I could barely sleep last night. The older I get, the harder it is to rest comfortably. But, then the more important it is to do so. I’m not sure at what point the weirdness starts. Maybe because of the medicine I’m on it will keep it at bay.
It sure was weird at Cursillo. I was on my medicine then and it still happened. But then again I think that is the point of that retreat. I think they want to inspire alternative consciousness through sleep deprivation and constant emotional highs.
My only problem with alternative consciousness is that I can’t guarantee when it will end now. I want it to end so I can return to normal. With pot it was about 3 hours. With acid it was about 8. I don’t do drugs anymore. I don’t have to. The madness comes on its own these days if I don’t take care of myself. Perhaps it always was there, and I just didn’t notice it because I was self-medicating.
Alternative consciousness isn’t that great for driving or for work. Somebody has to pay the bills, and keeping up with time and days just isn’t part of the package when your head is in the clouds.
It is why I’m resistant to create before work. Art creates its own alternative reality. That mindset is difficult to switch out of. But maybe that is the trick. Create something every morning and train myself to switch back and forth.
I’ve already written about not waiting for the muse. So maybe this is the other side. Seek out creativity all the time. Do it every day. Write, bead, paint, draw – whatever. Set a time limit. Learn how to switch back to “normal” or whatever suffices for normal in my world. Keep a constant flow of creativity going. Then, I’ll learn how to balance myself.
I think the only thing that separates productive, functional artists and raving lunatics is this skill. I believe that it can be learned and improved upon. I believe that just like shamans, we can go into that realm of spirit and come back different, but intact. I think it is just like yoga – you don’t take yoga because you are flexible and have good balance. You take yoga because you want to have these skills.
The only problem is that I don’t think there is a class on this. I might just have to figure it out on my own. I am coming to realize that this is my normal way of being. That this life, this creative life – isn’t one that has a road map.
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Tag Archives: art
Wallpaper
Here is an early Christmas gift for you. Wallpaper for your desktop or phone! These are pictures I’ve taken that are interesting but not too busy, so they go well behind other things.
The plastic cup of water at a local Mexican restaurant, with light shining through it.
Sunlight through slush on the windshield.
A different shot of the same thing.
Sunlight patterns on a wall in my bathroom – I fingerpainted the wall, and there is a picture I painted in the top right.
One of the floor in the Frist. See “A Trip to the Frist” for the backstory.
Another one.
A blurry accident. I think this was taken on the day I went to get an MRI.
Digital manipulation from me – I’d taken a picture of some spirally art paper, then used two different photo manipulation applications to get to this point.
The Formica countertop at the same Mexican restaurant in the first picture.
A guy’s shirt at a “Compassionate Nashville” event. He is from India, and has no idea what the shirt says.
Sunlight through a sheet of seaweed paper. Part of my breakfast.
Please let me know if you use these and what you think about them.
Figs, two ways
I had an afternoon snack of figs, dates, and a leftover pancake not long ago. There was probably some green tea involved too. It was very tasty, and beautiful. I decided that it was so beautiful that I had to capture the image.
Then I realized after taking the picture that I should draw this with my watercolor pencils. They are kind of like regular colored pencils, but when you add water to the image after you’ve drawn it, it becomes a watercolor. Pretty magic.
I’m not that good with them yet, and I figured I’d get overwhelmed with all that “stuff” so I decided to draw just the figs. I took a few pictures of the fig first just in case I wanted to refer to it later. I was getting hungry.
I drew the fig twice, partly because I wanted to understand it, and partly because I had a hard time getting the shape right.
Here is what the result is, in two different lights. I’ve adjusted the image a little so it looks more like here what it looks like there.
Inside –
And outside.
One day I’ll remember to take pictures of the art before I add the water so you can see the difference.
Taking pictures in art galleries.
Censuring people doesn’t make them stop doing something wrong. Sometimes it only makes them get more sly about doing something wrong. Authority figures should give praise for doing good rather than censuring people for doing bad. Every child psychology book teaches this – if you want a behavior to continue, give it attention and energy. So if you want bad to continue, call attention to it. If you want it to go away, ignore it.
When I was in middle school, my Mom was the substitute teacher in my classroom once. This wasn’t the smartest of things to have the Mom in the classroom with the student, but there you go. Everyone was talking at one point, except me. I knew better. It is my Mom, after all. If they got punished, I’d get punished more at home. This is a basic rule.
