Studio Notes

Last night I got inspired to work on a piece that has been languishing in my studio for almost a year. It’s a polyclay mosaic that I started last December.  Some things can’t be hurried. That’s a lesson that has been both intuitive and difficult for me.  I don’t hurry for my own sake, but I do get pressured by others to ‘finish’ projects.  It never makes me happy, and the results are seldom good.  

If you listen carefully, you can hear the stirrings of an idea. Shhh.  I can’t talk about it yet. New ideas can be that fragile. Let’s wait and see what happens. 

la la la…

I might as well trill a few notes, because nothing is happening in the studio right now.  I’ve hit a block, and it is a familiar one. My days are fragmented with too many small demands.  Even when I get through the day’s list, I’m mentally scattered and too jumpy to work on anything.

Instead, I’m working on getting my studio into better order. I’m sharpening pencils, sorting paper scraps back into their proper colors, and trilling aimless notes, while waiting for my muse to return.

la la la…

What do you do when you’re too fritzy to concentrate?

Things aren’t perfect in WordPress land yet.

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Yesterday, N and I had a good art jam session in the afternoon. She worked on a portrait of her cat, Simba. I finished the weaving for the small drawstring bundle, sewed it up, and made the drawstring cord. I haven’t decided whether to add any beads or other embellishments. The symbolism of the bundle is the part of your self and your energy that you hold dear to sustain you on your journey through life. This concept can be hard to embrace.  The corporate world demands 100% of you, all the time.  110% when they can get it. In our personal and spiritual lives, we often feel the desire to love  and give so much that we destroy ourselves by giving too much.  Keeping a bundle is not a selfish act.  It is a self-sustaining one.

Because the bundle’s energies face inward, I’m not sure I should add any surface embellisments.  Maybe I should focus on what goes inside it.

Studio Notes (this blog) replaces the beautiful but impossible to maintain original Studio Notes on ::collagespace.com:: as well as the Melange_Artiste LiveJournal.  

I hope you will enjoy my comments on art, weaving, life and spirit. They are all intertwined in my life, and it makes little sense to isolate each along some very arbitrary lines. My creative energies flow from spirit, and are shaped by what I believe and who I am.