Art Every Day Month, November 22nd

November 22nd, 2008

Today is the 22nd day of Art Every Day Month. Your creativity is a light in the world. Keep up the great work!

The box below is a widget that I provide each day as an optional place to share a direct link (blog post or flickr image) to that day's creation. If you don't have something to share today, don't worry about it! Share when you can. In the meantime, be sure to check out what other participants are creating! Check out the links from today's post, the previous day's posts and the links in the sidebar for instant inspiration. You can also see lots of great work in the AEDM flickr group. Feel free to share your work there too!

If you use the widget, please link to a specific blog post (or specific image if you're linking to a flickr page or other website) instead of your main blog page or website. If you want to share, but don't have a specific page to link to, feel free to use the comments section of this post to share what you're working on. If you're posting less than once a day, no problem! Simply use the latest one of these posts to share a link to your creation! For some, it's too much to keep up with posting every day, but don't let that get you down. Do it if you can and if you can't, just keep on creating, that's the most important part. If you get off track and miss a few days of creating, don't let that freeze you up either. Just pick up where you left off and keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other. You are making your life a more creative one with each step.

If you're new to Art Every Day Month, check out the before you use the link widget to share your creations.

Today, instead of a quote, I want to share a poem by Rilke. I read it yesterday while in a bookstore, when I turned to a random page in Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again by Roger Housden. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to share. Enjoy!

SONGS TO ORPHEUS PART 2. XII

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
Where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
As the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
And is easily shattered.

Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
Finishes often at the start, and with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of separation
It did not think it could survive. And Daphne,
Becoming a laurel,
Dares you to become the wind.

- Rilke

Posted by Leah on November 22nd, 2008 in Uncategorized | Permalink | 12 Comments |

12 Responses

Leah,

Thank you for the idea of bringing out the sun more with ink on the altered CD that was posted yesterday. That is something I hadn’t considered. I think that just might be the ticket.

Posted by: Vicki | Nov 22, 2008 at 9:36 am |

Rilke’s poem is beautiful – and I do feel dared to become the wind.

I’ve been a lot happier since I stopped thinking about my art as a product or end, and instead concentrated on the journey, the doing. Sometimes the results are cool, and worth seeing again and again, but that’s not the point. The point is the seeing and the doing – this piece, not the last. My artist statement on my website recently took on that idea – it’s healthier and happier than any other I know. Thanks for sharing the poem.

I wonder if Rilke drew the figure? Or if he knew from drawings that the artist does indeed love the figure as the curves turn and recede…

Posted by: Steve | Nov 22, 2008 at 9:49 am |

I love today’s poem. It touches on some of my thoughts about selling my work, which I was discussing with friends last night. It’s part of the flow, and makes room for the new.

Posted by: Jul | Nov 22, 2008 at 10:23 am |

Oh yes, giving yourself permission to flow,to play,(. . . “pour yourself like a fountain”) I feel gives one a totally different perspective on the overall creative process. Maybe that’s why I am so enjoying participating in your AEDM Leah!! Thank you, Thank you!! )

Posted by: Carol Cooper | Nov 22, 2008 at 10:36 am |

what an incredible poem…it does require becoming flexible, bending, to make art, to flow art, as it is not a static thing that stays the same…it must move.
I have found my mistakes create the opening to move more within the work, to loosen up and let it be what it wants to be (since it’s going to anyway!) “the curve of the body as it turns away” is very beautifully said.

Posted by: linda | Nov 22, 2008 at 11:30 am |

just listed my latest painting. so much fun, and there’s a video, too.

Posted by: mystele | Nov 22, 2008 at 11:55 am |

Rilke is one of my all-time favorite poets. What a way to spend a Saturday … marinating on his words. The following lines described my morning activities at my artist-in-residence meeting held at Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts:

“Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
Finishes often at the start, and with ending, begins.”

During our two hour monthly meeting, artists shared updates and listened to the executive director share news about Smith Farm’s recent programs and grants. Each of us were give several pieces of drawing paper, colored chalk, pastel crayons, and Crayola crayons. Some of us created drawings throughout the meeting. I made several self-portraits that illustrated my lawyer self, creativity self, and 43 year old self. They poured out of me so easily. It was not planned. My hands and the creative utensils just flowed with the intuitive knowledge that what I am seeking to share in the last days of finishing my artwork and writing for my poetic memoir is really a new beginning of sorts. The new beginning is coming from getting to know myself better and seeing how much more I have to learn by using art as my daily companion. What a creative gem!

Posted by: Ananda Leeke | Nov 22, 2008 at 1:22 pm |

I was reading one of Rilke’s poems last night and was struck by these lines:
“Do not seek the answers within which cannot be given,
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then,
Gradually, without knowing it,
Live along some distant day,
Into the answers.”

Posted by: Sue | Nov 22, 2008 at 2:49 pm |

Great inspiration to ponder Right now I’m caught up in the need to produce that while I’m flowing like the wind, I feel like it’s in a tornado that I’m rolling with it..lol. I haven’t had time to post but wanted to share my new collection of black/white and red pieces: