Nuturing Creativity - Week 35

Ok, I'm really behind....again.  But I DID read this card on Monday...just been so busy I haven't taken time to post.  Moving on....

Easy Art Access

Well, not too sure about this one I must say.  It is about having bits of art or art encouragement all around you.  For example, putting colored pencils and paper in your silverware drawer, crayons in your medicine cabinet....and so on.  Only problem for me???
I can't keep track of all my stuff when it is IN  MY  STUDIO!!!!  Heaven help me if I need my colored pencils and I can't remember which drawer in the house I put them in!!  I think my poor sieve brain is way to old for this particular nurturing activity!  Oh well, you can't win them all!

Nuturing Creativity - Week 18

Haven't posted much to look at lately. Getting everything ready for "company" in 10 days!!! My friend Wil is coming to visit me from the Netherlands for a months!!!! Can you say PLAY DAYS?????? Wheeeeee! I say "company" in quotes because she is more like wonderful family than "company".

We have TONS of fun together and I am so looking forward to experimenting and playing in the studio, and going to garage sales, and shopping of course!

My Nurturing Creativity card for this week is:

Add Comfort

The idea is to have things around you that make you feel special while you are creative. I have my big comfy chair, my tea pot and lots of different kinds of tea, and a studio full of fun stuff to play with! This week is not difficult for me at all. My studio is my oasis and my sanctuary. I keep it pretty well stocked with things that inspire me!

Nurturing Creativity - Week 15

YEAH! I'm on the right day today! The past two weeks were a bit hectic and this morning I just decided that posting my Nurturing Creativity card for this week would happen on the MONDAY like it is supposed to do. So, shuffled the cards and let one drop from the center of the deck.

Free Associate

So this is the concept - just like you've heard about free association - write down words then go back and next to or below that one word free associate by writing down the first words that come to your mind. The fun part seems to be not to stop at one word...just keep going and see where it takes you! Supposedly it will reveal something about where you are headed in your head these days. We'll see........hmmmmmmmmmm How about a little test right now?!?!

rug - woven - basket - laundry - yuck

car - broken - mend - sew - machine - clean - yuck

tree - green - money - job - yuck

dog - protection - lick - poop - yuck

OK, I don't think we need Freud or Jung here..........the trend seems obvious!! What do you think? LOL!!!

Nurturing Creativity - Week 14

I pulled this card days ago but, like I said before....I'm been having so much fun playing that I haven't taken the time out to blog! So, today I'm playing catch-up! And here is this week's challenge.....

Emotional Hot Spots

The idea - take emotional issues and work through them (at least partially if not completely) through creating something. An emotional catharsis. Funny, but not too long ago I remember telling Tom that I just really didn't understand artists who say that pain and suffering enhanced their art. When I'm depressed or frustrated, I can't seem to get the creative juices flowing at all! Totally confusing.

However, as most of you know, there is a lot of frustration and emotional hot spots recently (like the past year anyway). One of the pieces I did was really more to celebrate the fact that I was coping! Transitions - "Life Upside Down" was one of those endeavors. But what I recently found interesting is that I made quite a few ATCs to kinda ease back into my studio after a dry spell. I didn't think about it much....just did it. But when it came to naming the cards for trading or swaps........I found that the names for them expressed many feelings of frustration, etc.

Like...Rough Around The Edges I and II....

...Back From the Abyss...

...Trying to Keep It All Together...

...and Searching For Memories. This one is for my dad who is now in nursing care with Alzheimers.

So, it seems that the emotional hot spots have a way of working themselves to the surface even if you aren't looking for them! Very interesting week........................

Fabric for Water

Is that kinda like "Water for Chocolate"? Nevermind..........

Anyway, I have been known on occasion to "forget" that I had fabric in Soda Ash to soak in preparation for dyeing. Sometimes for longer periods of time that I care to admit. One time, I decided that since they WERE soaked in soda ash after all............why rewash them only to soak them again. It was one of those "I wonder what would happen if..." moments. So, I just squirted on some dyes in the colors I was working with at the moment and let it batch overnight, rinsed it out the next day, washed....you know...all that stuff. Then I ironed it.....AMAZING RESULTS. Well, at least I love it!

I found a piece like that in my bucket just the other day. Hmmmm I had some dye mixed...why not do it again! I used some Mixing Blue and Marigold. And I gotta tell you...I LOVE this piece of fabric! AND I have an immediate use for it! You know those houses we are making in the DAG group???? Well...........this would make awesome water!! Don't you agree???

The whole piece is 18" X 44". These are pictures of different sections of it.

