I'm in progress on updating my website and blog. A lot of new functionality has been added since I last updated, including a new shop feature, so I will be adding that soon. I have way too much art just sitting around taking up space, so I'm going to work on making more, for other shops and things. And that's how this page gets so behind of course. :)

Early Birthday Presents

Evidently April 8th is the day for my giving myself an early birthday present. (next month) And it's always something serendipitous that appears as the time is evidently right. Last year was more frivolous, in a way, being an artist signed limited edition of 10 longboard. Mind you, I don't even skate. But it's beautiful, and I enjoy sitting in my studio with my morning coffee and looking at it. I have never bought something so rare, for myself.

This year, I'm getting through some technology issues, and trying to work efficiently and healthily. Switching to a standing desk, higher chair so that when I do sit to work it's not causing the problems it has been. Trying to make everything simpler as well with the de-cluttering. Well, 3 days ago I discovered an ad for 2 bookcases 8 by 4 feet, 7 adjustable shelves per case. For an extremely reasonable price. Anyone whose searched for ones this big knows they're not easy, and expensive when you do find them. Ever since I was a child I have thought this house would be awesome with 2 bookcases on either side of the fireplace in the living room. I have figured I would one day get some built in. (But I would never spend money on something like that for myself, hence it's been 22 years and never been done. There's always a bigger issue to fix first. So I knew I had to jump at this chance!

Now one side of the fireplace has always been more complicated, it has a woodbox door and an air cooler cut through the wall above it. (This side will just have to be custom if it gets done.) but the other side is perfect with a little space for the fireplace vent. And the second case is going over by my art table to hold art books and supplies! Another perfect fit on that wall, with an inch to spare. These couldn't be more perfect. And that they fit exactly in the suburban with the seats down 48x94 If they had been an inch more on any side they would not have fit!

So that's my gift to myself. And if I estimate right I will get rid of 3 smaller bookcases and 2 dvd storage racks. I will admit I have books/cases in just about every room, except bathrooms and my daughters room, (only because hers is full of action figures and toys.) I have a spare room with a 3/4s wall of built in book cases, That's been full for 22 years, and another bookcase in the garage full. I've gotten rid of a lot of books through the years. But I've always had a passion for collecting them, and even though I do audiobooks now mostly because I can do art and listen. I will likely never get rid of all my books. But I may cull some more from the herd. I have $100+ in book credit at the used book store already. I see this being a huge project over the next couple days. It will be so worth it though. As soon as the paint is dry. I'm painting them to match the trim on the walls. Once I start a project that makes me love my house more, I'm all over it. And I already love it a ton. I will be lucky if I can sleep tonight thinking about it, the last couple days have been rough, deciding and thinking on it!

Second Wave on Etsy

Trying to play catch up a bit on here so I can start posting more regularly on this process. I have SO many categories to go through. It's Overwhelming if I actually start looking at it. Which I must do this next couple weeks.
The second thing I put up on Etsy was the sewing patterns. Another thing I inherited that cost me actually nothing but the time and effort of storing and moving them around. Once again, Simple shipping. Easy storing them while waiting to sell. Amazing the actual number of them I have. Honestly though both of my grandmothers and my mother were excellent seamstresses. They had a knack, and a patience for it that I simply do not. I can sew, and have on many occasions out of necessity. but I find it extremely frustrating. The last thing I made was a doll dress for my friends vampire doll that I finished that my mother had started. It drove me to tears on more than one occasion, ripping out imperfect stitches. And so, this was an easy category to start on. I still have dozens of doll patterns to add at a later date. The regular and craft patterns have done amazingly well. And I am truly happy that they are going to places where they are wanted.

My mom's mom was a professional seamstress at one point for Singer. And she won awards from Vogue patterns for her outfit designs. (Another thing going up on the Etsy soon will be stacks of Pendleton Wool plaids that she got from Oregon back in the 50's or 60's. Gorgeous, but I have no use for them.)

My dad's mom also sewed probably 90% of her outfits, clothes for everyone in the family actually. When I was in the 8th grade, I became really fashion conscious and upset that our family couldn't buy the ultra popular Jordache jeans. (Annoying in retrospect. But that was a Very awkward time for me) My Grandma Verla set about making a to the stitch and Emblem pair of light blue Jordache knock offs, with unicorn logo. They were perfect. I still have them in storage. I actually still have a number of items they made, for me through the years, and for themselves, that I will probably keep forever. There are some things that just aren't a part of the De-accumulation process. Or at least not till the very end. I have way too much on my plate to begin with to focus on, but I guess we shall see towards the end.

