I am generally not interested in celebrities. I’ve gone to a couple shows or conventions and have only been somewhat entertained by the ones I’ve seen, yet not interested in meeting them or anything.
Today, I went and visited a friend from the now defunct Portland TechShop, Kathy, and we were catching up on random sewing and life news. Just as I was leaving, I mentioned that I was still working on my steampunk script and amature movie with the intention of sewing many Victorian costumes and cool steampunk gadgets and she says to me “You should go see my friends work. Her name is Paloma….” and my entire torso spasms in a visceral reaction that I was not at all prepared for. “No, Kathy, you don’t know Paloma…” and we say in near unison “Soledad.” FRITO!!
I confess to Kathy that I LOVE her work. I had known that she worked on Coraline, but I figured she’d only be staying up here for a while and then going back to California, but Kathy says she lives here in town and described her living room and shoe collection. How can that be? I found it particularly funny, because a major reason why I started going to the TechShop was to be able to use the machines to make costumes as elaborate and multi-media as hers… sculpting wooden blocks for leather forming, metal bending/cutting/casting tools, the hack space for electrified parts and pieces… And to only now find out that Kathy knows her? Wow! But, I immediately begin to talk down to myself. “She’s so creative and actually paid for her creative work and pretty, what would you possible have in common with her to maintain more than one, awkward conversation?” I rally, and defend myself: “I’m creative, too, in my own way! And I am really nice!”, but really… neither parts of my brain were convinced.
I discovered Ms. Soledad’s work through Dr. Steel’s website where I bookmarked her last June and check in on her webpage every once in a while, wistfully prodding myself to do GET TO WORK!