Bigger on the Inside

While I have been diving into creative pursuits such as growing vegetables in the community garden, cooking with local sustainable food from the garden and farmer’s market and fermentation experiments in the kitchen, my artistic impulse has sat dormant in an untouched corner of my apartment. Literally. The last space in my apartment to be organized is my art space. There are still  boxes and plastic bins piled up in the corner behind the flat files that have not been moved or opened in the past seven months. I’m not sure what to call it. “Studio” seems a bit ostentatious for the corner of what is supposed to be my dining room that is now devoted not only to art, but also to paperwork and bills. I obviously intend to make art here as I have sacrificed any notion of a dining room table in preference for eating at folding tables in the sunroom or living room or frequently just standing up at the kitchen counter. For someone as devoted to cooking as I am, it seems odd not to have a dedicated space to eat. Alas, my dreams of a custom-made countertop and comfortable bar stools to turn the flat files into a part-time dining room table came to a grinding halt when I realized that the divorce and the fallout thereof was going to cost a lot more than I originally thought. I’ve tabled any type of decorating budget in favor of making do with what I’ve already got.  I’ll get there, eventually. But it is going to require a lot of ingenuity and next to no cash.

I have long since realized that in order for this to be a useful workspace, I am going to have to be realistic as to how many different projects I can fit. I’m working with less than a quarter of the raw square footage I had at the house. I’m also dealing with a lack of “messy” space. In the attic of my house, the floor was plywood in some parts and worn-out hardwood floor in others. I had access to a large utility sink and a basement for wet and/or messy projects. Paint, beeswax, honey, glue? NO problem. In the house, there was plenty of space to spread out the messy projects without the worry of ruining the nice parts of the house.

Here, not so much. I LOVE the herringbone wood floor throughout the apartment. I don’t want to be spilling encaustic paint or glue on it. Papermaking is wet and messy. Same with any kind of paints. Anything from the beehive, honey or wax, is messy. I am not one to keep such messes contained. I know there are artists who can do it…work with such materials and not spill…but I am not one of them. Most of the time it is painfully obvious what I am working with because I am wearing my materials under my fingernails, in my hair, on my clothes. The room I work in fares no better.

I’ve put off tackling this corner of my “dining room” because I must make difficult decisions about which of my “children” — I mean art tools– to keep and which to let go. Again. Because I already made a bunch of those hard decisions when I packed up and left the house seven months ago. But, it seems I didn’t cut deep enough and I still have way too much stuff. Which art supplies I keep and which I part with determines in no small part the direction of my art and what my next art show will look like (because I’ve decided to have faith that the next show IS happening in the not-too-distant future, and that I will figure out how to finance it). How often I get into a creative flow amid my busy and distracted life is largely determined by how efficient, organized and inviting my work space is. Of course I can pick up any and all art mediums again “someday” when I either have a larger home or can afford to rent a studio to work in, but realistically, given the financial constraints of going through a divorce, the next opportunity I have to do that will be at least a few years off (if I’m lucky and/or very smart).

So today, I am deciding what projects to take on for the next period of time until my life changes again. And then I am pitching everything that doesn’t support those projects.

I need to focus on smaller quantities of finished pieces and smaller project sizes, but more detail-oriented pieces. I want to go back and revisit the medical, scientific and botanical illustration styles I studied in college.  I want to go back and look at the children’s stories I started writing several years ago with the plan of creating small-scale pen-and-ink illustrations to go with them. I want to create small miniature pieces that contain volumes of detail and draw the eye in to discover what is going on in a tiny, evolving universe. I may display these pieces with a magnifying glass. For that matter, I may need one to make them considering my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I want to show a secret world that is bigger on the inside. Aren’t we all bigger on the inside?

Michaelangelo

 

Michelangelo: Study of a Striding Male

I’ve been reading a great blog called The Culture Monk  by Kenneth Justice. You should check him out, he’s got a ton of thought-provoking posts and the one I just read is titled “Getting Naked for Art is Wrong…Really?”

The post reminded me of funny story…when I was an art student in college I took figure drawing as required for my major. At the end of the semester my Italian Nonna wanted to see what I’d done over the semester so my Mom and I packed the car with my art to take it over to her. I started pulling out the nude figure drawings to leave them behind. My Mom said, “Why aren’t you bringing those? I think you should”. I was mortified. Show the nude drawings to my modest, religious little old grandma?  But my Mom just said, “All those old churches in Italy have nudes in them. Let’s see how she reacts”. Reluctantly, I agreed to bring them. It turns out, she really liked them. Particularly a pastel drawing of a very handsome young man with nice buns.

