Rusty Nails and Inspiration

 

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Maya Angelou

Yes, these are indeed rusty nails, 2” with square heads, pulled from boards in a circa-1905 Victorian home. I just purchased them from an Etsy shop. God bless Google searches.

So why are rusty nails so exciting to me today? They’re a demonstration of how much inspiration fuels my work. At 4:30 AM this morning this idea woke me up. The little rusted hand-made paper and wire sculptures I’m currently constructing could hang from rusted nails instead of bent copper wires. I wasn’t even trying to find a replacement for those copper wires! Now it seems the most perfect way to hang them, so I hope it works.

I love these surprising bursts of insight and inspiration most about being a creative. Do you ever experience such flashes of new ideas when you’re engaged in a project?

Here are some of the works in this installation, now nearing the finish line. Will the rusted nails work? I love the suspense of wondering while I wait for them to arrive in the mail.

Seeing, Feeling, Expressing

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. --Carl Jung

After enjoying hundreds of visitors who came to my studio last night for First Friday, I realize just how much of an equation there is between making art and sharing it. That exchange feels magical when what we make is well received by others. We encounter that energy in concerts, in live performances and sporting events. Athletes, actors, dancers, musicians all perform to audiences and whether small or large, our creativity comes full circle when shared. 

For many of us who are makers, our creative selves are always reaching. I’m feeling an internal desire now to focus on emotional content in new work.  What is it that makes some pieces evoke a deep emotional response?

Colors, shapes, lines and textures can communicate feeling, either what the artist feels internally or their responses to the world around them. The Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s believed the best way to express pure emotion was to create nonobjective or totally abstract artworks. They saw the use of colors, shapes, lines and textures as vital to expressing deep emotional states.

What feelings or emotions do you wish to express through your works? How do you choose color, shape, line and textures to communicate those? 

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. ~Leonardo da Vinci

Attempting a Reclamation

Is there a single one of us who hasn't made a piece that just never worked out well? What do you do with yours? While I read often of painters burning failed works, I'm more frugal -- also more optimistic about recycling my materials.

An old, failed project revisited the design wall this week. The original idea, attempted last October and November was to build a surface where letter forms appear to be falling down like rain. One of the other reasons it failed, I decided, was that I just didn't like the letter shapes themselves. I twisted and turned and painted and overworked the surface to death. I completed it and then realized that I basically could never show it in public.

But this week it occurred to me that I could re-vision this "finished" piece strictly as an under-painting, pushing back the original composition to a mere suggestion by layering painted, manipulated cheesecloth over it.


I planned to develop cracks and fissures with elongated Etruscan letters applied along with hand stitching onto the cheesecloth layer -- again referencing age and accumulated layers over time.

But then I went to the hairdressers and saw a picture in a decorating magazine of a painting with an abstracted bowl shape in it. I have been drawing bowl shapes and musing on how to integrate them into my language pieces for two years. When I came home, I drew some variations inspired by the shape I saw and decided to consider the idea of adding abstracted bowl shapes to the surface rather than more letter shapes.


Here's the first effort. I question whether the bowl shapes really integrate with the language forms still faintly visible through the manipulated cheesecloth.

My dear friend and fellow artist Rebecca Howdeshell saw this and suggested the shapes might integrate better if I age their surfaces, which is an excellent idea to try next. What if they have cracks and fissures and maybe even fragments of letters on them?!

So that will be tomorrow's studio agenda, creating ancient, cracked fabrics to cut into bowl shapes and try in place of the ones shown above. If either of the new ideas work, then I will add hand-stitched cracks as line work for definition and emphasis and reclaim this. If they don't, the piece goes deeper back into the storage closet or off to the local Goodwill thrift shop!

Live from the Front Lines

I honestly wish those of you who are reading this could have a studio right next door to mine. Then I could call you up and say, "Hey, come on over and talk with me about this." In lieu of that, I'd love for you to share your thoughts and comments as you watch the progression of this piece. I even promise to answer all comments if you do. If some of you disagree with me or each other, even better -- it could make for a good discussion!

First things first. I am wildly in love with the top third of this. I'm envisioning adding an accent or two of a rust/red tone along an edge, but that is all here. If you strongly disagree, here is your opportunity to tell me so.


