was that. 

Election Glove

It's hard to believe but in just over a week I am heading back to Philly to take down 310 Ulysses Gloves, glove by glove. I bought fancy mylar sleeves, one per glove, to the tune of about $500.00. This salt of the earth, low brow project has ended up costing me a small fortune. But I need to preserve these rubber hands for as long as I can, in case some other gallery, museum, venue, would like to exhibit them, or, even better, of someone comes along who wants to buy them. 

So, a lot of people have asked me what's next. It's like when you make it through high school and everyone wants to know where you are going to college. Then, when you are a senior in college everyone starts to ask you if you have a job lined up, or something BIG on the horizon. When you are single, people ask you if you have met anyone "special". You find someone special and people want to know when you are getting married. When you get married people ask you when you are having a baby. And the next baby.

For every event there is a What's Next ?. 

And here is the answer. I have no fucking idea.

Maybe, I'll get another dog. 
Maybe I'll just do a little drawing. 

Maybe, the Summer of Jess was a one time event. Maybe not.
  
When I figure it out, you'll be the first to know.

The Big Event

Tomorrow morning my husband and I are flying to Philadelphia, for assorted festivities having to do with Bloomsday, and my Ulysses Gloves Project. I do not like to fly so my first concern is getting there. Alive. 
The next hurdle is a talk at the esteemed Rosenbach Museum & Library, which is host to my gloves. This is my first solo museum show and it feels BIG. 
Of course I'll discuss the gloves. How long they took (2 and 1/2 years), how many there are (310), what sort of pen I used (Sharpie). 
But in my artist statement that mentions WHY I decided to write all of Ulysses onto rubber gloves, I mention that it is a tribute to my dad. Also, in a beautiful poetic touch, Bloomsday is  Father's Day this year. 

This photo is of my dad, Gerry. He loved Ulysses and James Joyce. No one in my family knows why, including me. Including my mom, who I asked. 
I like to think he would love this show, would love the whole idea of it. He was a social man. He liked to meet people, to talk with people. He was calm and assured. He was one of the very few people I know that could actually change someone's political viewpoints because he had such a grasp of facts, of history, and of fairness. Also, unlike me, and my mom, he had control of his temper. 
Dad liked to go to annual Bloomsday readings. I think that sometimes he would just sit in an audience, and sometimes he would volunteer to read some of the novel. I never saw him do it. I never went with him. It did not cross my mind at any point to do so. 
My dad and I were close but not close. A lot was left unsaid. 
I see a lot of him in my son, who shares his love of the physical book...the paper, the binding, the covers. Also a love of Stephen Sondheim. And my son is social and calm, like my dad. I inherited my dad's free floating anxiety. I remember when he told me he had it...and explained what it was. The instant he told me I knew I had it too. 
Anyway, it is impossible for anyone who did not know him to know him now. But the gloves really are a tribute to him. I will try to enjoy this trip. I tend to be a worrier. But I really want to soak it in, or in Oprah speak, to be "present". I will talk about dad a little. I'll try not to cry.
I wish he could see this. 
I love you dad.

The Installation of the Ulysses Gloves

May 31, 2013
I walk around 20 blocks from my friend Gail's house to the Rosenbach Museum. It is a really hot day, more like August than late May. By the time I arrive I am sweaty, but I know the museum will be cool, so I'm not too concerned. I don't know what to expect. I am nervous, but not overwhelmed...more excited than anxious. 

Very soon after I arrive, we get to work.

The armature that will hold all 310 gloves.

Judy G. & the gloves.

Judy Guston, the curator, likes to stand under the gloves. She is petite and is the only one of use who can do this without ducking a little. This is at the beginning...many more gloves to hang. It takes a while, but once we get going we get into a flow and can hang a glove fairly quickly. Judy trims the museum tape. I attach the clip and then hand the glove to a trusty assistant on a tall ladder, who threads the tape over the armature. Once height is determined, the assistant ties a knot and we move on to the next. The gloves are hung in a sort of wave pattern.

