The Terror in Creating

The Terror in Creating

Terror.  That’s a word they never mentioned in art school.

Color theory, art history, figurative drawing, these were all pre-requisites; considered the very foundation of any good education in the arts.

Terror?  Fear? Not so much.  Neither of those words or any words like that, were ever uttered.

And yet… who doesn’t feel fear and even terror, at some point, when creating?

As children, we run headlong, without thinking, without concern, without fear, and we create.  Using mud and sand and sticks and our fingers. We don’t pause and reconsider.  We don’t think – but maybe this isn’t a good idea.  Yet somewhere along the way we learn to be fearful. We learn that being creative opens us up to criticism, anger, even rage and perhaps violence.  Suddenly what came naturally to all of us, no longer feels natural.  We tell ourselves that we aren’t “creative types”.  And yet, I would argue that we are born creative.

Every. Single. One. Of. Us.

Creating doesn’t have to be on paper, it can be an idea, a vision, a way of thinking.  Each of us has a unique mind, shaped by our experiences, our interactions, what we love, our passions, where we were born, the families we were born into, the land upon which we were raised.

So where does this terror come from?

Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear, fear, fear.  We are taught to be “sensible”.  We are taught to not “dream too big”. We are taught to not “waste time”.  We are taught that to create is a luxury.  But what if what we were taught is wrong?

Moving through fear, even terror is one of the most exhilarating, transcendent things I’ve ever experienced.  It is what connects me to other human beings. It is what connects me to my creativity.  It bonds, unites, and can bring me to my knees.  It’s what causes me to rediscover the unadulterated beauty and joy of my innocence, that exquisite time before I learned to feel fear.

If any of this resonates with you, consider enrolling in my new workshop: Finding Your Voice where we will use various prompts, words, exercises and even stitching to break though our fears and find ourselves in our work.

 

The Artist’s Residency Begins!

The Artist’s Residency Begins!

I cannot begin to describe how incredibly grateful and fortunate I am to be able to do this 2-week residency in this Chateau in Orquevaux.  It is beyond anything I could have imagined.  I have a studio, a real studio where I can splash paint around and create pieces that are much, much bigger than anything I could have dared imagine back in my workspace in New York City.  It is like being in a dream.  Seriously.  And here’s the thing, I’m practically in tears because I’m just overwhelmed at how lucky I am to be able to do this, to have this opportunity, to have this kind of space, to be able to create without distractions, to be able to make a mess… it really is a dream come true.

My view…

My studio for the next 2 weeks.

This is the piece I brought with me and have begun working on…

And here it is a little bit later…

More will be revealed!

New Business Cards, New Stitch Along & An Artist’s Residency

New Business Cards, New Stitch Along & An Artist’s Residency

Have you been thinking about doing some Improvisational Stitching, but feel it’s a bit daunting?  Do you also LOVE Dorset Buttons and wonder how dorset buttons like the ones pictured below get made or if you know how to make one like this, do you wonder what you’ll do with it?

Well, in my upcoming Stitch Along, I’m combining these two ideas!  We will be thinking out of the box, applying elements of my improvisational stitching style with dorset buttons that are beyond wild.  So if you like this idea, sign up because there are still some spaces left.  AND I have thread and fabric kits made up, that you can purchase as well.

In other news… here are my new business cards and notecards just in time for my upcoming trip to France!

My new business cards and notecards!

I was awarded a 2-week artist’s residency at the Chateau d’Orquevaux, which is about 3 hours east of Paris and about 3 hours west of Basel, Switzerland. I have a vague memory of driving through Verdun heading south with my parents when I was in my early twenties, so I’m guessing I’ve been in this part of the world before, but that was a long time ago!  I’m very, very excited and will be taking my new piece that I’ve just begun working on and that I talked about in this video (which I made for my Patrons and is unlisted, but you can see it here!)

And here it is after I annotated and moved things around, sewed the left side piece down and took away the upper left bit, as it seemed unnecessary, at least for now.  This piece is BIG!  At least big for me.  It’s about 40″ x 52″.

Very exciting!!

