How To Break through A Creative Block

Spring, the season of renewal, has arrived. Tulips and daffodil shoots have pushed their way several inches above the ground. The lawn is free of all but a few patches of snow, and the spring peepers sing loudly at night. The first crocus  has poked it's pretty purple head out from a ground cover of dried leaves. A variety of birds are visible.

With spring comes the beginning of craft show season. With craft show season comes the need to build up an inventory. The pressure of having to create on a deadline can often lead to a creative block.

Here are a few helpful ways to break through a creative block;

1. Step away from what you are working on and take a break.
2. Clean, organize, or rearrange your work area.
3. Take a walk. Often the environment can be an inspiration.
4. Flip through a collection of crafting books, art books, magazines, or other artists work.
5. Shop for new materials, or just go shopping.
6. Get some sleep.
7. Write down any inspirational ideas or thoughts.
8. Talk it out with someone.
9. Stay positive.
10. Don't pressure yourself.

Creative blocks can last for any amount of time, and hopefully not too long. A creative block can be what is needed to help refresh the motivation and inspiration that is needed to create.

Jenny - Reclaimed Designs

DIY Leaf Pincushion Pins

 Leaf Pincushion Pins Tutorial

For all you crafters who sew, or know someone who sews, here's a little way to green up your pincushions!

Materials:

Sculpey

x-acto blade or even a toothpick will do

foil

flat top pins or needles from the dollar store

Choose or make various shades of green by mixing the ready made colors with white or clear sculpey.  Just knead the two shades together until blended.  Roll into a tube, and cut some slices.

Make a leaf shape of a slice by rolling it into a ball, flattening it, and pinching one end.  Push in the pin or needle, and push the clay back onto the puncture so it's sealed.  Its nice to have decorative pin heads that are flat, as they are easier on the fingers and okay to iron over.

Gently press the x-acto blade or toothpick onto the top of the sculpey to make the veins of the leaf.

I got some leather punch tools to press into my sculpey pins as well!

 Place or even make the pins right on top of a small piece aluminum foil.  That way you don't even have to move them after you've formed them, which usually distorts their sides.  Bake at 275 degrees for 10 minutes and they are done!  So simple and fun!

Easter Egg by Vanessa of the Pudgy Rabbit

The Garden Party Tortoise goes on his way to new projects

Jody

www.astudiobythesea.etsy.com

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

I've mentioned Alyson Stanfield's blog ArtBizCoach.com in the past and sometimes posted a link to one of her articles that has seemed especially helpful or provocative.  Her book  I'd rather be in the studio!  is a great guide to the creative life, especially with regard to taking steps to market and share your work.  She subtitles her book: "The Artist's No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion".

"Live with Routines to Free Your Creative Mind" is a title of one of her chapters.  Do we automatically associate routines with creativity?  On the one hand, I continue to hold dear the idea that creativity should bubble freely, without being bound by restriction or structure.  And yet, if you go back through some of the previous posts in this series, you'll sometimes see that there are many people who use routine and discipline to make themselves ready for their creative expression.

Alyson suggests that "if you structure your life around routines, your mind will be free to respond to your creative inspiration."  Her favorite routine is to make sure she is dressed, made up, hair done before she starts her day - it establishes the professional tone she wants right from the beginning.  The last post on Maya Angelou talked about the ritual she uses to begin her writing.  I like to set out the materials I expect to use, clear the kind of space I'll need, choose music or cd's that I will listen to.  I get certain tasks done early in the day - exercise, meditation, shopping, etc. , so the studio time will not be interrupted by things hanging over my head.  There's often an inertia when I want to work.  The idea of just sitting down and beginning feels impossible.  But if I ease myself into it by my small rituals, then I find myself relaxing and ready, ideas flow.

How about you?  Do you have established routines that enhance your creative process?  Or does that feel too cumbersome?

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

I'm reading Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman for a book club.  (This is the fourth volume of her six volume autobiography)  What a life she has led!  She has done everything!  She's seen highs and lows, has suffered and danced.  She admits that she's not the best at some of the things she's done:  she sang and danced for a living and some people said she wasn't the greatest singer.  But people came to see her - she was such an entertainer.  She is often remembered for her poetry - yet she doesn't get great acclaim from "professional" poetry circles.  She took over for Bayard Rustin as the northern coordinator of the SCLC to assist Martin Luther King's efforts.  She had no experience in this kind of thing, but she used her talent for  organizing and her personal charisma to do work that she felt strongly committed to.

