Existential Neighborhood

Choice and Surrender

2012-01-31T05:34:00.000-08:00

It’s been a quiet block in this existential neighborhood for several months. Time reserved for contemplative writing diminished as projects that required active doing entered in.

The good news? A studio dream that has been manifesting for years is coming to fruition. There are pictures and street level, get your jeans dirty stories at artclothchangepurse.blogspot.com. I am very proud of this solid project. It will touch lives and do good. But it sure is time-consuming hard work.

I also returned to the board of the Surface Design Association as vice president. For those of you who aren’t familiar with SDA, or who couldn’t attend the international conference last summer, there’s a podcast of my talk, which was entitled What Matters? on the SDA website, along with several other great talks from the conference.

Time invested in SDA is worth it. It’s an opportunity to sculpt the association into a fresh, 21st century version of itself. But it takes an awful lot of time. I didn’t realize it would be such hard work. I didn't realize how fragile making decisions can feel sometimes.

Which leads to true confessions. I’ve been busy but I haven’t been happy. Studio time disappeared. Contemplative writing time vanished. A book project went stale. I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights. A lot of sleepless nights.

I know it, but I forget it; a spiritual practice is so important. Praying is good. Rigorous self-examination is good. I had to get a few years under my belt before I could recognize this is why we call it life cycles. Facing down fear and self-doubt; coming through the dark night intact. Reclaiming equilibrium. It doesn’t happen just once.

A long time ago my father tried to tell me this. But I couldn’t hear him. I thought once you got through school and fell in love and got a job, life would be set. Two marriages, an abortion and a bankruptcy later, I let go of that idea.

I could characterize this as growing into balance, but that’s not really it. Maybe growing up and choosing balance says it better.

After I got over the idea that life isn’t automatically once and for all set, ever, I embraced Joseph Campbell’s admonition to follow my bliss. This is not a bad idea. It’s echoed in a book title from 1989, Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. Good advice for anyone mired in the belief that fulfilling someone else’s expectations will make your life work out ok. Following your bliss is another way of saying you have to take care of yourself first. Put on your own oxygen mask; then help the person next to you on the plane.

But following your bliss is just one more station along the road to enlightenment.

What then?
I believe it’s in this prayer:

Stay in present time
Seek only the truth
Surrender your will to God
Love is the only true power
Honor thyself
Honor one another
All is one.

Surrender is the stage I’m in now. I thought I would be happy following my bliss off into the sunset, but I realized I was wrong. There is another kind of happy. The happy that comes from surrendering to the opportunities that manifest, even when I feel unable, or ill prepared. Choosing to put aside studio time for a while, because it feels better to spend time on projects that will ripple wider. It feels like an alchemical mix of surrender and choice.

And it’s just another stage. It’s where I am right now.

Hubris

2011-11-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

There’s a whole lot in Life to be unsure of
But one thing I can safely say I know
That of all the things that finally desert us
Pride is always the last thing to go.

-Mary Chapin Carpenter

I should have known what was coming when I had a reading in January. I must follow that statement with this one: I believe in the possibility of everything. I believe in prayer, readings, intuition, healing arts and evil. I mainly believe in all of these possibilities of reality because I am old enough to have been humbled by all other realities. I am a witness to the broad scope of the unknown. And yet I have faith. I do believe we each have a path we are meant to follow. A place we are meant to be.

Hubris. Pride. Caroline Myss writes poignantly/powerfully about this very basic human failing. We are each more afraid of humiliation than we are of anything else we experience in Life. Why shouldn’t this be true? It’s all about survival. Evolutionists and Biblical scholars alike must admit that past tense humans were better at surviving when they were capable of rebuking humiliation. As if we didn’t know where those phrases came from - Buck up. Get over it. Get some balls.

Whatever it takes don’t let anyone humiliate you.

I look out my window and there is a squirrel 50 feet up; jumping from branch to branch in the late afternoon light. The squirrel looks fearless. The branch springs and then there’s a bounce. My breathless gasp - followed by a touch down on the next branch, whether higher or lower.

I have witnessed the death of a squirrel when it leapt accidentally onto the electrical transformer that faces the alley. A blast of sparks. A flash of life exploding. It took down the power for four hours. It can happen.

Two weeks ago a friend of mine died. In retrospect he was one of the most alive human beings I’ve ever met. His death was crushing. His wife, with whom I am fortunate to have a long and deep friendship, told me that before he died he asked her why she’d never been willing to let him take care of her. “I’ve always had to do it myself.” she said to me. “That’s who I am.”

I could relate. Even in the depths of love and trust, something calls us to do for ourselves. I can’t judge whether it is right or wrong. It just is. Painfully just is.

So I continue along my path; often feeling that the best I can do is to rebuke scattershot BB’s in favor of one clear bullet, focussed on the task at hand. All I can do is get up early, take time to figure out how the day should go. Focus on what a class needs most in order to be self-propelled. Admit it when I am wrong. When the supply list asks for two yards of silk and I recognize way too late that this was an errant cut and paste. Apology needed. Humbled self. Keep on going.

Is your work calling to you? Family? Love or death?

Take your best shot.
Get up the next morning and do it again.
Amen.

Symbolic Color and Hard Content

2011-10-16T08:31:00.001-07:00

Last week I got an invitation to review the latest issue of Hand/Eye from Annie Waterman. If you aren’t familiar with Hand/Eye, check it out. This issue is devoted to Global Color and the photos alone will knock your socks off. Icing on the cake that the writing is solid, too.

Activist Mary Fisher writes poignantly about red. It was timely. I was coming off the second week of my 2011 Mastery Program and we discuss strategies to take work deeper. Participants are charged with assessing their own symbolic use of color. Sure, there are cultural and societal memes related to color - holiday colors, Halloween colors, colors for weddings and mournings. But each of us has a distinctive color vocabulary - one that’s personally symbolic. If we don’t analyze it intentionally, it operates in our work by default.

So what does blue mean to you?

India Flint wrote about her iceflower recipes and she’s always a good read. Author and Fulbright scholar Catherine McKinley describes the rich black mourning cloths in Ghana as one of her most memorable textile encounters, and shares her memories of the funeral of a friend’s husband with Hand/Eye readers.

Emotion. The profound power of color and pattern and making. Color is a life lesson. The essays from Hand/Eye this month are contributions worthy of rumination.

The profound power of making and art. Color and emotion. A rich and offensive - even frightening - mix for some viewers, and perhaps by association, for some artists.

There are various sorts of controversy in the art world. Some of it is manufactured. Stunts by artists who are 99% personality and 1% art. It takes all kinds. What about artists who want to comment on sensitive topics in their work? A discussion in class focussed on work that references the destruction of the World Trade towers. On the anniversary of 9/11 artists’ responses to the loss were featured on Facebook and on the front page of the major newspaper in Seattle. When is work honor, when is it an invasion of privacy and when is it shameless self-promotion? Are images of people jumping from collapsing buildings ever legitimate subject matter for a work of art?

I suspect each reader will have his or her own opinion of this, and it may be based on how close to a tragedy he or she is. Hard to have an impersonal opinion when the tragedy is personal.

And what about the potential to be criticized or ostracized because of work you’ve made? We’re all familiar with the idea of being politically correct. If I make art that offends someone’s sensibility, will it impact my ability to make a living? Am I morally obligated to make it anyway? Andres Serrano is an artist who has spent an entire career challenging societal and religious norms and it’s probably safe to say that viewers either hate his work or love it, but the reaction is never neutral.

Recently a colleague wrote to say that a piece of hers - which featured an AK47 gun and real letters from soldiers (some of which contained profanity) - was returned by an exhibition that accepted it, before the exhibition had actually been mounted. The work was considered inappropriate. It was probably the profanity that blocked the piece from exhibition, since the venue was a family oriented one. Or maybe it was the anti-war sentiment of the piece.

My friend questioned whether she should continue with the theme. I wondered how she could not. It’s hard reality that difficult work may not find an approving audience or a welcoming venue. But hard work still needs to be done.

Challenging viewers is one of the honorable duties of a committed artist. But shock value has to be handled carefully. In my opinion, it’s morally wrong to use shock value just to provoke a reaction and draw attention to yourself. On the other hand, the world can be an inhospitable and unjust place. Not every artist feels compelled to address this in her lifetime, but if it’s the call you get, you must honor yourself, and answer.

Being Distinctive

2011-10-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

What are artists really seeking if it isn’t a way to better marry meaningful work to enjoyable work? Far too often, we pursue work that doesn’t have any personal significance. It isn’t distinctive in any way. Satisfying work begins with being able to start from meaning to create a work that seamlessly interprets your ideas OR it is work driven by a set of processes you love. In this case meaning is eventually unearthed as the work unfolds. Either way is satisfying. Any artist can start from either place, based on the goal at hand.

It takes a lot to be distinctive. In a recent class we tossed out the word unique because it’s cliche’d in this culture. But you could try it on for size by asking - what is unique about your particular take on a subject or process. Loads of people know how to do shibori. Loads of people know how to put dye on a screen and let it dry out so that it can be reactivated and printed later. Lots of people are thrilled by bubble wrap as a part of this printing. But technique has limitations. Most of it looks the same. If I line up fifteen samples of breakdown printing in a row, will I be able to tell who made what? Highly unlikely. The technique itself isn’t that distinctive.

And then there are artists who got there first. Nancy Crow appropriated and perfected improvisational piecing. Jan Myers Newberry has taken the use of shibori in quilts to a masterful level. Trying to outdo either of these masters is not for the faint hearted. I don’t think it can be done. So the point is - what are you going to do with a technique to make it distinctively your own?

There’s a lot of bad art in the world. There are bad paintings and bad art quilts. We don’t want to lose track of the basic reality Don Henley tapped when he wrote “You never see a hearse with a luggage rack.” My bottom line is the importance - the value - of the process. What you learn from engaging with materials. How making defines, refines and reshapes the core of your soul.

You may never achieve anything that is as famous or perfect as a Nancy Crow quilt. We’re not all visionaries. But you have a right to create distinctive work and this is a worthy goal. You’ll be more likely to succeed if you align your preferences, skill sets, and goals with what you care about. Because it is what you care about that makes work distinctive.

And it’s not just about content. You may care deeply about color or pattern or line. Passion is not predictable. It’s personal.

Simultaneous Contrast

2011-09-30T05:37:00.000-07:00

I had a great trip to the dentist last week.
Well, actually that’s only half true.

Having molar crowns replaced introduced me to a new experience: panic attacks. I couldn’t handle the cement form in my mouth. I started to choke and it got worse from there.

But the counter balance to the bad dentist appointments was a visual treat I am still processing.

The examining room had pale green walls. Chartreuse green, to be exact. Directly in front of my face, positioned so it was difficult to look away, was a computer monitor, used to display the inside of your mouth to the dentist - and to you - in case you care to look. The screen on the computer glowed an unusually vibrant red-violet.

Are you familiar with the term simultaneous contrast?
It’s a physical phenomenon that occurs inside your eyeball when you look at colors. Suffice it to say, those rods and cones you learned about in high school physiology are pretty miraculous devices. Simultaneous contrast always occurs when you look at one color a long time - say 60 seconds. The physiology of the eye causes it to generate the complement (opposite) to whatever color you are seeing. To discover simultaneous contrast for yourself, stare at a red square of paper on the wall for 60 seconds, and then look at a white wall. You will be rewarded by a green square (your eye’s reaction) on the white background. Kids love this. It's like magic.

The longer I stared at the red-violet computer screen in the dentist’s office, the more vibrant the chartreuse after-image on the wall became when I looked away from the screen. The visual effect was heightened because the wall color was already the complement to the computer screen color. So the illusory intensity of the chartreuse square on the chartreuse wall was heightened, and majorly incredible to my eyes.

There’s an important color lesson here for artists. Studying color is never over, and never enough. The more you understand the subtle complexities of visual phenomena, the more capable you are of deliberately employing color illusion in your work. Masterful use of color generates combinations that glow, vibrate, fade and illuminate shape; adding dimension where none actually exists. All illusion. Check out Richard Anuszkiewicz as a 20th century example of profound mastery over color.

The other thought rolling around in my head is harder to quantify. Simultaneous contrast generates an illusion, but it’s real. It’s really happening, but the color on the wall isn’t real. Stare long enough at the wall and the chartreuse square fades away. My eyes are left with the original chartreuse wall, nothing less and nothing more. I can reactivate the square over and over again by staring at the red-violet computer screen before returning my gaze to the pale green wall, but the square will always fade.

What’s that got to do with life as an artist? Or Life in general, for that matter? Most of us try again and again to produce the perfect image we see so clearly in our minds. On occasion, we triumph. What was inside is successfully interpreted outside. We live up to our potential.

But so often, the image fades and then reasserts itself. We struggle toward alignment. You’ve got to be in the right chair, with the right light, the right tools, and the right intention. Easy? Often not. But keep working anyway.

The Little Nutty Piece

2011-08-20T07:07:00.000-07:00

A non sequitur can denote an abrupt, illogical, unexpected or absurd turn of plot or dialogue not normally associated with or appropriate to that preceding it.
-Wikipedia

My therapist sister, Ann, says she is convinced we all have a little nutty piece. Your little nutty piece can be an elephant in the room if you don’t befriend it and acknowledge it, because a little nutty piece has the power to undo your equilibrium or totally annoy your friends if you don’t admit it’s there.

I've been drawing the conclusion that quite frequently a little nutty piece in your personality is there because it helps you deal with stress. So recognizing when a little nutty piece has kicked in may actually be a warning sign of mounting stress in your life.

When I am stressed I start waking up at four in the morning. It’s not uniformly bad. Four a.m. is also when I’ve gotten some of my best ideas – like the term complex cloth, interfacing stencils, and soy wax crayons. But more often that not, waking at four a.m. is problematic. Thinking turns into a minor panic attack and I can’t go back to sleep. That’s not good when you are expected to be fresh and fulsome for a class at 8 a.m.

I’ve mastered meditational breathing as a coping mechanism for this little nutty piece. Gradually breathing deeply, and focusing on the breath, works. Nine times out of ten I go back to sleep immediately. You might try this if you share insomnia as a sign of stress with me.

Byron Katie’s ideas have also helped. One of the questions she suggests you pose when you are troubled or stressed by your thinking is this: Where would I be without that thought?

When I wake up in the night, I ask myself where I would be without the thoughts. I start deep breathing. The answer is always simple: Without the thoughts, I’d be asleep again. So I go back to sleep. Doesn’t that sound crazy? But it’s true. It’s as if my mind is a little child, easily satisfied with a simple answer to a simple question.

But then there’s that tenth time. No amount of breathing or simple questioning quells the busy thinking in my head. Last night is an example of this.

Do you remember Ode to Billy Joe? If not, click on the title and check out the song.

“It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay
And at dinnertime we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet"
And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge"
"Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

Last night Ode to Billy Joe was playing endlessly in my head. Forty years more or less, since the song was a hit for Bobbie Gentry, and I still have the entire lyric in my head.

The fourth verse goes:

And Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?"
"I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite"
"That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today"
"Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way"
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
"And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

From four a.m. on, one question kept cycling in my brain:
What did “she and Billy Joe” throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?

Getting Started Again. Grrrr.

2011-08-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

One of the smartest pieces of advice I ever heard, came from a lecture the artist Nancy Crow gave at a conference in Ohio. “Always leave something unfinished,” she advised. “Then when you come home from a trip or you’ve been too busy to work, you’ll know where to begin.”

Good advice, but unfortunately I didn’t follow it the last time I left town.

I could blame it on the hectic preparation required when I am going to travel and teach for a month. I could blame it on the huge amount of time and energy that goes (I am recognizing this on a daily basis) into acquiring a new studio space. I could blame it on the many distractions of friends with hip and knee replacements, cancer, and/or the delight/trepidation of having a daughter who is a year away from college graduation. And assorted traffic tickets and car woes. (hers, not mine)

But it really comes down to not having any ideas.

In January I mounted a personal triumph – 48 pieces in the Etudes series. A few, very small bright ideas popped up in March and April. I assured myself that by the end of the summer teaching bits in August, I’d be good to go again.

But so far, no ideas. At least no bright ones.

What’s an artist to do?

I work best intuitively, but with a purpose. I adore having a goal, building tools to a theme and figuring out the symbolic significance of colors. But in the studio lately? Dry, dry, dry. As dry as the parched grass, or what’s left of it, in my backyard.

This afternoon I played around (rather listlessly) with some new Spoonflower fabrics. Tried combining them with each other, and then with hand printed dyed stuff. Not working. Not bad, but not singing, and why make anything any more - in this over-crowded creative world - if it isn’t going to sing?

Maybe because it’s therapy?
I can recall more than one conversation where all the artists in the room agreed that the alone time, the silence, often proved to be better than therapy.

I must agree. Maybe that’s the ticket. Alone time is what’s been missing. Since I didn’t leave myself an obvious start back into the routine of working (how could I forget about Nancy?) I am going to have to start from scratch.

But as another artist, the great Miriam Shapiro, once suggested, if in doubt or struggling, play. Fool around with materials or paints or whatever grabs your fancy and just begin.

So that’s where I’ll be tomorrow. Back in the studio, giving it another shot.

Because although the Tao te Ching states clearly that the journey begins with one small step, it takes a lifetime to get used to the idea that the journeys are never over. One creative journey begins and ends. If you are lucky or paying attention, you will have left a symbolic map and a compass on the shelf in the studio; ready to chart the course of the next trip.

Back Home

2011-08-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Things don’t always go the way we wish they would. I drove three days from upstate New York; eager to return to my beloved Texas landscape. The morning I crossed the state line it was 110 degrees in Austin. Parched earth and an occasional mini dust cyclone bore witness to the reality that Nature sometimes has a plan for us we wouldn’t choose ourselves. This entire part of the United States was bereft in the 1930’s; a Dust Bowl literally and figuratively. Lack of water dried up the verdant land, and every creative act of commerce attached to it. Hopes and dreams lay in ruins alongside abandoned possessions and property.

It was a sobering drive, since we’ve been in a serious drought here, and there is no sign of rain.

The drive provided plenty of thinking time. A close friend wrote, “Solitary long-distance driving provides respite, and time to process. That sort of aloneness away from our everyday tasks and responsibilities can feel like spending time with a long lost friend.” I whole-heartedly agreed, and added to the mix of my own thoughts, hours of other people’s thoughts. I listened to favorites – Caroline Myss, Krista Tippett interviews, and an assortment of other podcasts and lectures. Modern technology may not be able to solve a drought, but it effectively distracts by rolling rich ideas from a car radio.

Staying the course.

This phrase wove in and out of the landscape of my thoughts. No one will pick up and leave Texas just because we need water. We have to stay the course. While we wait for rain, we take measures to preserve the water we’ve got. When you’re stuck in a situation and you can’t get away from it, you stay the course and maintain. Do what it takes to keep moving forward, even if the forward motion is only baby steps. What other choice do you have? It never feels good to cut and run.

Unless it’s the right time to cut and run.

Because that’s the undeniable other side; the yang to the yin. It’s the small voice of intuition, niggling at first, but gradually growing – suggesting that the time has come to let go.

Dust Bowl settlers stayed as long as they could, but eventually the reality of the drought forced their hand. Leaving was the only choice left.

Dust Bowl. Drought. What did any of that have to do with me?

It’s because I’ve been trying to buy a new studio building. My current space has developed limitations, and I’d rather be proactive than find myself without a classroom space. Forty-five days into the first contract funding fell through, the down payment went up, and the building owner began to behave downright squirrelly - admitting to questionable business practices, and even lying about it.

Stay the course or cut and run?

It took one sleepless night in San Antonio to convince me that the nerve-fraying wasn’t worth it and would probably get worse. By the light of day I faxed my retreat from the contract to the title company. An imperceptible shift had occurred during the night. I recognized that the smartest thing I could do was cut and run.

And stay the course.

Then several amazing events transpired. Is it the proverbial closing of a door so a window can open? Caroline Myss calls it grace. You can’t force it. You may not deserve it. But when grace enters your life you know it. You are humbled by it.

The day after I cancelled my deal, a realtor friend emailed a listing with promise. A foreclosure. Space for an addition. A church parking lot two doors away. Did I want to make an offer? She’d taken the liberty of qualifying me for the mortgage amount.

The next day my offer was accepted. The money that was to be spent on the first property’s down payment can now go to the remodel. As long as I stay the course.

And what’s any of this got to do with you?
You have to stay the course, too. Or cut and run.

In the studio, it’s a delicate balance. Staying the course keeps you working. Keeps the experimentation going until you get that elusive dye bath color perfected. Until you learn how to hold the brush – or even which brush to choose – to make the perfect stroke. Staying the course confirms the intention of your conviction. You will master your materials. You will merge imagination with making. Heart and hands will work as one.

And when it’s time to cut and run, you’ll get it and you’ll do it. No more guilt over unfinished work that went AWOL. No more guilt when you open up studio space by taking a load of stuff to Goodwill. Cut and run at its best is an acknowledgment of growth, of change, and of the power of Intuition.

Wouldn’t this be a good lesson for our Congressmen and women?

Pinning and Unpinning

2011-07-27T04:11:00.001-07:00

The wind blew vigorously in Syracuse this week. Rain poured. Of course this is why I schedule workshops with an outdoor laundry component. It is a surefire way to attract rain. Let me know if you would like to hire me to provide this service in your area.

When I checked on the samples line-drying outdoors, the gusts whipping the clothesline high into the air were thrilling. The clothesline had become a giant, noisy kite. Cloth squares - whipping with little firecracker-like pops - threatened to sail off, borne by the wind. I set about pinning the pieces more securely to the line. I pinned and unpinned. Some of the pieces, pinned with a single peg, twisted into balls around the line. Longer lengths of silk enveloped me as I pinned and unpinned; gradually sorting out the line.

I was reminded of a folk tale I’ve heard. An old woman is weaving the fabric of Life from porcupine quills. She softens them by chewing on them and her teeth are brown and small, worn from endlessly chewing the quills. She must also stir the cauldron of Life and when she stops weaving to stir the pot, a black dog goes to her weaving and undoes every strand, so that the old woman’s tasks endlessly repeat.

Some people believe that if the black dog would just stop unweaving the fabric, Life would be perfect and trouble free. But it is actually the problems the black dog causes that keep the cycle of Life cycling. Without the problems, existence would be static. The re-weaving, the stirring, and the endless pinning to the line seem immutable. But the potential to stimulate creative thinking is the unspoken part of the equation. Whether affecting the cycle is possible or not, it’s the thinking about it - the envisioning spurred by the challenge - that keeps the cycle going.

Kahlil Gibran, the mystic poet, said this many ways in his classic, The Prophet. The line I am remembering this morning is “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.”

Your problems are your opportunity for fresh ideas.
I’ll think about that while I am joyfully pinning and unpinning today.

Creative Problem Solving

2011-07-19T16:01:00.000-07:00

A friend wrote today and noted wryly the distraction her studio work had become. She initiated her post by stating that she intends to make art the rest of her life, but qualified her intent by recognizing a perceived need for balance. Can you relate?

I laughed out loud when she described her garden - overrun by Queen Anne’s Lace (one of my personal favorites, so I saw this as positive) and thistle gone to seed. “There I was,” she wrote, “standing in a thistle patch with the shop vac, trying to suck up the seeds from the vegetation and ground. It looked like a cottonwood grove down there. But how whacko is that - an aging (well, probably little old) lady vacuuming her YARD? Yikes.”

Oh, I don’t know. Sounds like creative problem solving to me. I once used a shop vac to remove a dead rat (or what was left of it) from my hot tub. That was memorable.

Thinking about this led to a few other creative problem solving efforts I’ve witnessed lately. For instance, I took a tamale pot to my fabricator guy last week, and asked him to make a stainless steel chimney for it. I wanted a taller, bigger chimney than my current version, so we could steam longer, wider lengths of cloth in my next workshop. The next day he produced a new and improved stainless steel model with a flared edge. Now the stack sits on the pot, instead of inside it. His innovation added height to the steamer and expanded my steaming horizons exponentially. He grinned from ear to ear. Then he suggested we go into business together.

Even the cats I know have been problem solving this summer. Dexter, a yellow tabby with a mischievous personality and a heart a mile wide, went to live with a friend last April, when it was obvious he needed people. I was on the road more than either of us liked. His new hostess, Leila, wrote to me recently. She’d gotten Dexter a harness, because he longed to be outdoors, but the coyotes unnerved her.

Dexter proceeded to escape from the harness every time she put him in the yard. Mystified, Leila determined to disarm his trick. Prepared with a magazine and a cool drink, she stretched out in a lounge on the deck, ignoring Dexter, who lolled in the harness a few feet away.

Leila peered over the top of The New Yorker magazine. Dexter had forgotten about her, and was busily licking the fur on his right shoulder. When it was sufficiently damp, he switched to his left shoulder. In no time at all his fur gleamed with cat spit, allowing him to wriggle free of the harness. He sprang to the deck, and then to her lap, where he purred with yellow cat pride.

A brilliant cat move on his part. Creative problem solving at its best.

I take heart in stories that underscore one tenet of my life as an artist.
It isn’t always about creativity in the studio.

I guess I could be a monastic and make art alone - without friends or animals to distract. Carole could allow her garden to wither. We could sell our possessions and forsake the assorted pleasantries of life. But maybe seeking balance is part of the creative repertoire. Solving any problem creatively, no matter how small or insignificant, carries a reward that makes it worth it. It all adds up. I had a boyfriend once, who said his real goal was to be a hermit and play the trumpet up on the mountain all by himself while he meditated on the world and wished it peace. All I can say is that I think it's more admirable to stay in the trenches, spreading the good news of creative problem solving around right here, where we can use it. If it's good enough for the Dalai Lama and Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me.

And worthy food for thought when you’re on the road and the studio is a thousand miles away. It’s one of those circles of Life. Days unfold and then bingo - it will be back to the studio for me. And I'll have as much alone time as I can muster.

