Artist's Block

There are days when inspiration packs a bag lunch and heads to the beach...I wouldn't mind doing the same.

Sometimes I stretch a piece of silk and the next thing I know I have a finished scarf, ideas flow like a river and colors seem to combine themselves...beautiful things happen and at some point after the sun has gone down and long after I should have stopped to eat something, I come up for air and stretch my tired fingers in amazement at what has transpired. Those are really great days.

Then there are the other times. The stretched fabric stares at me, defying me to mar it's purity with something so crass as color....maybe I just can't decide what to paint, or I have a concept but no shape...whatever it is, it's almost physically painful - to need to create and be unable to. These are the days when my ridiculously large collection of fiction books get re-alphabetized by author, and my fabric swatches get refolded and put away in size and color order. These are the times when I barricade myself in the bathroom with an old toothbrush and a container of baking soda - because NOW is the time that I'm finally going to conquer the miscolored shower grout.

Occasionally I am able to reroute creativity into another art form - movement really helps at these times, and some of my best choreography work has occurred on days when the silk refused to speak. Yoga also helps, or just going for a walk - but there are always days when nothing will come, no matter what I do.

I've come to both loath and respect my creative block days - if I never had them, I'd never have a clean apartment, and that in and of itself is a reward. Also, there's the miracle that occurs when you finally push through....something happens to break the dam and creativity comes flooding back in. Today is one of those days. After almost a week of staring at a single piece of silk on a stretcher frame, 5 am sleeplessness had me sketching, and now I'm waiting for my resist lines to dry so that I can put dye to fabric.  This piece is one I've been trying to get my head around for sometime and will hopefully turn out to be one of the pieces I will display at my very first art show in April.

Inspiration is back, and oh it does feel good.

Making Treasuries on Etsy

I must confess, I am as computer savy as the average 4 year old - maybe. I know that my cousin's 8 year old puts me to shame, and I've never really been concerned with that fact - until I started my ETSY store.

Suddenly, I had to deal with sites like Paypal. For someone who hates paying for anything with anything other than cash (that invisible money makes me extremely nervous - I get it from my father who still believes that five dollars is a rip off for a pair of tennis shoes), Paypal was a whole new kettle of fish.

Once I got my mind around the fact that the invisible money, though riddled with fees, was actually money and relatively secure, I then had to figure out Etsy itself. This meant taking new photos of all of my items, and then taking them again when they didn't turn out the way I wanted them to, writing and rewriting blurbs about my stuff, shipping - oh don't get me started on the shipping.

Well, eventually, I figured it all out enough to get started. I put up my items, created a banner from a bunch of my photos, sat back and waited for the money to roll in....and waited....and waited. Hmmmm....so to sell your stuff on Etsy, people first need to be able to find it. The quest for "hearts" began.

Three months later, I'm still not where I wanted to be with my Etsy store, but I have learned more about this whole Internet phenomenon because of it, enough to start this "blog," and even add pictures and pages without my brain exploding from the effort. And, somewhere along the line, I stumbled onto my newest guilty pleasure - Etsy treasuries.

For the uninitiated, Etsy treasuries are compilations of items available for sale on Etsy by Etsy members. I love looking through and making treasuries. I love finding something interesting and then pairing it with other items that complement it. I adore seeing what other artists are making - and though no one else may feel this way, every time an item of mine ends up in a treasury, I feel rewarded....so I love to "reward" my favorite items in this manner too.

Though treasuries may not lead to my shop being well known, they give me an opportunity to browse and be a little bit creative - in a world of technology that is surely already leaving me once again in the dust, I can wallow in beautiful things, gain inspiration, and share....isn't that what art is all about?

My newest tree treasury
An Edgar Allen Poe inspired treasury

New To Me

Today I made the long awaited decision to cancel my webpage (a waste of 15 $ per month if you ask me) and instead focus my energy on a blog - I'm very new to this, and it took hours to get the whole thing set up, but so far so good.

I suffer from Artistic ADD....it's not enough for me to focus my energy on one art form, there's no way - not when there are so many ways to create, to touch the earth, to build an idea, to become more than we are through the act of making something beautiful.

I have no idea where I'll go with this blog, but I am hoping that it will give me a way to reach out, and a way for the general public to find me....I make art...of all kinds...and I will post as I go. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Something beautiful, I'll bet!