This quote of hers made me laugh:  in  talking about what she does to write, she said " I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write.  I suppose by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears and over my face."

I imagine when you've got so many ideas, you're balancing so many activities, that that's about what it feels like when you sit down to concentrate.  And to actually do implement a physical reminder to focus could be useful.

If you've never read any of her works, I would recommend picking one up - she's an engaging writer, who has a good story, an earthy woman you'd like to meet.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into a sun."  Pablo Picasso

I think the operative word is "transform".  I wonder if that is one of the essential qualities of any work that is characterized as art.  I've seen many paintings that technically may be very good, but they don't seem to have much life.  The painter has not been an instrument of transformation, using her acquired skills to capture and transmit an experience in a unique way.

Frederick Franck is an artist I admire very much.  He lived a long and productive life and  his later years were spent in Warwick, NY.  I saw was a wonderful exhibit of his work in Poughkeepsie before he died.  Early works showed his incredible skills with line drawings, beautiful finely detailed paintings.   Throughout his career he played with every medium imaginable.  Toward the end, as his eye sight was deteriorating he took up the Chinese brush and his paintings became very simple.  But they were so moving.  I remember one in particular of a sun setting over water.  You could feel the heat.

May we focus on essence in our lives, may we be given patience to allow it to blossom.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it. "  Dee Hock

When I was looking for quotes for this column I came across  one which caught my attention,  but the author was totally unknown to me, so I looked him up.  Turns out he is someone with some authority to make  such a comment.

According to Wikpedia he is the founder of Visa and after spending 16 years in management there he withdrew from the business world for almost 10 years.  Then in 1991 he gave an acceptance speech for his Business Hall of Fame induction, saying "Through the years I have greatly feared and sought to keep at bay the four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper - Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition.  In 1984 I severed all connections with business for a life of isolation and anonymity, convinced I was making a great bargain by trading money for time, position for liberty, and ego for contentment - that the beasts were securely caged."

It sounds to me as though his whole life has been dedicated to creativity.  As I look through some of the blogs that people have written about him and his later books, I have become intrigued.  So was this time of withdrawal a cleaning out of the mind that he refers to?  Or was that an earlier statement? Something brought him back out of isolation.  I don't usually read books about business  or business leaders, even though I know there may be value in these stories.  But I think I have to go find one of his books.  I'll let you know what I think when I do.  Or maybe you'll beat me to it.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

We are surrounded by signposts and guides for the creative life.   Beside the sampling of quotes from well known people that I've been sharing over the past six months, you will be aware of the limitless resources in your own circle - family, nature, friends, books, movies, music.  Sometimes it's a good idea to explore beyond your circles, too - to really get a sense of the abundance that is out there.  We will each gravitate to certain kinds of messages and messengers, and trying new things will help you learn what it is that you find most helpful.

We spent New Year's eve with friends, talking, eating, singing, playing old folk songs.  But on New Year's Day we attended a wonderful concert in Kingston organized by Amy McTear:  the 2013 New Year's Day Community Harmonic Choir.  The space was beautiful, the participants dressed in white adding to the ethereal atmosphere.  It was a very different concert experience for us, with gong, drums, guitars, flute, digeridoo, singing bowls, and gorgeous haunting chant.  The audience was invited to join in whenever they felt comfortable doing so.  There was a pattern to the evening related to the breath: focus on exhaling to release sorrow, pain, waiting in stillness, then building to a celebration with focus on inhalation.   It was a moving way to start the new year.   Rather than making resolutions, I liked her emphasis on setting intentions regarding who you want to be in the new year.

Here is a quote from her Life Creed that she recited at one point:  "My inner lover knows I am on a holy mission, a grand treasure hunt of finding out through what I love, what I have come to offer."


As you create yourself  in this new year, may you be alert to the clues offered by your passions, may these guide you in your journey.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"The only hope Mother Earth has for survival is our recovering creativity - which is of course, our divine power.  Creativity is so satisfying, so important, not because it produces something but because the process is cosmological.  There's joy and delight in giving birth."  Matthew Fox

In this last week of the  year it is all too apparent that our world is suffering.  We watch the erosion of  consideration, compassion, the environment, values, and sometimes feel hopeless, that things have gone too far, that perhaps we can't recover.  Matthew Fox's words are encouraging.    They remind me of that popular fund raising technique we hear on the radio when they say, "Make your contribution  within the next half hour and we have an anonymous donor who will match what you give."   We have experienced our own small successes when we've lived out our individual and communal creativity; as we look to the new year, what will you birth into being?  What deserves your attention, your nourishment?  Trust that whatever you "donate" will be matched in surprising ways.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter every day epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world."  John Milton

It is in that time of awakening when we might experience new visions of and for ourselves.  May our eyes be opened, our heart be quickened, our spirit be deepened.  Our communities and the world are desperate for our creative engagement.

