It’s hard to believe that this artist’s residency is coming to a close. Â I have just four more days here before returning to Paris. Â So I thought I’d do a pictorial recap of my time here so far. Â It’s been beyond anything I could have imagined or hoped for. Â Just amazing.
Gare de l’est
On the train heading toward Orquevaux!
My Studio! I can’t believe it!!
Some of the art work in the Chateau left by other artists in residence
And so it begins… getting the work up on the wall.
but now I have all of this space… I can go much bigger!
The view from my studio
Taking a morning walk with fellow artist in residence, Kevin Ford
Throwing some paint around
Adding stuff
Working and adding
Playing with shapes, getting in the blues…
Lichen always inspires
Taking a walk to clear my head and get some perspective on the challenges I’m seeing in the piece now that I’ve doubled its size.
The sheer beauty and magnitude of this place…
The boat house
The blue alien is now an ever present “issue” that I work hard to resolve…
Deciding that I have to stitch stuff down anyway…
Boldly stitching the blue insect/alien even though I have misgivings… maybe it’ll look better once it’s stitched down.
Nope it doesn’t. Annotating the work, before adding more blue, because if the blue bits are the problem, let’s throw more on there and see what happens.
The blue rabbit hole continues. I’m so deep in it I can’t see my way out.
Still I can appreciate the fabulous art all around me that covers the walls of this amazing place.
Raclette night and the fabulous Beulah van Rensburg: artistic director
The. blue continues to prove problematic.
But I’m determined…
and when all else fails, start another piece…
Fellow artists put on a puppet show for all of us, to great hilarity and fun!
and then I return to my studio to finish my little study inspired by the lichen I’ve seen on my many walks.
And on it goes… the creative process continues.
The big take away from all of this is that the process of creating is often bumpy, but if you don’t give into despair and just meet it head on matter-of-factly, the process is actually very instructive and can be wonderfully fun. Â It so mirrors life. Â Some of the things I tell myself: Don’t take it personally. Â You got this. Â It’s a momentary hiccup, what can you learn? Â This feels uncomfortable, but it’s okay. Â I’ve been here before and gotten through, I’ll get through this too. Â Breathe. Â Be patient and honor the process.
The ups and downs, the unexpected road blocks, the work arounds, it’s all there, just as in life, but making the decision to find the joy, to be present, even when I’d rather not be, that’s the trick. Â Right now I still haven’t resolved some of the issues I have with this piece, but I know I’ll get there eventually. Â It’s all part of creating and creating is always wonderful! Â Hard, but wonderful!
A documentation of the process… I’ve come to rely upon this documentation as it helps me figure the next step out. Â So this is how it began when I arrived and then I realized – Oh! Â I can create something SO much bigger!! Â Once that idea hit, I took all the other stuff off and began adding fabric. Â In fact, I doubled the size of the original piece, which was very, very exciting!!!
Beginning
An idea occurs to me: I can go bigger!
Bigger it is!
Now I have to find a sewing machine so that I can piece it together…
And then I took another photograph once it was all pieced, so that I could put it up on my computer to annotate it. Â This step is crucial and one that I’ve come to rely on. Â I find it makes all the difference in the world as I can literally draw on top of the photograph, delete, play, try any number of things, play some more, move shapes around, see what I think, before committing to anything.
Where do I go from here? Annotating makes all the difference in the world!
Testing the annotated ideas…
Continuing to look, play, try out ideas…
Stepping away. Â Zooming back in, stepping away… this is all part of the process.
Adding a bit of blue in the upper left corner.
Now what?
Who knows?! Â And that’s all part of the fun of the process. Â Adding, moving, playing, trying out other ideas…
It’s time for lunch, and then I will return and play some more, but all in all I’m loving the process and enjoying the movement of this piece. Â The trick is to keep going and not allow oneself to get bogged down with doubt! Â Continuing is key!! Â And loving every moment helps as well.
My YouTube Channel, Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand, has become monetized! Woot! Woot! This means that my channel has over 4,000 watched hours and more than 1,000 subscribers.
This may seem like one of those, ho hum, who cares announcements, particularly as it began with such a build up… however, before you leave in disappointment, here’s the good news – I no longer have a time limit to my videos, I can go on and on and on endlessly for HOURS, literally hours. Just imagine!
“If you are verified, your YouTube videos can be up to 12 hours long, or as much as 128 GB.”
Okay, okay, so maybe that’s not the good news, and anyway I promise I won’t post any 12-hour long videos or even multiple hours, seriously, I swear, though I did have this one idea… Oh come ON, I’m just kidding!
Please enjoy this photo of a beautiful rose that I took while out on my once a week walk where I actually leave our home here in New York City
Also, I can now link to external websites, like this blog, if I could only figure out how to do that, AND, once I’ve converted my website over to the new website I’m planning, which will house this blog, my Youtube channel, a shop filled with fabulous new designs and all the other things on my to-do list, I can add links to that too, at least theoretically.
And then there’s the – is this good news or is this bad news part of the whole my-youtube-channel-is-monetized-exclamation-mark-aren’t-you-happy-for-me pronouncement and that is, there are now ads on every single video I have posted. I’m expecting a huge uptick in the thumbs down button being pushed by disgruntled viewers, however, just so you don’t become one of them, please, please try to remember that those annoying ads give me a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal, seriously small, amount of money, which means I can keep posting more videos, that hopefully you love and will find helpful! A win-win, right?!
More calming photographs of beautiful flowers while all of us take a breath.
