Refreshing a Creative Practice, Week 3

Momentum. What a lovely state of being. The ideas pour out, my notebook pages fill with notes, sketches, quotes and insights. It seems that an image or idea serendipitously arrives daily to add another log to the creative fire. While inside me this vortex of energy pulses with strong intention and direction, on the outside I am engaged in the most menial, repetitive and tedious of activities, cutting out letters that will become a new Pages piece. It is the first one I've started in over a year. Interestingly enough, I am picking up again exactly where I left off, the time consuming task of cutting all the elements that I will use in this piece.



A piece by Mark Fox that is part of the current exhibition "Topographies", at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

This piece by Polly Apfelbaum is also part of the same exhibition.

For week three in our Refreshing Creative Practice course Leslie slowed down the pace during our teleconference call with a guided meditation. As we relaxed and got centered and comfortable, she suggested that we imagine ourselves projecting ahead in time 10 years and visualize meeting ourselves. Extraordinary exercise to contemplate yourself ten years in the future, consider what you will look like, where you will live and what you will be doing and feeling. Me at 70? -- a radiant and strong presence. I looked and felt vibrant, energetic and confident. A future self to inspire the current one.

Members of the class have responded to Leslie's invitation this week to share the names and works of artists who inspire them on our class blog. After recently visiting the Topographies exhibition at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, I'm currently quite inspired by Mark Fox, Tara Donovan and Polly Apfelbaum. The works included by these artists in the exhibit were all 3-D installations that involve repetition. The interaction between the materials and the space and the dimensionality of the works have been in my thoughts since I first encountered them. It was the first time I had seen Apfelbaum's and Donovan's works in person. They touched a chord.

Polly dyes and cuts each piece individually for the hundreds and hundreds of pieces that comprise her floor installations. I find that information wonderfully reassuring right now!