The gloves begin to grow. We work all day, 

until just past 5:00 p.m.

Throughout the course of the day museum people stop in. The room smells of rubber and everyone who sees the project has a smile on their face.

Against the walls are cases which contain not only the completed manuscript of Ulysses, but also pages of text in Joyce's own hand. The pages are beautiful. The text runs down the page with an extreme slant. His words written by him near his words copied by me. It's such a rush. I  wonder what he would make of this. I wonder what my dad would make of this. I wish they could see it.

We get just over half the gloves hung. On Monday, tomorrow, Judy and the team will finish the installation. I think Judy will send me a photograph which I can share.

I feel happy about all of this. I don't feel sure of what this exhibit will do for me, but I am sure that this whole process, from concept to completion, has nudged me out of my comfort zone and pushed me on to a slightly higher tier of the art world. I have a lot of mixed feelings about all of this. Those can be written at another time. For now, I am just going to enjoy knowing my rubber gloves are hanging in a museum. I am going to have breakfast, waffles with blueberries. I'll do the dishes after. I'll be wearing yellow rubber gloves.

The Rosenbach!

In just a few days I am going to the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia. They are going to exhibit my Ulysses Gloves. All 310 of them. This is the first solo show I shall have, and my first museum show. My art dealer Cade Tompkins is coming with me, which is a very good thing because I am a little overwhelmed just thinking about my meeting. But in a good way.
Kieth Haring, when he was around thirty years younger than I, used to fly all over the country and the world, overseeing installations of his work, painting  freehand on museums walls, in hospitals, on buildings, on bodies. I think about him when I am afraid because that young guy was fearless. He is an art hero to me.
Anyway, everyone at the Rosenbach seems really nice. The e-mails back and forth have been encouraging and when we are done meeting and discussing and drawing up a contract we are going out for a nice lunch. I am excited about that too.

The Next Phase. . . Providence Athenaeum.

This Glove post needs to continue.
First of all I gave a talk at the Providence Athenaeum on October 19, 2012.
It was a wet night, chilly and rainy, but so cozy inside this beautiful old library. On Friday nights there are salons, open to the public, about any number of topics. There is wine and sherry, and dainty snacks. This was my Friday, shared with my new friend Stuart Blazer.
Stuart is a poet. I am not well read in the genre of poetry and when I first found out we would be paired...Stuart asking me questions about the Gloves and me responding, mingled with questions from the audience, I was nervous. All I knew about him is that he did not like e-mail, which is my life blood.
Fortunately, this being Rhode Island we met first by accident, at a gathering for Art New England. As soon as we began to talk I knew it would be fine, that we would be fine. That truth was made more sure when I met him for coffee with Christina Bevilaqua, who organizes these events.
Over coffee the three of us fine tuned the format we'd use for our talk. After C. left, Stuart and I continued to talk. Our conversation went from the art project, to e-mail, to childhood, mutual acquaintances and family. It was one of those conversations that gives you goosebumps because the things that draw you closer are so unexpected as to feel other-worldly.
The night of our talk only a few of my friends were able to make it. Of course my husband was there, with his sister Amy who flew up from Florida. It was great to have hugs and familiar faces but most of the crowd were strangers to me, to my work.
Just like the conversation I had over coffee with Stuart this night at the Athenaeum began and ended taking turns in directions I never imagined. It was one of the happiest, most fun events I have been part of. I should have been really nervous, and I was for five minutes before we started. But once the first word was out of Stuart's mouth my nerves were hijacked by adrenaline, and the audience came along for the ride. There were cynics and skeptics, fans and puzzled Joyce devotees. At the end we were all high and happy and there was applause and cheers.
It was magic.

A Party

On June 16th, I had a party to celebrate finishing my Ulysses Glove Project. I am not good at having parties. I like the idea of it, and I want my muses to be Gertrude Stein and maybe Florine Stetheimer. But mostly I am anxious from the second I make it known that I am having a party, right through the following day. 