She assigned writing sentences to everybody as punishment. It seems like a strange punishment, but it was common at least when I was growing up. It seems like it will make students equate writing with punishment, when writing can be very healing. Certainly, writing the same sentence over and over – some inane mantra about how they resolve to not do whatever infraction again, isn’t healing. It is silly. But I digress.
Everybody had to write the sentences, including me. I wasn’t guilty. But I had to do it anyway, in part so my Mom wouldn’t get accused of favoritism. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And it made me want to do something wrong to make up for it. I needed to deserve to be punished. I got the pain of punishment, I should get the thrill of the crime. I don’t remember what I did to make up for it. I just remember the lesson.
One year when I was in college I was headed out for spring break. It was early in the morning. I was speeding. The speedometer registers up to 140. This makes no sense because there is no place in America where you can legally go over 70. So I wanted to find out what 100 miles an hour felt like. I got up to 95 and realized that was way too fast for me. I started to ease back down and passed a cop. He caught me fair and square. I had to go to jail and post bail on myself. There was a court date later so I could pay the ticket. It wasn’t just a simple thing.
Now, while I admit that I was breaking a law, I wasn’t breaking the one I normally broke while I drove at that time in my life. I had gotten in the habit of getting stoned all the time. Getting stoned all the time meant that I was stoned when I drove. Sometimes that meant getting stoned while I drove. This boggles my mind now that I thought this was a good idea. But this time I was stone cold sober. When I was stoned I was very careful about not breaking any other laws. It is a good idea that if you are breaking one law, don’t break another one because chances are you will get caught for one and then the other one will go along for the ride. If only the people who star on “Cops” would learn this truth.
So I came back from spring break early and spent it with a friend who was still on campus. We got stoned a lot. I got out my need for speed by playing driving games in the student center on an upright console. And I remembered the “lesson” I learned when I was in middle school.
A few years ago I went to an art gallery and got thoroughly chastised by the guard for taking a picture in the gallery. Of the floor. The floor, for goodness sakes. I hadn’t planned on taking pictures of the art. I understand about copyright and the desire of the artist to protect her intellectual property. The gift shop wants to make money on the catalog as well. But the floor isn’t art. It is cool looking, and it looked like it would be good to use as a digital wallpaper on my phone. But the guard lost her mind. I was thoroughly chastised.
And all the old memories and twisted training came back. If I’m going to be censured for something, I’d better be censured for actually doing something worth being censured over. Do the crime, do the time, right? But I’m not about doing the time without doing the crime.
So I got sly. I took pictures. I figured out how to take pictures using my phone in a way that doesn’t look like I’m taking pictures. First step – turn off the sound to the phone so it doesn’t make the annoyingly loud “shutter release” sound that is pointless on a camera phone anyway. There is no shutter to release because it is all digital. Then, look like you are texting. Don’t hold the phone up to your eye. Angles are important here. The zoom feature helps. Having a cohort to look out for guards and/or provide a human shield helps too.
I’m glad I did. I have later bought the catalog for the exhibit, once it went on sale. I mean really, there is no reason a catalog should cost the same as a college textbook. But then lo and behold, the piece that I really really liked wasn’t in the catalog. Some of the pieces I liked were. But the whole exhibit wasn’t present. So if I’d not taken the pictures, it would be gone.
There was one exhibition I liked that I went to in Boone, NC where the exhibit was site specific. It existed only then and there. It was created there for that space. The gallery has a photographic record of the construction of the exhibit, but not it, itself. It is gone. This is a shame, because it was really beautiful and it isn’t fair that people who weren’t able to go to this tiny art gallery in the middle of nowhere should be denied the beauty of this piece. Art is meant to be seen.
So, yes, I take pictures in art galleries. And I’m going to do it again.
Boone, part two
But wait, there’s more! At the same time that “STUFF” was going on, there was more stuff. Some of it was recycled. Some of it was really imaginative. Some of it was really weird. But most of it made me think and wonder and see the world in a different way, and that is the purpose of art.
I apologize for the fuzzy pictures. It is a smidge dark in there.
Look – a “lawn chair”.
Closer. Astroturf on an old metal chair. I’m pretty sure nobody has ever sat on this.
In the same area. I don’t think it does anything except look like it does something.
This artist has taken the old family tablecloth, with its tears and stains from years of use, and highlighted the damaged parts by embroidering them.
Closer view of the top.
A view of the edge.
I don’t know what this is. I like it though. People, either jumping through the floor or falling through it. They are carved wood, and larger than life size.
Closer.
