gone fishin'

closing my four rooms for a bit

could be for the winter

(while I travel to tropical locales on the wings of my imagination)

or maybe I'll open back up at quarter-to-one tomorrow

or the next day

or Friday three weeks hence

hard to know for sure

but I'm definitely not going fishing

i'll be at my other places (see sidebar).

until then ...

walking

Last year, my goal was doing.  Not striving, frenzied, accomplishment-driven doing, but mindfully working at those creative things important to me. Doing and not just thinking or talking about doing and not getting distracted by activities that feel like doing but are sometimes just exercises in avoiding the uncomfortableness of sitting alone in a room with a blank something - piece of paper, canvas - and trying to fill it up with something from inside.

The schedule I had at the beginning of the year was a faint memory by the end of it and one of the hardest things to reconcile myself to (I'm still not there, actually, and might never be).  But while I hate getting home when it's dark, and while I struggle with all the time I'm forced to spend when I actually get home prepping for my next work day (because I work far away from home and have to be pretty organized), despite all that, maybe even because of it, I managed to plug away, a word here, a stroke of paint there, and stay true to my intention of doing. 

There is something about a condensed window of time that distills creative energy and burns off hesitancy and doubt - there just isn't any time to indulge in that. Working in this way, I cultivated a contentedness with incremental progress instead of throwing up my hands in despair because I didn't write complete poems or paint paintings in giant, gulpy, swept-away sessions.  In fact, I didn't finish very much of anything.  And I'm ok with that too because for me the doing is the thing.  The only thing.  Anything after the doing, after the finishing, is something else entirely. 

The important thing is taking one step forward, followed by another and another, and - will you at look at that - we're walking!

Two resources that help me tremendously in this endeavor of doing:

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield (I about fell off my chair when this appeared on my amazon recommendations early in the year - that "Do" in the title seemed planted there just for me).  And by the way this one's free to read on a kindle.

and

The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life by Ann Patchett, a long essay about her experience as a novelist but appropriate for all creatives and can be had for the princely sum of $2.99 (again for a kindle).

well, hello there!

cover girl (spotted at the bookstore over the weekend)

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inside

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wheeee!

Art Journaling Magazine

Winter 2012

happy new year

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I love reading blog posts this time of year.  I love how so many are moved to sum up the year that's ending and throw their hopes forward to the year that's beginning.  I'm pretty sure there's magic in that kind of reflective collective.

For me, 2011 was a year with hard edges and sharp corners, but it was also a year where if I didn't exactly get what I wanted, I got plenty of what I needed.  And too, just as the year was winding down, it offered up a soft place to land and for that I am thankful.

I lost my voice here this year, and getting it back is slow work, but worthwhile, and I'm determined. 

Happy New Year!

Christmas Eve

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From last year, and again this year, for you:

This Christmas Eve:

May you draw close - in proximity, in memory, and in spirit -

to those you cherish.

May you experience a little of that wonder particular to children on Christmas Eve, that keen awareness that impossibly amazing things
- ridiculous, magical things -
transpire in the slice of time between going to bed and waking.

May you hear angels sing.

Merry Christmas!

unintended ...

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... self portrait.

twelve

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Twelve favorite photos and art pieces (of mine) for 2011.

Some I love because I know the behind-the-scenes effort that went in to setting up a shot (the jars, the popsicle, the ballerina); the converse is also true for I love others for their randomness (the bucket of flowers), and some I love because of what inspired the capture or the work (books, random snippets of thought, the weather, color, place, or technique).

The artwork includes a lot of drawing and that makes me happy, and the painting too, which in the last quarter of the year I've become even more smitten with ... more carried and swept away by ... though funnily enough I need to learn how to photograph my efforts as the work has grown bigger in size.

If I was asked to choose a favorite, it would be the jars, oh yes, because the vision arrived wholly formed and unbidden and it took some time to arrange, but the vision was realized completely and this happens so rarely in my creativity (and often frustrates me) so this was a delightful result. That it hit flickr's explore and other people enjoyed the photo sweetened the whole process. 

I wonder what photos I'll take in 2012.  Can't wait to find out.

blue and orange

A lot of blue and orange around these parts. 

Blue and orange, complements on the color wheel. 

Orange and blue, like peanut butter and chocolate, a duo that never gets old.

Soon there will be red and green in this house of ours, and non-blinking lights wrapped around a tree, and two whole weeks off after a summer and fall filled with far too much duty and obligation and schedules, two weeks off to breathe, reflect, to recalibrate and reconnect. 

Soon can't get here soon enough (though actually, soon will be here Friday at 5:01 p.m.)

an almost-week off in sort-of review

6:00 a.m. Black Friday, Mr. P at the wheel, Ella on the stereo jingle belling all the way, and me, in the passenger seat taking shaky photos of the sunrise over the bridge, on our way to the art supply store for 40% off an aspiration measuring precisely 48"w x 72"h (a canvas so tall if it had shoulders I could rest my head on it, so wide I'd have to be elasti-woman to wrap my arms around it). 

Traffic was light, the parking lot empty save a crew of little black birds practicing barrel rolls in the sky above us and a couple of kids standing outside the indie music shop. No crowds, no pepper-spraying, just a few artists trying to save a little on the raw materials of their particular art.  Too bad the goodwill and good cheer never make the Black Friday headlines on the news.

"Hard Rain": Work in progress, acrylic paint on canvas paper.

 

And then there is Gus. Not much needed to explain here.
(Pic courtesy of Mr. P).

It was a wonderful almost-week off.  The weather was lovely, lots of college football to revel in, dreamt (literally) the design for an atc swap I'm involved in on facebook and translated it directly in my journal, combined leftover apple pie filling with my oatmeal (which I personally think should get some kind of award for Most Creative Use of Leftover Thanksgiving Meal), received bits of encouragement from various and unexpected quarters, ate a lot of sashimi, and just generally enjoyed puttering around at home.  I work about an hour away from home and even though I enjoy my work, I'm always pining for home.  Home is where my heart is.  Maybe one day my work will be there too. 

monday is an orange day

Trying to make my own Snapz. (I think I could slice apples on the mandoline all day long. Something so satisfying about the even slices).

 Big orange cat, contemplating.

Double exposure-ish.