Still, I thought it would be a good idea to have people around who have supported me and encouraged me, as well as some people who might be able to help me get this project shown. I saved the last six sentences of Ulysses to write at the party. They are beautiful lines, from Molly Bloom. I don't have the book in front of me, but I know the lines include yes I said yes I will yes. As I leaned over my last glove, pen in hand, I was so hot. My face was hot, my hair was hot. I felt like one of those cartoon characters who is sweating from every pore. Out the eyes, the nose, the top of the head. I had such a surge of relief when it was done....as though an infusion of oxygen had been blown into my lungs. 

 I should have said a few words, but I didn't. I mingled and chatted and drank champagne and did not eat any of the food I had paid for. I think I had two strawberries, two crackers, a half an inch of pate, and a piece of broccoli. 

When it was all over I had to get right back in to mommy mode, head downtown to pick up my son from  Pride festivities and deliver him to a party in Johnston. I am always trying to imagine Picasso or Richard Long, Richard Serra, Warhol, or any big time artist having to make mental switches like that. I think I might be able to imagine Roz Chast having to to do it.

This project is about so many things. One day I will write down all the ingredients that make up the Glove Project. I do have an official artist statement, but that is for grants and residencies, for parties and publicity. It does give the general idea, but there is much, much more. One important piece of it has to do with what I see as a mostly female concern with being able to be a shape shifter all the time. When I began this project I wanted to create something epic. But I knew I needed to be able to do it on my own terms, with my limited time and space, my lack of funding or star power. I needed to be able to be in the car pool, to walk my dog, do the wash, clean the house. 

This project is so personal. I need to re-read the book Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, which I think I read twenty years ago. I seem to remember that the main character was an artist. She had an exhibit when she was past middle age and all the strange parts of her life, the roads not taken, the turns and random choices, the decisions of her parents and family, went into the artist she became. For me, the Gloves are everything I have been doing since childhood. They include being taught handwriting by nuns in parochial school, feeling like I am not skilled enough to draw what I want to draw, not brave enough to make something big. 

Anyway, the party is over. Now I need to get this project out in the world. The next party, for my opening, should be really big. I'll try to eat something. I'll try to relax, and enjoy all of it.

What's Next?

This morning I finished all I am going to finish of copying Ulysses on to rubber gloves. I left six sentences for my Bloomsday party, where I will sit and finish the book, then open some champagne!!!
I have an artist statement to explain the bones of this project. But in part it was to show myself, and whoever else cares, that one person can create something very epic without any help. I had no funding, no grant, no residency, no assistants. I took my gloves with me on every vacation, to Florida, to California, many times to N.Y., to the beach hotel in Misquamicut. I didn't miss any school plays or concerts or any of my son's lessons. I watched t.v. and cleaned the house. I did it all with no special space, no special equipment. This is very much a woman's project because I just don't know a man who would worry about the above list. The clean house, the lack of chunks of time, the child's lessons and plays and appointments.
These are the books I listened to while I worked on this project:
If I Stay
My Hollywood
The Sun Also Rises
Secrets to Happiness
Away
The Three Weismans of Westport
The Lakeshore Limited
The Widower's Tale
Heir to the Glimmering World
My Abondonment
The Septembers of Shiraz
Private Life
I'd Know You Anywhere
Strength in What Remains
This Beautiful Life
State of Wonder
The Lost City of Z
A Good and Happy Child
In The Heart of the Canyon
The Starboard Sea

I also listened to the news, too much, watched a lot of Pawn Stars, repeats of movies. Anything I could follow without watching.
Soon, my dealer, Cade Tompkins and I are going to spend a day finding out how many gloves this project took, and talk about the show we will have.  My friend Pam Petro is going to photograph the process so we can document each layer of this crazy project and have some idea of how much space all these gloves will take when shown as I want to show them.
But first, on June 16th, Bloomsday, I am having a party to celebrate the end. My thanks to each and every friend, acquaintance, passer-by, facebook friend and family member who cheered me on along the way. To those colonies who turned me down for a few weeks to work, you just might rue the day. Or, maybe not. I could have used that validation because I had some very low moments. But now that I have done this, I feel like the chubby out of shape person who just finished a marathon. Proud.

