The Domino Effect or How to Effectively Procrastinate

For the Docents is one of my completed paintings from my "Nooks & Crannies" series. I am currently at work on several new paintings for the series. Well, I should be, anyway. And I am making some progress.

However, the state of my studio seems to be echoing the state of the inside of my brain–scrambled.


Besides painting, I should be grading. See above. I have a pile of stuff from my Basic Design class at Tohono O'ohdam Community College to grade. I love teaching. I do not one little bit like grading. Consequently, I'll find just about any excuse to put it off. Tomorrow is class. So I need to get with the program and deal with it.



However, somehow there doesn't seem to be a single surface in my studio that isn't piled up with stuff. And I need a surface to spread out the student work in order to do the grading. This table isn't so bad, but it's part of my painting set up, and I hate to mess with it, because then I have an excuse not to jump into painting.



Ouch. This one I wouldn't consider touching. I'm sorting family photos (many boxes of photographs in a big jumble). The idea was to put them into some sort of order. Also, I plan on using some of the images for various projects I have in mind. However, now the mess is much worse than the original jumble. And it's been like this for months. No grading is happening here.



Here is my fun clay stuff. I'm making lots of little gargoyle guys. Not sure why. But you can see that this table would be way daunting to clear off. No grading is going to happen here, either.



Then there are the boxes. I was doing this box thing a couple years ago. I got a wild hair and started making a new series of boxes. Road signs, the yellow and black boxes on the right. These are for the online store for my husband Jim and my project on US Route 89 . Clearly cleaning up this space is too much to tackle right now.

It seems I have the domino effect going on here. I'm not willing to just shove stuff aside. In order to clear up the studio and create a surface upon which to grade my community college students' work, I want to finish what I started. But each table is piled with stuff that represents many of hours of work before it can be cleaned off. That's the domino effect. Nothing gets done because there are so many things that need to get done before the real thing that needs to get done can get done.

And thus, you get a glimpse of the inside of my brain right now. Maybe it's just too scrambled to do justice to grading all of this work right now anyway.

My Income Stream (Trickle), Saturdays on the Reservation

Every Saturday I make the trip from home (Oracle) to Sells, on the Tohono O'odham Reservation, where I teach Basic Design at the Tohono O'odham Community College.
It's a bit of a long drive. 2 1/4 hours, to be exact. Each way.

In the photo above, I'm completing the first 1/2 hour of the drive, as I approach Tucson. The mountains are the Catalina's. They're quite spectacular, if you know what you're doing, and if you aren't shooting while driving.


Freeway driving through Tucson. I got a few shots of just sky. A few of just pavement. And then, well, sort of a photo of some of the big buildings in Tucson. I've now been driving for about an hour. It's 8:15 am on Saturday, not much traffic, so it doesn't matter too much that I'm weaving all over the road to get this shot.


Under an overpass.


And onto the long road toward the reservation.



Approaching the Border Patrol checkpoint.


Taking my life in my hands photographing the Border Patrol as I pass by. (They only check you going the other direction).


Almost through Border Patrol checkpoint.



On the reservation now. About another 45 minutes to go.



Arrival in Sells. You have to watch out for animals on the road. I almost always see at least a few horses and cows wandering about town.



The slow approach is the best approach.



Entering campus.


The studio. Actually, it's a science lab, but we make do. At least there are sinks. I meant to take a photo of my students. But I got busy and completely forgot. They say hi! They are a wonderful group of 12 students. They work hard and are eager to learn. Although nearly all of them do a variety of arts and crafts, only one has taken any formal art classes. A delight to teach.



There's always something posted on this white board. In English and in Tohono O'ohdam. It's always interesting to see what the phrases are. I especially like "watch out for the rattlesnake" and "pass the salt". Two essentials in life.


Three and 1/2 hours later (that's how long class is), I'm back on the road, going in reverse. Approaching the Border Patrol checkpoint, I snapped a quick shot, but didn't dare take a photo of the officer as he stopped to check me out, making sure I'm a US citizen, not carrying any contraband in my Mini Cooper. I was hungry and didn't want to take a chance on being thrown in jail.



Not far from the reservation, I stop at a gas station to get my lunch. Yes, very nutritious. I try not to eat all the Cheetos, but it's hard to resist, after all, I have another 2 hours to drive before I get back home.