Hey brother can you spare..

An extra few hours in the day?

My initial thought for today's entry was - what to do when your tumbler explodes.

But the prevailing thought from the experience was -

What does it take to be an artist?

TIME

This is an ongoing problem with me as I'm sure it is with most every artist. How do you navigate home life, relationships, responsibilities, work and the indulgent time needed to learn, imagine and create art?

Yesterday my one hour work commute into the city took me 2 1/2 hours. That's a helluva lot of time spent doing nothing!! So this morning I decided to approach it differently. I hit the floor running as soon as I got up trying to get all of my mundane responsibilities taken care of so I would have a little time in the shop before heading into the city, I had in mind a ring to start on. At about 11am I was in pretty good shape and then I looked at the bus schedule. I needed a 1:30 and there wasn't one. Not able to chance being late I had to go with the 1pm which meant I just lost 1/2 an hour. Ok- that still gives me 45 minutes in the shop and I can at least START the ring.

Then the tumbler disaster. I spent my precious 45 minutes literally running to correct the mess and still make it to the bus on time. As I write this I am on the bus wondering how artists juggle everything and still find time to create. Maybe that is why artists have historically been considered selfish and somewhat narcissistic. Art is a demanding lover.

With each piece of jewelry taking 3+ hours I don't end up with a lot to show for my toils and the prime selling season is about to come and be gone. And it is a craft the requires me to be with it - tools and fire don't seem to travel very easily.

It's a much larger issue than can be solved in one little blog entry but I put it out there to you and to the universe - brother can you spare an hour?

Oh the tumbler. Here is what I did to help protect me from a reoccurrence.

The lid popped out and the rocks and liquid is what you see globbed on the base of the unit.

I placed the unit on two pieces of wood to raise it off the bottom and protect the motor and then placed the entire thing in a disposable pan to control the fallout of any future explosions.

Keep in mind that this has to run unsupervised for days at a time. Let's all keep out fingers crossed!

This is a piece I finished the other night. Not crazy about the silver finish and on my way now to see about new finishing tools. And then I have rehearsal and then the show - all good! All good! I am one of the luckier ones that these are my troubles. Have a joyous day and thanks for listening.