Nurturing Creativity - Week 13

Man, I don't know what the deal is but the past two days I've been exhausted. Mentally caught a breath earlier today and realized I hadn't posted my nurturing creativity challenge for this week. So, let's see what the cards have in store.

Stream of Consciousness

Well, first we have to assume that I could possibly be conscious!!! Questionable this week, but I'll still take a stab at this one. Basically....don't overthink stuff. OK, that sounds good so far. Like to just draw without an idea of where it might be headed. Same thing for writing. Hmmm....I wonder where this could lead. The idea is that giving your creativity a little vacation you might be surprised what might just bubble to the surface. And the first one to comment anything about "bubble brain"......well......just don't do it, OK????

Nuturing Creativity - Week 6

OK, now this one I can really get excited about. Just picked it out of the deck and haven't even read the description - just the title.....

Be Open to Adventure

This one HAS to be right up my alley. Gonna go read it and I'll BRB.

OK, taking risks (no problem - LOVE it!) Interesting that it is talking about summoning the courage to try something new! Falls right into line with the new group I participate in on a monthly basis -- Fiber Arts/Mixed Media. They have a group that for 2010 is doing an experiment each month with something you haven't tried but have wanted the excuse to do!! Or something like that. Pretty much my interpretation! Obviously, being February and all, this is only the second month. I have some "toys" I've never played with so perhaps the best thing to do is to just pick one out and PLAYTIME BEGINS!! And what if it is really ugly when I'm done??? That is the wonder of being a Mixed Media artist..........nothing ever goes to waste! It can always be overdyed, painted, cut up, reassembled....you get the idea!

So......LET THE ADVENTURE BEGIN (this week will be an easy one!)

Nurturing Creativity - Week 5

Today felt exceptionally exciting to me for some reason....something about the beginning of a new month and the beginning of a new week. And I've really been looking forward to seeing which card pops up for this week.

And the winner is.........

Be Taught or Not

To take a class, in person or online is the Be Taught part. I LOVE online classes and take as many as I can. I love learning new techniques or new ideas with techniques I'm already familiar with.

The or Not part is for the self-motivated....learning on your own. I also love that! In fact, this card really fits in right now. I just started studying about Claude Monet. I have a fantastic book of his biography and am enjoying it very much. I've always been partial to the Impressionists and Monet in particular. I did get to see one of the Monet traveling exhibits when it was here several years ago at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Awesome.........truly. So, I guess it must have been a connection that was meant to be. On the first pages of this book is a quote from Monet that says, "Even in my childhood, I could never be made to obey rules..." A man after my own heart!!!! I'm just now to the years when he first returned to Paris. A very interesting man.

And a friend of mine told me about Antoni Gaudi....the Spanish architect whose work (at least all I've seen) is in Barcelona. Intriguing! Very "Middle Earth"

I try to find art and learn about art and artists in many disciplines. It never ceases to amaze me what mediums some people come up with to vent their creativity!

So....never stop learning.....never stop seeing art all around you!

Life Upside Down

Well, here it is!!..............all done!!!!

Life Upside Down (& slightly off-kilter) is the full title of this piece.

The challenge title is ADAPTATION. I didn't have to think very hard about what that has meant in my life for the past 9 months! Nine months ago our son and his family moved in with us "temporarily". They have three babies all under 3 years old and because it is a blended family, on weekends we have all the kids. This makes 7 kids in all and 4 adults. It has been a major adaptation for me. I was used to having my days all to myself. I could be in my studio and skip lunch or whatever I wanted to do. I was responsible to or for no one but me during the day. Now we have a house full of people all the time. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE having the babies here especially. They are a constant source of entertainment and love and hugs. They are wonderful. It's just that it is so different and therefore required much adapting. That is where this art quilt comes from.

This situation has turned my Life Upside Down and thrown so much slightly off-kilter. The number cascading off the clock are symbolic of the fact that I no longer have a schedule I can count on. Many many times, my plans go out the window due to other things that come up. The flower upside down on the slanted shelf though is significant of my flourishing in the midst of all the chaos. The four front petals are my 4 grandchildren that make it all worthwhile and the three smaller petals are the 3 additional kids we inherited to be kind of like grandparents to them. The big comfy chair and the rug are similar to the ones in my studio. My studio is one of the main things that help me stay grounded and sane (or at least in my life what passes for sane!!) The window is my sometimes slanted view these days....yet the view is pretty and wonderful.

It was a long process and I'm so glad the deadline for this piece was pushed back from earlier in the year to the end of January. It has been a labor of love and a journey of understanding all at the same time.