In the meantime, all I need to do is figure out how to teach twenty people to screen print on low tables where the wash-out is limited to three sinks and inadequate hot water.

No problem. We’re glad we came. And twenty-one heads are always better than one.

Donating to a Cause

2011-07-09T08:24:00.001-07:00

Summertime in the northern hemisphere, and it’s darn hot in the studio. I only go up there to feed the cats. Pretty Girl and Marshall lounge around on the printing tables. Stretching out in the pool of morning sunlight is a winter activity. Right now they prefer a table near the open window, where there is at least some semblance of a breeze.

Teaching occupies my days. I am away for weeks at a time. Never are May, June or July productive studio months. I laughed recently when a student asked how much time I spend in the studio and was visibly surprised when I reported that months go by without a single day of making. Summer is about money in the bank. Without resources, studio days couldn’t exist at all.

A book proposal is occupying any time that isn’t spent preparing for classes. I think I’ve finally got a handle on ideas I’ve cultivated for ten years. Maybe I just had to grow up; or at least get a little older. Perspective isn’t automatic. You have to live long enough to establish distance before perspective is relevant.

Mixed in with thoughts about writing and making are a few thoughts about sharing, because I’ve been asked to contribute work to two events this month.

Giving art to an auction or other good cause is dicey. A long time ago I donated a hand painted shirt to the local public TV fundraiser. I went to the station the evening the shirt was going to be auctioned and when it was time to offer it for bidding, the hosts made fun of it. A ha ha, wink, wink sort of fun, but it felt demeaning. I never donated anything to the station again. I took it personally.

What I realized once I got perspective was that the hosts didn’t understand fiber/textile work. To them it was just a weird shirt. This was proven out at another event, where my darling darling bought the piece I’d donated, rather than risk the embarrassment of not getting a single bid the entire evening.

By then it didn’t feel personal. It was just that no one got it.

Fast forward and here’s my theory and a piece of advice. I do support good causes – not all of them; that would be impossible. But I like to get work out there. It’s a good feeling. I don’t think much name recognition actually comes from it. You should never donate your art to a cause because you think it’s going to get you something. That’s a deal breaker. Donate because you believe in the cause and it’s the right thing to do.

And be selective about what you donate. It has to be good work. You don’t want something crappy out there with your name on it. You should be proud of what you’ve given. It’s helped me to think about my audience. If I am fairly certain the audience won’t relate to my serious work, then I do one of two things. I pass up the request to give art, and instead I give money. If the piece only brings in 25.00 or worse, doesn’t get any bid at all, then a check is a pragmatic alternative.

If I want to donate a piece of work, I choose something that I believe will be salable. This is practical, but it also gives me a chance to play with some materials or processes I might not use all the time. So I expand my range and abilities, which keeps things interesting. Photographs are a good choice, for instance. And one of my favorite organizations always provides the artists with a wooden box. It’s good – the exhibit is integrated by the similarity of the materials, and the artists work with limitations that challenge and inspire them. The photos included today are of my piece for that event. It’s titled Hail, Hail….and the day of studio time it took to make it was a gift I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.

San Francisco artist Jane Baker demonstrates the ultimate expression of generosity through making donations of art. Granted, Baker doesn’t need the income generated by sales of her work. Remember, we each have a singular path and hers isn’t mine, or probably yours. But hers is a good path. Baker donates every penny of her sales to charity, and allows the buyer to participate in deciding where the money will go. This is just another example of how we can move past institutional structuring and do good creative, generous things because we see the need and choose to meet it.

And have some fun at the same time. When I teach at Quilting by the Lake next week, I’ll get to be part of the annual apron auction. Each instructor embellishes a QBL apron and those are auctioned to support the scholarship fund. (By the way, there is still room in one of my classes there.) Two years ago Laura Wasilowski and Katie Pasquini vamped it up while I sang Honey Bun from South Pacific. This year I can’t divulge the whole plan related to the bidding on my apron, but I can say it will involved a hula hoop with lights. Sometimes you just have to cut loose and have some fun while you’re raising money for a good cause.

And isn’t it great that we can? Because we can do anything we want; we’re grownups.

Preconceived Notions

2011-07-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

This week the film, Buck, opened in theaters, and it’s worth seeing. This is a guy who was abused within an inch of his life as a child, performed rope tricks blindfolded on the rodeo circuit with his brother - at the command of his tyrant father, and spent the last half of his teenage years in a foster home, along with fifteen other boys – in what must have been a summer camp atmosphere.

The resiliency of the human spirit is astonishing. As an adult, Buck runs horse training seminars, taught Robert Redford how to ride for The Horse Whisperer, and has raised strong, equally resilient daughters, one of whom accompanies him on summer road trips and ropes and rides almost as well as he does.

The horses in the film are magnificent and endearing. The scenery is breath-taking. The loneliness of being on the road nine months of the year is palpable. But the insights Buck shares about horses and human nature, and the gentle humor he infuses into those insights, is priceless. Never in the movie was Buck described as a wounded healer, that is, someone whose ability to heal others stems from also having been damaged. But his willingness to recount the past, and the thoughtful processing of the links between then and now, speak for themselves. This is a man who took all of the pain heaped on him in early life, transcended it, and turned it into a deeply sensitive understanding of what happens inside a horse’s brain when it is confronted by human idiosyncrasy. Buck is a modern mystic, someone able to empathize beyond ordinary understanding, in his interactions with both horses and humans.

Watching Buck changed my preconceived notion of horses (and even animals in a very broad sense), and gifted me with an appreciation I don’t think I could have gotten any other way.

I’ve also been to the gym this week. I love ITunes and my Ipod. There are only three choices for television in the middle of the day. Vapid (soap operas and talk shows), mean-spirited bordering on evil (Jerry Springer and all the judge shows) or confrontational (news and sports channels). I try to score a treadmill at the back of the gym so I can’t see any of the screens. I focus on music, pump it up and get going.

Unless the Ipod dies mid-workout. Which it did. Don’t be a crab. A little television never hurt anyone. I chose The Talk, a women’s show featuring Sharon Osbourne (wife of Ozzy), Holly Robinson Peete (I’ve always liked her) and Sara Gilbert (the daughter on Roseann), along with two other female actresses.

They were talking about the differences between sons and daughters. Oh my God. It was shocking. I know there are differences between boys and girls. But these women were in agreement that having a daughter was harder, a lot harder and almost a handicap. One of the actresses had just had Ultrasound and is expecting a girl. She asked their advice. “Good luck.” one of them offered, but there wasn’t any joy in it. It was all resignation.

“Girls are so full of drama. They wear you out emotionally.” Everyone nodded. “And it goes on forever. Boys move out.”

Fifty-four percent of Americans under the age of 30 would prefer to have a boy.
What?

Never was there any discussion related to whether the drama results because of pre-conceived ideas of what girl children are like. Did it occur to anyone that children (boys and girls) become who they are partly because of what is modeled for them?

I know lots of young women. I have a daughter and four nieces. I haven’t ever felt any real difficulty or drama in our lives because of them. I know it’s out there. It isn’t as though I haven’t witnessed it. When I do, it’s often clear that the seeds of the drama were watered, instead of being weeded out, at home. Where is the mental health of mature parenting? Of mature mothering?

Right now, this is about a man who overcame the preconceived notion of what his life could be like as an adult, and the real time reality of children being raised in an atmosphere of restrictive preconceived notions.

But it’s also about this aspect of human thinking in a broader sense. Read But Is It Art? Cynthia Friedland’s readable guide to art theory and criticism, and it turns out nothing, including art and making, is immune to preconceived notions. Maybe that’s what theory is.

More on Friedland’s book next week.

In the meantime, if you get a chance to go see Buck, grab it. He doesn’t have any pre-conceived notions about what his daughter can do. And you’ll enjoy watching them together.

Alone Time

2011-06-25T21:55:00.000-07:00

It was supposed to be a well-deserved retreat after ten days of teaching and lecturing at the Surface Design Association conference. My youngest sister and brother-in-law procured the cabin on the St. Croix River well in advance of our June dates, and we rallied – not the entire family, but seven of us, including a young niece and her husband. The three hour drive north of the Twin Cities was easy enough, fueled by Starbucks and a stop to acquire a major stash of micro-brews and hard cider.

Minnesota is gloriously green in June, especially when compared to my drought stricken back yard in San Antonio. We reveled in the cool temperatures and upon arriving, stocked the fridge and set off on a hike, spirits high; all bouncy conversation and good humor.

About a mile from the cabin, mist settled over the woods. Half a mile more and intermittent sprinkling couldn’t be denied. At the two mile mark we agreed unanimously to turn back, and just as we did so, the rain began in earnest. Fast walking was good. Running was better. The sky opened. We got soaked.

We skidded up to the cabin’s front door and began peeling off wet layers. And then, oddly in unison, we looked down. We were covered with ticks. Hundreds of ticks. It was as though we’d stepped into a huge pit of creepy, skittering deer ticks. At this point I think I went into shock because I don’t remember what we did to get them off. I just remember eventually getting my turn in the bathroom, where I stripped, and picked two dozen ticks off my legs, flicking each one into the toilet. Then I ran the hottest shower I could stand, and scrubbed myself from head to toe. I wrapped my clothing in a plastic bag, and tied it shut. I still felt creepy.

Everybody still felt creepy. We discussed the virtues of a hotel in Duluth and cracked open a few microbrews. Ann and Mary talked about getting dinner started. We ate and played cards and argued about politics for a while. My niece cried. I was reminded that sometimes families repeat scenarios from the past without even realizing it. Her tears jumpstarted instant memories of a long past vacation, during which I argued fiercely with my own father in a cabin in the woods, shattering the quiet of our family outing.

But this would all be ok. We were creeped-out and disappointed and tired, but morning would make it all right. I knew everyone would bounce back as soon as the sun came out and breakfast was served.

But it was time for me to go home.

So on Sunday morning I repacked the car and set out on the twenty-two hour drive to San Antonio. The morning was transparent and fresh. When I stopped for coffee I realized I was exhausted. Not bodily tired. Not too tired to drive. But mentally whipped. It was time to be alone.

I think it’s hard to admit you need time to be alone. Down time gets lip service, but there’s always that internal/external sideways glance - what’s wrong with you? We’re all in this together aren’t we? You must be awfully weak. Some people are affronted and consider it a rebuff. It’s hard to keep it from getting personal. They think you don’t want to be around them.

But it’s not usually about them.

And it doesn’t change the reality of needing alone time.

The drive was long, but it wasn’t hard. Fourteen hours later, in Oklahoma City, I parked in front of a Hampton Inn, got a room, and went to bed. Easy. The up side of living in a country plastered with hotel chains. I always know what to expect from a Hampton Inn.

But the interior life of the day was rich and still lingers. I listened to Bobby McFerrin twice, once in Iowa and once In Oklahoma. (The benefits of Public Radio) Interviewed by Krista Tippett, he was inspiring and delightful from start to finish; but what resonated was his description of rising in the morning and pacing, literally pacing, in his living room, alone. This is the precursor to his busy days. Alone time. Thought time. Pacing. Movement.

Which threaded back to a wonderful talk India Flint gave at the SDA conference. She described her practice of wandering and singing, simultaneously; no matter where she finds herself in the world. She admitted that she feels quite safe in this activity, since even muggers don’t want to deal with crazy ladies. At the end of a phrase or a verse, she stoops down and picks up whatever leaf or flower or weed that happens to be in her path. These become the dye stuffs used to color her magnificent cloth.

I was struck by how grounding such an activity must be. And now I see the connection. Pacing, driving, walking and singing – these are physical acts. I mentioned these similarities to my friend George and he told me that when his five children were small, the only alone time he had was at 3 a.m. He walked around his Austin neighborhood, composing poems in his head, and then went home and wrote them down.

So I am reconsidering movement in solitude. I can sit meditation. I can stay in the pew and pray. I can stitch or dye alone in my studio, but these activities are stationery. How to work in movement as part of my solitary time? Maybe that’s what my bike rides do. But I am contemplating slow, quiet walks. And singing.

What Matters?

2011-06-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

This is the text of the lecture I gave last week at the Surface Design Association conference in Minneapolis. Several readers requested that I post it on line. It's long - longer than a typical post, since the talk was about an hour. Maybe print it out to read the entire text.
In the fall it should be available as a free podcast on the SDA site. I hope it will provide food for thought:

We are here to investigate this question:
What makes someone creative?

I. All of human culture is one massive creative act. If a system or activity isn’t driven by genes, it is driven by human creativity. Our evolution as a species is all about the gradual invention and creation of domains - specialized areas of the information.
Examples of domains are Science. Art.The Written Word. Music. Government. Each of these exists because of a series of cumulative creative acts.

Within every domains there are fields.
These are even more specialized areas of interest. Sculpture. Painting. Collage. Photography. and that’s just ART.
Think of science and you’ll see immediately that the specialized fields include Physics. Botany, Biology - and, since evolution is occurring even when we don’t acknowledge it because we are right in the middle of it, the specialties are becoming more specialized.

Think about it: Religion. Even religion is evolving....because if a field or a domain isn’t continuously welcoming new information and incorporating discoveries, it is a dead field. And since every aspect of human existence (every living bit of existence) is governed by the same set of fundamental and universal principles (like gravity) Religion must evolve just like Science must evolve. Otherwise it would be dead. IS that what they meant when they used to say God is Dead? We humans couldn’t accept that God could evolve along with the rest of us? (Or at least the systems that honor God....)

Domains are alive as long as they are organic and open to innovation and change. Change and innovation happen because within the subset of Fields, creative people are investigating, seeing, thinking, guessing and discovering. Those discoveries can’t happen in a vacuum, others have to be able to hear about them and embrace them:
SO: When an idea reaches a critical mass of acceptance, then the field, and the domain, change.

And it all begins with Memes.
Let’s talk about Memes.
The funny version is the ham story. The young woman, following her mother’s lead, cuts the end off the ham every time she bakes it. Finally she asks why - was it to make it more flavorful? Juicier?
No, says her mother. I cut off the end to make it fit in the pan.

Or consider the lyrics from the musical, South Pacific:
You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

White people were afraid of everyone else when that lyric was written in the early 1950’s. Now it is references an attitude - a meme - we have been working to dismantle for several hundred years, and there is still work to do around it.

So memes are the units of information. Memes build each domain and by extension, build the culture. Within the culture there are certain memes we believe about being creative:
Here are a few examples:

Only some people are creative
Being an artist is a huge gift given only to a select few
You aren’t a successful artist unless you win awards
OR get into a good gallery
Or make a bunch of money

II. In fact, there are some observations on record about creative people.
Mlhalyi Csikszentmihalyi wrote a book called Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. In it he shares these observations:

If creative people are anything, they are complex personalities. This means being able to live with paradox. To be willing to embrace the shadow side as well as the light.

Carl Jung called this a mature personality. Every one of a person’s strong points has a repressed shadow side that most of us refuse to acknowledge. An orderly person longs to be spontaneous, and vice versa. Not good or bad - rather archetypal qualities that are neutral aspects of the Self. It is how we, as individuals, act on the qualities of shadow or light that can throw things out of balance in our personal and artistic lives.

Csikszentmihalyi theorizes that complex personalities move back and forth between extremes as the occasion demands. He describes sets of personality traits as:

1. A high level of physical energy, but also a need to be quiet and at rest.

2. Being smart but naive at the same time. This intelligence is a Core intelligence - not special brilliance, but a curiosity and willingness to seek intellectual stimulation.

3. A combination of playfulness and discipline. Lightness, irreverence, detachment combined with a willingness to work hard.

4. An ability to move between imagination and reality. Being able to see the future while keeping a sense of past.

5. The ability to harbor both introverted and extroverted tendencies simultaneously. Physicist John Wheeler said: “If you don’t kick things around with people, you’re out of it. Nobody, I always say, can be anybody without somebody around.”

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. They know upon whose backs they stand and willingly acknowledge this, but are also rightfully proud of their own achievements.

7. Psychologically androgynous. Able to embrace male and female “qualities” and live with these within one mind and body.

8. Creative people are thought of as both rebellious and independent. This is a paradox because in order to be good in a field it is important to internalize the “rules” of the domain. Not to do so would mean working in obscurity or a sort of vacuum. So a willingness to become traditional is usually evidenced. Creative people are both traditional and independent. Being only traditional leaves a domain unchanged; constantly taking chances or being rebellious for its own sake rarely leads to ideas or creations that have the potential to change the domain.

9. Passion + Objectivity = Energy. Tension exists between being attached to, and in love with what you are doing/making, versus being rigorous and honest with yourself about the outcome/product/process. No passion? You lose interest. No objectivity, and what you do isn’t very good.

10. Creative people express an openness and sensitivity that leads to both great happiness and the potential for hurt feelings, suffering, unhappiness. This is a vulnerability that can go either way.

Remember: All of these traits and pairs of traits are present in varying amounts in all human beings, but in different quantities.
Creative people may have pairs of paradoxical traits. Not every creative person has every set of traits. Plenty of creative people have a little of this, and none of that and loads of something else, and pairs that are out of whack.

SO: the reality of our individual strengths and weaknesses indicates that we should handle the information, the abilities, the same way.

III. By sharing them.

Paradox: We’ve been learning, evolving, inventing, expanding - information, ideas, scientific thinking, approaches to music, art and making, But we’ve also been buying into a consumer culture that has gradually hijacked community in favor of commodities.

Consumer “demand” - for better food, and cheaper prices, and better availability of everything from shoes to computers = using human inventing and creating to get and market more stuff for everybody...

Marketing removes us from the source of where and how our “stuff” is produced.
Children don’t know where milk or vegetables come from.
Adults are even more likely to enjoy STUFF without thinking about origins...

Becoming a consumer culture has affected our thinking/beliefs about other parts of life too. We’ve turned over lots of tasks we used to do ourselves, or asked friends to help us with, to professionals. For example:
Counselors
Financial advisors
day care
dog walkers
personal chefs

NOW. Don’t get me wrong. Progress is GOOD. This is a democracy (my father always said.) Consumer culture is mainly a problem when paying for services rather than doing it ourselves impacts our sense of connection to other people - or our sense of community, or our own sense of self esteem.

IV. SO: Let’s talk about community.
In The Abundant Community, (written by John McKnight and Peter Block) the authors suggest that there are three properties of competent community that are worth making an effort to cultivate:
sharing gifts
being hospitable and welcoming strangers in
nurturing associational life

(btw - associational life is any group that shares a love of the same thing - boats, beets, or fiber art processes...)

If we don’t act intentionally to cultivate these gifts:
sharing gifts
welcoming strangers
acting associationally

then we lose them by default to consumer culture.

When we DO choose to intentionally cultivate the properties, we are acting in the best possible way to encourage innovation, discovery and new ways of looking at things.

In a scientific community, if the community is healthy, individuals work on projects, theories - using their individual gifts - and when a discovery is made, it is shared with others on the project or in the field - associationally. Strangers (new scientists) are welcomed into this community because of the contribution they may be able to make to the furthering of the group’s goal.

Key to this is the word intentionally. We would be naive to ignore the reality of human frailty when it comes to jealousies, pettiness, envy, and the lot. Those feelings exist in scientists and artists, and in quilt guilds and prayer circles. But acknowledging them openly is the first step to neutralizing them. One evil thing consumer culture has done, is to insinuate into the culture a fear of scarcity. There won’t be enough. I won’t get mine. That some THING is so important I’d better get up at five in the morning and stand in line at Best Buy, or I won’t get what I want. There won’t be enough.

We can and must choose to believe there is enough.
There is abundance. If I don’t get into an exhibition this time, I’ll get in next time. This is only one moment. There are millions of moments ahead of me that will be better; different.

So back to community. If we see the good in cultivating community, sharing our gifts, being with people who love what we love, then there are qualities we can foster that will make the experience richer:
These properties create a fertile environment where certain capacities can grow -
Kindness
Generosity, which is making an offer for its own sake, not for its exchange value
Cooperation - For me to win, you must win.
Statesmanship - setting aside person preferences for the group good.
Forgiveness, which signals a new beginning, and choosing to stay in present time.
An acceptance of imperfection - recognizing that our gifts are intertwined with our limitations and being willing to deal with it, without passing judgment.
Mystery - which creates space for what is unknowable in life, and honors it.

When we work intentionally to foster the above properties and capacities in the community we are part of, we open the way to a life of satisfaction and creativity.

V. In order to be in community you have to know yourself. We each have to decide what to keep, what to dump, in the effort to make more time for what matters.

So far this lecture might not seem to be about making, but it is. Your whole life is one long and connected creative act. YOU are the only person who can be the unique being who will never be repeated again on the face of the earth. You are uniquely qualified for the job. And yes, life is going to unfold, whether you direct it to or not.

PARADOX: Life is going to happen no matter what you do. So why not take control of what happens? Ha! You can be intentional about your choices, you can be thoughtful. This is all good. However, the most basic lesson is recognizing that after having become intentional, you will allow life to unfold as it is going to unfold, and there is nothing your intentions can do to change that reality.

Life happens. Your best intention is to allow it to do so, without getting in the way, and by being constantly present.

We might ask:
What works against cultivating a creative life?
Being exhausted by too many demands.
Not knowing how to protect the energy we have. getting easily distracted.
Laziness. lack of discipline.
Not knowing what to do with what you’ve got.

TRY THESE STRATEGIES:

Cultivate Curiosity.
Try to be surprised by something every day.
Life is a stream of experiences. Swim in it.
Try to surprise someone every day.
Write down these two events.
When something sparks interest - follow it.

None of the above will sustain on its own. PRACTICE. is needed.
Your thoughts are your life. This is about habits. NEW HABITS.
In the film What the Bleep Do We Know one theorist suggested waking up and visioning the day - just at that moment between wakefulness and sleep. While the veil between conscious and unconscious mind is still translucent.

In addition to fostering that unique timing, consider:

Learning to do something well. Working toward mastery.
Increase levels of complexity to keep things engaged.
Evaluate what you know how to do or what to do better.
Be rigorous with yourself. Let go of guilt, criticism and mean self talk.
BE TOUGH. BUT SHOW SOME COMPASSION TOWARD YOURSELF.

CULTIVATE TOTAL DIGNITY AND HONORING OF YOURSELF.

and through that honoring, GET your life back.

How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.

~ Wendell Berry ~

There are so many things we do to fit an external perceived requirement, rather than choosing for ourselves. Albert Einstein wore the same clothing for weeks. When criticized, he said he just wanted to put his energies in more important places.
How could you realign your preferences?

The slow food movement is an example of consumers taking food culture into their own hands. My friend Elaine Lipson did the same thing when she proposed the slow cloth movement. Sewing by hand. dyeing with natural dyes. This is worth considering.

THE WHOLE DIY CULTURE SIGNIFIES A REDIRECTION OF INTENTION AND THINKING WHERE CONSUMER CULTURE AND PREFERENCES ARE CONCERNED.

SO: What could you toss out that would leave room for something more significant?
Because we’re working toward the SACRED here. Why would you squander any time at all on anything you haven’t chosen for yourself? 

Now of course we don’t live in a vacuum. We CHOOSE to take care of children, to be in relationship. We choose community. But what about all the things we don’t intentionally choose. What if we stripped those back and started over?

The point is that the clearer you are about what you prefer, and the more intentional you are about your choices, the more you have to offer others when you choose to engage with them. Make Time for yourself and then your time spent with others will be quality time.

Get control of your SPACE -

What do you LIKE and what do you HATE? It is astonishing how few people are conscious as far as this is concerned. Figure it out and do more LIKE and less HATE.

“The only way to stay creative is to oppose the wear and tear of existence with strategies that organize time, space and activity to your your advantage.”

It’s one thing to recognize what matters to you. It’s another to have the courage to act on it.

Most of us have to rehearse the truth until we find the courage to live it.
Repetition isn’t a failure, it’s the heart’s way of learning to be in the world.

There are TWO versions of repetition.
One is unconsciously reliving scripts - replaying the past without learning anything from it - mostly not even aware we are doing it. this is a trap and we feel stuck when we are caught in these situations.
Dealing with life this way is reaction based. We’re not awake yet.

The opposite of unconscious repeating is rehearsing as a conscious choice - intentional - conscious repeating.

In this form we practice dealing with what Life has given us until we have practiced our way into honest living.
This is a very solid place to be and also humbling but freeing, because to accept this as a way to behave means you are being completely honest with yourself. If you can’t be honest with anyone else, at least don’t lie to yourself.

You may find this difficult, because it means you become very vulnerable emotionally. From an artist’s standpoint, an example would be telling someone how to do something you discovered yourself even though you know they may copy you. maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Can you share from a place that assumes there is enough for everybody?

And where do healthy boundaries fit into this? I have a right to keep a process to myself, don’t I? Why should I tell someone else how to do something?
I take my lead from Starhawk, who wrote:

I am a woman creating myself and all I can figure is
I'm on my own. This I have learned:
All of our activities should be influenced by the pleasure,
not the pain, principle. We have not come into the world to suffer,
or to inflict suffering.
Every day do something that is good only for you. Selfish?
No. Self possessed.
Balance it out by doing something equally good
for the benefit of all...
This will depend on your opportunities.
Only you will know what you can do.
If you are an artist use your power to be original-
to try to heal the wounds you see around you.
Everything we do needs passion to be done well.
Passion is precious. It indicates good mental health.
Use it as an important energy source all day.

You are probably familiar with the idea that we keep encountering the same situation over and over again until we finally get the lesson in it. So when I am half way into an experience and suddenly have a flash of deja vu, it’s time to pay attention. I’ve done this before. what am I supposed to be learning?

Portia Nelson’s poem sums it up:

I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost...
I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in...it’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

So breaking patterns and establishing new habits take practice and takes repeating.

And what’s it going to get you?

A different reality.
A clearer sureness about what matters.
A clearer head in the studio.

And how do you know?

You don’t know. But imagine a lemon right now. Do you salivate? Can you feel the tartness in your mouth. Is that real?

The sensation is most definitely real.
Thinking has generated a physical response.