It wasn’t until years later when I went to Italy on my honeymoon that I understood why Nonna was ok with her granddaughter drawing naked men. My Mom was right…it wasn’t just the frescos in the churches that had nude and semi-nude figures in them (and not all of them were stick-thin). There were centuries-old larger-than-life marble statues out in the streets like someone forgot to put them away. We never actually made it to see the David because the line was so long and there was so much else to see and yeah, there was a lot of nudity. But you didn’t think of it as overtly sexual, it was just amazing art depicting the beauty of the human form.

Now, It is possible my Nonna didn’t realize there was an actual naked handsome man in the classroom that the class was drawing. Or maybe she did.

Bird Woman

This painting started out as a figure painting excercise in college. It was a male model. Years later I had several canvases of human figures that were, well, pretty static and boring. So I took my pallette knife and went to town. Out of that effort emerged Bird Woman. Say what you like about gender bending, but the avian figure has always been female to me. She reminds me of a Phoenix, rising out of the ashes of her past.

Everyone Has One Good Story in Them…

Doodle on Manila Folder + PicsArt

Geek Love. Photoshop 7. Cartoon Character Mermaid Punch. I’ve got at least one good story in me, one great unforgettable female character. She takes center stage like an explosion, like a blazing fireball, glowing like St. Elmo’s fire only far more destructive. She’s worth staying up all night with no sleep and goddamn any work that needs to happen the next day, because letting her run loose in my imagination one more time is worthy work in and of itself.

Get me into the writer’s club! I can’t draw anymore, not unless there are words attached.

I need words like I need flowers and fresh sage leaves. I need poetry. I need to be a bard.

I need to be heard.

Something from Nothing

To the best of my knowledge, only God (or whatever name you’d like for the divine) can truly make something from nothing. Maybe. We don’t know for sure how that works. However, to me as an artist, it is not only possible, but very desirable, to take something of “no value” and make it into something of value. I put quotes around the words “no value” because I’m pretty sure that all matter is valuable. Humans put value on things based on how useful we think a thing is to us. In any case, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Here’s a fun challenge to get you thinking about the value of the raw matter all around you: set a timer for five minutes and walk outside. If it is winter where you are (I am in Chicago), don’t even bother putting on your coat (but shoes are a good idea) and in those five minutes, gather as many useless items as you want from your immediate environment. They can be natural, as in a stick or rock, or something manmade, like a pop can tab.

Go inside. If you like, do an internet search for your objects: “stick art”, “pop can tab crafts”, “Oak Leaf properties”, etc. Especially check out YouTube tutorials. I”m pretty sure you will find that there are folks using these raw materials to make stuff cool enough to warrant posting a video. It is amazing.

Finally, make something from your objects. Just try it. How does it feel? Frustrating, confusing, liberating? Really pay attention to the inherent properties of your materials: texture, color, strength, brittle/flexible and so on. How easy is it to get your materials to do what you want them to do? Once you have your finished piece, how do you feel about the raw material you worked with?

If you do this exercise often enough, you will start to look at the world around you with different eyes. Things you disregarded as background noise, like weeds, dandelion fluff, rusted metal, bark and the like start holding interest. What are its physical properties? Would they lend themselves to a task I want to do?

This, my friends, used to be how humans looked at the world around them, until very recently (a few hundred years or less). There were no boxed solutions to search for in a special place, a store. The solutions and materials needed for survival were outside all around, and to be successful you had to keep your eyes open every time you stepped out the door.

I suspect that in spite of our pre-made conveniences, the ones that came from a factory and deemed valuable by virtue of costing money, it is still true. In order to gain real value from our immediate environment, we need to keep our eyes open.

I challenge you to step outside and see the world this way, and I’d love to hear about the results of your experiment!

Raw stuff for this piece: Kentucky coffee tree seeds found on walks home from work, canna Lilly seeds from garden, dryer lint, pics from an old gardening catalog. Not found objects: white flour, baking powder, powdered soap, and glue. Paint, glitter, glaze, string and plastic beads.

Books I’ve Recently Read on Kindle

books (Photo credit: brody4)

But first: My thoughts on kindle, technology, and the demise of the cheap paperback.

