Take a bad wrong and make it better...

Stopped by jeep on a snowing evening
Whose jeep this is I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He can not see me standing here
To watch my car fill up with snow.

My little car must think it queer
To see my eyes pop wide in fear.
Boston drivers take the cake
To park like that and disappear.

I give my fisted keys a shake
And ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the creep
When I release his parking brake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
I have no means to stop that jeep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I penned this while waiting 30 minutes for the gentle soul who blocked me in at my studio. (And no, I did not leave it on his windshield!) Writing it was more fun than expending lots of angry energy, calling a tow truck, or pacing. And it fulfilled my commitment to write something every day.

Strangely, it also let me rediscover the elements that make the parent poem (Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening) one of my all-time favorites. Even more fun, I forgot that I intended to leave the studio at all, and opened up an opportunity to do a little more "serious" work.

Anger carries a great deal of energy. We all know its power to destroy. Fewer of us are aware of its power to create.

Using anger to create is not about creating angry art; rather, it is about redirecting the energy in a positive, constructive way. Acknowledge the anger. (I couldn't go where I wanted to go when I wanted to go there.) Identify the source. (I felt diminished by someone else's lack of consideration.) Separate what needs to be done from what would feel good in the moment. ( I didn't really need to leave the studio for another 4 hours, so I left a note.)

Retain your right to communicate, but abandon the desire to retaliate. What is left is usually an intense need to "do something".

So "do something". If at all possible, first make yourself laugh, because joy will reconnect you to your body and your humanity.  Then allow yourself to enjoy more serious play.

Stuck in the car on the side of the road and exhausted all avenues for rescue? Paint shapes in the fog on your windshield. Take photos with your telephone. Write sonnets on gasoline receipts. Make up a song. Turn your coffee cup into an extraterrestrial being. Or model a chair you can make from a single sheet of plywood. Start that business plan you've been deferring.

As Dan Gioia wrote in his article The Transformative Power of Art

"Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "it is a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art awakens, enlarges, refines, and restores our humanity."

Perhaps the worst of our anger can be left unsaid, while the best of our anger transforms our lives.

Being Shared

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

(Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

Something today, perhaps some small thing, will catch your eye, your heart, your funny bone. Film it, photograph it, write about it, document it.

Tomorrow, look for that same small thing. Note how it changed. Note if it didn't. Record it again.

The next day, look for another thing that is, in some respect (however finely you must stretch the point, similar to the first thing. Record that, too.


Continue in this way for oh, maybe, 45 years. At the end, pick the recordings that speak most clearly to you, and compile them into a show, a book, a film, an object.


You will have produced something that only you could produce, and it will be a beautiful body of work.


Then share it.  


And share the work of the people you admire who do the same thing.

Connecting the Dots

Some shameless self-promotion today...

I have long encouraged people to create their own definition of Art, and then move enthusiastically with that vision to create what moves them. I have been doing this for my entire life, in many domains — so many domains, in fact, that I have been questioned about my dedication to any particular domain, and challenged with respect to my seriousness.

I took up the challenge to define myself, and it has taken me three years of studying and soul-searching, plus six months of non-stop writing and editing to finally do so. The common thread that unites all my interests appears to be design.

I wanted to be an artist, so this came as a bit of a shock. Having been brought up with the belief that Art is superior to Design, I kept thinking that if I applied myself to discovering my voice, then I would be able to create Art.

I discovered, though, that Art can not exist in the absence of design. Art is well-conceived and well-crafted. It achieves a mission, and through it the artist causes her audience to experience a shift in perspective. Design — even when its principles are applied intuitively and unconsciously — is inherent in the process of assessing and responding to all constraints, the media employed, the methods of work, refinement of vision, through to execution and presentation of the finished work. And design is so little talked about, so poorly understood, so frequently denigrated that it took me fifty years to recognize that design is the unifying field of my life's work. I may have created something artistic along the way — that is for other's to decide — but my passion is ignited by analyzing, visualizing, conceptualizing, realizing — in short, design!

Armed with this theory, I took a trip through all the many kinds of things I have created over my entire lifetime — disparate fields of photography, computer software, art, landscape, furniture, business plans, and music — tracing details, puzzles, questions, relationships, observations and intentions and the ways in which they informed my entire body of work. I wrote a book which conceptually began as a portfolio. It evolved through its essays, drawings, photographs, digital montages, typography and examples. I believe it illuminates what I've come to think of as the art of design.

I throw a little world-saving in there, too, just because we can never have enough of that.

Please take a look. It is a big 12 x 12 book printed by Blurb on luscious paper. All profit will support my independent project for the Landscape Institute, which I expect will be a community service project, most probably in aid of the group Architecture for Humanity.

http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/

Finding Your Own Party Hat

Last Valentine's Day, I came up with a CafePress design that reads: "I love you 365.2425 days a year.  OK?"  I made it in honor of my wonderful, loving engineer husband, who gripes that he doesn't want to be told by some card company when to tell me he loves me.

