A Passion For Creativity

Excuse me while I digress from visual art, again, as there’s the rhythm talk on this blog also. It all started in a fit of studio cleaning with Foreigner blasting from the CD player, fast feet, drumming hands, and singing. Allegedly, also involved was a half a bar of Green & Black organic milk chocolate with peanuts. Fiery energy whirled ‘round the space. Aside from the shoe shuffling, floor sweeping was neglected, but the counters, palette area, and drawing table are cleared, ready to go now.

Creativity all comes from the same place as we are expressive creatures, it just takes various forms. Our human bodies are tools and instruments; from our brains, eyes, mouths, to hands to feet and shaking hips. Exploring all of it is just natural, enhances life and gives me insights for the visual work.

And sometimes, when there’s a snag in the creative process, or when the pipe feels clogged, doing a 180 is exactly what is needed. At times a walk clears the head, or I pull out music, the drum, the guitar, the twinkling toes. It’s a swirling out to the edges process so I can come back to center refreshed.

I certainly don’t consider the other artistic expressions equally to my visual art as the originality is not there. I haven’t given it enough time for that. My art images come from inside of me, from my soul. With music, I’m using the melodies and lyrics of others-a huge difference.

But it’s fun, and so rewarding.

Still, my tendency is to jump into a project with both feet and carry it to a level of resolution. To illustrate how far I took this singing, for instance. I’m sharing my, hang on… Ta Dah!… raw GarageBand version of a favorite song. I actually purchased a mechanical license to make 25 copies (minimum) of this song from the publishers, Harry Fox. For the understanding and experience of doing it, to acknowledge John Prine as the writer of  Angel From Montgomery, and so I don’t have to look over my shoulder. It’s from my album titled: Not Ready For The Big Time. They asked for an album title in the licensing process. It’s so not ready that right now there’s only one song on it.

Angel-From-Montgomery

The next post may be musings on distractions in the studio.

Sorting through a kitchen cupboard, culling long unused, or worn-out pans and utensils, there’s an unfamiliar plastic object. See exhibit A.

Exhibit A

It’s very likely a piece of an appliance, the round part is about 2″ diameter, but WHAT IS IT? Oh, just throw it out!  Yet, what if it’s something important that something else can’t work without. It doesn’t fit on existing kitchen appliances. Now I’m intrigued. How did it get here, did the parent get tossed out long ago?

So I take many photos of it, and post it on my FaceBook page as the “alien object”. One of my helpful friends thinks it looks like a coffee filter part. Then another friend, Shari Downhill, is certain that it’s a wall bracket for holding an immersion mixer. Mmmmm, OK, makes sense! Although not working as hanging device with the mixer I have. See exhibit B.

Exhibit B

It’s definitely “an extra”, but now a compelling extra, having spent surplus energy on it, so now the creative brainstorming kicks in. A resolution is needed before I let it go.

There are sculptural possibilities; the object fitted into a glued construction, white or painted? What about an installation, an old kitchen drawer filled with other unknowns, leftover pieces and parts of appliances and tools long gone-a puzzle to figure, and a comment on our consumerism.

More immediate and accessible are the images, the photos, let’s do something with those.

PhotoShop is my go-to virtual tool. The photos are already on the computer; I cut, paste, reorder, manipulate, and filter. Absorbed with it, often I can’t recall the paths while immersed in the process.  The object takes on a bit of personality. See exhibit C.

Exhibit C

Then, more ideating follows. It’s a logical step take this image and create an ArtiStamp with it since it’s offbeat and the design would easily fit the format.

Briefly, artistamps are faux postage that mail artists create as an extension of their ideas and run the gamut of subject matter. The creation method also varies, from hand-drawn, painted, etched, photocopied, rubber stamped, to the easily created computer/personal printer version. We share, trade and use them on mail art. See exhibit D.

Exhibit D

Designed as a sheet of 24 stamps here’s a close-up.

You are looking at the group mural from the 2008 Arts Festival. We’ll be creating another one this Saturday April, 18th, 1:00 PM-7:00 P M. at South Fork School, 5225 Kelso Valley Rd. Weldon. The Arts Festival also has art exhibits and other workshops, plus great music, and food to fill your belly. The day is geared toward kids, but all ages are invited to participate. Come be creative!!  Here’s the whole fishy story for the Mural. Hint, this year we will be flying instead of swimming!

This image sums up my initial impressions of virtual networking. It’s a digital work I created for Valentine’s Day and sent out. The art is based on two scanned collages, edited, combined, and reworked– layer within layer within layer. Let’s call it digital collage. I love the possibilities and discoveries when manipulating computer imagery. 

