Patrice, Martin, and the Moons

The Moon Eclipsing the Sun

colored pencil

I have an Internet friend named Patrice. She had a question about mixed media fiber art once and pulled my name off the Internet to ask. Ever since we have been in correspondence. Patrice lives in Louisville, KY, and she graciously came to the opening of the 19th National EGA Exhibit at the tail end of August this year so that we could finally meet in person. Patrice is a teacher and an artist. She teaches children special topics in art around Louisville, especially in miniatures making, gourd work, and mixed media like quilts out of recycled materials.

In Patrice's current letter to me she talks about creativity, about being a creative person, and how she deals with certain aspects of it. Thanks, Patrice, for writing me about that, by the way.

I believe that creativity is innate within everybody, that it is a human condition. But certain people are overwhelmed with constant ideas than most others. Patrice says that she is so swarmed by ideas that she can sometimes not sleep at night. That she wakes up with ideas and goes to sleep with new ideas in her head. I know that feeling. Getting ideas is not my major stumbling block. Honing them down and homing in on the ones I want to actually execute is the hard part.

Part of my own creative process is day dreaming. I like to take a part of each day, especially in the late afternoons, lie down, and just think. It's true that sometimes I fall asleep, but in the last couple of years I more often enter a meditative state where I can explore my mind. What do I do next on my current project? What colors go best with with yellow and black (my current bee theme). How else can I put together this bee sampler? Where do I go next? What else can I add to my work on my Color ICC? What has happened is that I have taken the mass of ideas that constantly bombarded me and have channeled them in this meditative state. Now I am a little (okay, a lot) older than Patrice. I think I have finally tamed part of the beast.

The Moon Asleep

I saw an interview with Martin Scorsese about creativity in artists once on PBS. It changed my world view. All of what he said made sense to me. But what I came away with is that an artist should follow where her ideas take her. This is sometimes scary because it leads to uncharted territory. I heard the interview at night one summer in 2004 and sat right down to work on stuff that had been teasing my mind for sometime. I was holding back on this work because I thought it might be too frivolous for me. But he made me realize that it was me. It was my moons.

The Moon and the Solar Wind

Right now I am on the cusp of finishing two projects. I am almost done with my Bee Book Sampler. I will certainly be done with it by Sunday morning when I next blog. And I am putting away my color theory books and dragging out my patterning theory books. Lesson 1 of the Color Correspondence Course is done and has to be sent to EGA Headquarters for approval before Carole and I can do the rest of the lessons. Now I get to work on my Master Class in Blackwork Patterning for a month and a half.

An artist gets better with time, no matter what the medium. A creative person never retires. from it.