So now we move down to the bottom. This is the newly steamed, washed and ironed fabric with the additions of rusty orange and a brownish green. I'm liking the colors. They can grow softer and lighter as they move up the surface of this piece. But now I have to decide how much and where to add the additional color and whether or not the letterforms add anything to the composition. Part of me likes the textures, lines and colors on the piece so much that the letters seem overkill.

The other part of me (I'm a Libra, these internal debates go on continually, what can I say) says that the whole IDEA of this piece is ancient letterforms, so I can't very well throw them overboard. Maybe the answer is to add them selectively and very sparingly to the surface rather than use as many as there are here in this sample area.

Since the test area for the orange and dark green is at the very bottom edge of this super long piece of cloth, I folded and pinned the bottom part up closer to the top on my design wall and took this picture. This gives me an idea of what these colors and textures will look like more towards the middle of the composition.

I'll sit here munching my apple, staring at the images on my computer screen and holding this debate in my head for a bit. Maybe I'll have an insight into what I want to do next.

I really am thinking I want to decrease both the amount and shape of the lightest areas in the lower half of the piece. I might sponge some resist on the surface and screen over those areas to soften the value shift and reduce the amount of that very lightest color. That could create a softer transition from the darkest areas at the bottom to the lightest areas on top. Or I can have hard edges in some places and softer transitions in others.

Or maybe a whole new idea will emerge. The day is young! If you have any thoughts about these options, yes I know it's the weekend and you're busy, but please know you are invited to comment!

One Near the Finish Line, One Still Running Laps

If you had been at my studio today, you would have seen me take a very deep breath before I silk screened the final elements on this new work. It took a while to let that breath out! Once I did, ahhhhhhhhhh...


This piece is ready for the addition of stitching. In my imagination, I'm toying with the idea of hand stitches accentuating those lovely rippling horizontal lines in some way.

Completing this one isn't a priority, though , so it's back to the other work that I'm creating (for the Australian exhibition) when I return to my studio tomorrow.


Now I have to consider how best to add the letterforms and cracks on its surface that I envision. Here's one Etruscan letter sample utilizing wax resist, which is looking a bit too clean and crisp to read as ancient. Your opinions are welcome! Tomorrow, more experiments with other techniques.

Exciting New Venue for My Work

Photo from SOFA Chicago exhibition in 2006; this is a shot of the Jane Sauer Gallery booth

Works from my Parables series will be on display at SOFA Chicago (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art) beginning November 6-8,2009, represented by Maria Elena Kravetz Gallery. Maria contacted me in November; we've finalized arrangements and it's official.

SOFA is a "field of dreams" for fine craft lovers and collectors; patrons come to purchase new works to add to their private, corporate or museum collections. On view are some of the most beautiful contemporary craft pieces in every medium that I've ever seen.

And my work will be there among them.

Artists never know how or when an opportunity will arise or what it will ultimately mean for their work. Whatever outcome there may be in exhibiting my work in this venue, the opportunity provides a strong focus for my intentions for this year.

Because of this commitment, I took teaching off my website. Although I'm honoring my existing workshops for this year, I'm not taking on any new ones. I'm also not taking on any new writing projects. This allows me to focus on the vision and new work for this series.

Since I made this decision, I've experienced a gamut of emotions -- from panic and fear of totally failing to an incredible confidence that I'm ready and equal to the opportunity.

None of us can do more than greet any new life opportunity by giving it our absolute best. That's what I intend to do for exhibiting my work at SOFA.

This New Year is unfolding filled with hope and concerns for us as a nation. My anxieties may spike, I may have times of doubt and elation, but I also trust that the universe has brought this to me because I'm ready. I have a strong inner compass; it says this is right for me.

I've always been willing to try and fail in any artistic endeavor. Now it's time to be equally gracious about accepting visibility and the potential for collectors investing in my work. Whatever this may lead to for my career, I already possess a love of creating and joy in being a maker. That is my touchstone.

Finding Calm

Pages 3, 20" x 21", silkscreened, dyed silks. Reverse applique, raw edge applique, stitching.

