The Library Stack

Continuing my ongoing series of my latest stack of books from my beloved public library…

Art Business, Writing, Quilting, and Decorating 

My latest stack of books from the library center around making of living from selling your art, decorating your home, writing, and a random new quilting book on scrap quilts.

I have already finished Farrow & Ball’s How to Decorate (2016). Basically I looked at the beautiful photos while I sipped my tea and eating my morning granola and yogurt while a very manipulative and bossy miniature schnauzer stared at me (Sassy the Highly Opinionated Miniature Schnauzer thinks what I am eating is also hers).

The book, How to Decorate (2016), is a lovely book on ideas for paint colors (Farrow & Ball paints of course) and room arrangements. After flipping through this book I did however realize I am burned out on decorating books. My decorating style is “Random Cozy”. My house look either “cozy enough to take a nap in” or the “stylings of someone with no style” depending how you look at it.

I have an ongoing fantasy that I am going to get an actual “style” and redecorate my house to look like something out of an interior design magazine. Then I realize: “Why?”  Who am I trying to impress?

I plan to repaint the interior someday to freshen it up; but I think I need to embrace my tendency towards comfort and what visually pleases me (like seeing quilts everywhere) over having “style”.

I remember someone coming over my house and saying: “Whoa, you have a lot of quilts on the wall” in a tone that meant “I think you overdid it”. However, Terry the “Quilting Husband” always says, when I express my concerns over too many quilts on the wall, “we are insulating our home with quilts – you don’t want the walls to feel cold!”

Best compliment about my house ever came from a visiting 3 year old, who remarked after diving into a pile of pillows on the floor: “Tierney, your house is COZY!”

If a 3 year old thinks your house is cool, then I think you are doing well with your decorating (smile).

I have also started reading the books Crafting the Personal Essay: Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction (Dinty W. Moore, 2010) and Art Inc. (Lisa Condon, 2014). Perhaps when I finish reading Crafting the Personal Essay: Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction, you all can look forward to well written tierneycreates posts, but I am not promising anything!

Art Inc. by Lisa Condon, was a book recommended in the latest issue of the SAQA Journal, the publication of the group I belong to Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). Reading it plays into my fantasy of someday becoming a professional artist. (It seems like a lot of nonfiction books I borrow from the library  just feed into my “someday fantasies”!

One of the best things I have read so far in this book is that you need to give yourself permission to call yourself an Artist. Accept that you are an artist, do not shy away from this label!

Postscript

I am going to start borrowing fiction books out of the library and add some fiction to my life. I think also reading fiction will balance me creatively. I already received a magical e-mail from my public library that a couple fiction books I have put on hold are ready for pick-up!