The beginning of the end, for real. Page 781.

I am so close to the end of this project, at least as far as copying text on to rubber gloves goes. It has put me in an odd state of mind. I am almost nervous about it, as though the end is more of a challenge then starting it. I could have finished it today if I had wanted to, but I was not ready. I have other things to do and I just want to stick to my routine of about a page a day. Tomorrow I'll do the last full page. Thursday & Friday I think I'll take a break, and Saturday I'll do all but the last few sentences. I'm saving those for my party on June 16th, when I'll write the last bit in front of my friends.
Meanwhile, I heard that tonight there is going to be some sort of astro phenomena. The transit of Venus? The Venus transit? There are lots of postings on facebook about the implications as far as moods and feelings. I am such a tumultuous person anyway...I'm not sure any astrological event could have much of an effect on me that anyone would notice. I am up and down on an hourly basis. I am cranky and then corny with love. I want to do everything but I want to sleep in. As my husband says, I am uptight. The nice thing about this project is that I have had a plan for each and every day. I always write something of Ulysses on to a rubber glove. Soon, I won't have that. It's like studying meditation or yoga or being a runner, and then stopping cold turkey.
I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do next as far as art work. In a way I think I would like to do a series of still life's (or is it still lives?), just small paintings and drawings of things around the house. I feel like I want to do something kind of conventional to cleanse my palette. But, who knows? I don't have to decide for at least a few days more. Maybe Venus will give me a clue.

The beginning of the end. Page 737.

Today I start copying the forty-six page four sentence stream of conscious musings of Molly Bloom. I have heard of this section. I had heard it was eighty pages and I'm glad that isn't true, at least it isn't true in my edition. There is almost no punctuation, almost no paragraph indentation. It is very, very dense.
I remember when I started doing this project.
I remember when my son was rehearsing for the play 13, in the Courthouse Theater. I brought gloves, my pen, and my library copy of Ulysses. I sat alone in the beautiful, quiet lobby of the big old building. I listened to podcasts on my ipod and wrote, while young actors were upstairs learning their lines and songs.
I remember reaching page 100, and having Noah make a little you tube movie to mark the occasion.
I remember reaching the halfway point, which I had bookmarked with a small, torn piece of paper.
I remember reaching page 500, when my friend Pamela Petro brought me a bottle of champagne.
Now I really feel that I am near the end. It is hard to believe, but it has taken over three years and in the past year hardly a day has passed when I haven't written at least a page, and usually more.
When this is over, which it will be on June 16th, 2012, I am having a party. Anyone who reads this blog or who is interested in this project or curious is invited. Details to follow.
Today I begin the task of reaching the end, one letter, one word at a time. Page 782 and 1/2....here I come! I think I shall remember this day too.

page 646 - Hopes and Dreams

I set a deadline for myself to finish this project. June 16, 2012, Bloomsday and a day before Father's Day. Right now that means completing 1 and 1/2 pages a day, which takes me around two hours, because the text is so dense. It's the first time the project has felt a little burdensome. I don't allow myself to work on any other drawing until my Ulysses quota is finished, or unless I know I have time to get to it before the day ends.
Now, having set this deadline, and having told people about it, I feel pressure. Because I feel pressure, my anxiety about what will become of this work is invading my sleep.
The first dream I had was classic anxiety stuff. I dreamed I was going to have a launch of the project at a museum before an audience of high powered curators, museum-goers, friends and family. At least three hundred people were waiting. I was running around like a lunatic, upstairs from the crowd. The plan was for me to lie (or is it lay) naked surrounded by a circle of gloves. But I knew I could not do that. Me, naked?  I realized I needed clothes but all I could find were old, too large overalls. My assistants (if only) were telling me I could not wear overalls and I insisted I could. Then we started looking for all the gloves, which had gotten out of order, grown furry (?)...well, let's just say this dream did not end well. Everyone important had left. It was a total failure.
The next dream was much better. In that one (last night) my curator friend Judith told me she had set aside a room at the RISD Museum for my first show of the gloves. I was shocked and elated and grateful.
Neither of these scenarios are going to happen. I can't imagine what will happen. It's been a long long time since I have done something where I can't visualize the outcome, at all. It's scary and thrilling. It makes me feel a little like I felt in college, when I attempted things that were beyond my reach.
And all this pressure is coming from inside me.
I do know that I shall finish on or by June 16.
And I am having a party.
And I am excited.