If you acknowledge this, then perhaps you can also acknowledge that how you think may truly create your reality.

By sharing you find generosity.
By forgiving, you find forgiveness,
By being clear about yourself, you find clarity with others.

Naomi Nye wrote this poem:

The Art of Disappearing

When they say Don't I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It's not that you don't love them anymore.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

I love that last part. At first glance I thought this poem was about someone who is anti-social. But it isn't. Instead the poem seems to me, to end with a message which is "this is how I am intentional".

Ceramist Eva Zeisel (now 104 years old) - when interviewed by Csikszentmihalyi had another way of characterizing intentionality:

“I was thinking how to convey my accumulated wisdom to my granddaughter. And one of the things I thought to tell her is that one tries to do good and one tries to produce something. I find that my craft helped me very much to make life meaningful; because once you make a pot and it is outside you, it makes your life kind of justified and not flimsy. After all you go through,at the end you die, and it makes your life, well, more satisfying. It justifies your existence.

Then the question of doing good for society. Don’t forget that all of our contemporaries and ourselves had big ideologies to live for. And at the end it turns out that none of these ideologies was worth your sacrificing anything for. Even doing personal good is very difficult to be absolutely sure about. it’s very difficult to know exactly whether to live for an ideology or even to live for doing good. But there cannot be anything wrong in making a pot, I’ll tell you. When making a pot you can’t bring any evil into the world.

So what matters comes down to these questions:

Will you choose intentional creation?
Will you choose to share your gifts with the community?
Will you cherish yourself as artist and original being?

We, the members of SDA, are an association - by definition, a collection of people who share a love of the same thing.

I hope this week, during this conference and away into the months ahead, we will bravely engage in conversations about ALL of the things that we love - all of our challenges - all of our fears. I challenge you to turn to someone you have just met, to seek out those who know you well - and talk frankly with one another. Decide between you what matters, and then go out into the world and pursue it with joyful abandon.

Thank you.

Owl Quest

2011-06-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on an owl quest for most of my adult life. Why the sense of connection? Why a belief in the creature as a totem or familiar? I don’t really know. But as much as I want to see one, I never seem to be in the right place at the right time.

Ten years ago, I stayed with hosts in northern California. We drove out to the hills, to a spot where they regularly called owls via a pre-taped recording. They assured me they were rarely disappointed. But that night we shivered expectantly in the frigid air for two hours; finally giving up because I had to teach the next morning. The owls were no where to be found.

And what about my friend Niki? She spent several summers hiking in a local park with Katie, her Texas Brown Dog, relishing the cool mornings; rebuking the oppressive heat of midday. More than once they encountered an owl dissecting a small rabbit or a mouse in the dry creek bed. She always called me on the spot; eager to share the gory details and the magnificence of the bird. I was always green with envy. But no owl for me.

And just last month?
My friend Diana visited the San Antonio Museum of Art at dusk on a Tuesday evening. The next morning she beamed as she produced the photo on her phone - an owl gazing directly at her, framed by one of the museum windows. I couldn’t believe it. How had she noticed it - on that branch opposite a third floor window?

“I just looked out the window and there he was!” she laughed delightedly.

Grrrrr.

So. Summer 2011. My morning bike ride lasts about an hour. I tour miles of manicured lawn before turning into a surprising stretch of urban wildness, which serves as a buffer between the stately neighborhood and a sprawling north/south highway. I adore the contrast of smooth green lawns with the tangled vines that threaten to choke the Live Oak trees towering above the bank to my right. Every morning of this ride - every summer for several years - I’ve scanned the woods, anticipating the flourish of wings that would reward me if I startled an owl.

To no avail.

Bursts of Cardinal red. The silhouette of a Red Tail Hawk, hunkered over an arroyo gone dry in the drought. But never the coveted owl.

Last week I rode and I pondered. Rode and pondered. That’s the routine by which the hour long ride is paced. I pedal and consider my Year of Letting Go. The elusive safety net of health that once held my beloved family and friends. Gone. The solid form of relationship that wasn’t so solid after all. Gone. The crisp, precious reality of this single moment. All we have. All I have.

The owl quest popped into my head. OK. It’d been a lot of years. Maybe time to let it go. I could be ok with that.

I rounded the next corner, and peered into the woods, softly lit by the dawning light. Of course. There it was. A Barred Owl, not six feet from the road. Eye level.

I laughed out loud. It startled and flew, majestically, and only a few feet further along the road. I got off the bike and walked until I was even with the bird again. This time we took turns looking at each other and then looking away, until it tired of me, and lifted from the branch, deep into the woods.

My ride home was a mix of elation and awe. Even better, three days later on my ride, I saw the owl again. Same tree. Same branch. I was learning where to look. And to ride quietly on my path.

Somehow, seeing the owl clarified how I think about time and being. I would usually say if asked, that I’m lucky. That many of my successes have been about being in the right place at the right time. But this week, I witnessed the illusion of timing. I can’t control time. I can’t plan to be in the right spot. I can only show up and pay attention.

But it helps to pedal quietly. Then I don’t screw up something I would have missed because of my noisy, misguided meandering.

And it helps to remember where to look. If I found inspiration there before, I might find it there again.

I’ve been away, so I haven’t seen the owl again. But I have no doubt that I will. As long as I show up, keep pedaling, and don’t forget where to look.
I’ll keep you posted.

Loving the Artist You Are

2011-05-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

Two of my recent essays discuss individual artistic style. Where it comes from. Developing a style. Refining the style you’ve already got. From the standpoint of entering juried shows and presenting work to the world, cultivating a cohesive style is a valid concept.

But as I sat with a participant in my workshop last week, I saw that we needed to further peel back the layers of what personal style is, in order to go deeper. I realized that before personal style can be cultivated, expectations about personal style have to be dropped.

Ruth pinned up eleven samples she’d produced in our workshop. We were in Day Five and winding down. What did I think she should do next? she wondered. I studied the vibrant, lively patterns she’d created on the cloth.

“What do you see?” I asked.

She launched into an evaluation of the work, saying that it wasn’t quite right color-wise, that it wasn’t sophisticated enough, that it fell short when she looked at the class samples others had taped to the wall. She liked one of her pieces ok, but really, couldn’t a child have done equally good work?

I pondered this and didn’t answer immediately, so to fill the silence, she continued, dismissing the simple shapes (which I found charming) and the colors, which disappointed her. (Even though these were samples and she’d never done anything like this until four days earlier.)

I interrupted to ask what she meant by sophisticated. Ruth struggled to put words to the term. “You know,” she said. “Smaller, neater, not so loose…” She pointed at the work of a participant a few tables away. “More like that…”

Here’s a trap we get ourselves into: We judge our own work by comparing it to other artists’ work. Or worse, we judge it using a whole pile of terminology we’ve never actually analyzed, so we don’t even know what we mean and we don’t realize we are being critical of what is essentially our innate artist self.

Now I am NOT saying that I should just accept what I make as-is, and drop being driven to improve my stitching, my brushstroke, my ability to match color – or any of the other techniques in the toolbox that allow me to experience mastery of process.

But I am suggesting that before we get to mastery of technique, maybe it’s worth investigating our beliefs where innate personal style is concerned. Because it is what it is. And what it IS is basically good.

It’s our belief about what it is that gets us into trouble.

In my mastery program I have numerous goals for my participants. I want them to get better at using color, so we do hundreds of color exercises. I want them to get better at technique so we do dye studies, discharge and resist studies, and lots of other technique-based studies. I want them to realize the art world is huge and endlessly fascinating, so we study other artists and genres and we allow these to influence what we make ourselves. But my number one goal for my students is that at the end of the program, each of them loves her own work best.

Working as an artist and succeeding is a thinly veiled exercise in building self esteem. It takes ego to stick with it; to enter shows, be rejected, enter again and persevere. It takes ego and stamina to put up with all the dumb remarks people make about work they don’t understand or honor. So ego is required. Ego is public.

Self esteem is more important than ego. Self esteem is private. Self esteem means you feel good about what you do even when you are alone in the studio. You have made friends with your innate style and you are willing to love it as you would love a small child – unconditionally. Acknowledging that maybe there are some refinements to be made, and therefore, educating yourself as you would educate a child. Encouraging the innate YOU the Artist to grow and expand into your full potential.

Think about the words you use when you describe your work. Pick those words apart until you have discarded the dismissive or demeaning words. Because self-talk counts. Respect yourself as the maturing artist you are. Use only kind, encouraging words to describe where you are in your development and what you hope to achieve.

There’s a reason we are blessed with individual style. Humans are complex beings. Balancing all of our complex parts is important. If Ruth is a woman with a detail-oriented job - one that requires exact and specific abilities - is it any surprise that her artist self is loose and big and bursting with energy? Her artist self is balancing the part that has to focus on nickels and dimes to get the day job done. It’s a release and a relief. Her after-hours assignment is to embrace the reality of her Artist Self and work with it instead of against it.

That’s the bottom line. As Katherine Hepburn said, “If you please yourself at least one person is happy.” So do some investigating. If you discover you’ve been critical of your Artist Self, resolve to change.

Balance self-esteem and ego with a healthy effort to refine style and visual voice, and your artist feet will be on solid ground. You’ll love your own work best. And no one can take that away from you.

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T08:05:00.000-07:00

(Jane and Zenna circa 1989. Taken by our friend Beth Thurber, with a pinhole camera)

This morning I went for my ritual bike ride. I try to get started before 8 a.m. if I can. It’s too hot to ride if I go any later.

In 2007 I had an altercation with a dog that pitched me onto the street. Thrown from the bike, I skidded on my face and got pretty torn up. It took a year to begin riding again, and my return was tentative. I never knew when I might encounter another dog, and I was fearful. But this old dog figured out a new trick recently, when it occurred to me that I could choose to ride in an upscale neighborhood where the animals are restrained by their owners, rather than in my own beat-up neighborhood, where we are still working out the details of neighborly behavior, and dogs frequently run loose.

A mile from my house, and riding through trimmed, gloriously green streets, I ruminated on the current drought, and the lush, well-watered growth around me. Several yards sported starter plants – set out by industrious gardeners I’d observed on earlier rides. Was planting new stuff a symbol of wealth? Pride at being able to afford the watering? Thumbing the proverbial nose at the aquifer’s water level and city restrictions?

I pedaled and fumed. Then I remembered a book I am reading. The author suggests we question our belief systems and personal stories – in an effort to investigate conclusions that we’ve drawn. I pedaled and poked around in my brain for another way to perceive the new plantings, the swishing of the sprinklers, and the broad expanses of neatly trimmed green lawn.

What about Hope? What about wanting to generate beauty in the world? This ride was certainly more enjoyable because of the landscaping. All private. No taxpayer expense involved. And certainly artistic sensibility is engaged in organizing foliage and blooming color. How could anyone argue with oxygen-producing, chlorophyll-generating beauty? I pedaled and appreciated the quiet morning and hopefulness – now evidenced all around me.

On this American Mother’s Day holiday, I see mothering the same way. What more creative, hopeful act is there, than bringing another living being into existence? In this world where it so often feels as though we are experiencing a drought of good sense, kindness and compassion, what more positively defiant act is there, than choosing to mother?

So I take my hat off to mothers everywhere. The mothers who are standing up to corrupt, sexist governments in the Mideast, to mothers in Africa bearing the burden of real drought and debilitating hunger, to homeless mothers on the street corners in cities across the US. And to all of us who refuse to give up hope for our children and for the world. Happy Mother’s Day.

Settling a Score

2011-05-02T12:19:00.001-07:00

Verse 31
Tao te Ching
Stephen Mitchell translation

Weapons are the tools of violence;
All decent men detest them.

Weapons are tools of fear;
A decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Wholeness is his highest value.
If the wholeness has been shattered,
How can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
But human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
And delight in the slaughter of men?

He enters a battle gravely,
With sorrow and with great compassion,
As if he were attending a funeral.

Osama bin Laden perpetrated despicable, heinous acts. His evil, hateful influence ended not only American lives, but lives around the world. If death at the hands of another is ever justified, his death fits that description.

But I am troubled by gleeful celebrations of his death. If we sink to the level of Al Queda, whose members reveled in the Trade Towers’ collapse and deaths from bombings around the globe, hasn’t some basic human decency been compromised? Are we any better than they are, in our revelry over bin Laden’s final demise?

The end of a hateful life is the end of a hateful life. But death taken into human hands is a grave matter, and even when it feels justified, it isn’t a time for a party. Rather we should mourn the depths to which human beings are capable of sinking, and pray without ceasing, for global redemption.

Working on Style: Part Two

2011-04-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I referred to the worth of developing a unique approach to your work, and called it style. The point that day revolved around entering exhibitions or approaching galleries, where the jurist/curators might prefer to see a body of work that reads as visually cohesive. I still stand by that point and the reasoning behind it.

But as my friend Jackie pointed out in the Comments Section, Picasso did any thing he wanted. Sculpture, painting, watercolor, drawing. Did I mean to imply that somehow we are different from Picasso, and therefore we don’t have the option of working in more than one medium or style?

I did not.

Actually my reference was very narrow. I play around with all kinds of materials and techniques and so should any artist who is seeking versatility and also personal voice. But what happens in the studio is different from what happens on an entry form. I might have three different ways of working going at once and more power to me if I can keep that many balls in the air simultaneously. But when I submit an application for a show, better to choose which style I am going to present to the world, and save the other juicy stuff for another entry form. It’s all about harnessing vision and introducing it to the world selectively.

But a couple of other considerations.

Consideration #1: I still think that there’s a lot to be said for limitations within a specific body of work. I want to be really good at dye printing. I want to know it inside and out. I can flit and flutter around other techniques and maybe come up with some ideas that will eventually insert themselves into the work I am showing publicly, but in the meantime, I want mastery - at least in a few areas.

Mediocre might be fun in the present moment of creation, but getting good at something by spending intimate hours with it is much more fun long term.

Consideration #2:
It’s the playing around that leads to the unique combination of tools and materials that is recognizably Jane. It's like a buffet. The first time you go, you choose a little bit of everything. You’re stuffed; it’s fabulous. But you almost feel sick from overindulging. Next time, maybe forget the pastries. Skip the ham. Concentrate on the shrimp cocktail, and the exquisite salads. Same thing in the studio. You try out this or that, but most of what you try ends up on the cutting room floor. It’s a special combination of process and approach that adds up to You - the artist with the recognizable style.

And once you get into a groove, you discover that the techniques you live and breathe morph. I used to use textile paint for printing. Now I use sand. Same basic printing, but working with it intimately, showed me what else it could do.

The paradox of working – old techniques become new ones – rejuvenated by an unexpected brainstorm twist. And plenty of experience.

Here are two of my play day results. I’m lusting after color as a result of all that work in black, white and gray. So the color fields are new/old. New this month, but a method I know intimately. The sand printing? Old/new. Old screen image. New material.Next? I see stitching.

Just working along on style. Working on my voice.

Working on Style

2011-04-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

One of the essays I am reading suggests that Vincent van Gogh was actually a clumsy, rather inept painter. This would certainly never have occurred to me, as seeing his paintings in person is a highlight of being on the road so often. I get to visit a lot of museums.

Another part of the essay described how hard it is for a gallery owner to defend a painter’s work if the brushstrokes in one painting vary from those in another. Since I am not trained as a painter this was a bit of a shock.

Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime. Making all his brushstrokes alike probably wouldn’t have changed his sales portfolio much. It’s doubtful, knowing what we know about him, that he would have been inclined to play by those rules, anyway.

In the long run, we’re all a mix of trying to overcome ineptitude – at least at the beginning – and desire to please. Humans like consistency and continuity. It makes us feel comfortable. Gallery owners know this, so it is in their best interest - and by extension in the best interest of their artists - to encourage them to work in a recognizable style. That’s how artists become established in the collective cultural mind.

Last week I met with one of my Mastery Program groups. A noon discussion focused on entering juried shows. I offered the observation that many jurors prefer pieces entered by an artist that evidence continuity and cohesiveness, over the work of an artist who submits three stylistically different works. You might be good at three different methods of patterning cloth or painting, but if you are entering a juried show, it’s better to offer entries that hang together. It’s an indication that you have history, and also an enthusiasm for your process. This struck most of the class members as odd. What about versatility? What about exploring new mediums and ideas?

The fact is, artists need both experimentation and a personal style. In order to develop your skills and the ability to work meaningfully, you’ve got to play around and try out lots of ideas. That’s how an individual style eventually develops. It takes time and long hours of working to distill communal process into a singular voice.

But that still doesn’t solve the problem of being considered clumsy or inept. There are always refined standards by which your work will be judged. That’s why it’s so important to love your own work. If you do, then negative comments might sting, but it won’t be for long.

And consider this: too much refinement is like eating white bread. All the texture and powerful nutrients are gone. No artist should be relegated to white bread status. It’s way more satisfying to work from the heart, even when it’s a slightly clumsy effort, because the powerful nutrients are still there. Viewers always know this. And are grateful.

More Street Art

2011-04-20T07:18:00.001-07:00

As an exercise to get back into studio mind I've been machine stitching on paint chips. There's nothing great about these, but it's a good warm up and fun to respond to the paint chip name as a way of riffing on the imagery.

The paint chips were named:
Spritz of Lime
Jackson Square (an ode to Pollack....)
Night Shift

I took these three little pieces out and hung them on the street - once again using telephone poles because they already have an embarrassment of ready to use nails. Hopefully the clipboards will help avoid the problem I had with Round 1 of my Street Art project - when a piece wasn't secure on the nail and subsequently crashed.

I put the same note on the back of these pieces - Free Art. Take this if you want it. I posted them in a different neighborhood. We'll see whether they disappear, and whether anyone calls to let me know they've claimed ownership.

The Gorgeous Blogger

2011-04-19T06:27:00.000-07:00

This morning Sherri Lynn Wood nominated me as a Gorgeous Blogger. Hmm. Wish I’d known it when I looked in the mirror and fretted about whether to cut my hair or let it grow out.

Kidding aside, this is a neat way to let people know about blogs that are different or particularly intriguing to me, and I am flattered to be in her top five, since her own blog is one worth visiting.

As part of the deal I was asked to answer a few questions, and then nominate five other blogs I think readers might like to check out.

When did you start your blog?
Existential Neighborhood started in 2010, but I’ve been blogging since 2008 when I kept the Daily Visuals going for one year as a form of practice.

What do you write about?
I write about making, art, philosophy, absurdity and basically anything that is bothering, challenging or delighting me.

What makes this special?
I’m best known for technique development in the field of surface design, which doesn’t require philosophical components to be successful. But in the past I’ve been accused of being moody, intense and rebellious. It used to be problematic. Now it’s socially acceptable since nobody has to read what I write unless they want to.

What made you start writing?
I just love to write as much as I love to make. There are certain things you can do with dye that you can’t do with paint and vice versa. There are certain ideas I can represent visually that transcend words. But sometimes words trump art.

What would you change in your blog?
Right now at least, I wouldn’t change anything. It would be great to learn how to make short videos to include, but I recognize my own limitations and I haven’t gotten to that place on the list.

You might consider visiting:
Elaine Lipson birthed the slow cloth concept and always write something worth reading.
http://lainie.typepad.com/redthread
Jeanne Beck is prolific and dedicated and I love checking in to see what she is working on.
http://artbyjeannebeck.blogspot.com
Marie-Therese Wisniowski thinks big and deep about art and writes thoughtfully about many topics.
http://artquill.blogspot.com
Art Project by Google isn’t technically a blog, but you can visit art museums all over the world on this site with its virtual tours. Let’s set a date and visit together!
http://www.googleartproject.com
Robert Genn has a huge system of links, advertisements (don’t let them get to you) and insights. I just ordered his book The Twice Weekly Letters, because my friend Liz left it on the nightstand and I was awake past midnight, captured by his good sense, humor and professionalism. Check out the link to one of his letters (I guess technically it’s a blog) below:
http://clicks.robertgenn.com/eccentricity.php

Here’s to the mind expanding potential of the Internet.

Guerrilla Art Gardening

2011-04-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday my guerilla art action was directed toward our community garden. The garden is a public space where anyone can plant a few flowers or vegetables. At dusk I took dozens of pretend bugs, butterflies and birds into the garden, and carefully wired them to the fences, tomato cages and blossoming stalks. The silk interlopers immediately attracted the real thing - a graceful Swallowtail butterfly looking for playmates.

This morning I visited the garden again. A single yellow bird is the only remaining evidence of my garden party. Did children carry away the brightly colored collection? Did a local gardener find the phonies unsuitable and remove them? Did a magic wand transform the lot Pinocchio-style, breathing temporary life into their plastic bodies?

It's challenging to give up the need to know. So I remind myself that this is an exploration of process, not outcome.

Learning to be open to process and detached from outcome isn't a lesson you learn once and then you've got it. It's a lesson you have to learn every day. Being in the garden this morning was good practice. I'm not great at letting go, but I'm getting better.

For My Daughter's Friend

2011-04-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

The boy whose father died was not my son.
His father was not my friend, or lover or husband.
I didn’t know him.

I stare at the sparkling prisms on the chandeliers.
At the non-committal color of the walls.
Anywhere but at the face of the boy whose father died too soon.

I couldn’t stand to see my daughter in a casket.
Is it the only act I couldn’t undo?
When she was small, I told her I could accept anything as long as it was the Truth.
Death might be the Truth.
But it would not be a Truth I could easily accept.
And were death to come, I would want her to be somewhere. I realize this, sitting alone in the pew. I would need to be with her. I would need the confirmation of the body. It would make me crazy, but at least there would be no doubt as to the Truth.

Here, in this room, is a Father. Here is a casket. Here is a body. Here is a certain, resolute Truth.

The pastor makes remarks. It is all a pastor can do.
He’s talking about the other side.
The ship is moving away over the horizon.
We on the horizon line mourn the disappearance.
But those in the land where the sun is coming up stand joyfully and shout,
“Here it comes, here it comes.”
This, says the pastor, is Heaven. The father is the ship arriving. Everyone is joyful.
I am not convinced.

I look at the boy across the room, and love him.
I must. It is all I have to offer.
Maybe it will help him, as binding a wound begins the healing, once the nurse has arrived.
More likely, what he needs to survive this loss is a plunge deep into the immutable love of parent and child. Remembering.

This is the contract that cannot be broken.
This is the love that transcends time.
This is what the boy must fathom now, in his deepest grief.

Inside the Box

2011-04-13T05:35:00.001-07:00

Ever have one of those days when you just feel boxed in?
I started the day with a $700. utility bill, which is about five hundred dollars more than usual. Quick, indignant call to City Public Services, only to discover that yes - back in December when I got that low bill - even though we were in the middle of an ice storm in south Texas? It was an error and now the error has caught up with me....

OK. Off to the gym, ideas for essays swirling in my head. All I need is a good workout to help me focus. Then I’ll go home and get started. Yikes! A woman on the bench next to me in the locker room walks off with my keys. It had to be an accident, but stranded at the gym I start a slow burn.

Sound familiar? Modern life is filled with gripes and grievances. Too little time. Not enough money. Things that break or quit working.

Sometimes it’s hard to stay open to the moments of grace that can turn the bad day around. Moments that remind you everyone suffers these minor annoyances. In the words of a children’s book we used to read, It could be worse.

Most of us are no strangers to worse. Parents with dementia and a variety of age-related issues. Illnesses of our own. Kid problems. No one escapes this life unscathed.

So, I got a ride from the gym, thanks to an enterprising daughter with keys to my car. The cat on the kitchen counter (one of six in the house - anyone need a cat?) gave me a laugh packaged with a literal lesson. Sometimes when you’re in the box it just might help to settle there. Breathe. Maybe even take a nap. Get a little thinking done.

The path of least resistance might be a pretty good path.

Working to a Theme

2011-04-11T05:28:00.000-07:00

I’m not a fan of theme exhibitions.

The disclaimer: I do have a piece in the exhibition Green, which just opened at the Textile Museum in Washington DC. I haven’t seen the show, but hope to. But right now I don’t know if the bias expressed here applies to it or not.

Frankly, I don’t really understand why theme shows are so popular. I’m not on the bandwagon. Most of the shows I’ve seen that were built around a theme felt trite and weren’t the best examples of the work I knew the artists could create.
But maybe themes give the venue something to build on. When I challenged the value of a theme for the future Surface Design Association conference (San Antonio 2013) the conference manager was polite but firm. It only took a week to receive a forwarded email from her written by a presenter whose entire body of work had shifted – impacted by the Confluence theme around which the 2011 conference is constructed.

Last Sunday I went to the San Antonio Museum of Art to see the much anticipated exhibition The Missing Peace – art work inspired by the Dalai Lama. I could hardly wait. The theme issue didn’t occur to me until I got there and walked through the show. It was very disappointing. An impressive roster of names, but very little that was inspiring. Even some textile pieces (Yippee in a major museum) but not good ones. Some mildly interesting ideas. The Dalai Lama’s shoes and a photo of the aura surrounding them. (When told of the aura, the Dalai Lama smiled and suggested that perhaps the aura was really that of his cobbler, who’d repaired the shoes three times in the recent past.)

How could I love the idea of the theme and find the actual artwork falling flat?

Was it because as good as the artists are, most of them weren’t making work that would have been made anyway? Most of it was work created because who wouldn’t want to be in a show inspired by the Dalai Lama? I’d sure give it a shot if invited. This little opinion would fly out the window so fast your head would spin.

But It isn’t just about The Missing Peace. The Handweaver’s Guild of America always mounts a set of shows related to their Convergence conference that are theme driven. I never pass up an opportunity to enter their singularly worthy fabric lengths exhibition, but I always struggle with the theme. I don’t live in New Mexico. How authentic is it to work to a theme related to the landscape there? And why? Can’t those of us who work in that format just send gorgeous, creative, thought-provoking entries with a wide range of themes? Wouldn’t that sort of show be just as successful?
Maybe it’s sour grapes because I didn’t get in last time, even though my fabric was wonderful. It didn’t fit the theme, according to the juror.