What moves you to gratitude in this season?  What is being born in you as a result of this feeling?

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"There is no one definitive creative path.  There are many ways to be creative - not only intuitive ways but organized, logical ways, too. "  Theresa Bayer

We limit our ourselves when we judge that our right brain  activity is the creative stuff.  That's only half of our power.  Now there are some of us who might live more to the right, others are more comfortable and blessed in the left - most of us will find that as individuals,  combinations of intuitive and logical faculties are pretty essential.

I see people coming through my shows who are apologetic about their "creative" abilities " - "I'm not an artist", "I never was able to paint", "I can't play the piano", " You all are so creative".  And you want to ask "What do you do? What excites you, What makes you feel alive?  When do you feel satisfaction in your days?"

I believe that we need to pay attention to our gifts, to recognize them, honor them, share them.  And to not compare them - we are all essential.  We all have the potential to be creative.  

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge.  We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind."  Friedrich Nietzsche

What a great metaphor this is.  What we have to give has to come from what is inside us, what we have gathered, what we have digested, stored, and turned into an offering.  We each cover different fields, pursue different flowers.   The honey in different locales will have distinct signature flavors, scents.  It is the contributions from all the members of the community combined that produce the sweetness that sustains new life, expanded vision.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.  Each of us has cause to think with gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."  Albert Schweitzer

In this season that calls us to gratitude, may we give thanks for all those who support us, have supported us on our journeys.  Often we don't even know the people who might offer that spark.  Recently, I was moved to write to someone whose posts I frequently find to be inspirational.  Something she said triggered a memory for me of someone else whom I'd forgotten.  As I look back over my many years and see the path that has zigzagged and swerved, I can see John for the influence he was.  He held a signal lamp that guided me through a rocky time and also planted a shard  of light that I can see has grown.

When we look closely, we start to see so many of these people - stars, fireflies, constellations, galaxies.  So much to be grateful for!

When did you lose your light?  Who helped to reignite it?  Is it different?

Craft Fair Displays Part Four

More Ideas from Crafts at Lyndhurst and Others

Crafty Baby

Jill Chuckas of Crafty Baby has long experience as a small business woman and craft fair seller.  I enjoyed her use of old baby furniture in her display, and the loads of color and comfort in her wares.  There even a cot on the right showing off her blankets - the sort of cots daycare centers provide for their toddlers to take naps - along with a toy chest, old cradle, and room screens. 

The great modern fabrics she uses make me wish I still had little ones to buy for.

Cloisonne by Kristin Holeman

I've been a frequent attendee at the Lyndhurst Crafts Fair and this was the first time I'd seen Kristin's work, and I was blown away by her craft.  Kristin had come up all the way from Florida with this lovely and cohesive shop.

Kristin's husband has a love of ship salvage, and her industrial looking display is actually old rusted wrenches - you place the wrench on a giant bolt and poke an bar in the holes to turn it.  The rusty color goes with her orange color scheme and makes a great contrast with the finish and detail of her jewelry.  The rings here are actually her daughter's work.  A talented family.

I couldn't take pictures of her amazing work without reflections, and her shop was super busy!


That's it for the Lyndhurst displays.  Here is my own display, set up in Cape Cod during the summer.  It consists of two folding bookcases from Target, a raised folding plastic 6' table with white bead board panels screwed into the front.  I display some of my prints with stones that have a slot cut into them (stones ordered on Etsy.)  Though I get a lot of compliments on how my display looked, I think it's a complicated set up and am looking to simplify my shop for fairs.

a Studio by the Sea

Last but not least, a beautiful holiday display by Rosi Zingales last year in New York.

Hanky Blanky

I hope everyone gets some new ideas on improving their displays!  Please let me know if you see something interesting and commendable, so we can share.