page 620

So, I have started part 111 of Ulysses, which began on page 613. I have still been able to write out one page a day, though I'm not sure I can keep to that goal. I hope so. If I can, I should be finished with this project in around six months, which will be in August.
This section is pretty hard going. The text is dense, a wall of words with only a few breaks for paragraphs and quotes. But it gets even harder toward the end, when Molly Bloom begins the 80 page four sentence stream of thought that has no breaks at all.
I thought it might interest people to know what audio books I have listened to so far, while I work on this project. A lot of times I just listen to CNN or MSNBC, but lately, what with each republican candidate leaning ever farther to the right, I have a limit to how much I want to hear.
So, the books are:
If I Stay
My Hollywood
The Sun Also Rises
Secrets to Happiness
Away
The Three Weismans of Westport
The Lakeshore Limited
The Widowers Tale
Heir To The Glimmering World
My Abandonment
The Septembers of Shiraz
Private Life
I'd Know You Anywhere
Strength in What Remains
This Beautiful Life
State of Wonder
Lost City of Z
It's quite a variety. Murder mystery, a couple of y.a. books, non fiction, lofty fiction, chick lit. Within this list I'd say my favorite was Septembers of Shiraz, which was heartbreaking and beautiful. The next one, coming soon from my library, will be The Sense of an Ending. Sometimes I feel a little guilty that I am listening to books while writing Ulysses, because I can't really focus on what Joyce is saying when I am listening to a story. But mostly I think it helps me to focus and I feel like it enriches my life. I am a fairly slow reader and this allows me to "read" more than I could if I kept only to holding a book in my hands. I feel that listening to a book maximizes my time, and there are so many books I want to read and re-read, that doing this helps chip away at my ridiculously long list.
Anyway, I have not yet completed my page for this day, so off I go. Sadly, my new audio book isn't here yet, so I am stuck with politics.

page 600!

So, I am almost through with page 600. The past hundred pages or so have been very easy to do. Not easy like reading a magazine, but in the context of writing neat text onto a yellow rubber glove with a sharpie pen, easy. In approximately thirteen pages the party is over. There begins part three, and is the most difficult section in a difficult book. I think I read someplace that the last eighty pages of the book consist of just four sentences.
I have been able to do at least 1 and 1/2 pages each day for some time now, often getting through two or more pages. That's why this last hundred pages flew by. Soon my pace will slow down considerably. I'm trying to keep reminding myself that it is okay to finish just a half page, or three quarters of a page when the text is so dense, but it will be hard to keep myself from pushing to keep to a one page a day quote.

In equal parts I want to finish this project and not finish it. It will be hard to imagine what I'll do with the extra hour to two hours I now spend almost everyday on this thing. Also, there is the mounting anxiety about where this will end up...what gallery, room, space. Who will see it, write about it, want it, want to show it. For now though, I just have to keep myself in the right now, and today, make it to the end of page 601. A breeze.

Page 544

Yesterday I realized that I will probably be finished with the Ulysses Project this year...the year 2012 (the end of the world according to some people). When I started it, the end didn't even seem like a possibility, and now, it is soon to be a reality.
Part of me longs to just plow through, doing three or four or more pages daily. But I am also thankful that I am not finished, because when it is done I have the expectation, the hope and dream of showing it someplace fabulous to great acclaim and glory. So, with the end comes the inevitable fear of crushing failure.
Meanwhile, I have been working on small slinky drawings on color aid paper, which I bought when I was in college. Each piece of 6" x 9" paper is silkscreened in some glorious saturated intense color. Any mark one makes with a pen, or with gouache, pops, and in real life much more than on screen the final works are just plain luscious. Real eye candy. I hope to have twenty of these eventually, but so far only have four.