Lots of people will disagree with me and you’ve got the right to do so. But I guess I am a purist. Art is sacred. I’d rather artists be a bit obstinate when it comes to personal work. There are so many compromises in Life. If you’ve got a piece that fits a theme, that’s different. But working to one? I’m wary.

And not only that. It's Wordless Wednesday

2011-04-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Guerilla Acts Part Two

2011-04-06T12:36:00.001-07:00

I am working on a new name for art driven guerilla activities. There are loads of them out there. For instance, some folks led by my friends Diane Sandlin and Jean Dahlgren participated in a yarn bombing at the Blanton Art Museum in Austin, Texas.

Don't the colors look beautiful amid the trees?

After I wrote the post yesterday, I read a few inspiring things on line, and decided no time like the present. I grabbed four framed photographs left from a recent exhibition of spoonflower.com inspired pieces and hopped in the car, armed with my hammer, a few nails and the camera.

I loved the incongruity of framed art work hanging on a telephone pole.

Before I left the house, I printed cards that read:
THIS IS FREE ART
If you want it, it’s yours.
Call & leave a message if you want to tell me who you are.
Happy Day.
733-1957

I attached a card to the back of each photograph.

I installed the Dhalia piece yesterday afternoon at 3:00 pm. This morning at 9:00 am it was gone.

I installed the Agave photo in front of the liquor store. You know - tequila, and all - and the fact that this is Texas. I drove by this morning, and the photo had a crack in the glass. The Free Art tag was taped to the front, on the glass. I thought it was pretty sweet of someone to hang it back up, but I did wonder why he or she didn't just take it. One of those things that's interesting to question, but part of the lesson of letting go.

I chose to install the Poppy outside my favorite Mexican restaurant - the Blanco Cafe. There's a gorgeous tribute to one of the daughters - Miss Gina - painted on the window. I thought it was fitting to offer the poppy up in memory of her. This morning it was still there.

The last photograph is installed outside the local drycleaner's storefront. When we drove past it this morning (My sister Ann was visiting) we agreed that most people are so preoccupied with their thoughts when they drive, they may not even notice the 12" x 12" square hanging incongruously on the telephone pole. There's a lesson there, too. It's so good to get outside yourself and really look at the world around you. I will be looking and also reporting.

And I'll let you know if anyone calls.

Guerilla Acts of Making

2011-04-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

“What are you going to do with it?”

That’s a question you may have heard before. Art’s funny that way. If friends and neighbors have a frame of reference for your work, then maybe the question hasn’t come up. It’s easy to see that a framed painting is supposed to go on the wall. A blown glass object is meant to sit on a shelf behind the couch. Hand thrown ceramic tableware? Obvious. Bring on the ribs and potato salad.

But quilts can’t just be quilts. In order to be sure the audience gets it, we use a qualifier. It’s an art quilt. Hand printed lengths of fabric that took hours (and expertise) to print? Can’t be yardage. Better be art cloth. What am I going to do with it? Make a wall hanging?

Maybe I am just going to let it be. Art.

But that’s idealistic at best and escapist at the least. It’s hard to learn to work for the sake of working. We do better with deadlines. Challenges. A Call for Entries. We want our work to do something.

This is all related to thoughts on the potential of what I call guerilla acts of making. A young artist (sorry I have forgotten her name – if you know it, please add a comment below) who bought a shirt at Wal-Mart, went home and carefully disassembled it. Copied it. Sewed up a duplicate and returned her version to the store. This, a comment on mass consumption and also on sweat shops.

And how about various projects around the country where people knit to dress parking meters, fences and other bits of public and private property?

And have you seen any of the spontaneous musical events occurring all over the world? Wow. Everyone is having so much fun. I want a piece of that.

Maybe because it’s Spring in Texas. Time to lighten up. I love winter and the impulse to burrow in, go deep, create rich work. Delve into meaning. But right now, how about some fun with a purpose? Work that you don’t have to question because you know where it’s going and why you are making it!

Engage in a guerilla act of making this month. If poets and poetry lovers can strew poems on bus benches and restaurant tables, I want to make art and put it out there.

Here are my ideas:
Take a piece of art and nail it to a telephone pole. Watch from a distance. Or not. Will anyone take it? Will they be pleased and public or furtive?

Print a Tshirt and add a hang tag that says” Take me. I’m free.” Sneak it into a Stein Mart or Macy’s and leave it on the rack. Make sure you add a phone number so anyone who is curious can call you.

What about crocheting a few bugs and butterflies and then pinning them to leaves in a public garden? Consult 75 Birds, Butterflies & little beasts to knit and crochet by Lesley Stanfield (St. Martin’s Griffin 2011) for ideas.

There’s actually an advertising campaign like this happening across the country. Last summer I picked up a beautiful beach glass pendant and was happily surprised when the shop owner told me I’d chosen the one object in the gallery that was free. All I had to do was write an email to the maker and thank her.

It’s a great advertising strategy but it’s also a great way to spread a little joy around.

Joy. What a great idea.

Poem for Tuesday

2011-04-05T06:58:00.000-07:00

What does not exist looks so handsome.
What does exist, where is it?
An ocean is hidden. All we see is foam,
shapes of dust, spinning, tall as minarets, but I want wind.
Dust can’t rise up without wind, I know,
but can’t I understand this
by some way other than induction?

Invisible ocean, wind. Visible foam and dust: This is speech.
Why can’t we hear thought?
These eyes were born asleep.
Why organize a universe this way?

With the merchant close by a magician measures out
five hundred ells of linen moonlight.
It takes all his money, but the merchant buys the lot.
Suddenly there’s no linen, and of course there’s no money,
which was his life spent wrongly, and yours.
Say, Save me, Thou One,
from witches who tie knots and blow on them.
They’re tying them again.
Prayers are not enough. You must do something.

Three companions for you:
Number One, what you own. He won’t even leave the house
for some danger you might be in. He stays inside.
Number two, your good friend. He at least comes to the
funeral.
He stands and talks at the gravesite. No further.

The third companion, what you do, your work,
goes down into death to be there with you,
to help.
Take deep refuge with that companion, beforehand.

Rumi

National Poetry Month

2011-04-03T10:15:00.001-07:00

April is National Poetry Month. In honor of the month, I would like to share one of my recent favorites with you. This poem is by Naomi Shihab Nye, and was recently published in the Shambala Sun - a great magazine that always includes a poem, with brief commentary, at the end of the issue.

When they say don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.

Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?
It’s not that you don’t love them anymore.

You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.

Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.

Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.

When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-03-23T06:27:00.001-07:00

Keeping On

2011-03-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I lay awake thinking about various and humbling new realizations, some of which were influenced by reading your many comments following my last post. I realized I was lumping too much together instead of being thoughtful. I was channeling pain instead of tempering it. Then I knew I don't get to choose. I am meant to keep writing.

An apology. I never meant to imply that the books I have written are not useful. I am proud of my books. I consider the time and money extended by anyone who has honored me by purchasing one or more of them, well spent. I am sorry if I offended anyone by linking my doubt about being blog-worthy to your good sense about reading and learning from me. Please forgive me.

So I will keep writing, and I thank you for your expressions of concern and also your hard knocks on the head. I don’t think what I felt was cynicism; more like a sort of despair about where Art and making fit in. About relevancy. Your comments buoyed and surprised me, and since I am a big girl, I will pull away from any sort of poor me mentality that might have infected my thoughts and my writing. Caroline Myss wrote something to this effect – if you avoid the news, world events, and don’t engage actively with others, you aren’t being who you were meant to be. You aren’t fulfilling your potential.

My potential includes community building. That’s what counts and that’s what we’re doing here. And we’re good at it – as your many comments prove.

Revelations come in unexpected forms. I was listening to NPR and Scott Simon told a story about two dog companions found in the rubble aftermath of the earthquake. One dog refused to leave the other until humans rescued them together. He tied this to the story of a puppy just sold to a private buyer in China for over a million dollars. The breeder called the puppy a perfect specimen. Simon queried, “Of the dogs in the two stories, which really was the perfect specimen?”

Next came a forwarded letter from my friend Edie. I asker her permission to share the letter here and it follows in its entirety, for your consideration:

“Hi everybody,
Today I received an email with this enclosed letter from a Japanese student of Zen now back in her home country. Thought you would appreciate it.

Hello My Lovely Family and Friends,

First I want to thank you so very much for your concern for me. I am very touched. I also wish to apologize for a generic message to you all. But it seems the best way at the moment to get my message to you.

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend's home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line-up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, "Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another."

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on.

But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun.

People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled.

The mountains of Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend's husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don't. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent. Thank you again for your care and Love of me.
With Love in return, to you all.”

Gifts in unexpected packaging. Opportunities to become perfect specimens.

Thank you for being there.

No More Blogging

2011-03-18T14:23:00.001-07:00

The earthquake and Tsunami in Japan are another reminder of the fragility and transience of Life. I don't think I can justify the use of your time reading this blog. So I will no longer be writing it. It would be different if I had anything really useful to say.

Perhaps we should start an Anti- campaign. Anti- pointless ego driven blogs, silly Twitter exchanges and endless Facebook drivel.

I am going to try to use what time I have more wisely.

Thank you for your support and friendship.

Jane

ReInventing/Revisiting/Renewing

2011-03-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

How to live in community without scaring people or pissing them off?

Since I last wrote a post to this blog, I’ve struggled with the question.

One of my strengths, as a first born, and basic old-fashioned know it all, is my willingness to get involved. I was raised in an environment deeply committed to faith-based action. Add to this fundamental philosophy the fact that I’ve lived in my rather run down, inner-city neighborhood twenty-four years, and have maintained a studio here for ten, and you’ll understand why I have a large emotional investment in the dozen or so blocks around me.

In the early years, it meant feeding stray cats and inviting all of the kids In. Building solidarity with my neighbors. Before I moved into this house, my air conditioning window units were stolen one night. Two years later, I knew my neighbors had my back when they rallied at 3 a.m. - scaring a potential thief away from our pickup truck.

We watched out for each other. I bailed Sylvia out of jail, fed her kids when she had to work late, and kept the homeless pantry at the church stocked. Jeff played the Father card when my daughter and two friends got into mischief during one of my out of town teaching stints.

Now all of those neighborhood children are in their twenties, and have children of their own. The oldest people on my block have died. Renters have moved into most of the homes on the street. It’s the same neighborhood, but it’s different.

Now I am the Old Guard. What a shock. Time to take stock.

So I decided to revisit the Popsicle and Bubbles Strategy. You may not be familiar with this. I’ll explain.

Twenty years ago, it was easy to win the hearts, (and get the attention) of the kids on the block by passing out popsicles and bubble wands on a regular basis. Along with the treats came requirements like using the trashcan and cleaning up after the fun. And it worked. My heart swelled with pride one New Year’s Day morning, when I went to the front window and discovered Manuel, Sabrina, Samantha, Lauren, and Zenna on the sidewalk - picking up the refuse left from our previous night’s fireworks display.

Remembering the joy of this, I decided to befriend the legion of new kids in the neighborhood. I stocked up with a dozen plastic bottles of bubbles and wands, and laid in a supply of orange, grape and cherry Popsicles.

It went pretty well with the little boys next door. Their parents remember Popsicles fondly, so it wasn’t a problem to invite Jonathan, Adam, Mark, and Joshua in for a sweet treat. They stood shyly around the open freezer, scuffling and gently elbowing each other as selections were made. They marched single file toward the front door, as I brought up the rear, encouraging them to use the trashcan on the porch. Later, they loved the bubbles, and even traded a cap gun for a fresh supply of soapy water. Ah, the innocence of a four year old.

But it didn’t go so well with the kids on Michigan Street. In fact, it was a revelation. I know a couple of the dads. We’ve shared champagne on New Year’s Day. But children are quite rightly taught to be cautious in this world, and when I stopped the car to pass containers of bubbles to the four children playing in the yard, they screamed and ran into the house as I approached. Only the oldest of the four turned back, recognized me, and slowed his pace.

“Bubbles!” I shouted, “Here are some Bubbles for you!”

The other three poked their heads around the doorjamb like nervous kittens, followed by a Grandma’s sturdy frame. She eyed me carefully, and recognized me, if only vaguely. “It’s ok.” She said to them. “We know her.”

All four sidled back toward the car, thanking me politely for the gift being offered. Slightly chagrinned, I drove slowly toward my house. Thinking about the Cycle of Life.

How foolish of me to lose track of the fact that good work is never finished. It only feels that way. In fact, we must be vigilant and keep the good works going. It's the commitment to continuing that counts.

As the old Wiccan admonishment goes:

Every day do something that is good only for you. Selfish?
No. Self possessed.
Balance it out by doing something equally good
for the benefit of all...
This will depend on your opportunities.
Only you will know what you can do.
If you are an artist use your power to be original-
to try to heal the wounds you see around you.
Everything we do needs passion to be done well.
Passion is precious. It indicates good mental health.
Use it as an important energy source all day.

The Abundant Community

2011-02-20T08:03:00.000-08:00

This week I am reading The Abundant Community by John McKnight and Peter Block. Twenty pages into it, the premise seemed simplistic. But by page forty-two the quiet defiance of the words settled into my chest.

Simple but radical: We have allowed systems to co-opt community, and by doing so, we are gradually losing our connection to everything that is meaningful and potentially rewarding in our lives.

The authors write:
“All that is uncertain, organic, spontaneous, and flowing in personal, family and neighborhood space is viewed in System Space (caps mine), and in Science, as a problem to be solved…”

To paraphrase: What systems do best is organize human beings in ways that we may appreciate as the public school system, government, or the ease of knowing exactly what will be on the shelves in a big box store – because each store is laid out like all of the others. It’s the purpose of systems to create a world that is repeatable.

Embracing systems also means we don’t have to trust our own instincts about what is right or wrong or healthy any more, because we have trained professionals who know better than we do how our children should be raised, how much exercise we need, and whether a diet would be a good idea or not. How we should deal with homeless people. Whether it matters when a developer clear cuts a hundred acres of woods, or dredges the beach, to build a bunch of new houses.

Life is automated. Maybe it’s a relief. Maybe it’s a side step of decisions we could make ourselves. Feeling good about the decisions you make – whether they are related to your children, your work environment or your diet – is the foundation of a healthy sense of self esteem.

So it’s a trade-off. On the surface systems keep the wheels greased. Read further in the book, and you’ll be on to how this is all about consumerism. How human beings can be managed and automated until they actually think there is never enough, that acquiring is the name of the game, and that it’s every person and every family, for his or herself. Not anything new. But exactly what seems to be breaking down, all around us, right now. Perhaps we have reached the end of the rope when it comes to substituting impersonal systems for the slower, messier task of relationship building - a few dedicated folks at a time.

I am still thinking about how this impacts my art world. Based on the ideas proposed by this book, I must consider whether I am living in the world of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Last week I wrote about systems and classifications. This week I fear I’ve contributed to a system that will only serve to erase the personal face on all that is reverent and intrinsically human about making. It’s the paradoxes of Life that keep me humble.

We can’t throw out the systems completely without initiating chaos. Watching the events in the Middle East this week is evidence of that. But like the King of Bahrain, our best bet is to dismiss the troops and keep talking. Offering flowers, while rejecting the most dehumanizing of the systems. Making at least one peaceful, defiant choice every day that defies systems.

What could you do this week – in or out of the studio – that would defy a system and return a little bit of humanity to the world around you?

I’ll post my choices and experiences if you’ll post yours.

Talk on UTube

2011-02-20T06:49:00.000-08:00

My lecture at the Carnegie - printed as an essay here ten days ago, is now up on Utube, thanks to Karen Gillenwater, the curator of the Form/Not Function exhibit. It's presented in four ten minute sections since there is a time limit on Utube, but it can be accessed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCarnegieCenter - if you prefer a verbal verbose version to a written text!

Art Quilts: Emerging Genres

2011-02-04T12:02:00.000-08:00

This is the text of a lecture given on February 1, 2011, in conjunction with the Form/Not Function art quilt exhibition at the Carnegie Center for Art in New Albany, Indiana.

One aspect of art history I find fascinating is the connections that exist from one art movement to the next.

Looking briefly at a few major periods in art history helps us to understand the evolution of art quilt genres – and gives us a sense of place and context – perhaps indicating what we need to do to further the growth and expansion of the art quilt movement.

It makes sense to begin an art history slam with the period referred to as Romanticism – from roughly 1800 – 1850. JMW Turner initiated a gradual shift away from classicism with breath-taking paintings, which were as much about light, as about painting.

Eduard Manet’s famous Luncheon on the Grass represents another shift, this time away from Romanticism, inching ever so gradually toward what we now call Modern Art. His painting caused a scandal in the established French Salon world and was a precursor to the age of Impressionism.

Most people are familiar with Impressionism – the movement that made it ok to paint from an intuitive or feeling, rather than from a realistic portrayal of the subject matter. But we don’t always think about how revolutionary these new approaches to painting were. Breaks with traditional art making were controversial, ridiculed, and shunned. But artists kept moving forward into new art territory in a process we can only call evolutionary.

Here’s another interesting fact: almost every artist who was living and working in Europe at that time tried on impressionism for size – at least briefly. In the Museum d’Orsay in Paris there is an entire wall of the same street scene, painted by a who’s who of painters from that period. Some of the paintings, including one by Matisse, are horrible. What do we learn from this? That even good painters made bad paintings, and that everyone has to struggle to settle on an individual style. We know, as far as Matisse is concerned, that he didn’t stick with Impressionism. Instead he cultivated color as a language, and established a niche that was firmly and unmistakably his own.

We could talk about Expressionism, Art Nouveau, The Blue Riders in Munich, and Gustav Klimt’s role in an effort to unite fine and applied arts in Germany. These avant garde movements upped the controversy ante and inspired a subset of lesser known movements, including Futurism, Orphism, Rayonism, Dada and the establishment of the Bauhaus Design School. Why does it matter to us?

Because in every case, artists introducing a new way of defining and quantifying art met resistance from the galleries and artists who were the established powerhouses of the day. Most of the movements I’ve mentioned were actually labeled as degenerate by the Nazis.

In 1881 Pablo Picasso was born. It’s probably fair to say that he single-handedly developed one style or period after another, as only a true visionary can do. Revered during his lifetime, which is not always the case, his work still represented the continual tug of war between the establishment and the challengers to tradition.

We can skip ahead past Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. If you aren’t familiar with these periods of art history, do yourself a favor and surf the web. Each period is a fascinating study of artists seeking the new, the fresh and the original. Artists pushing boundaries.

One artist we can’t ignore is Robert Rauschenberg. A twentieth century visionary, Rauschenberg introduced work he called Combines – pieces that were still primarily canvas, but which featured an assortment of 3-D elements, including the one most familiar to quilters – a canvas with a quilt glued to the surface and partially painted. A picture of this piece is included in Robert Shaw’s wonderful The Art Quilt, suggesting that Rauschenberg’s work has played a role in influencing art quilters who incorporate mixed media elements into their quilts. Sad to say, Rauschenberg’s combine probably sold for more than all art quilts sales combined in 2010.

So what does this have to do with art quilts and emerging genres?

The field is now 40 years old, and genres are emerging. Some are recognizably linked back to traditional quilts. Others are not. What is true is that the same struggle to find a unique voice that characterizes ALL of modern art history is going on now – as art quilts evolve as an art form.

I wanted to know whether or not art quilt forms could be arranged into A CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM of stylistic influences or genres, so I researched the idea. I was able to identify a list of six basic categories into which art quilts fall. These are not all influenced by traditional quilts, but surprisingly, are influenced by the various art movements I have described.

There is overlap, of course, just as in other media where approaches to materials and processes merge and co-mingle. This classification system is still a work in progress. But here is what I have observed to date:

I. Quilts Inspired by Traditional Patterns and Processes
There are three sub-classifications.
1. Pieced Quilts:
Jan Meyers Newberry’s work is an example of a quilt based on a traditional design. (The Nine Patch)

2. Whole Cloth Quilts:
These are quilts where the pattern references a traditional pattern but the method of achieving the pattern is contemporary. Ellen Oppenheimer’s silk screened quilts are an example of this category.

3. Mixed Media Pieces:
Again, the design references a traditional pattern, but the quilt is made from surprising materials. John Lefelhocz’s Match Schticks – made from glued matchsticks – is a great example of this category.

II. Innovative Pieced Quilts Inspired by Traditional Piecing
Nancy Crow’s work is probably the best known work in this category.

She, as well as several other quilt artists, was influenced by the seminal work of Anna Williams.

Within this category there are numerous works that tread a fine line between improvisational piecing and pictorial quilts. In those cases, a piece may fit either category, but I place it in the category by which it is more clearly defined.
Lisa Call's current work effectively balances improvisational piecing with a story line.

III. Narrative or Pictorial Quilts
Within this category pieces may address controversial or socio-political themes or not. Some works have abstract elements but most of the time one aspect of the piece dominates over the others – it may be abstract, but the figurative or pictorial elements are critical to appreciation of the message.
There are four sub-classifications:
1. Quilts that represent (or are drawn from) a real life image:
These may be impressionistic or EXPRESSIONISTIC in terms of how the materials are used. The quilt may be pieced, appliquéd or created using surface design techniques. Lori Lupe Pelish is a master of this style.

2. The Self Portrait:
An entire lecture could be devoted to this fascinating sub-category. Alison Whittemore’s Funny Looking Kid is a delightful example.

3. Quilts with a strong graphic arts influence:
What I mean by this is several things: text may be used, or images that are graphic in the style of clip art - the shapes are typically flattened. The color palette is often simple, employing pure or bright color combinations.
Bean Gilsdorf’s piece is an example of this style.

4. Visionary Quilts:
This is one of those classifications where you know it when you see it. I was uncomfortable with the term folk art as it implies a simplicity that lacks sophistication. But outsider art isn’t right either – as it implies someone not connected to any part of the art world experience.
Susie Shie’s pieces are thoughtfully conceived and executed but she is definitely not an art quilt world outsider. She is a visionary.

IV. Quilts that Reference Formal Design Concerns
Quilts in this category are often created by artists who have moved to quilt-making from other art backgrounds, or who have art degrees, but this isn’t always the case. It’s quite possible to study design and color theory independently and to use that knowledge to fuel a body of work. I would never insult any of the fine art quilt makers whose work fits this classification even though art school was never in the picture. There are three categories within this genre.
1. Abstract Compositions.
There is overlap here with innovative piecing. Darcy Falk and Sue Benner are great examples of artists who work in this style.

2. Color Field Compositions.
These pieces are characterized by the role color plays in the development of the surface – either because it dominates other considerations or plays a singular role. Emily Richardson continues to produce mesmerizing color field works.

3. Whole cloth pieces created through the use of a series of surface design processes.
These include but are not limited to dyeing, discharging, painting, foiling, silk-screening, and the use of resists. Astrid Hilger Bennett's work is an example of this style. Whole cloth surface designed pieces may be the fastest growing category of art quilts in the world today.

V. Mixed Media.
A catch-all, right or wrong, of pieces that rely primarily on the addition of components that are non-traditional in use and application. There are two sub-categories in the mixed media genre.
1. Whole Cloth Quilts.
Fran Skiles pioneered this approach to the art quilt.

2. Assembled Quilts.
The term assembled is used here to separate the action of adding elements to a surface from the acts of piecing or appliqué. Pat Kroth’s eye-popping thread pieces are examples of assembled work.

VI. Three Dimensional Quilts.
This category is defined as any piece that exhibits three-dimensionality as a key aspect of the presentation. Susan Else’s humorous sculptures are just one example of this quirky genre.

SO.
My original plan was to draw conclusions and propose goals art quilters could work toward into the future. But although I worked on ideas for this lecture several weeks almost nonstop, when I started to write it I found I had only a few observations to share.

There are some intriguing oddities in the art quilt movement. Among them:

1. Art movements have so infiltrated popular western culture we reference them without evening knowing we are doing it. Case in point, the number of art quilters who are not familiar with any art history because they have never been exposed to it, or haven’t taken an interest in learning about it.

2. This is a field made up predominantly of women, which is contrary to every art movement to date. Form/ Not Function had one male participant. In the recent Surface Design Journal, twenty-four women artists were mentioned in articles. Only four men were included in that issue.

How does this gender reality affect competition? Or pricing?

3. Art quilting is like a huge organized religion, which is also unlike any art movement to date. The Studio Art Quilt Associates is an example of women artists taking matters into their own hands to develop the venues that are desired and needed in order to progress. Without being overt, this is a socio-political statement. Art quilters are no longer waiting to be invited into the mainstream art world. They are creating venues for parallel play while devising efforts to go mainstream. This has so far, been relatively frustrating because the art world is territorial and also traditional in the sense of how the “rules” work. Hark back to every art movement in history, kids.

With such force of numbers why aren’t art quilters taking the mainstream art world by storm? Maybe we don’t care? Or is this one of those shifting societal issues that does effect change, but more slowly than we would like? Forty years is not that long. Evolution is long.

Other questions and observations:

Have we created a textile ghetto by being willing to develop our own venues?
Should we be trying to play by insider rules? Could we alter some visual clues – like how a piece is finished – in order to remove references that don’t serve moving forward?

Would we be willing to re-characterize work as mixed media construction in order to help it go mainstream? Is the resistance semantic?

Because women ARE so nurturing and sharing, do we run the risk of becoming too homogenized? Frankly I think women are very competitive – many times in unhealthy ways. But can we intentionally or consciously marry our nurturing ways to good boundaries?

And what about the charge that art quilters don’t take critical analysis seriously?
There is a palpable tension between the desire to welcome newcomers/beginners non-judgmentally and the reality of the importance of refining standards of excellence, so that collectors will take art quilts seriously.

These are choices that can be made collectively if we orchestrate a dialogue, but they are also choices that must be made individually - which is where we have the only real control. In any event, there is much to discuss and I hope this lecture will get the conversation started.