Behind that. Something about large photographs of areas with overlays held in front of what the area looked like a hundred years ago.
I thought this was cool. Of course it looks better without the glare from the glass. Day for night, anyone?
A photo of a flag being put up in Antarctica, I think. But the guy on the right is familiar…
Oh yeah, it’s Death.
We went down a different way to get to another floor and ended up in the service area. This wasn’t part of the regular exhibit, but I like it.
Just the head.
In another area. It reminds me of a mandala, but not.
Outside the gallery, down the street, is a statue sitting on a bench. While cool looking, it takes up half of the bench so it defeats the purpose of the bench. I found out later why the flowers were there – it was in honor of Earl Scruggs, who had died recently. The statue is of him. He was born in North Carolina and was a popular bluegrass musician. When we came back to this corner there were hundreds of flowers here.
I’m a little confused because Earl Scruggs is known for banjo, not guitar, but there you go.
Art-spiration
Feeling the art blues? Haven’t made anything in a while? What do you do when you need to get your creative juices flowing?
Inspiration comes from many places. Try something different.
Go to a museum.
Go for a walk. Look at the colors. Look at your neighbor’s houses. Look at your neighbor’s dog. Take pictures to remind yourself later when you get home.
Read a book and make something the main character would wear.
Look at a magazine that has nothing to do with art. I find a lot of inspiration from architecture magazines.
Watch a movie and try to replicate something you see there with the supplies you have. Don’t replicate it literally, replicate how it makes you feel.
Try limiting yourself. Some of the most amazing pieces were ones I made from using just two (of the 14) bead bins I have. I decided I could not get any other beads – I had to use just those.
Make up a rule – only two colors, or only two textures.
Only use beads that were purchased from the same store, or the same state.
Use only one kind of art supply.
Use all the beads you can’t stand and put them together and see what happens.
Set a deadline – five things must be made by a week from now.
Sign up to do a show. That will force you to make stuff.
Have an art-date with a crafty friend. You both get together to make something, and you’ll be inspired seeing what the other person makes.
Buy more art supplies. Nothing inspires me more than getting new beads or a new tool.
Buy art supplies in places that don’t sell art supplies – like the grocery or the hardware store.
Only use materials that you found, or were given.
Have an art-swap, where your fellow crafty friends bring all the art supplies they don’t want or use. Trade. Make something.
Organize the supplies you have – you’ll find stuff you’ve forgotten and see combinations you’ve never noticed.
And just make. Make something, even if you don’t feel it. Sometimes the stuff that people are most impressed by is the stuff that I made in 10 minutes without thinking about it. Put something together, then put something else together.
Hide the bad stuff.
Smart artists hide the bad stuff, like how smart criminals hide the dead bodies. Part of being a good artist (or writer, or musician) is not showing people your false starts. And there are a lot of false starts in being an artist. There is a lot of “I wonder what this does” or “I wonder how this looks”. Those questions are the same as “Hey, watch this” and result in the same number of skinned knees and broken bones. But they also lead to amazing discoveries.
Part of being an artist is trying out new things. Part of it is just being willing to try. Part of being an artist is being willing to make really amazing mistakes. Part of being an artist is learning from those mistakes and not doing them again. Part of being an artist is discovering something entirely new and amazing and wonderful from those mistakes.
Sometimes I’ll show off something that I think is “eh” and others think is “oh yeah!” And other times I’ll put out something that I think is “wow” and others think is “meh”. You really never know. The audience always brings itself to your art.
What you meant to say is never what they hear. Ever. Get used to it. Even of you go out of your way to make what you mean to say as crystal clear as a lake on a still summer’s day, it still won’t mean that to the audience. Because the audience brings its own past and impressions and feelings to the table and sees your art through different eyes.
So just create. Learn to edit. Try. Show off the good stuff. Realize that some of what you think is the bad stuff isn’t that bad. Show it off too.
Artists just make creativity look easy. It isn’t. What the audience sees is the result of many years of work and refining. The audience sees the tip of the iceberg, while the artist sees all that ice. The artist scaled that ice, clawing and scraping to the top, step by agonizing step.
Consider Bruce Lee. He made martial arts look so easy and effortless. It wasn’t effortless or easy. He practiced all day. When he broke his back and was immobile he thought about his practice and had his wife write down his ideas. He was constantly working on his art.
So go make stuff. Make more stuff. Show it off. Make more stuff. But keep practicing your art, no matter what.
On art – collage, time, and audience.
