The Art of Joy Alyssa Day

You may have heard me beefing on Twitter or Facebook about a recent “Crappy Client” that we had. I’d like to elaborate on that some.

What makes a client crappy? These days, you’d think any client would be welcome, especially for artists who have seen their markets dry up quicker than most “needed” commodities. For a “starving artist”, any client is a good client. Right? Well, no. There are some clients that are just bad people, and they want to inflict their sorrow/curse on everyone they deal with. This is especially hard for an artist to take. Artists tend to be more emotional, more committed to their work, and much less able to think that it’s “Nothing Personal—Just Business” when it comes to anything related to their creations.

Well, after more than 60 days looking at the thick smoke and breathing the ash, the skies have finally cleared. I’m able to go back out without a respirator on and actually do some work! Our projects are so so far behind, it’s ridiculous, but we’ve been working very hard on them to catch up. Here is a photo taken from our deck. Scary, eh? You can read more about it in BJ’s journal of the fire.

Just went out onto the south porch to see if I could see the front through the smoke. The closest section, on Uncle Sam, is in places half way down the portion that we can see over the top of Elephant Mountain. This isn’t much of a change from its position on the 6th (Sunday evening). When the fire is backing down the hill, it moves a lot slower. Advancing up the hill is another story. It feeds on the fuel that is being heated in front of and above it and it is supplied with an unobstructed flow of air from below; a perfect scenario, so it moves very rapidly. This is one reason why we are so concerned.