Because of everything I’ve said, it is interesting to note the classifications... and It is grist for the mill to point out the observations…

but the most significant reality is that it still comes down to one artist, in one studio, becoming intimately aware of her own process and preferences; actualizing her own quest for meaning and/or creative growth, and then having the courage to pursue it independent of others. We must do whatever we can to honor that impulse.

Huh?

2011-01-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

In 2001, I was still the chair of the Surface Design Studio at the Southwest School of Art and Craft. Complex Cloth was selling well, and I was getting invitations to teach in other locations around the country. I struggled with leaving a program that was near and dear to my heart, but my job had turned more administrative than artful and I finally decided to go solo. It wasn’t an easy transition, but it did feel right.

Almost ten years later, I ran into a former colleague at a dinner party. “Jane,” he said, “I’ve always wanted to tell you how sorry I was that you got fired.” I looked at him in disbelief. Fired? Huh.

I called up a close friend the next day. “Hey,” I said, “Did I get fired from the Craft Center?” She laughed. “Of course you did, Jane!” She paused and continued, “Everybody knew that.”

Huh.

I had the same feeling this week when I read the headline to an article describing my current exhibition and visit to the University of Louisville. The headline in the Louisville Courier-Journal read Repairing Textile’s Tattered Reputation. Huh?

The article was fine. Elizabeth Kramer, the reporter, was fun to talk to, and she definitely got it. Where the headline came from, I don’t know. But seeing that headline certainly made me stop and think. I’ve been thinking about it all week. Is this just another indication that textiles are getting a bad art rap?

The corner of the world I occupy is lively, inventive and challenging. Just as it never occurred to me that I'd been fired (gee, I could have collected unemployment...) it has never occurred to me to think of my textile world as one with a tattered reputation.

On the other hand, I talked with a guest at my lecture the other evening about just this issue - why textiles aren't more MAINSTREAM - and we agreed that it wasn't technique or quality or message as much as it was marketing.

What can we do about that?

Discharge! The Emperor's New Clothes

2011-01-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

Last time I wrote an essay, I offered up the question Why do you make? I was delighted by the heartfelt responses you’all shared with fellow readers. Thank you, thank you to everyone who took time to write.

We didn’t determine anything definitive when it came to addressing the gender issue - which was a subplot in my previous post. It’s too big an issue to settle in a blog essay or two. But I’ve continued to ponder gender bias this week as I finished the text for my lecture. (which I’ll reprint here after I’ve presented it to the public on January 29.)

Serendipitously, a friend sent me a link I have to share with you. The Gagosian Gallery in New York City is currently showing the works of Piotr Uklański, in an exhibition titled Discharge! I read the description of the artist’s work, and could feel the color rising – or was it the hairs on the back of my neck? Or maybe my pulse?

Frustration?
Delight that a surface design process has gone mainstream?
Or the usual pissed off reaction I have when the “lowly” techniques I employ to make art are simultaneously appropriated and marginalized?

The review states,
“As with the crayon- shavings paintings, torn-paper collages and ceramic-mosaic tableaux, Uklański opts for low-fi, household wares — in this case, commercial bedding and bleach — over conventional, codified art materials with which to make his art.”

And don’t ask me how we could possibly go from the aggravating (as opposed to the ridiculous) to the even more aggravating (as opposed to the sublime) within the framework of one web link, but here goes. On the same page where I read about Uklanski’s Discharge! there was a link to an image of a textile piece entitled: Woman Recreates da Vinci's 'Last Supper' with Lint. Of course this piece isn’t displayed at the Gagosian Gallery; it’s offered up by Ripleys Believe it or Not.

Am I crazy? Is there a disconnect here?

Does anyone else think it's maddening that these two artists could easily be swapped, if only we had a magic wand handy? I can picture the lint pieces on the wall of a famous gallery, commanding top dollar, if only the artist knew how to work the gallery scene.

I can just as easily imagine the bleach paintings on a wall at Ripley’s - because there are loads of folks out there who would never believe that art can be made with chlorine bleach.

Is it the luck of the draw? Ambition? Asking the right questions and getting the right teachers? Gender bias?

I just hope he neutralized those rather large investments before they went public.

Why do YOU work?

2011-01-12T08:23:00.000-08:00

Why do you make? And why do you make what you make?
Have you spent time thinking about these questions?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot – partly because as a working artist you have lots of alone time, and although I adore audio books, I’ve recently chosen solitude over information. I need time to think.

Today what I really want to know is why other people do what they do, but specifically why people/women/men make art quilts or art work with a textile component.

Here’s why. I’m writing a lecture to be given alongside the current art quilt exhibition, Form Not Function, at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany, Indiana. As preparation, I looked at the quilts in the show. Then I started looking at all kinds of art quilts in all kinds of places. Famous quilts, not so famous quilts. All of the Quilt National shows since 1999. Fascinating. Genres have definitely emerged. More on that later, after I have introduced my classifications in the lecture.

My original plan was to draw conclusions and propose goals art quilters could work toward into the future. But although I’ve worked on my ideas for several weeks almost nonstop, I find I have only observations to share.

There are some intriguing oddities in the art quilt movement.

For instance, it’s a field populated by women. There is only one man in the Form/Not Function show. In the last issue of the Surface Design Association Journal, which featured the art quilt movement, four men were included alongside twenty-four women. Neither SAQA (the Studio Art Quilt Associates) nor SDA knows for sure how many male members are enrolled, but it’s not a very large number.

This is the reverse of almost every art movement to date. Men have dominated painting from Romanticism until Now, with women making inroads, but not definitive or speedy ones. From Mary Cassatt to Georgia O’Keefe to Lee Krasner, women were the exception, not the rule. Feminism influenced this of course, but the movements associated with women who acted partly from a Feminist stance are still subjected to faint disdain as far as mainstream Art is concerned. Maybe the playing field is finally leveling among young, aspiring artists, (I haven’t researched it – anyone have personal experience with this?)

But what’s going on in the art quilt world?

I guess it’s not surprising, since sewing has always been a girl thing. But it just feels odd. On the one hand, quilt making is huge because it gives so many women a context in which to be artistic. But quilt making still isn’t mainstream art – could it be because it is primarily a female arena?

Women are by nature supportive and encouraging. Quilt guilds have flourished in part because they provide connection. Organizations like SAQA have harnessed an incredible female energy, one that continues to rise – generating shows and exposure for the membership.

That’s good. But also problematic. If we get our own little club going here, then maybe we aren’t as inclined to venture out of the comfort zone. Do we care if we never make it into the mainstream art world? Are we happy here in the textile ghetto? Would we rather not compete with each other, or with other media?

It feels itchy to me. It’s too easy to ignore the fact that some of the issues we face might be rooted in gender inequalities that aren’t yet resolved. But maybe we’re at the best party in the world, with lots of women we like, so it doesn’t matter if we’re not invited into major galleries on a regular basis, or that often our work doesn’t sell for the price a comparable painting would command.

Disclaimer: Some art quilt artists DO command comparable prices to paintings and get them. Is it unreasonable to ask whether these numbers are lower than they could be, were quilts to be more widely accepted by the art buying public?

I’ve got some observations about steps that could be taken to move more aggressively toward the mainstream market. But that’s another subject. What I really want to know right now is all about motivation.

Another concern: If art quilters are content existing in the lovely world they’ve created for themselves, will challenges to refine, strive for quality, question design, color, innovation, and/or presentation be embraced? Maybe that’s an individual decision rather than a group one.

So:
Do you work just because you love the work?
Do you aspire to exhibit and sell your work and what does that look like? To friends? Through a gallery? Through exposure at exhibitions?

I welcome your thoughts.

Loving in the New Year

2011-01-03T07:43:00.001-08:00

Last Thursday I shipped 48 pieces to Louisville, where my work will be installed at the Hite Art Institute (University of Louisville) this month. If you live in the vicinity, come and join me on January 26, for the lecture and reception. It’s free.

On Friday morning I woke up thinking about what to do next. I won’t start right away, as I believe a certain closure is usually needed when a body of work or a project is completed. For me, closure doesn’t come until I breathe a sigh of relief seeing the work installed in the gallery space.

But I was already living in the future - imagining how similar images and formats could employ saturated color and the entire color palette. I guess I missed vibrant color while I was working with the achromatic scheme I chose for the recently completed work.

I’m also reading Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Wow. Highly recommended. And the inspiration for this essay because of how his ideas segue with my own experiences of making.

Lots of artists work because of what they think will happen if they can only be good enough to get some attention. Most people have a scenario playing out in their heads when they imagine where their art might lead. Winning a major prize in a juried show. Getting a book deal. Being approached by a public television producer interested in filming an interview. Our culture sets us up for this. Don’t you want to be in a tabloid at the grocery store so everyone will know your name?

I digress. Csikszentmihalyi suggests that we usually put the cart before the horse. This is true in many domains – not only within the domain of art making. We imagine what we hope to achieve as part of the impetus that inspires us to keep working. The thing is, without building a knowledge base so that we can be really good at whatever we do, and without choosing to do what we do because we find it endlessly fascinating - a practice we must do, as opposed to a practice we find mildly interesting – we easily lose the desire required to keep the practice going.

In Meg Cox’s fine anthology on quilters and quilting making,The Quilter's Catalog, she quotes one young woman as saying quilting is something she must do – it is as important to her as breathing. That’s the kind of attachment to a practice that will keep it going, no matter how busy life gets and no matter how many other “to dos” come pounding on the door.

It’s not a bad idea to visualize where you want your work to take you. A five year plan is a good thing. It’s important to know how to write an artist’s statement, and to acquire the self-confidence it takes to approach a gallery. But those are learnable skills. Loving something enough to want to do it whenever you can is less tangible. And not negotiable. It’s what wakes you up in the night, thinking into the future about color.

If you are struggling to stay focused or to find time to work, use your new year energy to take stock. What do you love? Haven’t found it yet? Keep looking.

Maybe you’ll find Mary Chapin Carpenter’s lyrics encouraging:

You might still be searching every face
For one you can’t forget
But love is out there in a stranger’s clothes
You just haven’t met him yet.

More on the Power of Limits

2010-12-17T07:17:00.000-08:00

Anyone familiar with traditional quilting knows it originated, at least in part, from the need to use worn out clothing and scrap fabric. Sewing bits together was a functional act of making driven by the goal to produce a bed cover that would keep someone warm on a cold winter night. Who knows when the tedium of hand stitching ignited the veritable inner light bulb – the maker’s realization that the scraps could actually be sewn together to produce a pleasing pattern? A single thought possessed the power to turn an endlessly tedious chore into an exciting task charged with potential.

Welcome to another conversation about the power of limits. This week I’ve been with my sister, logging a week of chemotherapy. Sitting and thinking, or trying not to think, is part of the game. I brought along twelve pieces of a current series, each of which required hand stitching in order to be complete.

I thought I brought all the thread I needed, but in one of those last minute packing flails of omission, I never packed four of the perle cotton colors I intended to bring along. Drat. A small town. Twenty four inches of snow. What to do?

The second morning I walked to a spiffy store called Dig. In addition to the fresh home furnishings, indy craft books, and objects Dig features, there was a rack of sewing thread. Not the richly saturated perle cotton colors I prefer, but a solid selection of cotton sewing threads. I switched mental gears and selected the colors I needed, and then a few more.

As is often the case, the lighter weight thread was a better match to my art work than the perle cotton I’d brought, which was all wrong in terms of scale. Making blows my mind on a regular basis. The thing I think will be the perfect resolution is too big (and overwhelms) too small (and disappears) the wrong color (I didn’t take the colors around it seriously enough) or just plain wrong. (Get out the critique sheet and figure out what went screwy.)

But the thin, sewing thread was just right. And there were enough color choices in the stash I’d purchased to make every combination of background and thread perfect. No settling. This Goldilocks was a happy camper.

Once the immediate design decisions are made, there is plenty of sweet time to think. I thought of an exercise, which is a variation on others I’ve taught in the past:

Pick a color, or a stitch, or a thread. Or a pencil. The first part of this has to be tailored to whatever it is you do and hopefully love.

Painter? Pick painting. Poet. Pick haiku. Stitcher? Pick the Wrapped Back Stitch.

What can you do with what you’ve chosen? How will limiting what you use to one primary action or format actually free you?

This sort of experiment is perfect once a day for a few minutes. You may sit and stare at the color, or the pencil or the needle at first, but try to get past the fear and begin. When your hand is moving your brain can engage. It’s a bit like learning to drive a car with a standard transmission. You can sit and stare at the clutch for an hour, but the car won’t move until you put it in gear and hit the gas.

Practice turning off the Judgment Function in your mind. Tell yourself you are just seeing what will happen. You are curious where this could go. If it really doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, lighten up. Make it a meditation. Draw or stitch straight lines for the whole session. Cut the paper you painted up into strips or squares. Keep your hands moving. Really stuck? Switch to a material you’d never think of taking seriously. Glue black bean designs on 5” squares of cardboard. Really.

Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Observe the ideas that flow once self-conscious awareness disappears into the activity at hand. Write those ideas down before you forget what they were. Present time thinking is fodder for future projects. Sit in the moment of making and relish the simplicity of working within limitations. Anticipate where it will lead.

And then get up and do some laundry. Or the dishes.

Limitations: Clearing Out Stuff

2010-12-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

This is a season focused on giving and receiving. In an effort to continue the discussion on the power of limitations, I invite you to think about what you could give away.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve already got too much stuff. I don’t want any gifts this December. If anything, I want a gift I can give myself – of inventorying my stuff and divesting of as much of it as I can.

Recently I noticed a property for sale in my neighborhood - perfect for a retreat center/teaching studio. Never mind that it’s on the market for way more than I can afford. I had to have a look. The formerly grand 1920’s house stands on a promontory with a view of downtown San Antonio. Situated on over an acre, there is plenty of space for a new studio building – and maybe even a guesthouse. (Let me know if you have some funds to invest!)

While I practiced active imagination envisioning what I could do with the house I noticed something else about the property. It was clear the owner had issues when it came to parting with stuff. Two cars, carrying plates that hadn’t been current since 1999, were parked in the large driveway. The inside of the house confirmed its occupation by a seasoned stuffologist. Every room was stacked with boxes. The spare bedroom had been turned into makeshift closet for hundreds of pieces of clothing – more than any person could wear in one lifetime. I felt sad for the owner, and also slightly claustrophobic.

To break free from that level of acquisitive behavior probably requires help. We all know people who can’t give anything away. I encounter them in workshops all the time. One student I adore had five bags of denim in her studio, just waiting for the right project to present itself. That alone might not have been a problem, but the garage was full of stuff too. And neither you nor I can pass judgment on this. Last April I helped my mother clear out a basement’s worth of stuff, in preparation for a move to a new home. Our time together in the basement produced touching memories and several belly laughs. It’s hard to get rid of things that remind us of the past. The electrically heated melamine baby dish with the shiny moon and stars on it (my youngest sister is in her mid-forties) tugged at both our heartstrings, but it had to go. And what about the dozens of cereal box fronts, carefully trimmed into 9” x 12” pieces? “You never know when you might need a good piece of cardboard,” my mother explained sheepishly. We both laughed. The cereal boxes went into the paper-recycling bag, although I can’t help but wonder whether some of it was vintage, and worth something.

And that’s the hook. We’re easily duped into keeping far more of the stuff we own than we will ever need or use, because we are sentimentally attached, or motivated by a belief that somehow the stuff will bring us money. If we got busy and listed everything on Ebay, or tagged it all and filled up tables in the driveway, it would. But there’s one niggling detail. Actually doing it.

My point is that the more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to take care of. Sooner or later there’s a tipping point. You’re serving the stuff instead of allowing the stuff to serve you.

So give yourself the gift of dumping some stuff this season. Face the facts. Will you ever get a garage sale organized? Will you ever learn how to use Ebay? For that matter, will you ever use those five bags of fabric scraps you’re currently hoarding? Or all of the old copies of Quilting Arts you have stacked in the corner of the bedroom? Do yourself a favor and clear some stuff out. And don’t focus on how much it cost originally, or whether it’s worth money now. Pay it forward, and give everything away. Use freecycle.com or send a note out to fellow artists. I know one group in San Antonio that hosts a clothes swap twice a year.

How about an artists’ swap? Or the good, old-fashioned Salvation Army? It’s been proven that those who give without worrying about getting anything back have actually healed physical maladies. Check out Cami Walker at 29gifts.org. Suffering from multiple sclerosis, she determined to give 29 gifts in twenty-nine days. Amazingly enough, during the course of the giving her symptoms actually abated.

I know when I cleared out my closets and studio in September it was as though a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Is it a coincidence that the pain I had in my back also went away? I don’t know. I do know the coats that went to the homeless shelter are needed this morning. And that all the textile paints I’d accumulated but was never going to use found a good home with a young student living on tips as a waitress. And it makes me smile – and feel considerably lighter on my feet – to imagine what someone must have thought when they encountered the original artwork (old and no longer viably salable) that I donated to Goodwill. I just hope it didn’t go into a bedroom stacked with so much stuff it won’t ever be truly enjoyed.

But that can’t be my concern. All I can do is keep clearing out – creating plenty of healthy psychic space for new ideas and new work. Which is just another version of working within limitations and staying in present time.

Why "Art Cloth?" - A Guest Opinion

2010-12-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

Marie-Therese Wisniowski is an artist, lecturer and writer from Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. She recently wrote this essay in response to a review published in the Winter Edition of the Surface Design Journal. I felt it was worth printing in order to share her ideas with an audience beyond the SDA membership.

Art Cloth was a term coined by Jane Dunnewold at the dawn of this century. Since then it has been widely used to embrace a myriad of “Art” that utilizes cloth as its medium. Jessica Hemmings in reviewing – ArtCloth: Engaging New Visions (an exhibition in which I was the curator) questioned whether the term Art Cloth was necessary, since she thought that “...textiles provide a rich medium for sophisticated communication of conceptual ideas. But I don’t think that textile needs yet another name” [1]. My answer to her assertions is that as much as I respect Jessica’s opinion, I disagree with her viewpoint on this matter.
The history of art is one of continual change. Art is dynamic and so serious philosophical questions have been raised as to whether or not it can be logically defined, identified or even classified [2]. There are numerous philosophical treaties exploring these ideas [2].

There are three basic ingredients (as opposed to definitions) that all artworks possess. When “engaged” they are non-functional, and aesthetic. “Engaging” is an important ingredient, since an unknown buried work is not art. These three conditions are “necessary” conditions and not the “sufficient and necessary” conditions that all logicians are searching for [2]. Note: I use the word “engaged” in a generic sense and so for example, that if all human species were blind we could perhaps “engage” sculpture artworks, although I doubt if water colour paintings would be in our art lexicon.

Historically what is now considered art - by individuals, cognoscenti, populous at large and by art institutions - has dramatically expanded. Furthermore, once a form of art has been accepted, like a biological cell when taken root in a particular form, it can divide and sub-divide itself into smaller sub-units.

Most areas of art are defined by doing nouns (i.e. nouns that evoke images of action): painting, sculpture, and performance art (just to mention a few). Once an area or cell of art has been loosely defined a number of sub-divisions miraculously occur. For example, let us consider the art making area of painting. It sub-divides on process (e.g. oil paintings, water colour paintings, and fresco etc.), on subject (e.g. landscapes, portraits, and seascapes etc.), on art movements (e.g. Impressionists, Post- Impressionist, and Cubists etc.) Those interested are not confused nor fear such sub- divisions or overlapping labeling. Rather their mere existence indicates a growing conscious interest, articulation and sophisticated appreciation of this form of art.

Let us define what is a textile. Basically it is defined as “any material that is woven” [3]. Clearly canvas is a textile and so technically speaking paintings on canvas, linen, velvet and silk are all textile art. Alan Sisley (Gallery Director, Orange Regional Art Gallery, NSW, Australia) is bemused that textile artists exclude canvas from their definition of their area of artistic engagement. “There is a lot of harmonious colour and thoughtful composition in this show [Engaging New Visions] . . . the same things we would praise were it an exhibition of paintings. When you think about it, canvas is also a fabric, so really what is the difference between printed or painted silk, painted canvas or paper?” [4].

The definition of “cloth” is similarly as broad, namely, “ a fabric formed by weaving, felting etc. from fibre used for garments, upholstery and for many other purposes” [3]. The same arguments could be applied against the use of “Art Cloth” as a generic identifier for artworks on fibre - other than canvas - as those that were used against “Textile Art”. There are nuances that tip me in favour of the use of “ArtCloth” in place of “Textile Art”, “Fibre Art” and “Surface Design” etc. For example, the use of “cloth” to define clothing or garments is now obsolete [3]. However, the use of “textile” or “fibre” always evokes textile or fibre design, so important for the Bauhaus school-of-thought that it was plundered by commercial needs to sell fabrics to a large and discerning market for functional use [5] (in defiance of one of the necessary conditions of artwork – its lack of functionality). Whilst its practitioners have spawned future art movements on canvas (especially in the USA) it lost its way as the poppet head of future art movements on fabrics. “Art Cloth” unlike “Textile Art” or “Fibre Art” therefore evokes the three necessary conditions (see above) that all artworks possess.

The word “Art” in general, may be considered by some (but not me!) as too broad a descriptor to attach to “Cloth” since it evokes a non-doing noun. If I had been there at the beginning of Jane’s thought bubble I would have suggested that she should consider the descriptor “Fine Art Cloth” since “fine art” now evokes - “an art form categorized as one of the fine arts, namely, those arts which seek expression through beautiful or significant modes” [3]. “Art Cloth” naturally assumes this role, even though “Fine Art Cloth” technically nails it!

The medium of cloth engages more of our physical and unconscious senses than most media used in art. In theory you can touch it, smell it and see it. The hue it offers is impossible to recreate on canvas. It is no wonder then that Leslie Rice used black velvet to paint his self-portrait to win the 2007 Australian Moran National Portrait Prize [6]. Cloth is like having available to you a Steinway rather than a harpsichord.

I am not at all fussed that Art Cloth is sub-dividing itself. I have often stated that Art Cloth works are exploring a new continent in art [6]. To take this analogy further - like any continent there will be different flora and fauna, landscapes and climates in different regions of the continent – all happening at the same time. The more mature these explorations become, the more sub-divisions appear.

Like the mature art of painting, Art Cloth can also be sub-divided on process (e.g. shibori, batik, and digital etc.), on subject (e.g. landscapes, post-graffiti, and social comment etc.), and on movement (e.g. post-modernism, abstract expressionism, and De Stijl etc.) [6]. Those interested in Art Cloth will one day identify new art movements in cloth being born, developed, appreciated and then perhaps discarded. These statements are not predictions, but rather are the artistic cycles witnessed with the exploration of any art medium.

We do not want to lose focus on what is important to us – definitions may come and go and undoubtedly, will keep art theorists and publishing houses very busy producing a vast array of tomes [2]. However, what motivates the practitioner is simply to do and to “engage” Art Cloth! Enjoy, and let those less fortunate and gifted than you argue about such nuances.

Biography
Marie-Therese Wisniowski (BFA) is a full-time artist, researcher, author and casual lecturer at the University of Newcastle (Australia). She maintains the Art Quill Studio at Arcadia Vale, NSW, Australia. She has written articles on the Art Cloth movement for scholarly journals as well as for art and craft magazines and e-zines. She gives lectures and workshops on the concept and techniques in Art Cloth. She is the curator of the - Art Cloth: Engaging New Visions – exhibition that toured Australia. She specializes in the area of Art Cloth and limited edition prints. She has created a number of silk screening techniques (e.g. “Matrix Formatting” and “Multiplexing”), which she employs in her works. Her current work explores contemporary issues and she employs dyeing, discharge, stenciling, hand painting, digital imaging and silkscreen printing to explore issues via her large format works. For more information – see http://www.artquill.blogspot.com.

References:
[1] J. Hemmings, Surface Design Journal, Fall 2010, pages 56-57. [2] N. Carrrol, Philosophy of Art, Routledge, London (1999). [3] The Macquarie Dictionary, Third Edition, Macquarie University, NSW (1997). [4] A. Sisley, ‘Audience Cottons onto Exhibition’ Gallery Pages, Central Western Daily, Orange, 15.5.10 [5] Editor M. Kemp, The Oxford History of Western Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2000). [6] M-T. Wisniowski, ‘Exploring A New Continent in Art’, Crafts Arts International, Issue 73 (2008) pages 67-72.

Thoughts on Focusing

2010-12-01T08:41:00.000-08:00

The question of how to focus comes up in almost every discussion I lead on the creative process. I think when people talk about focusing what they’re really wondering is whether their work would improve – be stronger, better or more satisfying – if it wasn’t going so many directions. The wealth of available materials and processes is seductive! I’ve been writing about the power of limits in my personal work, so it’s not surprising that I get letters from readers who want to know what they should do to bring some focus to their work, too.

Which led me to this evaluation of the various styles Artists employ when they are making. Where do you fit? If you can’t decide, ask a friend. She’ll be able to tell you!

The Six Approaches to Making

Spontaneous: Throw anything at it and see what happens.

Tentative: Tries something out but can’t decide. Lives with it awhile and one of two things happens: Likes it so far; and continues, Or can’t decide; so it collects dust.

The Planner: Regularly diagrams, journals and plans. Thinks about color, makes lists. The planning is more fun than the execution, so no piece ever gets made. But some great journals come out of the process…

The Pragmatist: Uses what she has, right or wrong. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least she finishes things and stays within her budget.

The Collector: Constantly shopping and/or acquiring. Sees Big Ideas when she’s in the middle of a purchase, but nothing ever resolves. Loads of stuff in closets and under the bed.

The Worker Bee: Never didn’t finish anything. What starts as a sample must become a vest or a pillow. Everyone is in awe of how she gets it all done. The downfall? She never moves beyond samples into deeper work.

I bet you’ll see a bit of yourself in at least one of these descriptions. I’ve got bits and pieces of each of them in me, depending on my mood.