I’m working on a new art style. I’m trying to do collage and it is testing my patience. I love the art of Nick Bantock, of the “Griffin and Sabine” series. I don’t want to replicate his work but I do want to try to approach its emotion and depth. The problem is that it takes a long time and you can’t erase.
When making jewelry using beads, if the pattern doesn’t work out you can always take it apart and redo it. Even years later you can always try again if the design gets old. Not so with collage. Once you paint something or glue it down it is done. You can’t go backwards and change things if it looks weird later. You can’t reposition it. You are stuck. You’ve used up the materials too – you are out that money. It also takes a long time. If you have multiple layers, you have to let each one dry for hours. I’m not really that patient, but I have to be to make this work.
This has stopped me from even trying this style for a long time. I’ve got lots of art materials that I’ve not used at all for fear of doing it wrong. So I’m wasting them even more so. It would be better to use them and figure out what works and what doesn’t work than to not use them at all.
Boats are safe in the harbor, but that isn’t what boats are made for. The same is true of collage. The same is true of life.
I’ve decided with collage the best thing is to just get over my “need” to start something and finish it in the same sitting. I certainly don’t feel that I have to do that with beads or with writing, so I don’t know why I think my painting has to be the same way. Maybe I want to see results fast. Maybe it is because I don’t have a lot of time to work on my art.
I think part of it might be that I resent the amount of time my job takes from me having time to do what I want. I just don’t seem to have a lot of time to do “me” things. I know I’m not alone in this thought. Nobody gets up and says “Yeah! I get to go be a cube-farmer today!” Don’t get me wrong – I like my job. I like the people I help. I just don’t think it requires 40 hours a week to do it. After 40 hours of work and the time required for sleep, there isn’t a lot of time for “me” stuff.
I’d rather work 30 hours than 40. I’ve asked if it is possible and they don’t think so. So I shoehorn in my “me” things – writing, exercise, art. I love the space I go to in my head when I create, and it is hard to wrestle myself back to a clock and a schedule and go to work after being in that space.
I’m starting to see collage as a good middle ground. Since I simply can’t do it all in one sitting, it works well with not having much time. I’ll do a layer, wait, do another layer, wait, and do another layer. I can’t work on it for hours at a time, and that works because I don’t have hours to work on it.
Collage is strange to work with because I don’t know how it is going to look until I’m done. I have some general idea but then when I add another element it changes everything. I can get an idea of where things are going before I glue a piece down but then sometimes when the glue dries it changes the effect. It is always a surprise. Sometimes it isn’t a welcome surprise.
But then I remember that with writing and with beads, the stuff that I really planned out and really love how meticulous and amazing it turned out happens to be the stuff that nobody “gets”. Nobody likes it or appreciates the work involved except me. Conversely, the stuff that I really don’t care about much – the stuff that I worked on and just don’t like as much is the stuff that people rave over. That is the stuff that I think is OK enough for others to see, but it just doesn’t get my idea across the way I meant to.
There are plenty of pieces of writing and pieces of jewelry and other artwork that I’ve created that nobody has ever seen. I feel like I show a lot of what I make, but what people see is just half of what I’ve produced. Some things I feel are just warm-ups, just stretching. Some things are simply exercises that help strengthen me for something better later.
I don’t feel like this about my art at the time. I want everything to be a marathon win, but some things just peter out about the three-mile mark. Or maybe that is just me. Maybe I need to show it anyway. Following the usual trend, they will be the things that people will really “get”. But for now, I don’t want to show them because I don’t want to put my name on them.
When you show any art – be it writing or visual art, you put your name on it. You say “this is me”. For good or for bad, you are showing off what you have made. People will judge you by it, for good or for bad. So you have to be careful what you show. You want to be known for good work so people will seek you out and buy what you have made. You want to get a reputation as a maker of good things. Do you keep with one motif, or do you have a range? Do you create for an audience, or create for yourself? Whatever you decide, you have to be mindful of who is going to see it and what they are going to think. Does this cause you fear, so you edit? Does this cause you excitement, so you embellish? Your relationship with the audience will influence your work.
Art isn’t yours anymore when you let other people see it. It changes. The meaning changes. What you thought it meant doesn’t matter anymore. When another person sees it, she brings herself to it. She brings what she loves and hates to it and sees that in it. Art is a mirror. It isn’t something that stands on its own and speaks for itself. It would be great if it was, but it isn’t.
First you have to see the box.
Sometimes there are ways to say things that don’t say anything at all. You can write a review of something and never really say if it is good or not. If you are really clever, you can spend your whole life doing this.
