Category: Creative Process

Right at Home

by susanbradfordart, posted in Creative Process, Learning, Visual Art

Last weekend I took yet another workshop and learned yet another new thing that I am excited about making.  This time, I went off to San Juan Island and spent a beautiful day outdoors making concrete leaves.  It is a really fun process and wonderfully tactile, even though rubber gloves are essential.  It starts with making a mound of sand, then laying the leaf on top of that.  The really fun part is mixing the concrete and then laying it on the leaf.  It is earthy and sensual to feel the cool, mushy concrete as it gets molded onto the leaf, moving it and shaping it to the desired thickness with the right contour.

There is a lot of potential for these leaves.  They are fun to make and fun to paint.  And I could see getting really wild with colors and shapes that have nothing to do with the natural world.  A purple leaf with yellow dots for instance.  We’ll see.

I keep learning new things that I want to do, and then feeling panic when I don’t have enough time to do them.  Or to do them justice.  Or to do them at all.  Somewhere along the line, it has to stop.  Yes?

For now, this leaf looks right at home in my garden.  At home in my garden, outside my house where my cats and lover live, near my studio where I want to be.  When I’m not off taking more workshops, that is.  Oh you mean like the wonderful mini wire basket that I’m going to learn this weekend?

But after this, I swear I’m staying home!

What Do You Mean? (again)

by susanbradfordart, posted in Creative Process, Visual Art

This is the same painting I have been struggling with for so long.  The version on the left has now become the version on the right.  I am much happier with it now.  Almost ready to stop working on it and to move on.  I have a good feeling about it for the moment.  And it seems to be about comfort and safety, so even the meaning is feeling more resolved.  Working on it again and again has given me a degree of comfort, like being with an old friend.  I’ll actually miss greeting it in my studio if it’s really finished.

Knitting

by susanbradfordart, posted in Creative Process

Last Sunday, I was watching football (the Championship games) and knitting, and it occurred to me why knitting is becoming such a positive thing for me to do.  I first learned to knit in high school and made a sweater which I never wore.  In college, I tried making a vest for a friend of mine, got carried away, and in the end it was so huge that only a member of the Harlem Globetrotters could wear it.  So I put my needles away and forgot all about knitting and all other craft-related activities, for that matter.

But now that I make baskets and hang around with all these beautiful women in the San Juan County Textile Guild, I see them knitting all the time – at meetings, on the ferry, at social gatherings, while watching TV.  Their hands are always busy, and it has made my hands start to twitch with eagerness to be doing something similar.  A friend of mine was knitting a scarf like this, and she said that it was really easy to do, and that I could do it.  She was right.  I can, and I am doing it.  Just like riding a bike, it all came back to me.

So this is why I am liking this process so much.  I can take it anywhere.  It is a really good way to focus and to concentrate.  For this scarf, it is 8-8-6-6-4-4-20. I need to pay attention, but at the same time it is very relaxing.  When I am nervous about anything, it is very soothing.  I breathe better. Knitting is a good way to hold me in the present moment.  I lose myself in the repetition of doing one stitch after another.  And I join in the archetypal process of all those knitters who came before me.

Best of all, by the time the Superbowl is over, I will have a fun and whimsical new scarf to wear.

My letter is…

by susanbradfordart, posted in Creative Process, Visual Art, Writing

I am always a bit sad to miss the monthly Trance Dance, and especially so in January when everyone sets their intention for the year and dances it deeply into their bodies. Still, for the past few years, I have been participating from afar and that has been good as well.

So when I read Anita’s post on Tuesday, I asked her to pick a letter for me from the ones that had not been claimed on Monday night.  In her email sent to me yesterday, I learned that my letter for the year is “B.”

Now don’t get me wrong.  “B” is a perfectly good letter.  It is even the first letter of my last name.  But in my heart of hearts, it wasn’t the letter that I wanted.  I was sending out for a “C” (Creativity, Communication, Courage, Compassion – all things I want and need more of).  Or maybe even a “P” (Paint, Play, Pray/Meditate – which have been my standard resolutions for many years now).

But no, I got a “B” and had no choice except to embrace it.

Here is what I wrote, after quickly going through the above mental process.  Oh 2012… that was the year of going Boldly, Beginning once again, and Being true to myself.

I still want all those other words as well, but the “B” words should help a lot.  And while I was writing this, I thought of so many more lovely words.