But no matter where you fall out on the above list, sooner or later, it begins to wear on you. You tire of the collections, or wish you could do differently, or better. Maybe you begin to realize it could feel great to buckle down and make something you’d be really proud of.

Which leads back to focusing.

I think focusing loses its appeal because we make the mistake of believing that if we decide to focus our efforts, we’ll leave something else wonderful behind. That somehow we’re choosing forever.

Not true! Focusing doesn’t mean you can’t do everything you find appealing. It just means that for some pre-determined period of time you are going to choose INTENTIONALLY to work with some limits. Picture the old mother in the shoe, who had so many children she didn’t know what to do. Every mother knows that each child requires at least a few minutes of individual attention every day in order to blossom into a human being with healthy self-esteem.

So this is your approach – and the first assignment (of which the next blog entries will suggest several…)

Don’t be the old woman in the shoe – with so many projects you don’t know what to do. Think about each project, technique or how-to book that interests you. DO make some notes about what appeals and then do a little mental ranking. What do you want to do MOST right now – in this space of time? Think about concentrating your efforts on one interest – either for a specific period of time, or until you complete a certain number of works employing the technique, OR until you feel you have mastered it.

When you feel really good about the project or process from one of those angles, you’ll feel equally good about moving on to something new. OR perhaps, about sticking with it even longer – because you have discovered how much more there is to explore.

It’s a win – win proposition.

Sunday in the Studio

2010-11-21T16:12:00.000-08:00

Funny how it goes in the studio. This week was Week 8 of my Daily Practice Series. Although I have always been good at getting to the studio for regular work time (since it’s so much cheaper than therapy) this series requires my attendance as part of the design of the whole project. It’s based on the premise that I will go to the studio, day in and day out, if only for a short time. Inspired by the talented musicians I know, many of whom still practice scales every single day, my visual etudes are in part about what I can discover if I renew my commitment to being present. Whether I feel like it or not.

I may have written previously, that I have also challenged myself to think of filling linear space. The gallery consists of three rooms. The total running space, as close as I can figure, is approximately 290 feet, allowing for doors and the various odd air vents, security devices and thermostat panels. In an effort to work within limits, my pieces are long, rectangular works – meant to mimic the style and presentation of scrolls - musical exercises, perhaps, or penmanship samples. So I am working not only from the inspiration of refinement – selecting each element to be included or discarded even more carefully than in the past, but also from the new angle of practical logistics. Can I produce enough panels to fill 290’ of running wall space? It’s a gamble.

But I have the Gambler archetype so it’s within my comfort zone. Especially with my Judge holding court – monitoring rigorously whether my work is up to snuff on any particular day, or not.

Darn frustrating today, though. I dyed gorgeous pearl gray silk backgrounds this week, but spent most of the time spinning my mental wheels. Too much going on, between Family and Great Big Life in general. I couldn’t focus. Nothing I did felt right. My Judge was operating full throttle. And not being very nice.

For example, yesterday it seemed like a good idea to cut out stenciled letters so I could print “and the greatest of these is Love” really big as a background on one piece. Even while I was cutting out the letters I knew it was hokey, but I couldn’t stop myself. Do you know that feeling - when you might as well be driving 90 miles an hour toward a cliff? The accelerator is stuck and Fate is driving?

Sure enough. Sprayed the paint. Tried to keep it soft like the image in my mind. Oh boy. Peeled off the mask. Totally wrong. Immediate response? Cover the whole thing up by gluing rice paper over the entire surface, obscuring the lettering. Punch the time clock in my brain and hope to have a better day tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrived. Today. Energized by the cool morning and the promise of recovery, the studio beckoned. As I worked to devore’ the paper surface - allowing just a bit of the wording to appear - I felt a surge of hope. And then I thought of Zenna’s heart screen. Drawn when she was three years old, I have kept that screen for twenty years. Partly for sentimental value but partly because she’s got a good eye and a free spirit and it shows anytime she picks up a pencil.

I resisted the idea of printing her heart on the reclaimed background. I’ve been so determined to keep this series mainly abstract. Going for reverence and connection without being figurative. Wasn’t using an image that had been in my repertoire for twenty years a sell out? Couldn’t I come up with something new?

I began to write in my journal and this is what flowed from the pen:

“ Maybe this week making is leading me to a more literal, heartfelt response to the world around me. Perhaps wanting to stick with abstraction is a defense mechanism I’ve been using to keep my heart from breaking. I’ve wanted to abandon the figurative imagery I’ve used over the years but now I see it emerging from the past and inserting itself into these pieces in new forms. This Etude series has abstracted, textural backgrounds, and a use of new materials, but the birds on a line, Zenna’s heart, and various other images have wound their way through the series connecting me inextricably to previous work in a way that is comfortingly grounding.”

“Will a viewer know whether an image is old or new? Will a colleague, smarter or more intellectual than I am, dismiss my work because it is too figurative/decorative or not up his or her alley? That’s my fear; but not necessarily reality.”

“ In the meantime, I can’t choose to use or not use an image that still exists as a tool in my repertoire. I can only pay attention when the rightness of using an older image asserts itself. And then I can choose to listen. Printing tenderly or fearlessly. I must trust that my making will also be my healing.”

That’s the value of developing your visual voice. It is a unique and personal language. With it comes the profound ability to express anger, tenderness, indignation and beauty – all in forms that will touch your viewer as surely as you were yourself, changed by the making.

What is Art Cloth, Anyway?

2010-11-18T09:36:00.000-08:00

What is art cloth, anyway?

The question took me by surprise, and since being asked more than a year ago, I’ve had some rather startling realizations.

For instance, I ran this project I called the Art Cloth Challenge. I dyed twelve lengths of fabric more or less the same way – color and pattern, that is. Then I invited anyone who read the Complex Cloth list to put his or her name in the hat. I drew twelve names and sent each person a length of cloth, along with a few simple “rules”:
The cloth had to stay intact and could not be cut.
Any surface patterning technique was ok and layering was encouraged.
The pieces had to be returned to me so that I could share the results with my readers on the list.

You can see the results for yourself at http://artclothchallenge.blogspot.com.

The whole premise of the project was that any twelve artists could take the same length of cloth, work it, and produce twelve unique pieces of art. And the premise was absolutely right! The finished lengths were unique. Some of them weren’t even the same color anymore. It was fascinating.

BUT. I couldn’t believe it when I opened some of the packages upon the cloth’s return. Artists whose work I knew and admired had approached the challenge not from the perspective of what they did best, but from the perspective of what I do best. The use of imagery and layering looked more like me than it did like them.

Then it hit me. If any approach to an art form is too narrow, eventually the form will choke, wither and die. If artists in this field define art cloth as what I make, and carry the thought through to the logical conclusion that anyone’s art cloth must mimic what I make, then we’ve got trouble. We’re choking on the definition instead of making art.

My experience with the Mastery Program groups confirmed this narrow definition. My 2008 group was the first to struggle verbally with what art cloth should be as part of considering what it could be. I shared a conversation I’d had with Marie-Therese Wisniowski – Australian artist and curator of an art cloth exhibition. Marie-Therese suggested that while art cloth could be a length of cloth cascading down a wall, it didn’t necessarily have to be a specific length, width or format. The length of cloth was just one way of organizing visual information. Maybe, she suggested, art cloth was a term capable of replacing older, parochial terms, in an effort to move toward wider audience understanding and appreciation of art that begins as cloth.

The 2008 group eventually settled into a comfort zone where each artist refined the methods of working that felt most authentic to her. By the end of the program, we had twelve artists working in twelve authentic voices. I still considered it all art cloth.

One of the ironies of this whole thing is that twenty years ago fiber artists were embroiled in an ongoing discussion of what was art and what was craft. I felt sure we were going to talk that one to death, and I could hardly wait. Once we were worn out talking about it, maybe we’d be able to go back to the studio and make. But here it is again in a new, updated version – what is art cloth and what isn’t? Can’t be digitally printed? Can’t have sand on it? Can’t be square instead of one long panel? Can’t be backed? Has to be one length and not pieced?

We’re getting awfully close to choking on our own restrictions.

I’d love to know what you think.

And thoughts another time on the need for limits! Because as with all things, there’s a paradox to explore - unless we don’t use any words at all, we keep returning to the desire - may I suggest even a thirsty need - for definitions. We’re human. We can’t resist it.

Protecting Artistic Energy

2010-11-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

Well, let’s get back to art and creativity since that’s one arena where - believe it or not – I think I have some inkling of control. Or is it the illusion of control? No matter. Let’s keep going.

Last week my Mastery Program students (2010) met for their second session. One topic of discussion was how to share what they are learning. Some folks want to post to a blog and others just want to know how to share what they are accomplishing with artist friends or family. Every group I set wants to establish a presence on line where they can share images of their work as it develops. Each group is very surprised when I say NO.

Isn’t it something what we do to ourselves if left to our own mental devices? I never used to mind the sharing of unfolding work – after all – isn’t that the sign of a group committed to each other and the assignments they have been given?

Yikes. The reality of this sort of sharing is a gradual closing off, shutting down, a big whomp to the tenderly emerging self esteem of all participants considered.

That was several years ago, but now not sharing is a rule veiled as a polite request. Please do not share your work with others while you are still working on it.

We’re not talking about my assignments or class stuff that I want to protect. That’s another story and perhaps one worth exploring another time. How much should a participant enrolled in an expensive and time consuming program share with others? When does it become a vicarious free class for the person who is asking and when is it sweet interest borne by desire for the enrollee to succeed?

But this is different. This is about honoring and protecting the Artistic Self. I request not sharing now because I know sharing not only runs the risk of intimidating shyer students so that they can no longer engage and make…but more importantly, sharing saps the energy out of what they do – no matte what the confidence level.

Spiritual masters had the right idea when they cautioned against what I describe as the blurt – the uncontained, gushing verbal mode that wants everyone to know what’s going on. Find yourself in the middle of a blurt and you’ll find that the sharing diminishes the power of your creative act – power which isn’t easily restored.

Do you feel some responsibility to share what’s happening in your creative life? The events behind your closed studio doors? Think twice and conserve that store of powerful resource. No one should demand to know what’s going on with you. Let them wait. Savor your alone time with your art and your process. Report back when you feel good and ready.

Seeking Forgiveness

2010-11-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

This week I was embarrassed and dismayed to discover that the post I wrote on election night and the responses that followed, upset one of my most beloved friends.

I have searched my soul to determine where I might have gone off track by sounding too critical of the other side. Because that was not my intent. My intent was to voice a concern that both sides of the political debate have resorted to tactics that aren’t civil. That we must categorically reject reactionary behavior.

I still don’t have an answer to how I could have written my post differently. Perhaps I could not have done so. But as the Pollyanna I am, I have sought a silver lining to the dark cloud hovering over me since that post.

The silver lining is the unifying, transcendent power of art, and specifically, of art cloth.

Those of use who love cloth don’t come from similar backgrounds. Some of us have had high-powered careers; some of us have never worked outside the house. Some of us are degreed, but many of us are not. Some have big aspirations, but many of us just love the work for the work, and are content to allow it to be so.

Our love of cloth overcomes varied family backgrounds, personal experience and education, and yes, political points of view. Which is a Hurray Moment.

I was on line this morning looking up the phone number for Spoonflower – that on-demand fabric printing site I’ve mentioned before. Stephen Fraser, one of the founders of the company, was featured in a UTube video, sponsored by the State of North Carolina. The overview of the company’s development was terrific, but what I loved most was Stephen’s statement that the company flourishes because of word of mouth – because of, in his words, ”community.” Community building.

I worry about how We will work through the current state of affairs in our government. I worry about our trashing of the planet and I worry about big business and the banking industry. These huge companies were not founded by a desire to do right in the community. They were founded to make a profit. Companies and banks don’t have a conscience. They aren’t socialized creatures. They are sociopathic entities and we, the real community, are paying the price for encouraging and indulging these practices in our culture.

How to translate our cloth community aesthetic into the at-large culture?

Rebuke? Revision? Restructure?

I am still asking myself these questions and I don’t have any answers. But I/we must engage and not falter. I am sorry I offended my friend. I hope we can continue to talk it out. Without the continued conversation among loving peers, resolution is doomed to failure. Please don’t be afraid to talk to those around you. Or share in away that could benefit others. All of us.

This is our charge.

Creative Governing?

2010-11-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in a funk all day and it isn’t just worrying about my sister’s chemotherapy tomorrow. It’s the political climate in this country.

While I am horrified by the gridlock that has occurred because a bunch of extremist (mainly) men (on both sides) refuse to give an inch in the power struggle for our survival as a country (and also as human beings), today I am dismayed by our inability to recognize the absolute necessity of patience in this attempt to rebuild our circumstances. And not only dismayed but Furious when I witness the arrogance pervading EVERYTHING - that if we only had the right person, we would have been further along in this recovery. Jesus! Or maybe Mohammed! Or maybe the Budhha… but in any event, holy shit that we can’t find the patience required to allow the team we elected in 2008 to do the task we set them to do. And that we are so eager to cast them out now, and seek someone new.

No President, Democrat or Republican, could be expected to turn the tide of several generations of abuse, mismanagement and may I add, denial. Yes, I voted for Obama and I still think he’s the right man for the job. But it is discouraging to watch my Democratic colleagues abandon the cause because he couldn’t solve problems fast enough, or to their liking. I thought we were the party of generosity, high ideals and compromise. We’ve made progress. But unfortunately, it is going to take MORE time, and we do need to tighten up our belts a bit. As a self-employed artist with limited health insurance, I am ok with that. I am willing to do my part. But what about big business and government? Where are the cuts that don’t have to affect the average family? Who’s working on that? That's where the gridlock begins.

And I am also willing to take care of those around me. As long as I am talking about dismay, I need to address the insertion of various rightwing Christian dynamics into the national conversation. I don’t really get it. Aren’t we the most prosperous, highly idealistic country in HISTORY? Even if we approve of the separation between church and state, weren’t we founded in agreement with basic Christian teachings? I want to take care of those around me who are less fortunate. It is my PRIVILEGE. As they go, so go I.

Why shouldn’t those of us who have made good lives for ourselves PAY IT FORWARD by supporting our schools, streets, parks and communities through the payment of our taxes?

And on one other note, what about Moderation? We’re a bunch of greedy, self-absorbed, spoiled children, and if no one else is able to rein us in, you can be sure Mother Nature will do so.

Which is even more sobering.

Skepticism and Defiance

2010-10-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

The older I get the more I want to encourage artists to cultivate two attitudes. One is skepticism and the other is defiance.

When I am in the studio alone I do one of two things. I listen to music or Caroline Myss, (her talks on Defying Gravity are fantastic) or I just think. I love thinking. There are so many things to figure out. Long hours in the studio this week gave me plenty of time to think about my past. Healthy skepticism and intentional defiance are character traits I’ve won the hard way. Through experience.

I think skepticism comes first. Being skeptical is an important component of self-esteem. When you are skeptical, you decide what you think is true or right or possible. You don’t just take someone else’s word for it.

Early in my career I heard someone important say the kimono had been done. Did it matter to him that loads of artists (most of them women) were exploring the kimono at that time, not only as a contemporary garment but also as a form? His words intimidated me when they should have instead, roused my skepticism. Has anything ever been done completely? Maybe a technique or a form gets too much play and goes through a period of being trite, but somewhere out there some artist is on the verge of seeing a new way through – of breathing fresh life into that stale worn out thing.

And consider design elements. Sure, you see a lot of circles, crosses, spirals and X’s in beginning work. You see them in mature work too. You can even see a commercial foam stamp set at Michaels that forbids you to sell anything you print with the circle, cross, spiral and X stamps included in the package. Hello? Since when does a company own elements that are not only universal but also part of the human collective consciousness? Be skeptical.

And then add a healthy dose of defiance. Don’t buy that set of universal symbol stamps with the limitation on how and when use will be permitted. Make your own. Every artist – budding or mature – is entitled to use a cross, a circle, a spiral, an X – and any other image that rises up out of your subconscious mind. Yes, you can.

Products? Be safe, and be skeptical. Keep in mind that when products are developed the inventor usually has one idea in mind and that’s the goal driving the creation. But it doesn’t mean that’s all the product can do. Think you’ve got a new approach? Don’t be intimidated. Try out your idea and see for yourself. But don’t be risky. Check out the safety angle before you get going.

Ten years ago I talked to the owner of a major textile paint company on the phone. We were talking product and he informed me (rather pompously) that it was not possible to screen print with Jacquard Metallic Textile Paints. I begged to disagree.
“I do it all the time.” I said.
“You can’t.” he said.
“But I do.” I said.

And the fact is, those Jacquard paints were some of the best metallic paints of all time and I still miss them. But that’s another story.

Our conversation ended. I went back to screen printing with my sweet Jacquard paints and he went back to running his company, which went bust a couple of years later. Too bad he didn’t inquire as to how I was able to screen print Jacquard metallic paints. Because it wasn’t about the paint. It was all about the technique. And it still is.

Defiance comes in all kinds of packages. Maybe it’s not putting a sleeve on your quilt because you don’t want some exhibition person to be able to use a round hanging rod that will make it pooch out and hang funny. Using another hanging strategy takes away someone else’s ability to make your work look less than it is.

Maybe it’s not stretching a canvas around a frame and pinning work to the wall instead.

Maybe it’s choosing to work figuratively because you like to work figuratively, even if the world around you thinks abstract stuff walks on water.

Maybe it’s liking a simple aesthetic – one that eschews loading up a piece with extraneous beads and found object junk. Or maybe it’s loving beads and found object junk and not caring who disagrees with you over it.

There’s something to be said for the example set unwittingly by outsider artists. These folks, off the beaten path, sometimes untrained and often mentally ill or socially inept, make art for all the right reasons. Because they like it and they need to. Hard to be skeptical about that, but definitely easy to be defiantly inspired by it.

Getting Started Again

2010-10-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

I am working on a new series; to be exhibited in January 2011 at the University of Louisville. My original plan was to mount the digitally produced Sacred Planet series, but surprisingly enough, when that series was completed (a year ago) I found myself longing for a return to the primitive hands-on practices upon which I have built not only a career, but most of my strongest efforts.

I am talking about simple processes. Dyeing fabric, and then adding layers of printing, which if I am lucky, will alchemically combine to produce what I can only describe as a visually poetic surface. No small feat. The traps are poor technique (the processes are deceptively simple) and/or trite or tired content, or both. I don’t have the luxury of being a newbie anymore. I can’t revel in the glow of a serendipitously printed dye surface, or the fun of printing with bubble wrap. Every beginning artist is entitled to the fresh excitement of those experiences, but sooner or later, as much as you hate it, you’ve got to ramp it up. I’ve discovered that the discipline leading to success is just as much fun as beginner’s fun, but it took me years to figure it out.

So discipline, what’s that about? I’ve written at length about discipline before. The writing done to prepare for the new series focused on three threads, which I share with you as a sort of November-December challenge.

What, I thought, would happen if I did what I always preach to students, and limited the variables that are an intrinsic part of creative making? And so I have.

Fabrics?
Silk, cotton and polyester overlays (driven by choice of process) with the addition of hand made papers.

Techniques?
Flour paste resist - because I love the texture generated by the paste, and it’s a good way to add contrast to cloth. Mostly abstracted design elements based on my twenty-year accumulation of symbolic images. (That’s my own unique visual language.) Devore (burnout) because I like how it looks, there is a symbolic side to the process, and Thank God we are out of the devore everywhere phase of surface design, so I can return to it without being in the middle of the pack. Screen printing, with some pigment and some sand – because it’s something new I’ve figured out and I like it. Paper lamination – because contrasting texture is good. That ought to be enough of a variety to give me some breathing space when I am fearful of being bored or trite.

Tools?
Screens - some of which are very old. They represent my personal development and also a certain sort of collective unconscious. But looser marks too – the mark of the flour paste, and the hand drawn mark. And the patterns on the paper used for lamination.

Theme?
The working title is Etudes: A Daily Practice. A musician practices etudes, the French word for study, in order to learn the repertoire and improve or refine playing. This body of work is my study. It is research into what happens when an artist’s methodology and content move forward within the parameters of limitation.

I look forward to sharing the unfolding with you. If anyone else thinks this sounds interesting, be challenged to set the same course! It would be thought-provoking to compare notes now and then. I’m hazarding a guess that a lot of what I’ll learn is going to manifest at the end of the process, after the pieces are mounted for exhibition…and not while I’m in the middle of the making.

It’s just one more leap of faith.

Creativity in the Face of Distress

2010-10-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written an essay in a long time. While I was in Europe, one of my sisters was diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently underwent a bilateral mastectomy. There are four of us, and her diagnosis rocked our world. I completed my trip, returned to San Antonio, and started a long spell of just sitting on the couch.

Eventually the real world intervened. Deadlines to meet, contracts to sign, classes to teach. A daughter with a lead foot and a string of minor car accidents. Cancelled auto insurance. Screw ups at the bank that would have curdled my day a year ago. None of it seemed to matter very much. A shift in perspective, I guess.

But I couldn’t write. I didn’t know what to say. Where does creativity fall on the scale of important life stuff, anyway? It felt rather pointless. Plus my spiritual beliefs were crashing and burning. I know bad things happen to good people, and that disease is never a punishment handed out by a vindictive God. I know love, compassion and forgiveness are the only real keys to a meaningful life. But somehow I couldn’t hold on to my convictions. I couldn’t make this better. I couldn’t fix it. I didn’t know what to do. I felt doubly bad.

I am still sitting with these realities. I want to get a handle on how to be creative when it comes to facing down the crummy stuff you never think will happen to you. Because some of it will. And if not to you personally, for sure to someone you know and love.

Two thoughts guiding me as this unfolds. First, it isn’t doing my sister any good for me to feel helpless, scared and disconnected. If anything, this is the time to be selfless, find the good and funny and beautiful in Life and share it with her. Be happy just because it might help. Stay connected.

And keep creating. It would be easy to sequester myself in the studio in an escapist fashion that would keep me from being available. That’s not the answer. But a centered Jane is a more useful Jane, and spending time in the studio is both solace and therapy. Some of my strength comes from being there. The studio has been calling me and maybe that’s why.

So creating is important after all. Sometimes it’s the glue that holds things together, and sometimes it’s the release valve that blows off steam. Either way, it’s one way to seek balance. I bet I’m not alone in this experience. Your thoughts?

The Creativity of Street Performers I

2010-09-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

I encountered amazing street performance during my five week teaching trip. Here are just two of my favorites. The young man in the second post was juggling crystal balls about five inches in diameter. Sorry the video isn't crisper.

I can't say enough about seeking out these artists when traveling. I've watched them in cities all over the world. Often living on what they make from the hat, they are a gorgeous witness to the power of doing what you love creatively.

The Creativity of the Street Performer II

2010-09-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

The Power of Limits: Part 2

2010-09-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

Recognizing the power of limits.

Five weeks staying in hotels where breakfast is either served at a certain hour or not served at all. Where each morning the clothing choice is between the black T-shirt again or the sleeveless tank. Where the souvenir choices are many, but basically boil down to what will fit in the suitcase, or on the shelf above my seat on the train.

Those are the practical limits, and working within them brings order and harmony to the day. But limitations have also manifested in surprising ways – ones that will affect how I think about making in the future.

Last Spring I was delighted to be offered an exhibition space at the Festival of Quilts – which was one reason I decided to make this five-week trek across Europe. The space was modest – approximately eight feet deep and nineteen feet wide. I paced it out in my studio at home and realized immediately that the large works I envisioned hanging would never be appropriate unless I wanted to give solo exhibition a whole new meaning.

About that time I realized whatever I decided to include, I had two choices – to ship or to hand carry. I’ve shipped work to England before and the prospect was daunting. Another limitation. Hand carrying was definitely the more palatable choice.

I imagine I’m not much different from any artist when it comes to thinking through variables before I make a decision to get started. I trust my intuition, which often involves waiting. Maybe that’s the hardest part. Waiting for the answers to manifest. Believing inspiration will come.

But it usually does and this time it did. I began on a new series - envisioning linear panels that would measure 18” vertically and wrap around the small display space. I wanted to showcase my range of surface design tools, so I decided I would return to my roots – dyeing the fabrics first and then working into the surfaces with screen printing, fused elements and metal leaf.

While some artists begin working and rely on serendipity to lead the entire creative process, I prefer to work with a theme. A theme may be one I have researched, after which I deliberately prepare the tools. This time I wanted to approach the printing and surface development more spontaneously, but I couldn’t help wishing for a theme to guide me.

The theme revealed itself through the inspiration of a colleague. She arrived in the studio with an armful of clothing from Goodwill, intending to transform her finds through dyeing and printing. These would be additions to her wardrobe.

But I saw collage. Two days later, my own batch of used clothing was cut into segments, and included in the dye baths I prepared for my new body of work.

A series unfolds over a period of weeks. Sometimes a panel completes itself, and sometimes I struggle and lose. At the end of six weeks I had eight panels ready for the UK show. Each measured 18” tall, and extended between 40” and 58”. Each featured my dyeing and printing. Each included dyed clothing parts fused to the panel surface and integrated into the surface through further additions of printing, devore, and sand.

The finished panels rolled neatly around two swimming pool noodles, and fit easily into my largest suitcase. Each was finished with a Lutradur backing, with grommets in all four corners, to ensure easy mounting on unknown walls. A small case included black nails – which looked like beads when nailed through the grommets.

My Intimate Conversations series was complete.

The recap:
My pieces traveled perfectly, unrolling without a crease. The nails proved ideal for hanging, since the walls were painted wood. The eight pieces fit the space and even allowed the presentation of one piece outside the entrance – where the colors could attract viewers and draw them inside for a closer look.

The viewer reactions were gratifying and positive. Four days of explaining process and also inspiration flew by in a blur of engaging conversation.

We dismantled the show on Sunday afternoon. It only took a few minutes. I’ve been thinking ever since about limits. If I hadn’t thought about the limits and allowed them to guide me, I might have encountered any number of problems. I worked with what I had, and it worked out.

