Green & White: Calm

 

This week in my Creative Spark class we have been studying color.  I tend to be drawn to blues and greens but the mixture of green and white stood out to me this week as a calming mixture.  For me, the life and vivacity of green coupled with the blank possibility of white create a balance of peace and calm. This painting was inspired by contemplation through our color exercises designed by Tara, a bar of soap, the lovely script text of a package at Trader Joe's, and the quote by writer Joan Didion included in the painting.

 

Below is the original painting before I cropped it to correct the wonky composition.

 

 

Then and Now

From a recent morning run, I stopped and gently lifted this snail to the grass in the direction it was headed.  It reminds me of myself these days...slow and steady and a lover of shells.

It has been a long time since I have visited these pages.  Coming back felt hard, and I felt deterred many times from entering this space again.  What would I say, where would I start? I even thought of starting all over, at a new address but decided that this space was not done, that there had simply been a pause.  And so I begin again (again) starting with a  summary of then and of now, a glimpse of the months in-between.

A new job after an 804 day sabbatical. 
The ebb and flow and tides of this new season of life.
Running the dark city streets, alone,  before the sun began to rise until I lost my nerve. 
Closing on the sale of our old home.
Joining a gym to take the place of the lost nerve.
Tears of doubt.
Lost days that I did not own.
Longing for a garden.
Joining an herb guild.
Taking classes about herbs and fermentation and cheese making.
Finding joy in juicing fresh concoctions of vegetables, herbs, roots, and fruits.
Volunteering at a music festival with my sister.
Planting pots of lemon balm, thyme, dill, basil, scented geranium, heirloom tomatoes, and pink vinca's to fill my need to nurture and for green and for life.
Joyous moments of gratitude.
Two half-marathons ran with my brother.
Long hikes through the mountains on warm and humid weekends.
A long labor day weekend at the beach spent reading, sketching, and relaxing.
Learning to play golf (and actually enjoying it).
A birthday celebrated with loved ones and cake.
Trying to recognize the person in the mirror with new lines and droopy eyes and to make peace that the person staring back is really me.
Running the dark city streets, alone, finding new nerves and resolve.
Giving myself a birthday gift, Creative Spark, taught by the inspiring Tara Leaver.
Unearthing something that was misplaced and learning new methods for play.
Always searching for the light.

Map Table

Map Table~Barcelona

I have long loved maps, a love likely developed while living with my grandparents where National Geographic magazines, The World Atlas, and travel maps were always readily available as reading material.  They loved to travel and visited almost every state within the US in addition to visits to Canada. 

On all of our trips we not only use maps to get to know and to get around the city, but I hoard them almost as much as stones and sea shells.  Each map has something different; some are hand drawn, some include famous sites, some are enlargements of particular parts of a city, some are colorful like a metro map, and some are black and white, but each are unique and have their own story to impart.  The idea to create a collage of our maps, ticket stubs and other paper ephemera has been ruminating since our honeymoon.  I often take these saved items out of the boxes I keep them in and arrange them in different fashions looking for something to speak to me on how to display and arrange these treasures.  There are also coins mixed in amongst the papers and each of these shiny jewels get added to the lot or sometimes lined up in an orderly fashion with the idea to mat and frame just the coins.

Well an opportunity arrived and while it was not the collage I imagined or even the map I originally intended to use, I was pleased with the outcome and the new display for this map.  We rented our condo out for the Democratic National Convention and I needed a bedside table for our guest bedroom.  I had several inexpensive round plywood tables that are intended to be covered in a tablecloth and then topped with glass and decided to try using one of these for my project.

The steps for creating the table are below.

• Using the glass table top as my template with the map placed underneath the glass I used a sharp razor knife and cut around the glass.
• Since the table was unfinished I sprayed it and the legs with one coat of primer and sanded the rough edges after it dried.
• After removing the sanded dust I coated the wooden table top and bottom (covering the metal areas where the legs are inserted with painters tape) and legs with white oil paint.
• After the paint dried I applied Liquitex varnish to the table top and the round cut out map and carefully placed the map on the table top smoothing out air bubbles as I went.  I did have a hard time with some of the air bubbles and had to gently pierce the paper where they appeared with the razor knife and then push the paper down.  I would recommend a brayer or other type of roller to ensure all air bubbles are removed.
• After the map was attached to the table, I covered the map and wooden edges around it with the same Liquitex varnish, sealing it and giving it a shine.
• I purchased small silicone disks from our local home improvement store and attached 4 of these to the glass to separate the glass from the table, protecting the map and providing a sturdy base for the glass.

I didn't take many "in process" shots but did take this one when I first cut the map and prior to painting the table.

A Must Read on Creativity

I just read this and had to share.  There is such brilliance in these 4 truths.  This is a REPOST from Bryan Franklin's blog.

I was talking with a man who is responsible for envisioning the future of how we will light our world (He’s a VP in the marketing department of Philip’s LED division, Lumileds, who is reducing the power needed to generate light by up to 85%) and he was sharing with me his ideas. I can’t tell you what they are because I’ve signed an NDA, but suffice it to say they are REALLY cool.

Is Creativity A Trait Or A Condition?

He wanted to know from me how he could get the rest of his team to think as creatively as he does. Maybe they just aren’t as creative as he is? I think they are.
As a thoroughly mundane attribute of being human, each of us has a connection to what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, and it is my experience that moments of heightened creativity have more to do with tapping into a universal creative archetype than any unique attribute of a specific person.
Performers, athletes, writers, computer programmers and professionals of all stripes attribute their most creative acts to being in a state of ‘the zone’. While in the zone, parts of themselves seem to disappear, and creativity moves through them, from a universal source, out into our world.

Where Is The Zone And How Do I Get There?

Creativity is an emergent property that arises from specific conditions, and if those conditions are present and are not at risk of degrading, every person will be able to tap into creative genius. People who are considered to be more creative are those that are more able to self-generate these specific conditions. The ‘zone’ is a byproduct of these four conditions.
1) Spaciousness
Give your self mental time and space. Allow time for the habitual thought patterns to dissipate. My friend at Lumileds does all his thinking on Airplanes, because there he has time and space that he literally can’t do anything else with. Drive time and shower time are great for this. Take a walk. Designate an area of your workspace for creativity and keep it absolutely clear of debris. Do what ever it takes to give your mind the experience of spaciousness.
2) Constraints
The reason most sequels are not as good as the originals isn’t that the filmmakers run out of ideas, its because they usually have significantly more time, money, and latitude from the studio for the 2nd movie. The first one was a huge success, so budgets and egos expand. Then, as the constraints decrease, the quality of creativity decreases as well. The beauty of human creativity is born of the constraints of being human. From arbitrary deadlines to iambic pentameter – find constraints that inspire your creative mind.
3) Model Of Inspiration
Inspiration basically comes in two forms. The first is: I want to be like you. Writers emulate writers. Musicians emulate musicians. Businesses emulate businesses. Choose someone that inspires you and study how they do everything they do. Neither compete nor idolize your inspiration. Just observe.
The second form of inspiration is: I want to express what its like to know you. Ravel’s “Une Barque Sur L’ocean” is a musical expression of what its like to be at sea. Write like Monet. Work like a gladiator. Love like Bobby Fisher. Take any idea in one context and express it in a non-compatible context. Be explicit about your inspiration and hold he/she/it in your mind as you create.
4) Love Your Ideas Into Existence
Each idea fragment that spills from your mind must be met by a resounding “YES”. The more you love the seedlings that sprout in your mind, the more fertile the mind itself becomes. Your objective is to open the channel between you and the universal archetype of creativity (creation), not to evaluate how the fruit will taste from the tree that might grow from the seed you see. Each “YES” loves the channel more open. Each “NO” closes it. Put your ideas in a context where they will be loved into existence by you and met with a “YES” both by you and by others. Once each idea begins to develop and mature, then step back and evaluate it. There will be a point when your channel is so open that trashing your ideas cannot close it – and that’s when you will experience brilliance.
Until that point, your job is not to come up with good ideas, but to love every idea that you come up with. 

Playing with Words

I decided to incorporate words into the Sun Painting (that I am still working on).  I gathered the words and placed them on a black foam board I bought for the frame work of the Seahorses (they should be framed by the end of today!)  The other evening I decided to group the words together in preparation to adding them to my painting and the words started revealing the most beautiful imagery.  I would scoot a word here and a word there and form these stories and even mosaic pictures from the word shapes.  Now I am am having a hard time finishing the sun painting because I am attached to these words.  The thing with creativity is you never know where it will take you.....words for my painting became a poem of their own, the opening for lines for a novel (perhaps), and the inspiration to begin a project that has been in the dark long enough.

Strolling down the geranium bathed sidewalks
I find kindess water offered at the
corner of incarnation and fiction.

What an adventure in solace
this heirloom light
awakens.

I dance across pools
of wild cosmos
lingering under the mosaic moon
while you write suitcase poetry
from the Shangri-La gardens.

Walking in This World

This morning I am struck by this line from Julia Cameron's book Walking in This World and find it resonating deep within me:

"When we avoid our creativity, we avoid ourselves.
When we meet our creativity, we meet ourselves,
and that encounter happens in the moment.
The willingness to be ourselves gives us
the origin of originality."