It's always nice to have a couple of projects going at once. One to take me years, and some to give me more instant gratification.

page 519

The pillow above is what I use when I am so sleepy from writing Ulysses onto the gloves that I can't keep my eyes open. It happens especially on days when I have already driven my son and other kids to school, worked at the library, walked the dog a couple of times. I'll sit down to write and I have to force my eyes to stay open for each letter of each word. When the amount of effort is just too much and making the writing too slow I'll grab the ugly pillow off the chair and put it on my desk, right over whatever glove I am working on, take off my glasses, turn off the television or the audio book and close my eyes. Usually I fall sound asleep for ten or fifteen minutes and most of the time it does the trick.
At first when I wake up from my power nap I feel kind of groggy, but soon I have the focus and the energy to continue writing at a much faster pace.
I could probably be doing more than I am right now. I have had a lot of "free" time. But I feel like I need to make other sorts of art as I work on this project in case someone wants to buy something or needs something for a show.
I second guess almost every single thing I do. My art, this project, my housekeeping efforts, my past, my future and everything in between. That makes me tired, and so I grab the ugly pillow and sleep off the doubts.
Two days ago I was rejected, again, by RISCA. That stands for Rhode Island State Council for the Arts. I was rejected by a jury of my peers for this years grant for drawing or printmaking. I have never gotten this grant though I have applied more than a dozen times. It's not really a grant. It's really a contest. Anyway, I was so depressed that I gave myself a sort of sick day and decided to just draw whatever I wanted to draw and eat whatever I wanted to eat (scrambled eggs with Swiss cheese, toast with strawberry jam), and take my dog for long walks. It helped a little bit. I didn't need the ugly pillow at all. I had angry energy, sad energy and I worked all day long, until I had to pick up my son from school in the evening.
I did need the pillow today, but no matter how many doubts I have about everything I do not doubt for one instant that I won't finish this project.

Guilty Pleasure

Page 475. 

Right now the section of Ulysses I am copying is easy breezy. Many of the sentences are very short. It looks almost like the format you'd see in a play, and therefore, unlike the previous section, I am moving pretty quickly. I am doing almost two pages a day...sometimes a little more. Of course I feel guilty. I feel like I should be doing three or four pages a day right now. I should be zipping right along, but I can't bring myself to work on this more than an hour and a half a day. 

If I could eliminate guilt and worry and anxiety I would have so much extra space inside of my head. 

Late this afternoon I finally wrote out a short note asking to be paid for artwork that had been sold last April. I wrote the note on my i pad last week. I let my husband and a friend look at the note and edit it, slashing it to half it's original size. My husband took away all the bits about me feeling badly, about making sure the person who owes me money knows I don't hold any ill will, knows that I am probably more concerned about his emotional state than my financial state. But when the note was stripped of all the sticky goo I let it stay that way. Short, sweet, business like. I need to put it in the mail tomorrow. It is already stamped and the person it is addressed to should have it by Wednesday.  I already feel guilty about adding to his financial burden, even though if he sold every drawing of mine he has at the gallery it would add up to less than three thousand dollars. Anyway, I did write the note and I am going to send it and guilt won't stop me, because I feel more angry than guilty. 

As for writing more, I feel like I am doing enough for now. Maybe when I am really close to the end I'll do more. Maybe not. Haruki Murikami wakes every morning at around 4:00 a.m. and works each day on writing for five or six hours. It makes me feel guilty for not waking to do the same. If I did that I would be done with gloves each day by nine or so, and I could use studio time to make drawings, instead of sacrificing one for the other. But at four in the morning I want to be asleep. And Murikami goes to bed at nine, which would never do in my house. I would never see my husband and barely see my son. And that would make me feel more guilty. 

Oh well. Maybe I can figure out a way to use all this guilt to spur me to action. 

In the mean time I continue along, getting things done, slowly, but most definitely surely.