Or is it actually clever to not really say anything? Who are you fooling? Yourself, or your audience? Is it that you don’t know how you feel about your topic, or you are afraid of offending someone? It is all too common that someone will get offended by what you say, and if you say nothing offensive, they will continue to read what you have to say.
But both of you are wasting your time.
You could say that something is indescribable. Does that mean that you simply don’t have the words to describe it? Does it mean that you haven’t had the life experience necessary yet to describe it? Or does that mean that you aren’t brave enough to describe it? That to tell someone what you really think might make them angry at you? Might make them think differently of you?
You could say that something is incomparable, and you’d also be hedging your bets. Everything is comparable. You can compare everything to something else, if nothing else to say how much not like it the item is.
But both these words are used to make people think that something is really amazing, when it might be really nothing at all. It might be that it is so bland and boring that the author really couldn’t come up with words that were worthwhile.
The phrase “Think outside of the box” is getting cliché. It was cool for a while, but somebody needs to apply that thinking to the phrase itself and come up with something else.
We all need to think this way. We all need to take the box and tear it up and find a bucket. We need to see the box for what it is – we need to see how our language, our words, our culture, our society creates a box for us. We need to see the invisible walls that have been put on our understanding and our ways of doing things. We are taught from a very young age how to think and see and act, and those rules help us all live in community. But those rules and the overgeneralizations that occur from those rules always prevent us from seeing what really is there, and what can be there.
Artists challenge the status quo all the time. The only way you can create is to tap in to the great well of “what if?” and “why not?” You don’t have to paint to be an artist. I’m using “artist” in the biggest way possible. “Artist” means anyone who is creative – anyone who makes something different, brings some idea to life that wasn’t there before. You can be a musician or a writer or a dancer or in business or medicine. Your “art” doesn’t have to be physical. It can be a different way of thinking, of doing things.
Anais Nin said “We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are.”
Change yourself. Challenge yourself. Create.
And when I say “create” it isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Often when I create I have no idea what is going to happen. I start off with some vague idea, some seed, and I give it a little bit of time and attention and it grows into something I didn’t expect. But that is the trick – be open to the idea. Be available to it. And give it time – work on it. Welcome it. You and the world will both be better because of it.
Art Attack
I want to get my art started. It isn’t beating very well. I forget to take time to exercise it, to keep it healthy.
It isn’t due to lack of materials. I’ve got paint and canvas and decoupage goop and brushes and watercolor pencils and watercolor paper. The list goes on. Trust me, I’ve got stuff. I even have a cute little bin that looks a bit like a small attaché case that I’ve put the words “Art Attack” on it using my label maker. I figure if it is portable, then I’ll do it more. Nope. Rarely works.
I’ve seen books that I like the style of. A little bit of words, and a painting or three to a page. Sometimes they are travel books, sometimes they are children’s books. The illustrations are irregularly sized, mostly rectangles though. Some people can make watercolor look so simple.
I’ve decided that I’m making this too hard. Just like with writing, I need to set aside time to do this. Once a week? Once a day? Whatever I pick, I’m going to have to stick to it. If I wait for the muse, she’ll never come. Sometimes you have to go find her.
Part of the issue that I’m having is I like to be free with my art. I like to get immersed when I’m creating. I don’t want to have to suddenly stop and have to get ready to go to work. Art, when done well, is transformative. It is like a soul-journey. It is like getting stoned, but without the illegal part. So I don’t really want to work on my art first thing in the morning. But then I don’t have time when I get home, and the light is bad.
Another issue is that I don’t want to waste the materials. I want to use them well, to make good art. Paint and canvas can’t be re-used in the same way that beads can. You can’t move stuff around to make it look better in the way that you can with words, either. I feel a need to think it through and get it right. So instead of potentially making a mistake, I make nothing. Talk about wasting materials.
I need to follow my own advice. Something is better than nothing, and if I make up too many rules about this then I’ll never do it. If I think that it has to be perfect, to look like the illustrations in the books I enjoy, then I’ll never do it. So I have to commit to this, and just create. I need to create for the sake of creating, with no editing or self-censoring. I need to remember that it isn’t the end product that is the point, and to just enjoy the process.
There is nothing like drawing something to make you really SEE it. There is this concept called closure – we see what we think we are seeing, most of the time. We see what we expect to see. But when we slow down and try to draw something, we notice all the things we’ve missed. By making art, I learn to really use my eyes to see, not just to look.
betsybeadhead 
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