reading . . . .

For Mother's Day, I think I will go to Tattered Cover (best independent book store in Denver) and enlarge my to-read pile.
Suggestions welcomed!

“He took up books as if they were people and welcomed them into his family.”    --Michel de la Montaigne

working.

 “The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up & get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part & a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you."  --Chuck Close.

remember:

"Perfectionists live lives of sameness, wondering why new things never come. Perfectionism is the enemy of good, and good enough. But in an elemental way, perfectionism is the galactic enemy of action itself."  --Bob Sullivan

my studio

What are you working on today?

Where to start.

How do you get yourself to start creative work?  If you work at home, it is really hard.  There is laundry to do, dishes that need putting away, and that recipe you wanted to test.  There are errands, phone calls, e-mails, the cursed internet to browse (and blog posts to write!)
There are a million distractions, some important ones, not to mention family and social obligations.
It is so very very easy to take care of all these needs, then to address the creative urge.
NO.
I have learned, over many years of NOT getting to my work, that if I don't make it a priority, if I don't value it beyond a clean house, lengthy communication, new movies to watch, the garden to work in, I will never get to it.
Another way to get to prioritize your creative work is to do it somewhere else.  Travel to give yourself time and space to work is a great idea -- I love this little book: A Writer's Paris, by Eric Maisel.   I might not ever get back to Paris, and the chances that I can be there alone for 2 months just to work?  Very slim.  But reading this book reminds me that I CAN make my work a priority here.
I can say "no" to committees and projects and a very clean house.
I can say "no" to all those interesting social networking sites that beckon.
So here I am, typing this.
Right now I will cut this short, and get back to my work.
Now you go do the same.

"I tamed my personal art demon – the tendency to think about painting rather than actually painting – by throwing the stuff on the blank paper and telling myself I didn't care about the end result. I believed it and was saved."   --Rich Hawk

say yes quickly

“Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about… say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe.”   --Rumi

creative tension

I have a shelf with 28 years worth of journals on it. (The shelf is full)

It's over 50 books. Sometimes I wonder about my life work, other times I know it was not really a choice, it was what I had to do. In a month an artist rep is taking some of my work to a trade show in New York. This feels like a nice validation after years of work. I wonder what will happen? and I also wonder why do I need that thing that happens to feel like I have accomplished something?

I'll let you know.

"I don’t know how you reconcile the two sides of the creative spectrum (idea generation and production), but I know that it never goes away.

If you are an artist, you have to learn to live in this tension. You have to keep releasing your work into the world, and it has to be good. If it’s excellent, and nobody sees it, it doesn’t count. If it’s on display for the world to see, but ordinary, it’s irrelevant.

The path to compelling work lies somewhere in between the two extremes of genius-but-invisible and ordinary-but-in-your face.  Only the artist knows the true balance; only she can find the harmony. This is the person with the taste and passion to make meaningful work. She’s the ones with enough gumption to create change."
--Jeff Goins
http://goinswriter.com/world-needs-artists/

Blue Jays and Branches

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

 

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer   by Walt Whitman

 

Thought for today

Dear friends, please remember that in response to the pain of the world, we can add our loving kindness. Also, I am aware that tragedy hits every day somewhere in the world, perhaps next time we hear of a bombing in another far away place, we can send peaceful thoughts to all, and move through our days with small acts of love.

Focusing on beauty can help heal the world.

Cool app to use for sharing information

My brother told me about an online app that is a template for presentations, called Prezi.  I made a one to show you:
Becoming an Artist

and here is what it says, if it doesn't load on your computer:

The hardest part is getting started.
To find enough inspiration and belief in yourself that you go to that eisel, pick up some paints and paper and pens, or pick up those collage materials and your journal, and just begin. Becoming an Artist You've heard this before But first you have to believe in yourself.

Rumi said: "You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?" If you put in the time, your art will soar.

Jack Kerouac said "Something that you feel will find its own form."
What touches you?
What gets your attention?
What in the world draws you in mysterious ways you might not even understand?
Start there.

Don't strain. Plotinus said: "We must not run after it, but we must fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for it, as the eye waits on the rising of the Sun which in its own time appears above the horizon and gives itself to our sight."

Rumi also said this: "Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon."
If we trust ourselves, look for the mystery, and then do what comes naturally, our work will become authentic. Our yearning to create will be satisfied. You do have a vision, and if you long to create it visually (or musically, or with your body, this can be applied to all the arts), your work will SING.

and last, I want to leave you with this: "In the language of the Tewa Indians, the three syllable term that is translated as "art" or "creativity" actually means "water-wind-breath." This is a beautiful evocation of the creative process. It's about catching the current, about breathing in and breathing out. In-spiration is literally breathing in Spirit; exhalation is releasing it into the world." --Robert Moss

If you are creative, this might help you:

I read this on an article in the Harvard Business Review on how to treat creative employees, and I thought it would be nice to treat myself this way!