Remember the brown lunch bag taped on the back of your desk chair in elementary school on Valentine’s Day? Then on the teacher’s signal we’d all walk around with our fistfuls of heart and cuddly bear cards and play mailman. All the while keeping a watchful sideways eye on that cute kid as he neared your desk to see if he dropped one in your bag. Even then it caused me to ponder what “friend” meant when receiving cards from kids I barely spoke to. “Oh, I didn’t even know they liked me.”  Or not.

Now through artist blogs and virtual social networking sites such as Facebook, I’m connected to close friends and family, but also to people I’ve never met. It’s fascinating. It’s weird. It’s engaging. Once again, it has me pondering what the word friend means. 

The web has redefined “friend”. Plus, I’ve been prompted to brush on my foreign language skills, usually through translation sites such as lexicool.com.  I’m humbled by foreigners’ command of English.

What’s all this rambling have to do with creativity? Back to the image.

mail art stamp created from my collage

The only time I really feel productive is when I’m creating art.

There, I said it!

So much of this art business is…well…business oriented. There is office work: the bookkeeping; record keeping; ordering supplies, printing brochures and such; mailing out info to individuals and shows; shipping or transporting work to individuals and shows; keeping up my resume and artist’s statement; documentation of artwork; photographing works to update my web site with images and info—although I do work with a great web designer; reading art newsletters, not only about new artists’ calls, but also by other artists and what’s happening out there in the art world at large; then there’s the daily maintenance in other areas of my life.

I’ve read different estimates of how much time a working artist should put toward art business in order to “make it”, with some numbers as high as 60% of an artist’s time.

This greatly depends on how much an artist is willing to outsource. Because of costs, and a general pickiness, I also tend to stretch many of the canvasses, and do the matting /framing.  With the current uncertain economy many artists may have to re-evaluate what can be done “in house”.

Much of what I’ve included in the list above is enjoyable to me. Yet there is usually a nagging sense that I’m missing something. Even as I’m typing this, there’s the shouldn’t you be drawing something instead? feeling. This is how it is, a balancing act between the making of art and the rest of my life. And yes, I will go draw and then I’ll do the dishes.

How does grief affect the creative process?

Our 11 years old dog, Gypsy, died a few weeks ago. It completely threw me off the studio track into the dirt, literally. Rather than painting, I dug holes, moved rocks, and planted native plants. I needed to do something extremely physical, forget myself in the ache of burning muscles.

Now, back on course, I’m reflecting on times when I’ve lost loved people and pets, and how it affected artistic productivity. It varied greatly. For instance, when my Grandmother-in-law died in 1990, I buried myself in a frenzy of artwork, churning out very intuitive pieces, like Endangered, in a short time.

When I read my writer friend Ann’s, loving, funny tribute Goodbye, Henry, it reminded me of my need to write creatively about our dog Capone, after he died several years ago.

However, with Gypsy’s death, I pulled out the shovel, and, starting with her grave, split open the ground and dug.  Kept it up for about a week, digging, extracting rocks and boulders, refilling the spaces with Sugar Bush, Buckeye, and Flowering Apricot.

Hopefully, I wasn’t channeling Gypsy, as one of her favorite toys was a rock, and she loved digging for rocks! Probably not, but I feel better now. 

In looking back over my varied responses to death, it’s apparent that all sorrow needed defined acknowledgement, whether through ritual, words, creative outpouring, or digging holes.

Sorrow is our natural response to a big loss. Not to give it expression and voice in some form can lead to depression, which is debilitating and can kill creativity.

Writing this…I’m being tough, but it’s awful quiet here without her bark, her stirring up of the garbage…

Amethyst Rat

Did you ever read the children’s story series about The Borrowers, the tiny people that lived under the floorboards and freely took what they could from “human beans”? In grade school I eagerly read Mary Norton’s fantastic tales.

We‘ve all had small household items mysteriously disappear. It’s a lovely imaginative plunge to consider a world of minuscule people carrying off safety pins, socks, buttons, and usefully recycling them on their scale, glove fingers into pantaloons for instance. Norton, a British author died last week and as far as I know, didn’t reveal her muse for “the borrowing” story.

I’m speculating that her inspiration could easily have been the antics of pack rats. One’s been scurrying through the garage and pump-house this past year. Can’t leave anything out overnight. Every portable item is fair game. Nails, bolts, pencils, are carted off and later found piled up behind a toolbox, in a flowerpot, or buried in a nest. The foot ruler must have been a challenge as it only made it to the floor, but the bit of Velcro, store receipt, and plumber’s tape roll carried to the hoard just fine.

That’s how Amethyst Rat scampered into the mask story.