I love my kindle. My husband gave it to me two years ago as a Christmas gift, and it has revolutionized reading for me. The fact that I can walk around with something that weighs about the same as a paperback, that contains my own personally curated library, is thrilling to me as a lover of words. Much care has been given to craft a device that feels comfortable on the hands and the eyes, and I appreciate that. I think e readers will eventually (rapidly) replace paper for most uses, like the digital camera replaced the film camera. I still have the Pentax K1000 my uncle gave me when I was an art student taking photography 101, but for most uses can’t afford the film and developing costs. I felt incredibly bittersweet about the demise of film photography (as the prevalent medium of choice) but thrilled by the new opportunities afforded me by digital photography. With every revolution comes the irreversible loss of some element of the old technology, and I think what I’d be able to sacrifice, not without some sadness, is the cheap drug store paperback as a vehicle for literature. We’d save a heck of a lot of trees that way.

I don’t think paper printing will ever go away, at least it would make me very sad if it did. I have been a print graphic designer  for the better part of two decades so my affection for the printed medium will not fade that easily. In fact, the actual programming and designing for web has proven difficult for me personally adapt to given how entrenched my print design skills are. This is one reason why I love WordPress, because I haven’t mastered Html.

I’ve witnessed with the advent of desktop computers for graphic design. I was among the first generation of designers to use the computer exclusively for a living, and one of the last to be exposed to now-defunct hand techniques in school. Quickly on the heels of that change was the change  from film to digital cameras. I’ve seen the internet evolve and am now watching the transformation of the role of the website due to the invention of social media.

A similar thing is happening with our printed materials, and it is an inevitable extension of what has happened to the field of graphic design. The way we read has not only been transformed forever, but so many new mediums have been invented. We are literally changing the way we tell stories. Think about it, the full arc of human storytelling probably started around a campfire in a cave and has now culminated in the YouTube video and this blog post. I say culminated, but it won’t stop here; we will continue to find ever new and engaging ways of telling our stories.

Here’s what I hope happens: I hope paper books become rare and valuable, perhaps not as inaccessible as they once were when they had to be copied by hand by monks, but enough to give us pause and pay a bit more attention to the artistry of the object in our hands. The average home will have maybe a shelf of printed books, expensive, high quality printing and richly illustrated. On this shelf will also be at least one or two such books self-published by someone living in the house, or received as a gift from a loved one. Libraries themselves would contain small collections of such books that wouldn’t get checked out, for library use only. Everything else would be available on an eReader. I really like the way Seth Godin talks about the library of the future, but here I’d like to stress the use of libraries as repositories of the finest quality print books, to be appreciated in much the same way as one does a piece of art hanging in a gallery. There could even be openings celebrating the arrival of new printed books.

That perhaps is the biggest revolution of all…the ability of the average person to have access to the publishing process.

Let’s try to use our new superpower wisely.

Sorry, I guess we won’t get around to my personal book list this post, it turns out my prelude became a post in and of itself. That just means I already have a topic for tomorrow’s post. This seven day challenge is a bit easier than I thought it was going to be.

I Have No Hobbies

I have long been irked by the word hobby. Such as when people say to me, Oh, you’re an artist? What a great hobby!

I cringe every time I hear this. What does a hobby imply? To me, a hobby is something that is fun, but if you don’t have time for it, that’s no big deal. It’s extra. You don’t get paid for it, and you do it primarily for relaxation, that it is secondary to your real work (what you do for money) and you are expected to drop it when it is no longer relaxing or fun (i.e., there’s more important work to do so it doesn’t fit into your schedule anymore). People look at you funny if you spend too much time on your hobbies, and parents with small children certainly don’t have time for them. By this definition, I have no hobbies. Yes, with a family and paid work and unpaid work, I certainly don’t have time for hobbies. About my art, and my garden, and several related activities that feed into the same vision, I feel that:

1. I’d like to get paid or compensated or earn a livelihood from these activities, I just haven’t figured out a way to do it yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t or can’t

2. I believe they have social value and importance to other people, not just as stress relief or a break from my “real” work

3. I continue to pursue them even when they add extra stress to my life, because I think they are too important to let go of in the face of other responsibilities

4. If I were to drop some of my “hobbies”  when they became inconvenient, other living beings would die.

This, to me, sounds more like vocation than hobby. The other day I tried to think of a single thing that I do on a regular basis that would qualify as a “hobby”, and I could not think of any. Maybe collecting Breyer Model Horses….but I stopped the collecting part long ago, and now I just look at the (very cool) collection.

So, in an effort to make peace with the word “hobby”, I looked up the etymology of the word. Bless my soul, Hobby used to mean a kind of horse. A lightweight, small, versatile  workhorse. Or a child’s toy horse, as in “hobby horse”. OH! there you go! Yes I do have lots of hobbies! Probably about 30 of them lined up on a shelf, that I collected as a child!

