Entries Tagged as: Books
Traveling with Uncertainty
October 7th, 2010, Comments (15)
I did this piece recently to submit for one of Patti Digh's latest books. It was inspired by an essay she'd written about dealing with uncertainty and stepping bravely into the unknown, something I find quite difficult in some ways and quite exhilarating in others. Just now, this piece makes me think of the daring decision I made at the age of 15 to be an exchange student and live with a family in Madrid for a month. What a scary and mind-opening experience it was! It certainly took a leap of faith to do, but I have no regrets about it.
And then thinking about the earth theme, I'm curious about the places you've traveled to, whether that be to a new part of town or an exotic location. What brave steps did you take to go somewhere new and what effect did it have on you? What kind of art might that inspire in you?
By the way, I received Patti Digh's Creative is a Verb in the mail and it's beautiful! Chock full of gorgeous art and inspiring words. Patti is amazing. I've got a piece in the book as well, it's this piece and it's on page x. I love that's it's opposite this quote: "Don't apologize for who you are or the art you create" - C.J. Rider
p.s. I'm working on the Art Every Day Month sign-up page and hope to have it ready to go shortly!
p.p.s. The piece above, "The Unknown," is 11"x14" with collage and acrylic on wood.
Checkity Check It Out
August 18th, 2010, Comments (10)
Yesterday, I got a copy of Four Word Self Help, Patti Digh's new book. I got an early copy because I have a piece of art in it, along with many other wonderful artists from around the world. You can find my piece, "Let Others In" on page 3. What a beautiful little book this is!
I also wanted to share Jess Larsen's website. She has started offering doula services in the Northern New Jersey area. I'm a big believer in what she does and was thrilled to have some of my work, including Spring Thaw (above), featured on her site. You can learn more about what she does as a doula here.
Story-filled Linkyloos for you
March 9th, 2010, Comments (9)
I love the way the monthly theme worms its way into my brain and pops up everywhere. It may not always show up in my art, but it's always in my head. Just goes to show how the things we focus on really do expand in our lives. Which makes me wonder about what it is that I'm focusing on!
Today, I've got some fun links to share with you before I go off to enjoy the sunshine. I truly can't get enough of walking in the woods lately. After the long winter, I've been so excited about the warmer weather, the sun, and oh, the little yellow crocuses! So precious! Life! Woohoo! Um, yes, I get a little excited about spring. One thing I can say about living in New England, it makes you reallllly appreciate the Spring when it starts to stretch its wings.
On to the links:
- The lovely Lianne Raymond has complied this absolutely beautiful ebook, Dying to Be Born, filled with wisdom and art from inspiring women such as: Martha Beck, Pam Slim, Brené Brown, Patti Digh, Jan Phillips, and many more. I've got a piece of art in it too! It's beautiful and it's free! Go download a copy for yourself. If you leave a comment on Lianne's post here, you'll also be entered to win Jan Phillips' CD set, Creating Every Day (now that sounds cool!)
- Thinking of the old stories we tell ourselves, reminded me of this post I wrote a couple years ago called, Digging Into Defining Beliefs. It was something I needed to read again today.
- Martha Beck is one of my favorite authors on the topic of changing up your beliefs and this recent post from her blog is a great example of why. It's hilarious and super smart, great combo. I also loved her book Steering by Starlight
- Have you heard of Jen Lee? I've had the pleasure of listening to an audio of her telling a story, and oh, she has a way with words! You can download a copy of her ebook, "the story catcher" here.
- If you enjoy listening to stories, you'll love The Moth podcast!
Well, that's enough links to send you down a few rabbit holes. Enjoy the stories and keep telling yours!
p.s. The art above is titled, Fishing and is available here.
Recycled Bits and Pieces in Art
December 11th, 2009, Comments (12)
A little sneak peek of something I've been working on for a book by arist, writer and teacher extraordinaire, Carmen Torbus, that I'll be featured in along with an amazing group of artists. So exciting! And it's so hard not to share the whole thing because I love the way it came together! But soon enough.
