Navajo Lake(Great Mountain Biking)

Leaving my studio for vacation is difficult, but necessary, both for my kids and my mental health. My feeling about leaving for vacation reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad would throw a temper fit before we left for our vacation. I resented him for ruining it before we even left the driveway. Us kids would be in the car while my dad would check and double check the yard and house. We'd be on the road for an hour or two before he mellowed, cheered and got into the trip.

On the way home yesterday, little Ella was wining and complaining and I said, "if you don't stop, I'm going to chip a tooth from gritting my teeth like my dad did when I was kid", I was referencing the time when I sat behind him when we were in the 1970ish four door Toyota Corolla. He reached around to smack me and missed and chipped a tooth. Of course it was my fault, if hadn't been "grabassin'" he wouldn't have been forced to grit his teeth. Lori said "that sounds like a parenting problem to me". We all had a good laugh at the irony and my tooth is still in one piece.

I have a feeling that my daughter Brynn (holding the hare below) is just like me when I was her age, she drives me crazy with her incessant energy and pestering.

I have a solo show looming in October in Denver at the Plinth Gallery. That's about seven weeks away. With work, family and exercise, my studio time is limited. I have enough work for the show, but I also have enough ideas to fill the gallery with new work. The day we left for Navajo Lake, I was at work for 5 days driving the Zion Shuttle, then 4 days in the mountains on vacation, then home again for two more days in Zion and that ads up to 10 days without any productive studio time. This afternoon I spent a few hours glazing two hares, one for my friend in Virginia and one for the Plinth, still not enough time.
When I was in grad school, Dan Anderson(my professor). said to me when preparing for my thesis show that "it doesn't get any easier when you graduate." It's true, deadlines approach, I stress and end up getting the work made. It's just a little more complicated now that I'm juggling everything else too.