Armed with focus, determination and an impressive plan for my artwork this year, I envisioned producing the next group of pieces in the Parables series in high gear.

Normally, when I start creating a new piece,I go to sleep with a question and wake up with an inner image in my mind of where to begin. That idea either works or leads me to one that does.

This time, however, the Mt. Everest of ideas surrounding language imagery felt like a tangled mess. My mind kept racing, ideas kept piling up and competing -- no clarity, no focus, no "seeing" a clear idea to begin the new work. Just more and more ideas competing for attention.

Clearly,a curious and troubling situation, but only in that one direction.

Work with the Seeds pieces bubbles with excitement, focus and productivity. The small work above, completed this weekend, investigated a number of new options.

Here were the "what ifs" it explored: What would colored threadwork look like on the black and white printed surface? What if I layered two fabrics on top of one another and cut through some of the seed shapes to reveal the fabric underneath? What will a strong golden yellow look like as a contrasting color? How would it work to add a single french knot at the center of each seed shape?

This small work excites me with even more new options. So it isn't my creativity that's suffering, it's something else that's going on with the language imagery.

Eventually I recognized yesterday I needed to take all that unpleasant and distracting burble of ideas in my head and spill it out on paper.

As I wrote, my inner churning and chattering began to quiet.I began returning to that inner balance point that is so crucial for me. I need calm.

I think I revved up my inner engines to take on 2009 and create new language pieces like a racer in the Indy 500. But all I started doing was spinning my wheels and overheating in the pit.

I'm throwing out the whole idea of speed and action. Instead, I'll visualize a quietly flowing stream and me moving along with it. If new Parables pieces aren't ready to emerge, I'll give them the time they need.

We all talk about trusting our process. Right now I have to live it.

Anchors and Sails

The idea of anchors and sails popped into my head this morning in relation to my artistic process. What makes these images a good metaphor for artists?

Anchors are those artistic practices we engage in daily. Whether we journal, draw, stitch, carve or throw pots on a wheel, practice builds an instinctual connection with our tools and subject. Draw a tree over and over; with each enounter the eye will see more clearly and the hand will respond more intuitively.

Our awareness grows through attention and repetition.

This year I'm making a commitment to a six-month correspondence course with Laurie Doctor to help refine my own work with language imagery. One of the anchors for this study is choosing one language to work with over the next six months. I chose Etruscan and learning about this language is an added bonus (more about that another time):


Each day I prop up a sample of Etruscan writing in front of me, open a sketchbook and take a pencil in hand. Then, without looking at the page, I draw the letters onto it.


Although I've only been doing this exercise for three days, I am noticing that every day the practice evolves and I engage in it more mindfully. The act of drawing blind opens me to feel my movements, see each individual shape and consider the relationships in spacing and lines.

Shutting off one sense intensifies others amazingly quickly. In this case it particularly increases my awareness of my movements (flowing or constricted,spontaneous or deliberate,calm or impatient). Even after engaging in this practice for only three days, my senses and concentration on the forms and shapes are heightening, much as I grow more aware of an object in a blind contour drawing exercise.

An intuitive urging led me to contact Laurie about working with her; some part of me sensed a need for a structure to my investigations that I hadn't been able to create for myself. Laurie's immediate response with a very limited set of variables and daily practices is informing me in new ways. It fills me with excitement and anticipation for how this study is going to translate to my body of work.

Even as I anchor myself to repeating this practice each day, I feel sails unfurling and billowing.

What holds us steady in one place is intricately connected to what propels us forward.


"Seeds of Change",42"w x 44"h, silk habotai, monoprinted, layered, stitched.

This piece, almost complete, relates well to my growing understanding of the merits of repetition. The elements repeat -- and yet they are also unique and individual.

What used to repel me about repetition -- the idea of sameness -- now engages me, because the smallest variations stand out and draw the eye.

Everything Connects

These are BillDings, one of my favorite toys when I was a child. And yay, they're back again in the toy market.

Note the amazing feature of this simple stacking toy -- the slots allow them to connect in multiple, unexpected ways.

