Sisyphean Tasks.

I've been half-heartedly odd-jobbing it lately. In fact, this month I may have made almost $1000 from removing carpet, vacuuming, hauling and distributing bark dust, painting interiors, &, yesterday, filling a crack in a cement pad with (you guessed it) more cement. In order to do this last task I had to rearrange, individually, about a yard of rocks without a wheel barrow or a shovel. So I sat and hurled rocks from one side of a pile to another. For, cumulatively, about 45 minutes. I got paid about $10 to move small rocks.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post. People would much rather pay me to do easy but slowly back-breaking, mindless work, than accumulate my art. Painted trim is worth more, even to artistically informed people, than a drawing or a sequin covered duck decoy. Yesterday I got called an "Angel" because I had a screw driver to put in a switch plate. No one has ever called me anything pleasant because of what I make.

I use bark dust a parameter of progress. I have yet to have a summer since graduation from undergrad where I didn't have to interact with the stuff. It makes me itchy and sneazy, and generally distressed. To prepare a garden for it you make islands of perennials, and then surround them with the mulched up skins & innards of non-native cedars. My client made the joke (and he was clearly proud to have thought of it) "How many graduate school courses does it take to be able to shovel bark?"

The thing is, I'm not unhappy odd-jobbing. I really like looking back at a task well-done, that makes someone's home more comfortable and beautiful for them. I just don't know how to make that art. For all I know, maybe it is already.