Going Down the Organizing Rabbit Hole

Going Down the Organizing Rabbit Hole

There are diversions and then there are DIVERSIONS!  Organizing can be one of those.  I finished the BIG piece I’ve been working on and instead of leaping into something new, I got sidetracked with organizing.  Organizing my work space, it’s pretty small so it takes some doing to spend more than a few hours on this one, organizing my threads, I’ve got a LOT of thread, so this one is easy to lose oneself for a day or two or week or month, and organizing my materials, again there’s a lot of stuff, some of which I use often, others not so much, still it’s a sink hole.

It all began with a YouTube video, doesn’t it always, though?

See that huge bag filled with thread winders?  That’s only some of them.  I did another video for my Patrons over on Patreon and had a little give-away.  Five lucky patrons are receiving a nice package of those thread winders from me. I haven’t sent them yet, because I keep finding cleverly hidden stashes of OH, so that’s where those were! threads that I then rewind onto those large cardboard bobbins and put in those 16″ long plastic refrigerator shelves.  It makes my life so much easier when I can see everything easily and quickly.

But now I’m nearing the end of my reorganization efforts, not that one is ever really done organizing, it’s like laundry, AND I have a lengthy to-do list that is calling to me as well, but the nagging thought that I need to start a new piece has been buzzing around making life feel a bit more fraught than usual.  A friend of mine used to say that she was both the team of horses pulling the carriage AND was also the driver with the whip beating those horses on.  It’s all a bit like that.  Still there’s good that comes from it.  Organizing makes me breathe easier, having a to-do list calms that voice that screams at me, and knowing I will not feel calmer until I begin a new project, propels me on.

It’s all good, as they say.

The stoics suggest that each day is best lived as though it were your last.  But if I did that, I wouldn’t get all that much done, because I’d just spend every moment that they’d allow with my children and husband and cat.  So yeah, there’s that.

Now I have some fabric kits for one of my upcoming workshops to pull together…  did I mention those?

No?

Oh well…

 

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Showing up For Work

Showing up For Work

I’m not feeling great.  I should probably just end this post right here.  But, no, I’ll soldier on. Not because this post is important, it’s not, but because it represents all the things on my to do list and so much that is just life. No one needs to hear my laundry list of “woes”, we’ve all got them.  More to the point is that I’m struggling.  My mom’s death feels like an endless, bottomless pit of emotions.  I know I’ll get through it.  I know work-arounds that help me get through those days when things are really bad and “getting through the day” feels impossible.  That’s when the put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other method of coping gets enacted.

Grieving is a luxury. Some days require putting all of that to the side so that other things can be dealt with in a timely fashion and because life moves along, it doesn’t wait for those of us who are grieving.  And I also know I can’t leap frog my way beyond the grief.  It will be there waiting for me on the other side.  It’s always there.  Some days I’m luckier than others, the grief stays on the edge, other days it moves front and center.  Those are the days when every step feels like I’m dragging a fifty pound weight.  Those are the days when showing up feels like a monumental task.  But I know from designing, from creating, from every day that I work on a piece, that even when I don’t “feel like it” showing up for the work is one of the most important things I can do.  And, counter-intuitively, it is what ends up making me feel better in the long run.

All of this reminds me of something Michael Crichton once said.  It was decades ago when I was the Director of the Aspen Writer’s Conference and had reached out to him to kick off the conference.  He was game and gave an amazing talk in the Paepcke Auditorium at the Aspen Institute.  I will have to paraphrase as there is no transcript of his presentation.  He was talking about writing. Imagine, he said, if you were a commercial airline pilot with a full schedule of flights and woke up one morning and said, You know, I don’t really feel like flying today.  I think I’ll go back to sleep for a few hours. Writing (any of the arts) is the only “profession” where people talk themselves out of getting up and putting in the hours.  Everyone in the audience was quiet.  But it doesn’t work that way, he continued.  If you’re a writer/artist then you get up and you put in your hours, whether it’s flying a commercial airline or writing a book, or in my case, working on a new piece, writing up a new workshop, filming a new Youtube video or any of the other things I’ve got on my list of things that I need to do because this is the life and profession I’ve chosen for myself.

How does grief fit into all of this?  It doesn’t.  It’s just there.  All the time.  And as a result, it is I that must make the necessary adjustments in my life to accommodate these new feelings and emotions, while continuing to show up for the work.