I share this little snippet because it fits well with the recycle theme going on this month for the Creative Every Day Challenge. In this piece and in a lot of my art, I recycle bits and pieces of paper to create the collage backgrounds for my paintings. In this small section, is a bit of to-do list stationery and some sheet music.
Where do these bits and pieces of paper come from? Well, like many creative folks, I'm a collector. I see interesting pieces of paper and I have trouble throwing them away. So, they get stored in boxes and eventually used in artwork. Sometimes I buy the scraps at fairs that sell antique goods in the summer, sometimes I trade with other artists for scraps (I loved doing this for a 6x6 collage project), and sometimes I find the bits myself in everything from my own scribbled notes, junk mail, and doodles on rice paper. My sister-in-law recently gave me a great stack of old blueprints that I adore using and my bff recently gifted me an old book of design forms. I like having the variety, so when I sit down to collage, I can pick through my supplies intuitively and use what works for me in the moment.
Sometimes it's easy to forget what we have, so it's good every so often to sort through it all. Whenever I do this, I'm always inspired by what I find and re-discover amongst the boxes. What are some of your favorite recycled goodies that you use in your artwork?
p.s. I was recently interviewed as part of the "Inspiring Women" series on the All Things Girl blog. All Things Girl is a fabulous zine filled with great articles, art, and interviews (and you can submit your artwork too!) that I highly recommend checking out!
Chairs in a Row
November 29th, 2009, Comments (24)
I traced the silhouette of this woman onto rice paper last night, but today I came back to it and traced a series of chairs, which got me all excited. Again, I collaged and painted on a 6"x6" clayboard surface, using bits from my collection, things I intuitively grabbed that seemed right in the moment. One scrap looked like it was the shape in the house, so I played with that. I had a piece of rice paper cut in the shape of a eucalyptus that I'd written on months ago, but not used in anything. It seemed like the right time to use it here. Stamps and stamped images of ferns came into play as well. Then I lay the rice paper image over it, using a soft gel medium to bring it together. I love the translucent quality of the rice paper and the way the drawings sit on top of it. I've always been a fan of layers, the way it mimics how layered things are in real life.
I'm so enjoying the rice paper at the moment. I love when a material thrills me and I know I'll be playing with it for awhile until the next medium makes me giddy. It's a good place to be, feeling the joy of materials, feeling in the flow.
I was feeling a big sluggish the last week, although I kept plodding through. Flow in creativity comes in cycles for me and I've come to accept that. Sometimes a down period means I do other things like reading or research, re-stocking the well as Julia Cameron puts it in The Artist's Way. And other times, like during Art Every Day Month, I keep plodding through, knowing that the spark will fire again, if I just keep patiently putting mark to paper. Often times, I don't think the spark has returned to me, until I've already begun, like last night, which makes me glad for those times when I kept plodding through. But other times, a break feels necessary. Neither way is wrong or right. Knowing that both ways of returning to my work can be fruitful helps me come back without judging myself in the process.
What helps you come back to your creativity after a slow period? Are there any sparks happening right now for you?
Standing at Water’s Edge: An Interview with Anne Paris
November 3rd, 2009, Comments (3)
I'm so pleased to be sharing this interview I recorded last week with Anne Paris, author of Standing at Water's Edge: Moving Past Fear, Blocks, and Pitfalls to Discover the Power of Creative Immersion.
I read the book a few months ago, and as I told Anne, it's just filled with underlines, notes in the margin, and dog-eared pages - signs of a well-loved book. There's great discussion on how even the introverted among us, reach out for connection in our own ways. I could relate to that considering how much work I do to reach out and connect others here on this blog!
I hope this interview will provide some extra inspiration for those going through the Art Every Day Month process. (I love to listen to podcasts while I work!)
The conversation is about 20 minutes long. You can listen to it here, by clicking on the link below or you can save it to your computer to listen to later by right-clicking (or ctrl-click on a Mac) on the link.
Enjoy!