But before you say – well not really, I hate ads and no amount of helpful or even mildly useful information will make me hate them any less, they’re annoying and a constant reminder that our world has veered precariously close to becoming some creepy melding of The Minority Report (without Tom Cruise at his prime) and Blade Runner (without Harrison Ford who was just heading out of his prime, though that may not even be possible…) which, by the way, were two really good reasons to even watch those two movies in the first place, and anyway even if those two guys were still IN their prime, it wouldn’t lessen the blow… before you say all of that, let me suggest that you think of this as a tiny (think thimble-sized) tip jar, which literally holds pennies, then maybe, just maybe you’ll feel less resentful when those ads appear, ruining your otherwise blissful experience of exploring the creative process or learning a new stitch or seeing a stitch you already know all about done in an interesting new way or maybe just done in a thread you might not have thought about until now or… okay, I’m running out of helpful suggestions here.
All is well with the world…
Just know that I appreciate your watching my videos even if they are now encumbered by annoying advertisements about things you don’t care about, have never heard of or, as is the case with this blog, photographs of old men’s hairy legs with captions that read “12 Ways You Know You’ll Have a Heart Attack in the Next 5 Years” and things like that. And remember, I love you for your patience in putting up with them and will continue to post videos that, I’m hoping, you will enjoy watching.
Bizarre patterns in the sidewalk in the Meat Packing District a few blocks from where I live.
There. Full disclosure. Whew. It was touch and go there for a minute. Thursday’s post will be full of musings from New York City where we are still in the lock-down-that-will-never-end-and-even-if-it-did-who-will-feel-safe-enough-to-go-out-anyway?
By the way, you have no idea how difficult it was to find photographs to enhance this post, thereby lessening the blow of the difficult news I felt compelled to impart. But we made it. And here we are! It’s a beautiful thing.
Every morning my husband and I read something we find interesting and thought provoking, and then we discuss. It’s become a ritual of sorts and has been incredibly helpful, even transformative in many ways. Not least of which is that I so often am reminded of creativity and stitching, and how both are a process and ideally, embraced.
Every day I sit in my little creative room and I stitch. Each day that act of stitching is a new experience, an exploration of the physical, but also of the emotional and even the spiritual. I gather together my materials, usually beginning with colors, and then I either sketch out an idea or just begin stitching something. What’s interesting is that sometimes things just unfold beautifully and without interruption and 45 minutes to an hour later I have something I like or, if I’m really lucky, something I love. But there are other days when that just doesn’t happen. I struggle, I tear out, I undo, redo, undo again. I walk away, I come back, I sketch an idea, I start again. Hours can go by and eventually I end up with something that I’m okay with, although perhaps not thrilled with. Still, I’ve learned to leave it alone and days later I may come back and think – I love this! Or not. The point is, it’s all a process and it’s the process I’ve become increasingly fascinated by and have learned to love.
Circle #42 took 45 minutes start to finish. Circle #44 took several hours… (And I made up a variation on the whipped woven circle that I’ve not seen before, though I do not claim to have invented this, I’ve just never seen it before, so if it exists, it does so without my knowledge of it.)
Each circle has its own personality and each one was a different experience to stitch. What I’ve learned from years of designing is that I must trust the process. I must trust myself. I must trust that if I stick with it, something magical will reveal itself, even if it’s not always in a way that I instantly recognize. It can be said that this is true for life as well.
My Tendril Circle. I can’t remember how long this took, but I had an idea and went with it. There wasn’t any ripping out and beginning again, but rather the steady process of continuing to let it unfold.
Every Wednesday I am devoting a video to creating, designing and the creative process. Those videos can be found ‘here‘. Stay tuned for a new one coming tomorrow!
This is the title of my latest YouTube video where I talk about how easy it is to talk oneself out of creating something new. Ever had the experience of thinking – “I’m going to design something new, I don’t know what yet, but something!” and then you sit down and suddenly you’re thinking about all the laundry that needs to be washed, the floors that need mopping, the faucet that should be looked at, the emails that need answering, suddenly, even your taxes seem like a good idea? Yeah… I know. Crazy. I’ve been designing or creating something, in some medium, my entire adult life and yet, this still happens to me (ok, I totally exaggerated about the bit about how I consider doing my taxes instead of creating. That hasn’t happened yet, but all the other things I’ve contemplated, I swear.) I’ve learned a few things over the years, and I discuss a couple of them in my video.
When I wasn’t taping and editing that video, I was trying to figure out how to make an Instagram Story. For anyone younger than 50 reading this – I know, I know, but I didn’t grow up with this stuff and it can seem pretty daunting. However there’s hope, even for me. Below is my very, first Instagram Story that I posted yesterday afternoon with a lot of guidance and help from my friend and chef extraordinaire Vikki, @Chefvikkik. Thank you Vikki! ❤️
My mother is a wonderful source of humor and joy, particularly during this pandemic when she’s taken to sending us (her children) videos, photographs and sometimes text of things other people have created. Here’s one of them – this one is from Daniel Emmet singing his version of Nessun Dorma. Wonderful!
And then there’s this from Taavi Metsma coming up with a great new exercise routine, which I won’t be able to do because we don’t have that many spare rolls of T.P. in our house. He’s clearly flaunting his stash, making the saying “compare and despair” all the more real and distressing!
#Stayhome #StaySafe #KeepCreating
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Please browse and look at our patterns available. We also offer Workshops! ~Ariane
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