Fair enough.

This morning, I was prompted by a friend's use of the phrase "small still voice" to go looking for a Bob Franke song that I adore, called "A Still, Small Voice".  It is a song he wrote in honor of Martin Luther King -- and because it isn't Martin Luther King Day, I almost resisted the urge to post it.

Then I listened to it again.  And I decided to travel with the song and my voice today, and celebrate Martin Luther King Day.  Just because.

I set about discovering what Martin Luther King might have done on this day.  I discovered that DreamWorks is making a biopic.  A story is published today on: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=55676

And thirty years ago May 17, H.R.1385 was passed "To make permanent the Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday Commission".

Most significantly, though, on May 19, 1963, The New York Post Sunday Magazine published (without King's authority) excerpts from King's now famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

So, today, I chose to create my own holiday, in honor of a man who had the courage to risk everything, to create the future he had envisioned.

What would you create if you followed your own "still small voice"?

Beyond the Sketchbook: A Confession

I've always treated my sketchbook as, well, a sketchbook.  In pen, or pencil -- or occasionally,  (oooo) colored pencil -- I dabble & doodle my way around a plague of ideas, or practice drawing forks and tomatoes.  I also have my "watercolor journal" -- which is a place where I capture successful color blends and palettes, and splat my brush around to loosen myself up before tackling the "real" work.  

And then there is my "furniture design" journal, which is full of weird little sketches of shapes that I want to explore in wood, and rough, but measured plans for tables and boxes.  Oh, and I shouldn't forget my landscape design journal, which is loaded with lists of plants that I think would look interesting together, and the occasional texture drawing.

Pretty dry stuff.  Nothing at all like my written journal, which is full of character studies and overheard snippets of conversation, song ideas, the occasional rhyme, tiny essays and mini insights, business ideas, aromatherapy notes, and loads of daily dross.  Multi-color pens.  Playful bits of calligraphy. Even an occasional illustration, directions to Royalston, a grocery list. 

Ideas gnaw at me, and distract me, unless I pay them respect & capture them with a whispered promise that I'll come back later.   My journals have always been therapeutic and utilitarian.

Well, today by way of a Facebook friend's friend's friend, I was turned on to a richer style of journaling.  I am inspired by mixed media artist Manon Doyle's blog, generously loaded with examples of her journal pages, her process, and her lively and thought-provoking work  http://manondoyle.blogspot.com/.  (The image included in this blog is hers.) She describes how journaling allows her to work on ideas, even when she thinks she isn't going to paint...  

More examples of visually stimulating journals can be seen at:

http://www.artistsjournals.com/ and this site is filled with technical information & instructions for creating your own mixed media journals.

To utility and beyond!

Lobster, Lima Beans, Locales and Luminaries: Artistic Team Sports, Part I

The first part of any business meeting is like herding cats: creative minds and egos and hearts and souls each going its own way seeking the best solution from its own perspective need to "storm and norm" -- and that often takes too much time. Here is one way to turn your cats into salmon. Fast.

You have one minute:  Hand each person four Post-it notes, and a pencil.  On the first Post-it, list five foods you love.  On the second, list five foods you loathe.  On the third, list five places you love so much that you'd go there -- even if all you could eat were foods from your "yuck" list. On the fourth, list five people you'd find so fascinating that you'd talk to them, and forget to eat.

Time's up.  New clock - five minutes: Post all the food lists on the wall, in no particular order. How food compatible is your team?  Can you identify one list of foods that everyone likes?  that everyone loathes?  Using any of the listed foods, can you create a meal that would suit every palate and dietary issue of the people on your team?

Time's up.  Five more minutes: Now, from the lists of  locations, can the team agree on one place to go have that meal?

Four minutes: Finally, draw up a list of people to share the meal.

The rest of the meeting: Imagine that you, and your guests are in this amazing place, with this fabulous food.  Now, introduce the challenge that your team is facing, and role play how these "guests" might offer perspective on the issues. 

Make no attempt to keep everyone focused on the role play.  If this exercise has been successful, the role play will drop away quickly, and the team will focus on the original goal of the meeting. The difference is that they will all now pull in the same direction, aware that they are on the same team, and with the ability to find commonality in even the strangest of subjects.

Shuffle poetry

Another 20 minute studio date idea --

Set your iPod to shuffle.  Write down the titles of the first ten or twelve songs.  Feel free to mix them up, move them around, drop or add words.  See if something strikes you.  Take that kernel and try to express it in your own medium, your own way.  Two examples:

Find you now
Embraceable you
walkin' West Ave,
at the club --
It's a wonder.
Dead men walking, watermelon boogie in the passage
Only the heart may know, once in a while.
Halo.
I will never be the same.


