Creative output
So – where have I been? Off exploring ... I seem to have been seized lately by a wave of creative energy that is slowly taking me out to sea – meaning, to places I haven't been to before, that are new and strange and seemingly a bit possibly dangerous, but beautiful and exciting and emphatically demanding to be lived rather than documented in a pitifully neglected online journal.
Yesterday I got up at 6 and took Baby Beast to our favorite Plaza cafe for an early-morning olive and tomato frittata and iced coffee, followed by a walk around the square and then (as the day started to heat up) a leisurely stroll through the deep shade of the lumber warehouse, where I picked up materials to transform the inside of an antique armoire into custom storage for art supplies. Bea took a great interest in the whole excursion – since she was the one who chewed the moulding on the bottom of the armoire, I enjoyed letting her help choose the wood I was going to use to fix it up again. I'm also considering painting it, so she isn't tempted to chew it again; unfortunately she only chews raw, unpainted wood, the older the better – she also ate some of the gingerbread trim off the bottom of a fancy 150-year-old beaten up oak side table that I knew I should have kept varnished ...
The upshot is, my stuff is all organized and together in one place now instead of scattered in various drawers and cabinets around the house, and I've been daydreaming and drawing like crazy. It's been a long time coming. And it feels great to be actually making things, instead of just thinking about making them. I took a one-day workshop in reliquary making on Saturday and am really just bursting with excitement to make more, more, more of these beautiful little things. I was the only person in class who brought an actual relic (a long braid of hair from Tater's tail, which he gracious donated without his usual screaming at the sight of the scissors) to use in my assemblage, and since my stats tell me my readership is finally down to zero I'll go ahead and brag a little bit, and report that my finished piece was the only one the owner of the shop asked to photograph. Her assistant suggested I make more, to sell, and from her I took that as a huge compliment and a serious encouragement to maybe start thinking about finally getting down to business as an artist.
With all my health "issues," mental and otherwise, I think I've always sort of held back some ... worried that if I ever really started to go for it I would end up feeling overwhelmed by demands I wasn't strong enough or energetic enough to meet. From myself or others, it's never really been clear.
I'm tentatively enjoying this new burst of energy though and excited to keep going.
Maybe I'll post some pictures of my stuff on this blog sometime. Or maybe I'll start a new blog just for art, like so many other crafty persons seem to be doing of late. Or, maybe I won't. Right now I'm feeling like I'd rather make things than take pictures of them, and would rather give them to people I know than show them to people I don't.
Yesterday I got up at 6 and took Baby Beast to our favorite Plaza cafe for an early-morning olive and tomato frittata and iced coffee, followed by a walk around the square and then (as the day started to heat up) a leisurely stroll through the deep shade of the lumber warehouse, where I picked up materials to transform the inside of an antique armoire into custom storage for art supplies. Bea took a great interest in the whole excursion – since she was the one who chewed the moulding on the bottom of the armoire, I enjoyed letting her help choose the wood I was going to use to fix it up again. I'm also considering painting it, so she isn't tempted to chew it again; unfortunately she only chews raw, unpainted wood, the older the better – she also ate some of the gingerbread trim off the bottom of a fancy 150-year-old beaten up oak side table that I knew I should have kept varnished ...
The upshot is, my stuff is all organized and together in one place now instead of scattered in various drawers and cabinets around the house, and I've been daydreaming and drawing like crazy. It's been a long time coming. And it feels great to be actually making things, instead of just thinking about making them. I took a one-day workshop in reliquary making on Saturday and am really just bursting with excitement to make more, more, more of these beautiful little things. I was the only person in class who brought an actual relic (a long braid of hair from Tater's tail, which he gracious donated without his usual screaming at the sight of the scissors) to use in my assemblage, and since my stats tell me my readership is finally down to zero I'll go ahead and brag a little bit, and report that my finished piece was the only one the owner of the shop asked to photograph. Her assistant suggested I make more, to sell, and from her I took that as a huge compliment and a serious encouragement to maybe start thinking about finally getting down to business as an artist.
With all my health "issues," mental and otherwise, I think I've always sort of held back some ... worried that if I ever really started to go for it I would end up feeling overwhelmed by demands I wasn't strong enough or energetic enough to meet. From myself or others, it's never really been clear.
I'm tentatively enjoying this new burst of energy though and excited to keep going.
Maybe I'll post some pictures of my stuff on this blog sometime. Or maybe I'll start a new blog just for art, like so many other crafty persons seem to be doing of late. Or, maybe I won't. Right now I'm feeling like I'd rather make things than take pictures of them, and would rather give them to people I know than show them to people I don't.