Trick or Treats
October 31st, 2009, Comments (12)
This week in The Joy Diet, which I'm reading with Jamie Ridler's book group, the focus is on treats or how you reward yourself. When I thought about it at first, I felt like I've been fairly good at treating myself. But when I looked more closely this week, I realized I'm good at treating myself in some ways more than others.
For example, I'm good at treating myself through distasteful tasks and finding small ways to make my day more enjoyable. For example, I love saving the Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me Podcast for when I clean the kitchen. I've been using enjoyable listening to make chores more fun since I was a teenager when I listened to musicals on my headphones (back when we used tape cassettes.) I still do this sort of thing with music, podcasts, or audiobooks while doing un-fun things like cleaning the litter and also with very fun things like making art. I love hearing a good story.
Earlier this week I upped the treat factor by asking some folks on Twitter for podcast recommendations. It was suggested I check out The Moth, Radiolab, Speaking of Faith, and some others, which I downloaded episodes of and scattered them throughout my day to make various tasks more fun.
Yesterday, I treated myself to some beautiful hydrangeas (see above), a bribe for going to the grocery store. Ok, so I seem to bribe myself a lot. A trick and a treat? But what I'm not always great at doing is treating myself as a celebration or just because. Thinking about little ways to treat myself well throughout the week was a great reminder though and I was grateful for that. I've got to keep that up as I dive into the busy month of Art Every Day which starts up tomorrow. Wee! Super excited!
As we wind up, this month of connection, I'm noticing how much I love to connect with folks online through places like Twitter, this blog, and the many challenges that pop up throughout the blogopshere. It's a beautiful thing. I'll be talking more about connections in an interview with Anne Paris, author of Standing at Water's Edge: Moving Past Fear, Blocks, and Pitfalls to Discover the Power of Creative Immersion, which will be posted later this week.
Happy Halloween everyone!
Connecting with Your Creativity
October 18th, 2009, Comments (17)
butterfly tree
This week's chapter of The Joy Diet, which I'm reading with Jamie Ridler's book group, was about creativity. Creativity! Yes, you think I'd be all over this like fudge on a sundae, right? Well, yes, I do love me some creativity talk, but his was a fairly quiet week for me.
It's interesting, but a lot of people reading the book are having strong reactions to it. While this has not been my favorite Martha Beck book, I'm still getting things out of it. I think for a lot of people, the book is going too fast, there's too much information, it's asking too much. And I do hear that. It is a lot to process and a lot to consider doing each and every day. I think part of the reason, I'm not having an adverse reaction to the book is because I'm holding it very lightly.
Perhaps I'll get less out of the process by doing this, but I've got a lot going on at the moment, and the only way I can do this book right now is to take on what's helpful and leave the rest. I play with the suggestions, incorporating them into my days as I see fit. If I don't do it perfectly, I'm not going to worry about it. Stress-free-book-clubbing.
There are books I've read where I've done every exercise and followed along with nearly every suggestion, as I've done in past readings of The Artist's Way, for example. And there are others that I've read without doing any of the exercises. This book is somewhere in the middle for me. I'm doing some exercises, leaving others behind without a second thought. It feels just right for me right now.
This week I've used the creativity prompts in small and subtle ways. Whenever I'd remember, I'd check in with myself about what I was desiring in that moment and then I'd think up a few creative ways to move in the direction of what I wanted. What I liked about doing this, was that it helped me to get playful with how I can get what I want and it helped me move from desire into action.
Ok, this is a super small example, but small is good too. I checked in with myself at one point this week about what I was desiring in that moment. What instantly came to mind was that I was super cold and I really wanted to be warmer. The funny thing is, that if I hadn't checked in, I might not have done much about the fact that I was cold. I might have just blown it off and kept going. Just checking in was a good thing for me. So then I thought, "Ok, I want to be warm. What are some creative ways I could get warm?" And I started to list off ideas in my head: I could put on fuzzy socks, I could put on an extra layer, I could do jumping jacks, I could drink hot chocolate, I could do some work around the house to get myself moving and feel warmer, I could take a hot shower, I could make soup or tea or hot cider, I could cuddle up with kitties under the blankets, I could turn up the heat, I could fly back to Florida, I could put on leg warmers and dance to 80's music, etc...