Nurturing Creativity - Week 3

Shuffle.....shuffle.....close my eyes.......and chose a card!!!!

This week it is:

Creative Space

Well, this will either be very easy or very difficult. Very easy in that I have a wonderful creative space already in my studio. Very difficult would be coming up with a way to make this card relevent given that fact. Hmmmmmm let me think........................

OK, I've determined that to me this card speaks of KEEPING my space creative. While I'm a very messy artist in many ways (just ask those who have worked with me in my studio!!) I find that having it messy DURING a project is waaaaaaay different that leaving it messy before I start the next project. So, what I think to do is this: there are currently several stacks, baskets, boxes of things in my studio left over from a stint of trying to sell things on e-bay (what a waste of time THAT turned out to be!!) My goal for this week is to get rid of them ALL. That will probably mean a trip to Salvation Army to leave stuff there or FreeCycle or something but they will ALL be gone by the end of this week!!! I know that doesn't sound difficult but when I'm in my studio I want to create....not clean up!!! It will be a discipline to walk past all my "toys" to go through boxes and things to get rid of stuff. LOL!! I just wonder how much stuff I'll find that will stay in the studio because "you just never know -- I might be able to use that in an art piece someday!!!" I'll try my best to keep that to a minimum!!

I am going to keep the deadline thing though. That was really an interesting experiment. One - to keep the deadline realistic given my current life situation and Two - to keep the deadline which also means managing time to end up "done" on the deadline time. It really helped keep me focused on whatever I was working on and not to start three other new projects along the way!!

Nurturing Creativity week 2

Another re-shuffle of the cards..........picking one...............and the winner is............

Give Yourself Deadlines!!!

Very timely I think. I have Adaptations to complete before the end of the month. This morning while writing my pages I set down that I want to get it done by the end of this week. That is because I have several other things to work on but want to get this done without having to scramble at the end of the month.

Oh, and I had another idea. One suggestion was to have the numbers coming off the clock go across the piece. I bought several different sizes of number stencils hoping to have the smaller ones next to the clock and getting larger as it goes across the piece. Here is what has been holding me up.......The background that I have chosen for this piece (and love because it fits the concept so well) is a one of a kind CCRR piece that couldn't be easily duplicated - if at all. Then I decided to stencil the numbers on a test piece to see if it accomplishes what I'm looking for. Then this morning it hit me!!! If the test piece turns out OK, it would make a wonderful backing for the quilt!!!! YEAH. Next challenge..........I don't currently have a piece the size I need for this project. SOOOOO.....I've been wanting to do some snow dyeing anyway and decided to do it today and use some colors that I want for the backing of the quilt! Now instead of stuck, I'm excited.

Fabric is soaking in the soda ash as I type. No problem having enough snow!!!! Now I'm going to go mix dyes and start playing!!!

So, here are my deadlines for the week. Complete the snow dyeing this morning (batching overnight). Tomorrow morning I'll finish the fabric and start stenciling. In the afternoon I'll pick the piece if it works out (I'll just use a different snow dyed piece if the stenciling is awful). Then do the window. Wednesday - start the quilting of the piece and hopefully finish it. Thursday and Friday, start putting on the other pieces and stitching them down. Saturday, add any painting or other embellishments I need and start the binding. Sunday, sew on the binding and take photos!!!

The challenge with deadlines is the limbo in which I live these days. Ever heard of the Tyranny of the Urgent???? Yep, that happens on a regular basis. It comes from trying to coordinate the lives of a minimum of 4 adults and 3 babies!!! We'll see how it goes! Keep your fingers crossed!

MY CREATIVE JOURNEY - week 33

No, your math isn't bad and you aren't seeing things. Last week was totally off the charts. I didn't even get to choose a card let alone do anything with it. Long boring story but I'm just pressing on with week 33.

The card for this week is: Stream of Consciousness

OK, so if I can even stay conscious this week....................... The concept is to take time (the card says an hour!!) each day to do something simply going where the flow goes. Like just drawing marks and shapes and not caring if they look like anything (not hard for me!) or maybe just splashing colors onto watercolor paper and not caring if they go together or not. This exercise is supposed to keep a person's mind open and creative.

I have to admit, it will be difficult for me to devote a whole hour to something that seemingly has no purpose, no usable outcome in the tangible sense anyway. I will try it today but I'm thinking a whole hour will be VERY hard to do. I'm so far behind on so many projects it seems like a waste of time but in keeping with my commitment to doing this journey I have to at least try the ones that seem difficult. I got spoiled - the last two were no-brainers for me. This one will take effort.