Some people love them, and some hate them. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with deadlines. I tend to respond well to those that I impose upon myself, and get a wee bit testy about those that others try to impose upon me.
Having curated several shows myself, I understand the need for deadlines. You need to have all the entries in at a certain time in order to give the jurors time to do their job. You need to receive the accepted works in time so the exhibit can be hung on the appropriate date. And if you want to submit a piece of art to an exhibit, you need to get the thing finished early enough to get it photographed and the paperwork completed in time to send the application. These are external deadlines, set by someone else, which you agree to abide by.
Then there are those deadlines that we impose on ourselves. After several years off the teaching circuit, I will return next week with a class at the Grunewald Guild in Leavenworth, WA. I set a goal for myself to create a number of new samples for the class, and just this afternoon I put the final touches on the last one. Some of the samples will be completed work, and a few will be in various stages of completion for demonstration purposes. The thing is, I could have finished a week ago. On my work schedule, I knew I had tomorrow penciled in for photography. So, what did I do? I put off finishing the last piece until today. What’s with that? I have no idea, but I tend to do it a lot. Rather than finishing early, I dawdle until the last minute and then get it done.
And why did I schedule photography of these class samples before leaving for the teaching gig? Because I learned the hard way that if I take all these new pieces with me, there is always the possibility that someone might want to buy one, and I would come home without it, and therefore not have a photo for the archives. Lesson learned. Anyway, here’s a quick snapshot of about half the new finished pieces waiting for tomorrow’s date in front of the camera.
Summer has arrived in the Pacific Northwest. New things are blooming almost every day. The raspberries are ripening and delicious. Wherever you may be, and whatever you are doing, please take a moment or two every day to enjoy a wee bit of nature.
Be well, my little chickadees!
Larkin