Phantom alone on the farm
painter song
Black & white bookends
Celebrate sh-boom Zaar
up, up and away
My heart would know freedom
All or nothing.

If the words don't work, pull the blinds, close your eyes, and dance a little.  See what your body has to say.

Dancing Your Art

Perhaps it is because I've recently become a Nia white belt. I've begun to see dancing in everything. Today, I was taught by my six-year-old daughter about how to dance a painting.

I discovered Charlotte downstairs, covered in paint from head to toe, waving her paint brush in the air and occasionally bringing it in for a landing on her paper. As I watched, I realized she was listening to and conducting a waltz.

As Schubert played, she started swooning around the room, circling her paintbrush, getting the gesture of the music in her body, and then -- swooooosh! -- she'd make that gesture on the paper. The paper was covered with amazing, lively brush strokes and vivid colors.

She turned to me with a 1000 watt smile and said "Look, mommy! I'm dancing my paintbrush!"

Tonight, in the car, she played a different game on our way to dinner. It was dark, and she couldn't see to draw. I suggested that she close her eyes, and draw whatever she felt like drawing. I promised that we would study her drawings in the light, when we could. She engaged in the game, making it her own.

After a while, she announced that she was "drawing what she heard". The sound of the tires, the cars passing by, the hum of the engine -- each became gestures on her sketch pad. At one point she exclaimed, "Listen! Listen! The pencil is making music!" and the fun thing is that I heard it. I heard the music, even before she called my attention to it!  She was making music with her pencil!

When we looked at the drawings, she told me things about the gestures.  "This is where we took that corner."  "This is the pencil music."  "This is vroom vroom vroom".  Great art? Well, in truth the sketches were not.

But the experience most certainly was.

Next time I get stuck on a piece, I think I'm going to dance my pencil and see what music I hear.

The Fastest Way to Finish A Project

The fastest way to get something done on Project A is to put a stake in the ground on Project B.  By declaring an intent to deliver A, you will terrify yourself, and start procrastinating.  It is a certainty that if you keep another project on the back-burner, it will pop up into the foreground as something meaningful and necessary which must be done to clear the decks for an appropriate assault on Project A.

As proof, I offer this humble blog.  

I started it with the intention of writing something short, sweet and useful, every day.  After merely three posts ( over 540 days. 3000+ working hours. ) I:

• Designed and managed the building of a Georgian style entryway.
• Designed and managed the installation of a 1/2 acre landscape.
  
• Went back to school to formally study landscape design.
  
• Wrote two new songs, and a few poems.
  
• Produced 37 watercolor paintings.  (new media for me!)
  
• Took more than 4000 photographs.
  
• Designed and managed the renovation of a residential bath.
  
• Designed one other residential and one commercial landscape.
  
• Produced 17 encaustic paintings.  (another new media!)
  
• Produced two large-scale digital works.
  
• Wrote the first draft of a book, and organized the photography.
• Took up 5-string electric-acoustic bass.
  
• Came up with a new furniture design to start prototyping.
  
• Got my Nia white belt.

I thought I'd try again with the blog.  If I disappear again, you'll know it worked!

What are you creating in your life?

Celebrity Bunny Bowling

Creativity requires a willingness to be a tad silly. When I find myself mired in a problem I can not solve, I try to give myself a little brain break. Answers to vexing problems usually pop into my head after about ten minutes of this silliness. My favorites:

• Train a video camera on a group of Bowling Bunnies by Schylling. Record the little guys as you peg bean bag cabbages at them. Use super-slo-mo, if you have it. Think of new ways to stack them up, and whack them again. Play back your video and study the faces of the bunnies as they fall. Find other characters & props to add to the mix, and whack 'em again. I usually laugh myself all the way to the bathroom. Repeat as needed.
• Fiddle with an Etch-A-Sketch. Start by filling the screen with a cross hatch of diagonal lines. Then trace over it a second time, trying to stay as close to your original lines as you can. Erase the whole thing. Draw concentric circles. Erase again, and write your name.
  
• Blow bubbles. Keep a cheap bottle of bubble soap & a wand on your desk. Blow and release the biggest bubbles you can. Take a deep breath and try to use the whole thing on a single bubble. (My 3 1/2 year-old tells me to breath in orange & blow out blue.)
  
• Put on a silly hat (like a beanie with a battery-powered propeller, or antenae) and try to write a trip or status report, or something more uplifting, like a dirge.
  
• Practice juggling. If you don't know how to juggle, pick up a copy of "Juggling for the Complete Klutz", which comes with three little blocks.
• Keep origami paper and patterns on hand. Make a few paper balloons & blow them up.
  