There’s a model in this that’s worth noting. What limitations can we set for ourselves as artists – in an effort to discover more about the process of our work? When I return to the studio next month I am going to limit my choices again. In the meantime, you can see some of the work and hear me talking about it at www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=156054037742093

The Power of Limits

2010-09-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent several hours studying the Impressionist paintings in the collection of the Musee d’Orsay, in Paris. It was thrilling.

Manet’s pastels were especially thought provoking. The subject matter included his requisite dancers and nude studies. Being so close to the surface allowed me to see how each painting evolved. Which strokes were first, and which strokes came later. Where the addition of soft pink enlivened the curve of the back. How a few dashes of white brought light to a tutu and set the music playing in my imagination.

It was curious to realize that Manet frequently added paper strips to a composition in order to expand the composition in one direction or another. Was he drawing spontaneously – and realizing once the piece was underway that he hadn’t judged the space accurately, so that he needed to add more paper? Or was the paper enlarged before he ever got started – an act based on limited resources? More than one pastel was worked on simple brown craft paper. Whim or limitation? Is that something you can Google?

I realized these works of Manet’s required only three things. A sheet of paper, a box of pastels, and the ability of the artist to put the two together. Which of course he did, magnificently.

When was the last time I worked so simply? Just cloth and dye, for example. Those materials get a piece underway, but I have an embarrassment of techniques and tools at my disposal. I love layers. I love complexity. I pondered the possibility of achieving these goals by using only two components. I am sure it can be done, just as Manet first sketched with pastels, and then worked to add the details.

This is a reminder of the power of limits; a topic I am going to keep pondering.

It's All in the Details

2010-09-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on the road for three weeks, and one of the things I miss about home is the quiet time for writing. Right or wrong, it’s hard to choose writing alone in a hotel room over seeing the Alps or strolling the streets of Paris, especially on a first visit. Maybe one answer to the no writing time arrived in the form of Quicktime Pro – a download that will allow me to post short film clips of the amazing street actors I’ve witnessed everywhere. I’ll work on those posts next week.

In the meantime, a quiet afternoon to myself on a sunny balcony in Bad Sackingen, Germany, just a few miles from Basel, Switzerland. What am I learning? What observations are carrying me into the last weeks of my itinerary and beyond?

One is the importance of looking small. At details. You can walk into a cathedral in any town in Europe and be blown away by the width and breadth and gloriousness of the space. And by the heavy weight of history. But it’s the play of light on the wall above the altar I’ll remember. And the worn center of each step leading up the hill to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur – smoothed by an endless stream of pilgrim feet.

My details range from the ridiculous to the sublime. The young trickster in Georges de La Tour’s painting – which I teach from, but had never seen! The perfection of a single white braid. A life-sized rhinoceros statue with the horn duct taped in place. Every detail catalogued into the internal filing cabinet otherwise known as my brain.

How will this load of disparate visual stuff mix and eventually manifest? Hard to know, but my presence will be known by the details, because that’s what makes each of us unique. Maybe we all have eyes and hands and feet, but it’s the blueness or brownness, the curve of the toes, or the strength of the grip, that sets us apart. Maybe artists share dye recipes and paintbrushes, fabrics and format. But it’s the details that make an artist’s work unmistakably her own.

I think that’s why eventually we have to get away from other people and focus on working alone. How can you discover your voice if you are always singing with a choir? Your timing, the phrasing, that lilt at the end of a line – you need the courage to go solo in order to unfold.

So enjoy my details and then go find some of your own. Details are one place where it’s healthy to make the exploration all about you.

Bring Out Your Eight Year Old

2010-08-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

The other evening I visited with friends after a long day working my stand at the Festival of Quilts, held every August in Birmingham, England. We were enjoying a little relaxation on the patio of our inn.

I’ve brought my snap together hula hoop along on this trip. I’m going to spend five weeks on the road and knew I’d need something to supplement my yoga practice. Got to keep that blood going or the body rebels. Hooping is great fun – you can dance by yourself any time you want to. The snap together hoop is an invention rivaling sliced bread! Easy to put together, lightweight and portable. Crank up the music and you’re good to go.

Sharing the hoop seemed like a great idea. The evening breeze was perfect; the sun was dipping low on the horizon and the folks enjoying their drinks laughed easily and often.

So I was surprised at the response the hula hoop provoked. Only two friends jumped at the opportunity to try it out. The rest held back as though I’d tried to pass them a loaded pistol. Hmmm.

Eventually almost everyone hooped for at least a couple of minutes, laughing and game about the new experience. Few of us are good at something the first time we try it out. It’s taken me five months to hoop consistently and I’m still not that great at it.

How is hooping related to creativity? It’s the realization I had after the evening ended. If we’d been a bunch of eight year olds, we would have clamored for our chance at the hoop! It’s the bugaboo maturity thing. Are we afraid we’ll look foolish? Do we doubt our abilities now - when once upon a time we believed we could do anything? Christine Northrup observed that seven year-old girls rule the world – at least in their own minds. But then adolescence begins, and self-confidence takes a tumble.

So now I am observing my own reactions to the new experiences of being in unfamiliar surroundings. Nothing like a five-week road trip to challenge your perceived sense of self.

I am determined to bring out my eight year old as often as I can on this trip – confidently embracing any opportunity to learn something new or imagine an approach to my art work I hadn’t thought of before. It’s a good creative strategy. Probably a good Life strategy too.

The Creative Impulse

2010-08-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

Life is LIFE - new, exciting, precious and cautious - all rolled into one.

Life is COLOR and BALANCE.

Living is all those qualities. Color, balance, caution, preciousness, excitement. Today I witness to ENTHUSIASM. It's what gets us here, right or wrong. AND what drives our choices, right or wrong.

YES, he IS hula hooping with two hoops while also balancing one guitar and playing the second. His prelude to this assortment of talents: "Two hoops, two guitars and two screws loose." If you are ever at Pike Place Market in Seattle, look for him. Or maybe he'll turn up on Leno.

Protect Your Energy

2010-08-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

Observation:
Creative ideas require incubation. Talking about an idea too early can sap the energy right out of it.

Observation: Most of us feel obligated to talk about our creative ideas on demand.

This week I was teaching another group of favorite students on Whidbey Island at the Northwest Pacific Art School. The third class day usually includes a critique of pieces in progress.

Here’s the setting: students work with white fabrics the first workshop day, tearing the fabric into swatches and immersing it in dye. The second day we dye the fabrics again and learn to make printing tools. By Wednesday we’re printing our pants off – adding flour paste resist, and using lots of luscious textile paint. Participants are propelled by visions of metallic leaf dancing on the fabric. It’s the final sublime addition to the gorgeous and complex cloth.

I’m the guide, so it’s up to me to call the printing to a halt in order to spend an hour evaluating design and color. We hang up the works in progress and talk about getting stuck and unstuck. I suggest hanging pieces on a design wall in order to get a better perspective from across the room. I suggest that sometimes another opinion can help. I suggest that a significant other is usually not the right person to ask. Everyone nods knowingly and laughs.

It doesn’t matter whether comments come from a spouse, a good friend or a colleague in a critique group. It doesn’t matter whether they’re well intentioned – meant to be helpful or a show of support, or slightly mean-spirited – a comment driven by envy or by the fear of being left out. When comments come, it’s a sign you aren’t taking care of yourself. Recognizing this gives you something to work on.

Good ideas need time to manifest. A Buddhist master once observed that sharing a newly acquired devotion to spirit or faith isn’t appropriate. Creative, spirit-filled activity requires private space. Otherwise the idea may dissolve back into the unconscious. The opportunity to sustain it will be lost.

A few ground rules help. Establish these in your own mind by inventorying your needs and creative style. Ground rules could include:

- An agreement within your household that a closed door signals an artist in early exploration mode; one who prefers not to be disturbed.

- An agreement within your household, that comments, while eventually welcomed, are to be invited rather than freely offered. If I leave a new piece on the wall in the living room so I can see it when I walk in the front door, my daughter just pretends it doesn’t exist until I am ready to ask for her opinion.

- One of the biggest joys of friendship is respect – part of the opportunity friends share to nurture each other. I want my good friend Niki to see my work. I want to know what she thinks. But she doesn’t volunteer an opinion until I invite one and I extend that courtesy to her in return.

- Critique groups are different beasts, but there are rules of thumb for them, too. The main thing is to decide why you are there and what you want from the group. If you practice articulating your needs to the group, and you are also clear about what you don’t want from them, you’ll probably get better advice. It will be the advice you really needed, uncluttered by personal preference or comments concerning parts of the piece that can’t be changed or undone.

All of this requires attention to detail, and sharing in a friendly, thankful and open way. We’re grateful when our loved ones are interested in our projects. We don’t want to offend anyone, or create an atmosphere where we can’t share the joys of the process. And it isn’t as if we don’t ever want advice. But it’s up to you to protect your fragile ideas through the hardening off stage – like protecting young plants until they are strong enough to be transferred outside into the cold spring soil. Eventually you’ll want to share the flowers and fruits of your labors with everyone around you. But during the initial thrust of new growth, you need to be protective.

Take a shot at discussing this with the people who love you, and offer to do the same thing for them. And feel free to use this essay as the starting point. Let’s see if we can deepen not only our attachment to our process, but also to those who inspire, delight, frustrate and embolden us. A little creative communication goes a long way. Wouldn’t it be terrific if it gave you the privacy you crave?

Visiting Barbara Lee Smith

2010-08-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

I’ve been on a week’s vacation prior to teaching at the Pacific Northwest Art School next week. I am lecturing on Tuesday night so if you are in the area, come by and visit with us. It’s free!

Barbara Lee Smith is one of the most influential artists in my field. (There’s a hard one to define – Surface Design? Textiles? Mixed Media? Gosh, when are we going to get past the need to Name?) The author of the groundbreaking Celebrating the Stitch, she was instrumental in guiding textile processes into new and uncharted territories. I had the great luck of collaborating with Barbara in 1997. Our exchanges – literally, as in real time mail - and figuratively, as artists, colleagues and friends – profoundly influenced my own development as an artist.

Barbara’s studio in Gig Harbor is a place of shadow and light, which is appropriate, since her work is all about shadow and light; color and nuance. She was working on new pieces for a one-person exhibition at the Gregg Museum in the fall, and she graciously invited me into her space while she was working. The photos tell it all. The importance of organization, the impact of being surrounded by the things we love, the exchanges that consume us as artists when we are engaged by both material and subject matter.

I was reminded that Barbara has been working with Lutradur for over twenty years. Only surprising because if popular advertising were to be believed, one might think Lutradur was just invented yesterday.

Which led me to two strands of thought and the message of this essay.

First, an acknowledgement of humility, and an encouragement to learn something about those artist folks who were working in the field long before some of us came along. I’ve been guilty of it. Witness your history. Find something out about it and be grateful. We so cavalierly assume we are the cutting edge, the new world, the Now. If you don’t know where you came from artistically, do a little Googling. We have a rich and fascinating recent past and it’s definitely worth exploring.

Second. Pick something and then stick with it. While I was in the studio I admired one of Barbara’s pieces and this is what she said. “I think I am finally getting somewhere.” That’s probably with at least five hundred completed works under her artist’s belt. Daunting yes, but anyone can do it. You just have to begin. And not swerve. I love silk Habotai and when I get home, I’m going back to it. I see there must be more to discover. I welcome the opportunity.

Thank you, Barbara.

Time Magazine and Creativity

2010-07-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

Last week Time Magazine’s cover story was entitled Creativity in America: The Science of Innovation and How to Reignite Our Imaginations. The premise: that creative thought is on the decline in the US – especially among children.

I happen to be in my fourth week of a Reading Class (partial fulfillment of the requirements needed to complete a Creativity Coaching Certificate.) The classic books I’ve read so far haven’t grabbed me, but I’ve been at a loss as to why. I thought maybe it was just summertime, or the stress of being on the road with a heavy teaching schedule.

But the Time article included a rather shocking observation concerning my reading material: Not only does the classic creative strategy brainstorming not work, but “according to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don’t work, or even have a negative impact. As for most commercially available creativity training, Mumford doesn’t mince words: it’s garbage.”

He added, “Whether for adults or kids, the worst of these programs …pander to an easy, unchallenging notion that all you have to do is let your natural creativity out of its shell.”

Ha! Just as I’ve suspected. Creativity requires intentional effort. It isn’t just going to spring bubbling from my inner well, or burst from the top of my head. Maybe that’s why the books weren’t resonating. The approach was too formulaic. Especially the chapters that proposed methods for tapping the intuitive, serendipitous Self.

It hasn’t been my experience that it’s possible to command serendipity. I may notice intuition at play and practice noticing. I may become better aware of intuitive hits when I get them. But I don’t think calling forth serendipity or intuitive resonance is a command performance.

In defense of the books, which shall remain nameless, each was written more than twenty years ago. As with all things, observations and experience of the creative process continue to evolve. Perhaps those books are losing their relevance. Wouldn’t that be good? It would indicate progress in the field.

The Time article suggested quantifiable activities that have been proven to enhance the quest for your Best Creative Self. Here’s the short list:

1. Never tell someone to be creative or to “think creatively.” Saying it out loud almost always shuts down anything good that was happening. Sort of like demanding great sex instead of letting it unfold. Some things just aren’t available on demand.

2. Quit watching so much TV. Not only does it sap time that could be used creatively, it also saps interest in being creative.

3. Get moving. Every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise and this is true of creativity, too. The type of exercise doesn’t matter and the boost lasts for at least two hours.

4. Take a break. I wrote about this a few weeks ago. Not happening creatively? Set the project aside for a while and don’t pursue that interest. Your back burner (the unconscious) will busily work on your behalf. Professors who set aside a writing project when they’re stuck get more papers published than those who labor over one precious document.

5. Explore something new. A new cuisine, a new culture? It doesn’t matter. The effect is the same. The curiosity around something new filters into your creative thinking sphere – and heats it up too.

6. Passion, passion, passion. Studies have proved that kids do best when they are encouraged to pursue a passion. Passion gives meaning and substance to existence. Have you got one? If not, maybe this is a good time to start looking.

As for the coursework I am pursuing? I’m going to stick with it. I know I have some strategies that work when my students need help accessing their best creative selves. And I've seen results. Maybe I’ve got a few ideas that will contribute to the field.

I’ll share my strategies next time.

What's Trite? What's Not?

2010-07-10T11:28:00.000-07:00

Last week a reader commented that one of my observations was “trite, but true.” Her comment didn’t bother me; instead it inspired me to wonder what the exact meaning of trite was, so I looked it up in the dictionary.

Here’s what I found:
Boring, not fresh or original.
Synonym: stereotyped, lacking the freshness that evokes attention or interest. Worn out by overuse so as to become dull and meaningless.

Life is so packed with paradox. I get what trite means in the dictionary sense. Overused phrases, tired sitcom themes, saccharin color schemes that remind me of social occasions - like holidays. Let’s not even get started on the downward spiral holiday memories are capable of evoking. Nothing about that little piece of collective unconscious is fresh or original.

But where does daily practice fit? I’ve spent ten years trying to stay in present time. Chopping wood. Carrying water. Keeping it simple. Living in the moment. Not jumping. What an interesting list of trite phrases. You might begin to think my life is boring. Not fresh or original.

And there’s the paradox. The activities that keep me centered, authentic, and real could easily be dismissed as trite. It’s all phrasing and context. How much outside influence have you bought into lately?

I propose that trite is a word so imbued with fear-based power it actually keeps us from engaging authentically with ideas, and by association, with right living. Heaven forbid something I think or write be dismissed as trite. Or that my life be judged uninteresting or boring. Not fresh or original.

What about the phrase new age? Remember how fresh and original new age used to be? On the brink of something. Open to creative thinking and an engaged approach to spirit. But somewhere along the line the meaning of new age shifted. No more fresh possibility. Only disdain for a phrase now considered the epitome of trite.

Which is why a healthy dose of skepticism is a valuable asset. When we hear words but never stop to think about them, we buy into a collective branding of our unique take on reality. When a whole set of deceptively simple ideas is dismissed as trite because advertising has the nerve to co-opt the veneer of a deep idea and drop it into a TV commercial, then we lose an important connection to the original profound thought.

It’s a challenge to stay in present time and keep analyzing the world and words around us. You have to embrace a little bit of rebel archetype - someone who is never afraid to say, “Oh yeah?”

And that’s what I’m choosing to do. Live my simple life and keep working on my authentic self – trite as it may sound. If I can live through the paradoxes of my own life then I can decide for myself what trite is. I don’t want to take thinking for granted. That’s the best trite-avoidance behavior I can engage in. I highly recommend it.

Hand/Eye Magazine

2010-07-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hand/Eye is a gem of an on-line magazine and it was an honor when they decided to use an essay I've written on Art Cloth in the latest edition. Check out the essay, but also the wonderful images and other articles included in the July issue.

Summer Recipes to Spice Up Your Life

2010-07-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

These were my inventions yesterday. The spice heats you up, so you don't notice how warm the day has gotten!

Pico de Gallo Baked Beans

1 can baked beans – your favorite brand
2 T. catsup
2 T. brown sugar
½ cup fresh pico de gallo (or make your own)

Combine all ingredients and heat over medium heat until slightly bubbly.

Pico de Gallo
Means Bite of the Rooster in Spanish
Great with chips or added to the above recipe

1 chopped tomato – very ripe
1 chopped small red onion
1 bunch of cilantro – washed and chopped (stems removed)
juice of one lime
½ - 1 whole seeded and chopped jalapeno pepper
optional: ½ c. chopped fresh pineapple or mango

Brownies Caliente

1 box of your favorite brownie mix + eggs or water if needed
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. cayenne pepper (more if you like it hot)

1 can chocolate frosting

Make the brownies according to the package directions and add the cinnamon and cayenne pepper.
Bake according to package directions. Cool.
Frost with chocolate frosting.
Optional: add 1 t. cinnamon to frosting prior to frosting the brownies.

You could make these from scratch but it's easier to use a mix on a hot day!

White Sangria with Cucumber and Mint

1 seeded and peeled cucumber
1 bunch of fresh mint, stems removed and washed
2 c. sparkling apple or peach soda
3 c. Pinot Grigio

Put cucumber, mint and ½ c. wine in the blender and blend on high until smooth.
Press the solids through a sieve to separate the juice.
Combine cucumber/mint juice with wine and sparkling soda. Serve over ice with a mint sprig garnish.

The Power of Memes

2010-07-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Today let’s talk about memes. Richard Dawkins coined the word meme (it rhymes with cream) in 1976, and chose the word deliberately because it sounded like gene. He defined a meme as a cultural idea, symbol or practice passed from one person to another through writing, conversation, ritual and/or gesture. (If you’re interested in etymology, the word springs from a Greek term meaning “something imitated.”)

Memes are like genes in the sense that they evolve by being passed from one human generation to the next. We inherit memes just as we inherit genes. But memes are not like genes where it really counts. Your genetic code isn’t easily altered. Your memetic code, on the other hand, can be rejected or accepted. Taking a look at your personal memes can reveal surprising realities about how you think and respond to the world, because as theorists point out, “The memes that replicate effectively spread the farthest and fastest, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.”

Detrimental to the welfare of their hosts! In case anyone is wondering, that means some of the ideas you grew up with are bad for you. I have a feeling an inventory of memes related to creativity would read something like this:

I don’t have a creative bone in my body.
I was never any good at (fill in the blank) drawing, painting, singing, writing...
I’m not really an artist.
Men are better artists than women.
I just play around; I don’t really make art.
Artists can’t make a living in this society/city/world.
Quilting isn’t really art; it’s a craft.
Art is more important than craft.
Musicians never make any money.
I am not that creative; anyone could do this.

Sound familiar or do you have your own personalized versions of creativity memes?

You may not be able to change your genetic make-up. But you can recognize the negative energy embedded in the above list of cultural memes and rebuke them. Christiane Northrup calls for an open conversation and confrontation of memes – and suggests that talking about hurtful, limiting memes is the equivalent of vaccinating participants against them. Naming is power. Recognizing a meme as the psychological limitation it represents is the first step in dismantling it.

So I am calling for an open conversation and confrontation of the memes that play out in our sacred creative spaces. An inventory of your outdated, subliminal, and hurtful memes is in order! Make a list and dismiss any idea that doesn’t serve your creative growth. Just because you thought it doesn’t make it true. Get a fresh take and breathe some new creative air. Clarity is good.

Nitric Oxide

2010-06-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

If you’ve stood over a print table in your studio, or sat on the couch stitching, you’re familiar with the flush of pleasure that accompanies a creative act. Making is good. And making is broad – encompassing all kinds of activities. Yesterday I roasted vegetables straight from the Farmers’ Market, and broiled peaches with brown sugar and cayenne. A dollop of vanilla yogurt and Yowza! It was as rewarding to be in the kitchen as it is to be in the studio.

And guess what? The creative acts firing up your hands and unleashing your imagination are actually having a positive effect on your physical body. Chemically. No kidding.

I’ve been listening, as I’ve mentioned in other posts, to Christiane Northrup, in a presentation called Inside-Out Wellness. Dr. Northrup is famous for her research into women’s body and mind issues. It’s no surprise that she’s writing about menopause now, because that’s the stage of Life she is experiencing herself. But what she has to say is relevant to any woman at any age, and what she has to say about nitric oxide is relevant to everyone, male or female.

Nitric oxide is produced in the body naturally, and released in abundance in our nervous system as well as all of our organs when we engage in sensual and sexual pleasures. Don’t confuse nitric oxide with nitrous oxide – that’s laughing gas, and while this new research might make you happy, it’s nothing to laugh at.

Doris Ogden, Ph.D. works with Dr. Northrup, and wrote, “ Her latest book offers astounding new information about nitric oxide, the Wow! molecule that continually resets our ability to connect body, mind, heart, and spirit. To activate this, we don’t need a pill or a patch, but we do need to care for ourselves. Dr. Northrup prescribes plenty of sleep, exercise, life-giving foods, letting go of resentment, and opening up to affirmation and love.”

And based on what she’s written, an hour you spend knitting or gardening, or painting or indulging yourself in making – in whatever form pleases you – is raising the level of nitric oxide in your body. It’s akin to the runner’s high we’ve heard so much about. The activity itself contributes to well being in a way that can be documented.

It’s a struggle to find balance in our lives. We take on too many projects, we care for the people around us, Life throws curveballs we haven’t anticipated. In the course of care taking and plain old living we often lose track of ourselves. Listening to Dr. Northrup’s inspiring encouragement to make and do the things that bring pleasure – for the sake of good health - reminded me of this Wiccan passage, which is relevant no matter what your spiritual path:

“All of our activities should be influenced by the pleasure,
not the pain, principle. We have not come into the world to suffer,
or to inflict suffering.
Every day do something that is good only for you. Selfish?
No. Self possessed.
Balance it out by doing something equally good
for the benefit of all...
This will depend on your opportunities.
Only you will know what you can do.
If you are an artist use your power to be original-
to try to heal the wounds you see around you.
Everything we do needs passion to be done well.
Passion is precious. It indicates good mental health.
Use it as an important energy source all day.”

Take care of yourself. Indulge in a bit of creative making today.

Facing Down Fear

2010-06-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Last Monday I finally got back on my bike.

Two years ago on July 3, I went for my morning bike ride. The summer air is still fresh and cool in San Antonio at 7 a.m. I counted on my ride to clear my head –setting the tone for the day.

A mile from the house I encountered a small, white dog. He was so small he didn’t worry me. I didn’t even brake when he rushed the bike.

In what seemed like an eternity – but in what was probably less than a minute – I was face down, skidding on the pavement. The dog leaped into the pedals. I was thrown over the handlebars and onto the street.

Nine stitches in my mouth, two wrists so badly bruised I couldn’t drive for a week. Knees so jazzed up from hitting the street – literally – that I couldn’t exercise for several months without feeling the pain.

And no way could I bike.

I kept thinking about it though. I loved to ride. The gym didn’t do it. Running wasn’t a fit for me. I needed movement. Flow. Air.

It was a thought spurred by Dr. Christiane Northrup that got me back in the saddle. Dr. Northrup is a noted women’s health advocate. I’ve been listening to a great recording featuring her. Being reminded of the power and resilience of the female body is empowering, but what really struck me was the reality of what LIFE does to us if we allow it. Gradually, because of fear-based experience, we shut down. We take good things out of our lives. We lose our enthusiasm.

Sometimes we are just plain overwhelmed. I used to go to the post office and frequently noticed a woman come out of her large, weed-entangled house next door. Dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, she puttered in the yard and sometimes came across the street, presumably to check her mail. I went to that post office a lot over several years. The house grew noticeably shabbier and more infirm, as did its owner. One day I pulled into the parking lot and the house across the street had collapsed. “That could be me,” I thought to myself. “Too much house to take care of. It gets harder and harder…”

Eventually all human projects disintegrate and disappear. Only Nature perseveres.

I thought about selling my house, but decided it was a little early to go that route.
But after my accident I stopped biking.

We humans are fragile creatures and we would be foolish not to take care of ourselves. But every time we make a choice to leave something out or eliminate an activity we enjoy because we no longer have the courage or enthusiasm or heart to do it - our world narrows slightly. And then the inner house gets shabby. The lights dim.

I don’t want to live in the dark. Screwing up courage to get back on the bike took planning – and a fair amount of positive self talk. Consider cultivating this positive self talk, and pepper it with a nice dash of defiant self-esteem. I bought a better helmet, but also decided to focus on each block of my ride more carefully. If I see a dog, there isn’t any guarantee we can share the street amiably, but I deserve to be there too, and I am going to take my chances. Feeling the air is worth it. I choose each morning not to be afraid. Or to feel the fear and do it anyway.

And isn’t that what every tough, self-empowering choice is about – every single day? You may be afraid of what won’t happen if you go into the studio, but go there anyway. You might be intimidated about speaking up when it isn’t socially or politically correct, but how will you feel about yourself if you remain silent?