"Few things are as aggravating to creatives as boredom. Indeed, creative people are prewired to seek constant change, even when it's counterproductive. They take a different route to work every day, even if it gets them lost, and never repeat an order at a restaurant, even if they really liked it. Creativity is linked to higher tolerance of ambiguity. Creatives love complexity and enjoy making simple things complex rather than vice-versa. Instead of looking for the answer to a problem, they prefer to find a million answers or a million problems. It is therefore essential that you keep surprising your creative employees; failing that, you should at least let them create enough chaos to make their own lives less predictable."

and here is a peek at my portfolio on my iphone, I love technology!

New beginnings:

I am so pleased to be represented by these awesome folks:
http://parcaidesigns.com/press.html

Need an idea?

If you ever need a journaling idea, here are more than 4000 of them on this amazing Pintarest board:
http://pinterest.com/bettina11/smash-journaling/

Happy Journaling!

A New York State of Mind

I'm in a New York state of mind. http://youtu.be/p04TYk4j0zQ 

This Youtube video of Billy Joel's spontaneous performance of that song brought tears to my eyes. We lived in New Jersey for 11 years, a short 45 minute train ride to Penn Station. Every few months, I got to take that ride and explore the city, shop a little, have a good meal or a theater outing, visit a great museum, meet a friend. 

9-11 happened while we lived there, friends on our street worked in the trade center building, and the whole world focused on this great city during that tragedy. I think the reason I choked up is because New York really does express some of the greatest of human achievements, along with some of the most profound pain; great music, like great art, helps us feel this passion. We owe such thanks to people who dedicate their lives to creating music and art. I certainly don't think my work is anywhere near as interesting or meaningful as the iconic Billy Joel (or the amazing young man who plays with him in this video.) But I am filled with emotion that I will get to bring my work to the city and have thousands of licensing art buyers see it. I have worked for so many years at what I do, and this feels like a wonderful chance to have it out in the world, even if no licensing deals result. 

Thank you, New York City, I really am in a New York State of mind, and it feels good.

and an owl.

I will be showing three collections of my work at Surtex, and art licensing trade show this May, in New York;  Owls (you're surprised?), Pears, and Sea Life.

More about this is HERE.

"We should see money in terms of the expenditure of energy and how we are going to transmute that energy into a proper use."   --Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

And my news:

I have not been able to post my art for a while, for a very exciting reason. But let me start at the beginning. . . . grab your coffee, this might be lengthy:

I have been making art for as long as I can remember. I remember once when I was very small being taken to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and my heart filled, I felt like I was in a holy place, my love for art started then. But school and work and life caught me up in "reality", so I spent an awful lot of my life putting this great love aside, studying architecture and working in that field, raising a family, teaching, and working at "real" jobs. Jobs that would earn me respect and money.

I worked hard at these other professions, but always ended up coming back to the studio, to a pile of watercolors and papers and inks and pens; I found myself needing to play in an art journal to keep feeling that connection to the mystery, to keep true to myself and my vision. Joseph Campbell calls it "following your bliss", and he says it leads to where we are meant to be, in our truest authentic self. The thing was, I always felt like I was being indulgent, or neglectful, or starry-eyed and that it should be the "real" world that I engage in.  I don't think I really believed that actually following your bliss could result in success, it just seemed too far away from the mainstream, too impossibly unrealistic.

For the last three years, I had a mighty battle going on in my heart, I love more than anything making beautiful collagey images and playing in my studio, but no one was paying me for doing this. I tried so many other things -- I showed "sellable" work in a few galleries (with minimal sales), I taught art journaling workshops, I took up book design and taught a graphics class, I even applied to work retail, feeling quite desperate to earn a living. Still, I kept coming back to the studio, making layered papers and collage after collage, adding paint, taking photos and adding them to these textured images. I just felt blissful doing this, and guilty at the same time for not "contributing" more to the real world.

Well, a few weeks ago, all this changed. I realized I had quite a pile of interesting work here in my studio, and when a friend mentioned an artist agent was looking for new artists, I applied. Lots of back and forth later, and suddenly, I find myself with an enthusiastic supporter who will be taking 48 of these images to the largest art marketing show in the country, Surtex, in New York City. I now finally know I was not crazy to spend years working on these collages, that someone in the world might even pay me for them. Not that money needs to be our validation, but the fact that if we truly love what we are doing, if we commit to the vision, if this is the only thing that fills our hearts with joy, then of course that is the right path. Money or no money, praise or no praise.

Developing an art style takes years; years where you won't get a paycheck. But imagine if no one in history ever dedicated their time to this. No new creative work could ever bloom.  No innovation in the arts could happen, no progress, no evolution.   So artists, keep at it, give yourself to your work. Even if no one is praising you or writing you checks, one day, one day, your contribution will deeply enrich the world.  And in year heart you will know you have done good work, worthwhile work.

I promise.

Studio News Coming Soon!

In the swim of things.

"The invariable mark of wisdom 

is to see the miraculous in the common." 

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thought for today

"You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?"   --Rumi

Another Owl

"Something that you feel will find its own form."  

--Jack Kerouac