Beyond the fact that making this list was kinda fun and a bit silly at times, it did get me to to come up with some solid ideas to get warm and I acted on a few and felt much better. Was this desire a deep one? No. But it was great practice and I used the process later in the week to figure out how to take action on a deeper desire to work on a writing project that I was procrastinating on. By coming up with creative ways to get started, I found a fun way to get moving on it again.
How do you connect with your creativity? What creative ways can you move towards your desires, both small and large?
Connecting to Your Longing
October 8th, 2009, Comments (39)
I have these pictures from a nature walk I took the other day and when I was thinking about posting them, I thought, "Oh, but you already did a post about connecting with nature for the connect theme! Write about something different!" But sometimes you've just gotta go with where your heart is tugging you.
It's kind of funny because of all the Joy Diet chapters (the book I'm reading with Jamie Ridler's book group), the one on Desire has been the most difficult for me. I'm not sure if it's because it gets harder as one chapter builds upon the next, if the exercises themselves are getting more difficult, if I'm losing steam, or if I have some kind of resistance to looking at what it is that I desire. I have a feeling it's the latter.
I've continued to get in my nothing time (mainly in the form of walks), I've done the truth exercises, but by the time I get to the desire piece, I've "run out of time" or "forgotten" or brushed it off. Hmm. And this is something I've been working on too, speaking up and saying what I want instead of being so easy-going to a fault all the time. Perhaps there's a fear underneath it all that something I want is too big, too grand, and the disappointment would be too great. Or perhaps I feel like I have enough and who am I to want more?
For now, I'm going to continue to practice Martha Beck's method of "picking a pebble" of any small desire and follow it where it leads. On my walks, I've been so thrilled with colors and shapes and have been so glad to have my iphone with me to capture snapshots of it all. I've been especially excited by reflections of sky in water and the shapes of leaves. Color and texture and beauty, oh my!
I feel like I've been successful in following my desires in terms of inspiration. It's something I'm more familiar with, allowing myself to be pulled by the inner nudges that lead me to mediums, subjects, and experiments in art. And perhaps this is enough for now and maybe if I continue to practice this, my desire skills will expand into other areas of my life.
I guess I did end up writing about a different sort of connection here. And in reality I could write about connecting with nature and all the things that come up from doing that all month long! (Although I doubt I will.) But isn't it interesting to see where following desire can lead?
Where are your inner nudges leading you in your art? Are you following them despite what you may "think" about it? What are you longing to do creatively? And if you don't know yet, how could you connect with that part of yourself?
Connecting with Nature & with Myself
October 1st, 2009, Comments (30)
It is the month of connect for the Creative Every Day Challenge, which has me thinking of all the ways I connect in my world. One of the things I've been loving about the home I've moved to, is that it's close to nature trails. Since I'm reading The Joy Diet with Jamie Ridler's book group, I've been using my walks in the woods as a time to do nothing. It's a great practice in staying in the present moment, letting my thoughts march by as if they were in a parade, returning and returning and returning again to my breath, forward movement, step, step, step.
There's a lovely resting point at the end of a wooden pathway that trails right into a pond, filled with frogs. I'm already enjoying the ways the trees are changing all around it and the way they reflect in the water. So peaceful.
This week in The Joy Diet, the focus was on truth. At the end of your nothing practice, you ask yourself what you're feeling, what story you're telling yourself about it, and whether another story might work better. I've used this sort of practice before (it's similar to Byron Katie's The Work), but having the reminder to do it every day has been helpful. And I love the practice of asking these questions after the meditative time.
Although winter will make it hard to take these long walks, I plan to continue them as long as I can. When I'm out connecting with nature, I feel like I'm connecting with myself and my spirituality. And that fills me in a wonderful way.
What are some ways that you connect with yourself?