• Pull out a coloring book & crayons. Color outside the lines. Use unexpected colors. Work with your non-dominant hand. Also try using any small manipulative (magnetic poetry or dress up dolls, felt or paper shapes, lacing cards or beads, magnetic blocks) with your non-dominant hand.
• Other brain-relaxing toys: small pin ball or marble games, peg puzzles, blacksmith puzzles, Wheel-O, or Gyroscope.

Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to stop thinking about it. (Whatever you do, don't look at the ceiling.) These games and activities distract the big brain, and let the wildly creative, intuitive small brain take over for a while.

Have fun!

How to Handle Getting Stood Up

Has this ever happened to you? You make a date. You eagerly anticipate the day, maybe buying a special outfit or a new journal, and you are all pumped up to see where this will all lead.

You look up from your daydream, (your computer, your book, your taxes, whatever) and are shocked to discover that the long-awaited time has passed. You have been stood up. By yourself.

How often have we signed a contract in yet another book on creativity, only to never open the book again? Or promised to spend twenty minutes in the studio, only to fail to show up. Vowed to start an exercise program, diet, dance class on Monday, and then next Monday, and then next quarter, or maybe when the kids are back in school... Morning pages, anyone?

What should you do? You could get angry with yourself, but that won't accomplish much. I wouldn't want to spend much time with someone who was always getting angry with me, would you? Lighten up.

If this recalcitrant date were a member of the opposite sex, I'd tell you to avoid planning dates more than an hour ahead of time. This works because the spontaneous offer to do something unplanned pitches the activity into the "fun" category -- and it doesn't leave your date enough time to develop cold feet.

So, try it on yourself. Google "dance classes", "yoga workshops", "pilates", "watercolor classes", "woodworking" in your area, and see if a drop-in class is offered somewhere in the next hour. Move away from the computer. Invite yourself to an unplanned trip to a museum or art gallery. Pull out your sketch book, right now, and doodle something. So what if the clock reads "9:00pm"? Flip out the journal, and write one of those "morning pages". Be a little naughty. Tell your boss you need a one hour mental health break, right now, and run back to your studio to keep your twenty minute promise.

If you don't give yourself an opportunity to procrastinate, forget, stall, or get scared you will launch yourself into the chosen activity with all the joy that drew you to it in the first place.

And laugh like hell, because if this works for you, you really are choosing to create.

Mount Malarkey: Just Make Stuff.

Oh, I've heard all the excellent reasons for not working today. I've created many new ones, too. Malarkey, every last one. If we can get into the studio, we will get work out of the studio.

So, here are ten little reasons to go to the studio that have nothing to do with making things, and everything to do with fooling yourself into accidently working on a project. Make a twenty minute commitment to go to the studio. Set a timer and do ONE of these things for fourteen minutes:

1. Sweep the floor.
2. Doodle with your non-dominant hand.
3. Take snapshots of your work-in-progress.
   
4. Pick one square foot of clutter (on your desk, in a file cabinet, near your drawing board, on your workbench) and clear it out.
5. Throw three useless items away. (old paint tubes; scraps of wood, paper, yarn, fabric, glass metal or other material you hoard but don't use; dried up pens or markers; old catalogs)
6. Play one favorite recording.
7. Put your feet up and relax.
8. Brew & drink one cup of tea, coffee, or chocolate.
9. Drink twelve ounces of water.
10. Maintain one tool. (Sharpen a chisel; restore a neglected paint brush; flatten a waterstone; lubricate a machine or airgun; empty the trash baskets or dust collectors)

With your last six minutes, pick one:

1. If you have a current project, go look at it. Rapidly write down three items (preferably on a white board) about what you need to do next on it. Look hard at that list. Can you do any one of those tasks now? If so, do it. If not, write down one reason next to each of those tasks. Can you (will you?) do anything about any of those items? If so, do it. If not, you are free to leave for the day.
   
   
2. If you do not have a project in progress, rapidly write down seven deeply daft ideas for your next project. Put them on little scraps of paper, toss them in a box dedicated to this purpose (or add them to a box you've already started), mix them up & pull one out. Rapidly, jot down three good reasons for assigning this project to a student. (You may have to dig a lot!) Can you make yourself that student? Have you shaken loose any ideas? If so, try to capture them in whatever way makes sense for your discipline (sketches, outlines, prototypes). If not, you are free to leave for the day.

This process will either get you going for the day, or it will focus your mind on why you are blocked from further progress. Even if you find yourself leaving after twenty minutes, you will create a little puzzle that will roll around in the back of your mind until you find a way to resolve it.

Tomorrow, make the same twenty minute commitment and see what pops out.