M.I.A.

I've been away from the blog for almost 2 months now which is a shame because it seems like I don't read my friends blogs unless I'm keeping up my end of things. I've been really busy prepping for a show at Diversionary Theatre here in San Diego, "As Much As You Can," for which I am designing the set. I created the image you see above (well, actually I adapted it, but you'd never recognize the original) as a possible set piece--it sort of sums up the complexity of a family--a family tree with so many twists and branches that the birds who nest there look as though they can't find one another. I'm neither disappointed nor relieved that this image will not be appearing on the stage--no, I take that back; I was relieved when the director had a clear enough vision of the play to ask me what we were asking the audience to believe this piece was. Was it a painting, or a tree? What did it have to do with the sort of iconic family/life vignettes we had created otherwise? We decided we didn't want to go there. But we both have seen the image of the tree now, if you know what I mean. We shared it, so it wasn't wasted.
There seem to be three legs to my milking stool of a life, and I can almost always keep my balance if I have two of them. They are: Designing (with a heavy dose of collaboration), Walking my solitary urban hiking trails that I've devised to keep my sanity, and Producing written language worthy of even one reader. I love doing all of these without passing through the conventional tollbooths of job interviews, walking buddies, and editors.