Accumulation Challenge Part One

I'm going to backtrack a bit with this post. One of the very first steps I took in my declutter process was to start with something small and easily manageable. So I picked the vintage valentines collection. Both sets of grandparents had kept every little bag of valentines, my dad, my mom and my aunt had received in school. I've loved and kept them for years. I have an unabiding love of vintage graphics. (They kept boxes of greeting and get well cards too, And more cards and ephemera dating to the turn of the century, but that's a later upload) These were something I had to make some real decisions on. And yes, I did keep a stack from the listing, maybe 25 or so that I just enjoy. Maybe eventually they will go later. But for now they are enough. I have sold many many of these thankfully, there are maybe 30 left listed. I picked them because they were small and the shipping was simple. I have a nervousness about shipping. It's the one thing I do not enjoy about this process. Especially when we get to the breakable items.

Time for a New Post

It's been while, and a lot has been going on. I keep saying I really need to start blogging more of this, especially the processes I'm going through right now. It might be interesting to look back on one day.

First of all, the things I have been working on for the past 6 months or so (unfortunately have very little to do with the art. I'm still trying to paint a little, a couple nights a week. But it's had to take a back seat for the one thing I've decided to focus on big time until I resolve it. And quitting it would mean certain failure as far as I'm concerned. The art is still here, I don't think I could quit it even though it pain me to have to shift focus.

What I've been working on the last year, but only in actual form 6 months is the getting rid of 4 generations, 6 to 8 other persons as well as my own, since it all became my own, melding with my own collecting issues. It's an an accumulation, a hoard, a mass of collections, endearing heirlooms, clutter, Story filled items. Whatever you want to label it. I kind of like the term accumulation. I've always known that eventually it would all come to me. And in fact it did and I've held onto it for a long time and had it at a much earlier point than many of my peers. Mostly due to the early deaths of my mom and her sister. And then the conclusiveness of my grandmother's death in 2013. My other grandparents, great grandparents before that.
I resolved that I'm going to get through this. My daughter is NOT going to want to have anything to do with any of it really. There's so much that I honestly cherish, that it makes none of it have much value to her. I want to change that. And the only way to get to that point is to let the things go. They've taken up too much of my world.

And so I left my job of almost 12 years, over 20 years in the business. And because of what I have been gifted this is the Only point in my life where I could take advantage of this time to get thing to new places. I am taking full advantage and trying to become good at getting this done. I do have opposition that's driving me a little crazy at times, as well as other projects that are going to cut into it. But I can't quit. I can't go back. It's kind of everything to me at this point to get this done. I'm determined to have happiness in my life and my home with out all the things that have taken over. I'm trying to think how high the percentage is of how much of it I don't even, and never did want - maybe 80% maybe 75 if I'm honest. I just always knew "inherited" the knowledge that it was worth more than just donating to charity.

And that's the crux really. It's not junk. I made sure that the truckloads of junk actually never made the 40 mile trek to my home. And then finessed down the other things that were already here. My grandmother was a hoarder of things and papers. And good things, things that she got for a quarter at a garage sale back in the 80's that are now worth anywhere from $20 to $250. So it's a long road. I have decided to research the antiques, the toys, the glassware, china, jewelry, tchotchkes each and every one and list them on my ebay and or my etsy. And I will admit to my own collections that will go as well. All my toys, collectibles from high school and then to my daughters toys etc. As a single mom, I simply stacked it all up from her infancy on. turning in clothes at times, giving them to needy families. But the mass majority of toys and books. Still here. and in superb condition. All of that has to go too. She always got too much, and if there was a kind of toy, she had to have one of every in the set. And because of her limitations, she really barely played with any of it. In fact I kept packaging, after a point because I knew it was going to be opened and just sit there. It's kind of criminal actually. But it wasn't my choice. I've tried to work around the mass toy influx every year. And get the things that would be used. It's all only added to my WORK. So I'm going to try to make something out of it.

I think I'm going to start blogging about it here. The things going to new places, what they meant to me, to us. And how it's helping me on my journey to some kind of minimalism. I don't see myself ever being one of those stark white boring minimalists, I have too much I enjoy as art for the love of it things. But I dream of having a regular house, garage, studio etc. And I'm on my way.