Stopping on the hilltop walk, the dog and I peered down at the lake yesterday. The early morning calm left the lake surface flat and dark in areas. Yet rows of ridges combed the water. Twenty or so parallel bands, then one gradually curved off leading into more parallel rows. In every direction, on and on, the lake was alive with currents creating patterns.

I thought of how it would look in a painting, zooming in only on the patterned rows and dark bands, so abstract, yet so representational of what is.

But instead of going into the studio I climbed on the roof to get the Mastercool going against the sudden 100% heat of the last few days. I’d promised the elderly cats that the house would not steam their fur another day. Hauling the hose up I washed the swirling dirt from the metal panels. I scooped out the brown water that accumulated in the pan and watched it run down the shingles.

At the hardware store I buy a new pump filter. Ah, the net one that reminds me of the lake. Plus some new panel screws. Look how the threads circle the shaft wave-like.

Back again, the float needs adjusting as the water dripped rhythmically down the eaves, onto the deck, and roiled away into the dirt. The overflow turned the roof’s steep angle into a slip and slide. The bottom of my walking shoes are worn smooth, no more contoured lines there. On go the Chacos, river sandals, lake sandals, sandals that let me jump over wet rocks and traverse slick shingles.

Some days are like this, chores need doing, animals and plants need tending, and there is little or no studio time.

Yeah, I considered calling a plumber. An hour and they’re out of there. But I get arrogant about paying for something I can do myself. And they don’t bring up the hose to wash the grime away, pull the rippled pads, or do all the other things that give me peace of mind for the season. Nor would they mention that an owl roosted in the pine trees above and left interesting mice-bone pellets scattered on the roof.

Still the lake image possessed me all day. Wave patterns followed me everywhere. Creative ideas are like that, itching to be realized. We are haunted by the images until we actualize them-send them into the world.

The beginning of May is near and I’m thinking back over the past busy month. This mural stood out as a fun creative idea that needs mentioning. Many participants, ranging from a 3 year-old, to someone in her 80’s, completed this mural. The occasion was the South Fork School First Arts Festival held on a sunny Saturday at the end of March.

My idea was to put together an art experience with a large scale work that people could plunge into and… one that wouldn’t be intimidating.  On matboard I loosely sketched a 5′ x 36″ fish drawing, which I then cut up into 6″ squares, so 60 squares in all. Most of the square images consisted of parts of the bigger image so there was an abstract quality to them. There was a small photo showing the complete image for initial reference, but the idea was that the approach would be free form. Each person that walked into the workshop completed a square, in whatever manner they wanted, using colored pencils and/or markers. Some of the kids did a couple of squares. The finished squares were then mounted on two foamcore panels recreating the original composition, and sprayed with a fixative to be hung in the school community room. A separate chart linked names to the individual images.

If this had been a workshop completed over several days, or with a specific group, they would have designed their own mural initially and the materials would have been expanded. I have seen something similar done with ceramic tile for instance. However, this particular approach worked well for a situation where people wandered in and out of the workshop throughout the 5-6 hours of the festival.

I think they did a terrific job!

Viridis Praying Mantis

I take it back already, the part about the collage series being about animal masks as this collage depicts an insect. There are a couple of birds also… so let’s just say the mask collage series is mainly about fauna, no frolicking fauns to be found-but mostly fauna, one flora, and one harlequin. The harlequin fits into what category?  Into masks and art. 

I’m dancing around words here working myself up to discussing the color green. In the distant past, green was not my favorite hue. This didn’t apply to green in nature. Nature was the natural home for green, deep forest green in plants; pine green in trees and vivid grass green. Visually I would roll and delight in nature’s green. But no icky green in clothes, man-made surroundings or furnishings for me…and I had difficulty using green in paintings. Weird! Perhaps the aversion developed because my mother had a thing for the color green and persimmon orange and would use them together freely whenever she could.

Geez, maybe it could have been used to explain away my teenage rebellion “She had artistic sensibilities and was forced to live with a huge, olive green, sectional sofa…and orange pillows, a difficult combination for her, so she became quite irrational”. 

If only life was that simple. Although now I understand how colors affect us emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

At some point in my art development I confronted green in my work realizing that dancing around that was ridiculously limiting. I did an all green painting. It was awkward and the resulting work was unremarkable but it pushed me unto a new level. Which is the whole point here. Creative growth demands that we push ourselves out of our comfort zones, whatever they may be (as I imagine some must be snickering about the color obsession here).

If we are to progress and fully engage our imagination we need to continually explore alternative perspectives. Don’t think that this applies to artists exclusively. Creativity is a natural brain function for all, but that’s another bit of writing.

While making this collage the combinations of green patterns in the various papers delighted me. I’ve learned to embrace the green! That is, I pushed my limitations and welcomed what propelled me onward toward greater understanding.