Ah, there. I feel better about the word hobby now. How can I hate a word that started out as meaning a kind of horse?

Gotta Pay the Piper

I’d rather be beading.

Tonight I am taking a long, hard look at one of my least favorite things. Finances. Credit cards. The big picture. I’ve come to the conclusion that it might be time to get some help with this stuff. It’s not that I haven’t paid all of my bills on time, or that my credit rating is shot. All of that stuff is in good order. But what I’m realizing is that for most of 2012 I’ve focused on reinventing myself as an artist, which is what I’m really good at. I’ve done it at the expense of carefully managing my money, which, frankly, I’m pretty bad at. My family’s finances have been beaten into shape by force of will and determination, not by any mathematical skill on my part. The responsibility weighs heavily on me, but the fact is it takes me way longer than it should to keep the money in line. So when time gets tight and I’m already staying up late to work on art stuff, money hasn’t gotten managed as it should. The scary thing is, I’m the one in the family who’s better at money management *sigh* Passing the responsibility off to my better half wouldn’t really be that much better.

This year, since I dove into making art, I’ve slacked off with the budgeting thing. Gotten lazy. Given up. Consequently, credit card debt has crept up, we have no real household budget, and my receipts for my art business are neatly saved in shoebox, but that is the extent of my organization. I’m now busily looking at my credit card interest rates and trying to shuffle debt around for the best rate. I’m thinking long and hard about where I was financially in the past and how far I’ve come in my relationship with money, and I’ve come to the conclusion: I have all the skills I have to do this properly, it is always going to take me longer than someone who has an affinity for numbers, and I still hate doing it. I’d rather focus my energy on making and selling my artwork.

I have two financial resources at my disposal with which I can turn around my financial disorganization and put things right. Several years ago my husband and I hired Monica Ross at Virtual Bookkeeping, and she kept us straight for five or six years until I felt confident to take it on myself. I also recently went through the You vs. Debt class and found it enormously helpful. My plan of attack will be to use both. Hopefully Monica and her team at Virtual Bookkeeping will be available to help us out with personal and small business bookkeeping, and Michael and I can go back through our You vs. Debt materials once again to really lock in our understanding of the financial big picture. But what I’ve decided is its ok to take some of this off my plate so I can focus on what I do best.

It is good to dream big, but dreams don’t come true without a solid foundation under them. Even artists need to balance the budget. That being said, to err is human; to delegate is divine.

If you are not one to enjoy crunching numbers, what makes it easier? I’d like to hear what works for you.

Thoughts while working

I know, in my last post I promised a little more information about the artists I met at RAW. It will be forthcoming. After putting in a big effort to put together my work for an event like RAW, the other parts of my life, the non-art parts, came clamoring for attention. Plus I was just plain tired. So a few weeks out I am finally photographing the rest of my work to post on Etsy. And revisiting my blog.

I would like to capture a bit of the flavor of what it is like to work as an artist in an attic. It is rainy outside and I’ve got this great big raw space (there’s that word again. I’ll stop, I promise). It is only usable as a work space in spring and fall, all other times of year are either too cold or too hot. But today it is perfect. It is warm, but grey and rainy. The light coming in the one and only west facing window is probably perfect for photos, and I’ve got a bunch of lights set up. I’m about to take pictures of my pictures. I’ve got music on, internet radio meditation stuff, and two dogs and a cat are vyying for the perfect underfoot spot, you know, the one that is guaranteed to make you trip. Dante, the big dog, is the undisputed winner at this game, and Nikita, at 13, has finally decided it best to find a quiet corner off to the side unless food can be smelled. Misha is smart and knows she cannot compete directly with a 75 lb dog. She is biding her time for the perfect moment to trip me up. It is good to be loved.

Well, here I go. We’ll see what I come up with. Sure is peaceful up here, in any case.

A Thought-provoking Piece of Performance Art-a Feast of…Rats?

Before you recoil in horror, check out this kickstarter page and listen to Laura (not me…different Laura!) explain her project. And yes, you read correctly, a feast of rats is involved. I’m personally not interested in eating rats, but I do appreciate the territory she is exploring. I was briefly a vegetarian and then learned how to butcher chickens as a way to connect with the source of the food I was eating. As a college student studying medical illustration, I dissected and collected bones,shells and feathers from dead things I found in order to better study and make drawings from them. But what most resonated with me was when she spoke of how we put so many layers between the world that sustains us and the products we use. She tans leather and creates something useful from the world; I can relate because I collect seeds and plant fibers and pieces of bark to use in artwork and to make something directly connecting to the world. She says it better than I…watch the video.