Oddly enough, even just looking at this image of them again makes the child inside me hugely happy. These clown like figures have huge smiles on their faces as they hang upside down and balance on each other's shoulders, arms and legs. These little guys inspire creativity!

And they have real life counterparts!

This weekend my husband and I attended the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra's Pop Series performance, "Cirque de la Symphonie".

Fortune smiled on us with tickets in the second row while former Cirque performers joined the orchestra onstage and performed stunning acts to each musical selection. Being so close allowed us to see and appreciate their tremendous focus, concentration and physical prowess.

Alexander Streltsov's stunning, aerial moves on silk were one of the many excellent performances of the evening. Watching him soar as silken fabric rippled and billowed around him and the orchestra played a "Star Wars" piece felt magical.

Each act and performer drove home the same message to me. Every art form takes discipline, patience and practice. The artist repeats moves and gestures over and over and over until the sheer force of repetition burns them into memory.

Watching the tremendous concentration and focus in the performers' eyes and faces even as their diaphragms heaved and muscles trembled from exertion, I can appreciate the practice that goes on daily behind-the-scenes to create that seemingly (unless you ARE in the second row!) effortless defiance of gravity.

What do Cirque acrobats performing with our area symphony offer me as inspiration for my daily artistic practice? First, stimulation. Our artistic selves thrive by watching, listening to and appreciating other artists.

Second,the recognition that the ingredients to accomplishment are the same. Desire and practice build our expertise in our chosen field, whether that is playing the tuba, juggling or oil painting.

Third, putting something out into the world from our creative centers is not a matter of how large or how small the rewards are. The concert program, by Cirque de Soleil standards, was tiny, with just one or two performers on stage at a time. Yet I was entertained and satisfied and delighted with this "bite size piece" of Cirque's dazzling choreography and physical artistry.

This means that practicing our art form, whatever it may be, from a place of passion and attention can have as much worth and impact on a small stage as in a large, lavish production.

Simmer and Stir Often

January's creative soup is simmering nicely on the front burner, a tasty blend of exhibiting, creating new work and chopping up MARKETING into small, bite-sized pieces.

Pat Pauly, a gifted artist whose work has been juried into the prestigious Quilt National exhibition, led the installation of RAFA's (Rochester Area Fiber Artists) newest exhibit at the Arts and Cultural Council on Monday. Forty-three artists' works are on display from January 6-30, 2009 in "New Year, New Directions," at the Council Gallery.


The space is wonderful. If you live in the area, please come to the opening reception on Friday, January 16, 5 - 8 PM. The gallery will also be open all day on Saturday, January 17, 10-4.


On the creating front, I'm completing the second "Seeds" piece, now titled "Seeds of Change." As this detail shot of it in process shows,I'm adding more color as well as choosing more saturated colors to accent the grayscale ground. Most of these seed shapes are just pinned on; next I will stitch them down and complete the piece.

I'm also beginning a concentrated expansion of language imagery and techniques for incorporating letterforms in my work; more to come about that soon.

Another ingredient that I'm stirring into the soup pot is marketing. Webmaster Holly Knott just completed adding current and upcoming exhibitions and several new pieces to my website. Next task will be creating a database for mailing lists to mail out postcards for future exhibitions.

The soup pot is also getting lots of spice from the inspiring coaches and motivational books that I've been gathering. Numerous coaches and websites offer newsletters and tidbits of valuable information; all of them help me stay positive, focused and action-oriented. Step by step, action by action, I am actively engaged in moving my artistic life forward.

Yesterday's mail brought three books to read: Ellen Langer's On Becoming An Artist, Visioning by Lucia Capacchione, Ph.D and Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel. I'll let you know how they stack up once I read them. For some years I was very critical of self-help books, but now I see them as tools to help me stay upbeat and charged with positivity. That positivity imbues the seeds of confidence that are growing inside me; I now truly appreciate those individuals who choose to dedicate their lives and their energy to helping others actualize their dreams and desires.

All these various activities and actions all go into the pot -- the ideas, the e-mailed tips and newsletter updates, the affirmations, the appreciation lists, the visualizations -- and the day to day showing up in the studio to do the work. What an aroma to inhale, and what pleasure to be cooking up something wonderful through these wintry January days.