I do a lot of thinking while I paint. Some pretty odd ideas get floated around, especially when I'm between audiobooks and don't want to start another. The mind wanders... yesterday it was why is the phrase "crazy cat lady" instead of woman, gal, etc. And what would the male equivalent be. Lol


But today it's a different thing entirely that I've been thinking on for hours. Prompted largely by this major discussion going on about sexual harassment. And so I thought I'd share. Because many, many things go to the grave without broadening perspective. And perhaps they shouldn't, because they make us who we are, and how we view the world. So I'm taking a break from the paint to share this.


My mom and I were very, very close, we talked about everything. And in that, she was the best mom in the world. She was always very honest, and straight forward, and empathetic. In the last few years, when my folks had moved to Sonora, and I was still in Modesto, they/she would come down every couple weeks to make sure I was O.k. We'd talk a lot, go to lunch, garage sale-ing, or just hang out. She'd grab one of my bills without telling me, or bring me groceries. I'd tell her about everything going on, sometimes dumb choices I'd made, the tougher ones I'll not go into here because this isn't about me. She knew everything, easy to talk to, easy to express an idea without opinion. And she would tell me things about her life, and how she dealt with them.


Now those who remember my mom, she was a 'big girl', I never knew her any other way. But she would try any diet, any thing to get smaller, to be well. Because she knew it was wrecking her. I can't remember how many there were, she'd lose the weight, put it back on. give up for a while, try again. But something always stopped her from getting all the way down to what she should be.
I always worried, because I knew she wasn't happy with it. Her body gave her many problems. She didn't have diabetes, and would never get to but it was difficult for her. I grew up with the firm decision that I would never ever allow that to be my trial. And it gave me a perspective about being overweight being something I really can't be happy about for others, get over or accept, to me it's a fear, it's death basically. I can't change that and I've tried.


Well, several months before she passed, I was expecting her to come down, I was off work. And she didn't show up. I waited and waited, and finally that evening she called and said she had come down but had to go right back home, and that we would go have lunch the next weekend. I could tell she was shook up about something but she said it was no big deal and we'd talk about it next week.


So the next week, we went to lunch at Ridgeways. She had been 'dieting' as we called it, but really she was just eating healthy, making good choices, and I was proud of her. She was down to about a 17/19?, the lowest she'd been in a long, long time. And she told me what had happened, she was in town, getting gas in her Camaro and this guy started hitting on her, non-stop. She had always said it was funny how guys were always interested in her shiny burgundy a year from new sports car and would flirt with her even when she was big sometimes. And why not, she was beautiful, always had the best smile ever, I think, her personality shone through in everything about her. But she said she hated it, hated the attention, she was married, after all, it stressed her out. She didn't know how to handle it and just wanted to run. And she felt safer when she was bigger, anonymous, unnoticeable, unthreatened. Safe. I have never forgotten this. I can identify with that stress, sometimes I feel it too. Even with people I know, I don't take complements well. I like to move past that, and it's not that I feel unworthy or bad about myself, I just don't like it, maybe it's genetic. But back to the story.


So, this guy was really trying to talk to her, (she wouldn't tell me what was said exactly) almost cornering her. She just got in her car and left. He got in his car and started following her. She drove around and around town, reluctant to go to my house or grandmas or Terri's, she tried to lose him, and finally she just headed back up to Sonora, and he gave up. She said she had never been so shook up by something like that, but that it made her realize. "You know I think I intentionally eat because I don't want to have to deal with that. Since college, pretty much, it's how I feel safe."


A week or two after that she was off of her diet. She said, the attention wasn't worth it. She'd just try her best and see what happened. Seven months later she was gone.


I know that's an abrupt end. But there really isn't much of a way around it. We never spoke of that again, but I never forgot.
My mom died of a myocardial infarction, or massive heart attack at age 45. I was 23. It's shaped a lot of things about my life, created a lot of ways for me to deal with life and death differently. I've now out lived her by 2 years, her sister by 3 and her father, my grandfather I'll pass up this year. It's a surreal life. But it hasn't made me unhappy, only challenged, and stronger, maybe wiser. It's influenced the art surely, but maybe not in ways you can tell.
Why did I want to get this down today? And on my blog, I don't know. But I wanted to get it somewhere, because it matters. Even though she's gone, it matters. How you treat people matters. That's all.

Thinking I will start posting on here again, the Muse is still alive. Look at new art here. My Fineart page under Jen Coffey dia de los muertos prints

It was a good art year at least. Here's to more of the same.

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