All the members of my family have supremely graceless moments on a regular basis. We all admit it: we’re klutzy. While I raced across the street once during rush hour to make the light, hands stuck in pockets, I tripped & face-planted in the crosswalk. The schadenfreude experience goes both ways. Upon standing back up, I grinned & took a brief bow for all the drivers watching. It pays to acknowledge one’s foibles, especially with road rash on the chin & a bloody nose.

I’ve felt sorry for the people who’ve lived in apartments below mine. They probably thought I was prone to tantrums. I drop things. Often more than once. I’ve accidentally dashed pans, dishes, & glasses to the floor whilst drying. I got so tired of cleaning up shards of broken glass I stopped buying glassware. Ceramic mugs for me. Not that they’re immune to breakage. They’re just less likely to shatter into invisible pieces that I find later with my bare feet.

Doing small kinetic sculptures at the time that I called my Failed Toys & Lethal Dolls series. These were figures with features of people & animals combined, inspired by Bosch’s hellscape section in The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. Though slightly monstrous, they were also sweet. Set in tableaux, the kinetic part being they were all jumping jacks; pull a chain & their limbs move. I used ball chain because it’s cool. This was my way of making monsters playful & relatable, commentary against social alienation of The Other.

It didn’t surprise me when I returned to my studio from any brief interruption to find I’d knocked some of my tools & supplies off my work table. The whole apartment had a slant to it & many of my clay-working tools would roll away on their own with no help from my errant elbows. I was used to finding tiny bits of wire with my unshod feet. A smart person would cut the wire over the trash bin. I was not that smart person.

I started to get especially peeved at myself for this new trend of spilling the internal mechanisms of the jumping jacks, made with wire frames & ball chain, onto the floor without noticing. There was a rug down there, so I wouldn’t necessarily hear anything hit. But these parts were not indestructible. The workings wouldn’t operate if bent. I’d sometimes be able to reshape them, but other times I’d have to start from scratch.

Then one day I was relieved of the supposition that I was sabotaging my own art. I had been painting the backdrop for a doll & had to rinse my brushes. My palette was going to be cleaned next. I returned to the table to find spindly little footprints in yellow on my blue background.

I shared my home with 2 free-range budgies, Mim & Addy, for as long as their lives allowed. I got Mim first, & she turned to me for lack of avian companionship. When I saw her longing for a bird friend, her fascination with the wild birds at the feeder outside tipped me off, then came Addy. Mim taught Addy to raid my plate whenever I was eating. This led me to stop consuming things my birds shouldn’t eat, although I didn’t give up cheese, because protein, & I like cheese. The birds did not share my appreciation however, & seemed disappointed in me whenever I ate it. They did have an affinity for pasta, so I had to relinquish sprinkling mine with grated parm. I tried to give them a plate of their own, but budgies are a flocking species. They wanted to eat with me. Having cage-free birds, I had to choose my battles.

My art studio was also the room the birds’ houses [cages] were in. They used their houses during the day for eating & drinking, & slept in them at night. Most of their time was spent either in front of the bathroom mirror, or on the window sill with their toys, or the sill by the outdoor bird feeder. Mim’s favorite game was Throw The Toys On The Floor. Addy didn’t share her passion for this game, but both enjoyed the Make Spit Wads From Newspaper & Put Them On The Person game. I would often find tiny spit wads in my hair. In my absence Mim had taken it upon herself to commit her own creative expression.

We began collaborating, & by collaborating I mean I worked on my stuff, & Mim would pick up & drop on the floor whatever item I just set down. She would eventually tire & fly off for something more interesting, so I could complete the more delicate parts of my creations without her ‘help’. This was crucial; once I glued the front & back of my dolls together with the workings inside, they had to sit motionless on a scaffold until the adhesive set or the works would get gummed up. This one afternoon I went to the bathroom to wash glue off my hands & upon re-entering the studio I froze.

Mim had decided to take another go at art today. We were temporarily engaged in a stare-down. She had dragged the little scaffold with my doll on it to the table’s edge. There was a mischievous glint in her eye when I said “Mim. Don’t do it.” As I lunged with the universal bird shooing motion of madly waving arms, she tugged one leg of scaffold off the table, & it all went down. The squawking in her flight away was clearly laughing.

I learned an important lesson that day. It involved an overturned empty box as a bird-proof cover. Also that Mim & I differ on artistic expression. Everyone’s a critic.