Don’t allow your world to narrow. Claim some small part of your joy back today. And relish the experience of it.

More Visual Poetry

2010-06-18T09:32:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my consideration of the visual as a poetic opportunity.

Thanks to the readers who shared their own thoughts on this rich topic.

Busy lives ebb, flow and rollick. Mine has just calmed enough to allow additional thought and research time for visual poetry. To my delight, someone else has been on it - and for awhile. I discovered this is visual poetry in a late night web session. I am entranced. ALL those artists out there exploring the notion.

It is so encouraging. Check it out. I am pleased to say my submission was accepted and soon my chapbook of visual poetry will be in the company of many entertaining, magnificent, thought-provoking others.

More later, when my order of assorted chapbooks arrives.

Considering Craftsmanship

2010-06-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

It’s humbling to admit that I’ve been in this field long enough to recognize myself as an artist/teacher people think of as established. That’s a weird feeling when you know you are still learning all the time. But it’s true, and it brings with it a certain set of realizations that are slightly uncomfortable because they’re hard to talk about without offending someone. They’re the elephants in the room.

I’ve been reading a great book entitled Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B Crawford. A white collar think tank guy, Crawford chucked it all to open a bike shop specializing in vintage motorcycle repair. He surveys historical twists and turns in the gradual separation of skills and labor into blue collar and white collar jobs, and in the process makes a strong case for the intrinsic value of learning to do something well. To choose to practice fine craftsmanship.

“Craftsmanship entails learning to do one thing really well, while the idea of the new economy (current social trend) is to be able to learn new things, celebrating potential rather than achievement.”

That pretty much sums up one of the concerns I have about my field – that is, textiles and surface design. What about refinement? What about craftsmanship?

Don’t jump my case. There is a huge indy craft movement out there – if you aren’t aware of it, check out Handmade Nation, or spoonflower.com or just Google indy craft movement and see where it leads you. This is GOOD. Making SHOULD be taken back from an elitist art world that's been pushing the self-serving notion for about a hundred years that most of us aren’t artists, won’t ever be artists and shouldn’t even try. A little bit of rebel energy is exactly what we need here. Every human's birthright is the flush of pleasure and adrenaline that accompanies the experience of making. Let’s just take art out of the equation entirely. It’s only a word anyway.

We all have to start somewhere. Yes, students copy teacher’s work. It’s a basic step in the learning process. Yes, some people never get past derivative, and some people never get past pre-packaged commercial products – paint by numbers, embroidery kits, and quilt books that dictate where and how much fabric to buy in order to copy the pattern to the letter. The proliferation of pre-packaged kits for children is horrifying. And what a shame. Because self esteem comes from jumping off into the creative unknown. Even if it doesn’t work out perfectly, it’s still yours and it’s still ok. And you can do it again. And get better. It just takes practice.

Consider. We are fortunate to live in a time and culture where we can have and do just about anything. Magazines arrive daily, packed with new approaches, fun things to try, new twists on old materials. Go, go, go. Collect them all and win a prize. Try this – you’ll be finished in an afternoon. And then try this – it’s fast and easy. Fast and easy. Fast and easy. Yikes.

I want thought. I want practice. I am a teacher. I see myself even more clearly as a guide. I don’t want to shut down anyone’s creative impulse and I don’t want to shut down the fun. But I’d love to slow things down.

And I do want to keep focus, and craftsmanship and refinement in the picture.

Consider. Anyone who writes for the public and/or teaches has a huge responsibility to monitor the levels of self-interest that fuel an essay. So I’ve thought long and hard about whether it's fair to be critical of the fun and easy approach. Isn’t it ok if it gets people started? Won’t people eventually long for depth and breadth in their process?

Maybe. I've realized it's not for me to judge. But it is for me as the public guide I espouse to be, to stand firm in my belief that refinement is good. Finding your own visual voice is good. Learning to do one thing really well is excellent.

Remember the old adage – "You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the handsome prince?"
Gee just writing that phrase gave me the creeps. It’s so sexist and dated. But the basic premise is true. Human beings have preferences and until you try out a lot of stuff you don’t really know what your preferences are. But once you do know what they are, there is merit in sticking to them. It’s the basis of good mental health to know your center and honor it. That might mean sticking with one thing and getting good at it. Going for the achievement of something really fine, just for the enjoyment of the challenge. Something perfectly crafted in an imperfect world.

Personal Time Saps/Addiction

2010-06-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

True confession time. I have been in the throes of an addiction that almost got the best of me.

I’ve been playing Poppit on line.

It all started in February in Las Vegas. I’d never been. Never really had an interest in Vegas to tell the truth. But my oldest, dearest friends convinced me to join them, which is how I found myself sitting at a slot machine at nine o-clock in the morning, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a controller in the other – madly trying to pop clusters of multi-colored balloons. Two days and 40.00 later I’d shot my gambling wad such as it was, and I was hooked. Thank God we were booked on a noon flight home.

Then a couple of months ago I started surfing the net, researching my interest in visual poetry. Don’t ask me how the little devil on my shoulder materialized, but when it whispered “Google Poppit…” I didn’t even think twice. Done. I was introduced to Club Pogo on-line game land.

It started innocently enough. I played for free and the games were interspersed with tedious commercials for Levitra and an assortment of other products I don’t want or need. (and BTW has anyone else noticed that Levitra sounds an awful lot like levitate? Is that deliberate?) I fooled around playing Poppit, but it wasn’t happening and the ads were boring so I never lasted long.

But then the real trouble began. I discovered an on-line tutorial of Poppit tips. I started winning. I wasn’t scoring big, but my Type A personality kicked in, and I started obsessing about getting better. There was a logic to the game that appealed to me and I found myself playing for an hour at a time – as a reward for finishing this or that boring admin task. And I played in airports, waiting for flights to Ohio, where I’ve been helping my mother move into a new house. I was stressed and tired and in retrospect – vulnerable. Poppit was the path of least resistance. And anyway, wasn’t I warding off Alzheimer’s by keeping my brain active?

Vanishing were the hours spent thinking and writing about the creative process. Studio time? I only had a few minutes here and there because of the hectic schedule. It was so much easier to play another round of Poppit instead. After all, maybe I could beat my highest score. Once I got it figured out I’d probably quit playing anyway.

I kept playing until one night last week, when I wakened at four a.m. because colored balloons were popping in my dreams. It was worse than an ear worm – a song you can’t get out of your head. I felt crazy. I had to do something.

I decided to quit cold turkey. I still wanted to figure out the strategies that have given long term players an edge - some of them have racked up millions of points! I happen to know how long ButterflyWingLV has been playing in order to amass more than 17 million points. Since 2001. I know what her win and loss record is because there are actually stats on line, and one of the most seductive aspects of Poppit is the ability to look up high scorers and compare yourself to other players.

But amassing 17 million points since 2001 – how many studio hours does that translate into? I don’t even want to know. It’s not for me to judge. All I know is that I want my unassigned time to go toward something that matters, and Poppit isn’t it. Winning? A kick. Strategy? Satisfying, I guess. But meaning? Priceless.

My whole Poppit experience is just another reminder that we have choices and can exercise free will for the use of at least some of our unassigned time. And that D word – discipline – is what it comes down to. I started writing Studio on my To Do list, and then I blocked out time on my weekly calendar – as a reminder of what really counts. Marriage counselors advise couples to set aside time for togetherness – whatever form togetherness takes, and artists must set aside time for making. Because without intention, insidious, unimportant trivia sneaks in and eats up time.

So think about your own day to day. Got a Poppit equivalent? Consider popping it. The artist in you will cheer. No one has enough time. Choose to make the most of yours.

What Makes Art Original?

2010-05-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

As anyone who visits the existential neighborhood knows, I like to spend time making whenever I can.

Making is process, and process is good. It enriches, informs and expands the experience of being human. Making should be defined broadly. Sometimes it’s an act where the brain participates, but the hands lead – as in following a pattern to sew an apron or a quilt, embroidering a design sold as a kit, or painting by number.

But sometimes making means the brain leads and the hands follow. Designing a pattern for an apron, printing a unique silkscreen design, or painting a one of a kind watercolor landscape engages the brain first. The brain figures out what to do and how to do it, and the hands, with a little luck, oblige.

Making is never bad. Most of us start in one place but eventually our interests evolve somewhere else. We liked completing someone else’s design but now we want to do our own designing. The desire has been ignited to create something original.

And that’s the million dollar question. What makes art original?

It’s a question we can’t ignore because it comes up in exhibition settings all the time. You’ve seen it on the entry form. All work must be original and that of the artist. But what about all those cool commercial tools?

A few of the choices available to anyone with a computer and a credit card:
- digital embroidery programs
- non-copyrighted clip art books and CD’s
- free use photographs from any number of websites
- rubbing plates and commercial rubber stamps and stencils

If I gave ten people the same set of tools gleaned from the list above, added a deadline, and left the other parameters wide open, this is what would happen: there would be a few similarities in the finished work, but there would also be huge, creative leaps of difference in how each artist chose to use the tools.

So should those tools be in or out? It’s hard to be definitive. Were I a juror, it would come down to the creative use of recognizably commercial tools or images. I’d reject almost anything that was clearly derivative – so that puts extra pressure on anyone (including me) who chooses to use tools everyone else will recognize! A big challenge is to get beyond derivative. Claim the tool. Make it yours. Use it so effectively your viewers will swoon with admiration. Win over the juror with your clever stroke of brilliance.

Good work surprises, offends, delights but most of all, makes the audience think. No one ever threw a Robert Rauschenberg collage out of an exhibition because it used familiar references. Good work references the known and adds an element of the unknown. It's the surprise that resonates.

Go into the studio. Take our your stamps or your rubbing plates, or your stock of clip art. Sit with it and ask yourself What If?

And don’t be discouraged if the answer isn’t immediately forthcoming. But start by asking the question. Play with the tools. And open your brain to the possibilities. Your hands might quite possibly follow.

Colorful Soy Wax

2010-05-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, Lisa Kerpoe and I co-taught our first Colorful Soy Wax workshop. About two years ago I got the notion that biodegradable soy wax could probably be mixed with fiber reactive dyes to make crayons that would make it possible to "draw" on fabric - after which the fabric could be washed to remove dye and wax simultaneously.

It took two years to figure out the formula and while I was working on it, Lisa, one of my studio colleagues, helped me brainstorm. We started to play with stamping and stenciling a hot dye/wax mixture. At first the results were so unpredictable we never knew what to expect, but we finally limited variables and developed a working model with some reliability.

The workshop was great fun. Watching the class experiment with the crayons and also the hot wax was satisfying and exciting. Stay tuned for a workshop coming to a venue near you - including the international Surface Design Association conference in Minneapolis in 2011.

The photos show some of what happened in the workshop - the crayons, the stencils, and hot wax applications. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Beta Mode version of this class!

and by the way, you can order the proprietary wax mixture and instructions on my website. complexcloth.com

The Poetic Visual Surface II

2010-05-19T21:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve been busy surfing the Net, seeking a definitive description of poetry as part of my quest to define the poetic visual surface. This definition is my favorite so far:

Poetry - A fundamental creative act using language.

It’s a contemporary definition but feels expansive in a way that the traditional definition, which I also found on line, does not:

Poetry. (from the Latin poeta, a poet) a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning.

Maybe the classic definition would have been more intriguing if only I'd found it first. Now it feels as dry as a pile of last year’s pecan leaves.

If poetry is a fundamental creative act using language, than a poetic surface must also be a fundamental creative act. It’s visual by nature, but what else? How could it be defined? I had a feeling it was like pornography. I was having trouble defining it, but I was going to know it when I saw it.

Stumped, I looked up lyrical, a word cycling in my head.
Lyrical. adj.
1. Expressing deep personal emotion or observations.
2. Highly enthusiastic; rhapsodic.

That was good and felt right; exciting, actually.

Then my musician Darling shared a phrase from his own reading - “Perfection, in performance, should be considered a point of departure.”

Which we translated as: Perfection, even when accomplished, runs the risk of being dry if it isn’t supported by lyricism – deep personal emotion and/or enthusiasm. Perhaps listeners actually prefer a heartfelt performance, despite the possibility of imperfection. Musical performance is another fundamental creative act, employing music as the language.

And so my elusive definition took shape:

The poetic visual surface – inspired by deeply personal emotional or enthusiastic observations, which can be lyrical and/or evocative; a fundamental creative act, and one that considers perfection a point of departure.

Is there a higher calling for any artist?

For Your Consideration: Artistic Appropriation

2010-05-10T10:53:00.000-07:00

Recently I met an artist with no ethnic American heritage, who through the course of the conversation, indicated he was trying to change his subject matter from abstract color field painting to images of ethnic (Native) Americans. I was surprised by this radical shift, but it raised some issues that strike me as important.

When is it fair or ok to appropriate imagery from other cultures? Is it ever fair or ok to appropriate imagery from other cultures? And what about materials – especially those intended for use in a spiritual practice? Are they fair game?

Take Joss paper, for example. It’s specifically created for use in Asian ceremonies honoring deceased relatives. Heartfelt prayers are written or breathed into the paper, after which it is burned, releasing the message to the heavens. But Joss paper is also shiny, tactile and colorful, and has been co-opted by artists all over the world for purposes that are almost always secular and sometimes even irreverent. Isn’t that artistic license? Why should an artist have to respect the cultural tradition? Isn’t it ok to use materials without any thought or reference to their origin?

And what about the wildly successful line of candles based on Catholic prayer candles, but with a twist. Gone is the full color Virgen de Guadalupe decal on the side of the 8” tall glass votive. In its place is a new decal with a funny picture and the logo Our Lady of the Dysfunctional Family, or Prayer for Unbridled Fun.

The issue of speaking what we know (or making art about what we know) comes up in my workshops all the time. Artists express an interest in developing a personal visual vocabulary – and that’s great. What’s surprising is the number of artists in a class who are drawn to imagery that has absolutely no resonance with their actual lives. Maybe it’s an escapist thing. Maybe it’s naive. Maybe they aren’t sure where to start or what they care about?

In any event, I think it’s a thread of thinking we should always challenge – whether it’s coming from someone else, or whether the thoughts are our own.

Consider this – as long as an artist can convince me that the impulse is heartfelt, I’ll probably go along with her choice - at least for awhile. I’ve had students who were sure they were Asian (hence the interest in all things Japanese, for example) or ethnic American in a past life, and this was the justification for their interest in using the imagery. I am not going to argue with anyone’s belief system as long as I think sincerity is at the heart of the impulse.

I WOULD however, point out that often people whose culture is being appropriated don’t appreciate it, and may feel even hostile about it. And they have that right. An ethnic American in the El Paso airport (working behind a shop counter as a clerk) really let me have it when I asked her about the Kachina dolls displayed on the glass shelves. Kachina dolls are holy to true believers in the culture and she considered it a sacrilege that they were available for sale.

I’m convinced that most of the time, we don’t consider the ramifications of our appropriation of imagery. So if you think it through and decide to move forward, or are counseling another artist who is making that choice, be intentional when it comes to owning and honoring the imagery as your creations manifest. And try on auditioning what you’ll say if you are asked about the use of your appropriated materials or subject matter. Try on for size the feeling of defending your choices.

One final idea: consider researching – through reading and writing – topics that DO resonate from a personal standpoint. The goal is to turn those topics into subject matter that will allow you to work from an authentic place, rather than an appropriated one. Whatever it might be.

Poetic Visuals

2010-05-07T14:24:00.001-07:00

These images fit my description as being visually poetic. A poem is described many ways, but one definition that resonated with me is the idea of a poem being a distillation of words and thought. These images are a visual distillation of thought. The artists are from the top:
Joseph Cornell
Niki Bonnett
Darcy Love
Francisco Clemente
Robert Rauschenberg
Jane Dunnewold

Visual Poetry?

2010-05-03T20:33:00.001-07:00

It seems obvious but isn't even an idea that produces a content stream on Google. This is the topic of my next essay. Anyone have an opinion on what a visually poetic surface looks like?

The Twelve Elements of Creative Practice

2010-05-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

What does a daily creative practice look like?

Eric Maisel has described it as “the way you turn your passion into fruits with names like books, symphonies and paintings.”

His outline for a creative practice includes twelve elements: simplicity, regularity, solemnity, honesty, self-direction, intensity, presence, ceremony, joy, discipline, self-trust, and primacy. Maisel suggests that examining and defining these elements supports expanded creative self-awareness.

I think examining the twelve elements encourages us to honor the artist inside – the creative Self who is unique, willing, and eager to get going. Examining these twelve elements loads the creative reservoir with intentions capable of sustaining us when the going gets tough. Here are my thoughts. I encourage you to write your own, so your reservoir will also be ready, should the well begin to run dry.

Simplicity
I seek simple elegance in my writing and in my making. While there may be a host of processes involved in a single piece, my end goal is to present simple work built through a series of elegant choices. Nothing can be added. Nothing could be removed. To secure simplicity I refuse to be rushed.

Regularity
My creative self writes, dyes, paints and otherwise patterns cloth. My creative self is also open to cleaning, cooking and de-cluttering – creative acts that allow thought time to channel toward writing and making. Regularity means engaging these activities in some combination every day.

Solemnity
I take myself seriously. I don’t dismiss my works or my process. I refuse to dumb any part of it down. I honor the time I invest in my creative self.

Honesty
I don’t lie to myself. If something isn’t working, it isn’t sacred just because I have time, money and/or energy invested in it. I don’t settle. I start over.

Self-direction
I work because I want to work. I make what I want to make. I teach so that I don’t have to compromise my artistic sensibility in any way, shape or form. I know other people make decisions based on their own sense of self-direction. I rebuke comparing myself to anyone else, and try to stay inside my own skin.

Intensity
I embrace it. A word used to describe me since childhood, I have decided intensity is good. It means I care and I am fully engaged with my life, my art and my making.

Presence
I leave my other selves at the studio door when I am writing or making. The first line of my daily mantra is Stay in present time.

Ceremony
Is mainly interior. While I appreciate the exterior manifestations: lighting incense or candles, getting just the right music in the studio, my ceremony is the inner voice that says Center; It’s time to work.

Joy
I try not to miss the joy that wells up inside when things are going brilliantly, or when I have a creative breakthrough. I remember to be thankful for every minute in the studio, every day at the computer and for my very life. Gratitude supports joy.

Discipline
I give up some things in order to have more studio or writing time. This is a conscious choice so I refuse to whine about it. Building stamina is good.

Self-trust
Without self-trust I lose my center, and with it goes joy, discipline and most of the other twelve elements.

Primacy
Writing and making are important and a priority, so each is high on the list of how the hours of my day will unfold.

What about you?

Art + Music

2010-04-24T18:22:00.001-07:00

This is great and a wonderful art history test! How many of the paintings can you name and/or how many of the artists can you name? The band is Hold Your Horses and the song is Seventy Million.

Terrific fun: http://vimeo.com/9752986

Taking Time Off

2010-04-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we get stuck as artists and the creative well feels as though it has dried up. One thing I’d like to suggest if this happens to you, is to deliberately not work at all for a month. One bad thing we do to ourselves is to ramp the guilt level higher and higher until we can’t think about anything else. It’s a little like picking at a scab. You keep picking and you can’t resist, but if you keep it up, the wound will never heal.

If self-discipline is practiced by working every day, it can also be practiced by intentionally NOT working every day! You aren’t off the hook for a month just because you decide not to make art or write. You must still commit to observing and recording the thoughts you have about art making or writing – whether they are good or bad. No one’s career is going to be ruined by not working for a month, but a month of study of the thoughts that arise around the topic of working should provide insight into what to do next - that is, in terms of your creative endeavors. Maybe half way through the month you’ll REALLY want to make something. That would break your agreement with yourself, so you’ll have to negotiate new territory – which I suspect would be very enlightening.

My own daughter begged to be given a year off from school after her sophomore year in college. The whole idea worried me, but she was adamant. I recognized the stand off that was beginning for what it was, and acquiesced, with some stipulations. She could take the year off as long as she agreed to do some traveling and engage in a few educational “experiences.” Halfway through the year she announced she was bored and missed the challenges of school. She enrolled in a community college for two semesters, and returned to her other college the following term. Zenna needed, as do we all, to experience the feeling of being without. Perhaps there is no greater motivator than missing something we used to do, and realizing we could go back to it, if only we choose to do so.

My goal in suggesting this strategy is to offer you an opportunity to reach a clearer understanding of your motivations, the level of your interest (which might be quite different from what you imagine it to be) and your sense of purpose or dedication. Relinquishing the hold guilt has in favor of a period of open-ended contemplation usually proves to be helpful.

Message or Gimmick

2010-04-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

It’s always something.

On Sunday I described the experience of seeing a need for change within my current Sacred Planet series. Although I love the work as it stands, I was embracing a desire to perform a defiant act - desecrating the surface of a piece by flinging paint over the existing imagery in order to underline its symbolic content.

I screwed up my courage. I felt it was right. Today you see the results. Perhaps not everyone will agree that this was a good thing to do, but I can live with that. Because the longer I make – the more I embrace the reality of making. The process is what counts. If something worth showing the public comes out of the making, it’s gravy.

But on to the next realization. There are seventeen other pieces in the series. You can see some of them in my gallery at complexcloth.com. If flinging paint defiantly worked on one, does that mean I should continue flinging?

Just between you and me, I did. And it worked on two more pieces. But then it began to get hard! It occurred to me that a defiant act is defiant partly because it spills out. It spews from an uncontrolled moment. That’s where the energy comes from.

So can defiance be thoughtful? Anyone who has studied American History 101 knows the American Revolution happened through a combination of detailed planning and reckless daring – possibly the yin and yang of defiance. See the need, plan the actions; dive into daringly executing them.

So I backed away from adding more paint, in order to think about the ramifications of my choices. The color absolutely must be part of the message. The placement? Probably counts. Is the paint flung or bombed onto the piece from the top of an eight-foot ladder? Am I moving away from defiance and toward an idea that could become a gimmick? Yikes.

There’s a paradox here. The end game visual message can spring from a moment of raw artistic courage, or it can carry power invested in the piece through careful planning. Both ways of working are valid. One thing I know for sure: continuing to fling without planning has the potential to ruin what was, up to that point, a perfectly good effort.

Now I want to find a graffiti artist and ask these questions. Is it easier to tag in the beginning when it’s a defiant act? Does it get harder to do once it isn’t as random any more – like, say, when someone gives you permission to do a really big spray paint image on the side of their building?

I suspect a tagger would agree with me. Defiance and planning both have their satisfactions. Maybe all we can hope is to know when to choose one over the other.

The Full Circle

2010-04-18T12:55:00.000-07:00

It’s funny how long an idea can take to bear fruit. We aren’t accustomed to waiting for things in this culture. We want to be entertained; we turn on the TV or run to the video store. We need information and right there it is – in front of our eyes on the computer screen.

In 2008 I got interested in sending designs to spoonflower.com because I could preview them instantly as lengths of cloth. That was pretty darn spiffy. Ordering the fabric was even spiffier. My daily delight became checking the mailbox, where fabric started to arrive with satisfying regularity. Bank account be damned! There was Paypal. It felt like getting fabric for free. But that’s a disconnect and not this story.

As the fabric stacked up in the studio, my delight shifted to auditioning. Length after length resided on the magnetic wall, where I shuffled patterns and prints for hours and never tired of the combinations. It took that long to get to know the pieces. There were so many intricacies. Such varieties of surprising patterns and colors. So many unexpected design similarities within the assortment. I loved the fact that the animals and plants disappeared into the complex patterns, which to me was symbolic of how each is literally disappearing from the earth. My Sacred Planet series was birthing in my head.

But it never actually birthed into reality then, which is now almost a year ago. Cutting up the fabric was waaay too intimidating, and the idea of printing or dyeing over the digital prints? At that point it felt sacrilegious.

Fast forward through summer and also through fall. A busy teaching schedule kept me moving and when I am moving that’s where my creativity goes. I’ve given up moaning about not having time to make art. This is reality and pays the bills, but it’s also just another version of being a creative self. So when I am moving, I dream about art making in my mind, and channel creativity into my teaching.

November passed; with December close on its heels. My studio time. Hurray! I went there. I got ready to make art. I looked at my fabrics. My gorgeous, precious fabrics.

They weren’t so precious anymore! Time had passed, and with it my enthrallment. I still loved my fabrics but the New Boyfriend stage was over. I began cutting and then dyeing. I ordered six large map silk-screens. Being in the studio was still intimidating, but now it wasn’t about the fabrics. It was about the meaning.

On January 14, I shipped eighteen completed pieces to the Boger Gallery at the College of the Ozarks. Three weeks later I went there to teach a workshop. I walked into the gallery. It was good. The pieces were singing to me. I was pleased.

The exhibition closed and the work came back. I unpacked it and stored it away, eager to show it later in the year.

But last week something unexpected happened!

In the middle of a workshop week, after speaking passionately about meaning with my class, I counseled a beloved student to consider the positive qualities of defiance. There are hard issues artists want to address. Difficult, unpopular, ugly, hateful and absurd issues. Violence and war and the degradation of the planet, for starters.

At home that evening it struck me like a lightning bolt. My own work wasn’t defiant enough. I’d carefully crafted art in which endangered animals and plants gradually disintegrated and seemed to be disappearing before the viewers’ eyes.
But I’d had a chance to be defiant, and I'd missed the boat.

So last night I went to the studio. My class ended on Friday. Students were returning home, with visions of their own work vibrating in their heads. It was time to practice defiance. To see if I could get it right.

I chose my least favorite piece. I analyzed the colors. I mixed a blood red paint. I stood over the piece, which was positioned on the floor. I held my breath. My heart pounded. I spewed the paint across the piece.

My sacred planet was defiled. The act was required to complete the meaning I’d so carefully refined.

It took almost a year - to the date of receiving that fabric in the mail - to get the final step figured out.

Lesson learned. Again. Don’t hurry. Don’t settle. Trust the process. Keep asking questions.

It’s worth it.

The beginning.
The end.