Jody

a Studio by the Sea

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

This week I thought I'd offer something a little different.  I occasionally watch TED programs online, short 15 to 20 minute talks on all kinds of subjects.  I find the presentations thought provoking, often absolutely fascinating.  A friend recently suggested this one with Beau Lotto who shares his work with kids and science.  He has found that kids can make some great contributions to science because of their ability to play, coming in with fewer preconceptions than most adults.  He says, "Play is one of the only human endeavors where uncertainty is actually celebrated.  Uncertainty is what makes play fun."  This ability to play is an important component of most creative work.  Take a look when you get a chance and see what you think.  Does it make you look at your materials with new light and energy?  What does it stir up for you?

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."  Pablo Picasso

I really like this quote.  There exists a sterotypical model of the frustrated writer, painter, composer;  the artist is in a funk, pulling her hair out, drowning himself in drink, making her own and everyone else's lives miserable as she"waits" for inspiration.  There is a shutting down, closing off.  The atmosphere is no longer welcoming.  It's something of a paradox.  You can't force inspiration or the creative muse.  But you can keep going while you wait for it to come.  You can organize your materials, take yourself on artist's dates, practice your skills.  You can maintain a work schedule and create  something, even if it's not quite what you think might be "the" thing that is just beyond your vision.  Volunteer some time teaching, take a class in an area that might be a little different for you, but may create a spark that sets you on fire again.

And keep the faith.  Inspiration will come if you've kept the windows open, you've laid the wood.  Now it's just a matter of spark and breath.

Signposts and Guides for the Creative Life

"Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world and not ourselves, for it is not of our making."  Jose Marti

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, there is overwhelming evidence that many people take this idea seriously.  There are so many individuals using their creativity to find ways to support those whose lives have been altered, compromised, shattered, inconvenienced, saddened.  Celebrities rally to raise monies through concerts.  Churches and organizations put their heads and organizational skills together to figure out the best and most effective ways to get goods, services, and funds where they're needed.  Small art groups try to figure out how to parlay their talents into support for galleries that have lost everything.

One of my favorite examples of individual creativity was a facebook post of a picture taken of a sign outside someone's home, I think, in New Jersey.   The sign was attached to a fence where a power strip had been attached.  It said "We have power.  Please feel free to charge your cell phones here."  Thoughtful, generous, imaginative, compassionate.  Without the ability to communicate easily, life gets so much more difficult in these frightening times.

What examples have impressed you most?  How might you use the talents you have?  Huge commendations to those who have begun to share their gifts already.  Share your ideas; creativity is contagious.

Signs and Guideposts for the Creative Life

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.  The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."  Ray Bradbury

Sometimes it might feel like it's a struggle to maintain our creativity - to find the time, to figure out the right expression, to juggle conflicting needs and desires.  I see this quote as a good followup to last week's post which was about considering creativity as a way of life.  What I like about Mr. Bradbury's statement is the suggestion that we are being filled whether we're intending it or not.  Perhaps we just need to ensure we are not being filled with junk of our own making, that we're saving a little space for what might be offered to us. And then somehow we have to be sensitive to when it's time to share what has quietly been developing within us.  This idea makes me take a slow breath, with an exhalation that releases tension I hadn't realized was building.

Signs and Guideposts for the Creative Life

Here is a piece of wisdom from Madeleine L'Engle: "But unless we are creators we are not fully alive.  What do I mean by creators?  Not only artists whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint or clay or words.  Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living.  Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career."

Many of us ARE engaged in the material  or verbal arts.  But those things we produce are not what allow us to claim the label "creative".  There is something larger and deeper that we tap into and these things we make or write or sing or dance are just expressions of that center.  There are many people in the world who are amazingly creative who don't produce any particular thing, and yet when you think about them and the way they live their lives, you recognize them as the most alive people you know.

I think of one friend from many years ago who provided the most welcoming place to visit - in her home and in her heart.  Carol would not describe herself as creative.  Her house was warm, eclectic, a bit messy, totally inviting.  Her meals were simple and delicious.  When you were with her you had her   attention.  Children and animals loved her.  She liked to discuss things, question, mull topics over.  Maybe you'd see something from a different perspective.  She was unfailingly kind and generous.  Her life was her art form.

Each day we are given the opportunity to be creative - whether or not we can get into our studio, open our box of supplies, find time for lunch.  What might you do today with this gift?

Craft Fair Displays Part III

Displays from the Lyndhurst Craft Fair

The Fall Crafts at Lyndhurst, Tarrytown, New York, is a well organized and well publicized high end craft fair put on by Artrider.  They have one in the spring as well, which is one of best selling fairs in the country, with entry fees to match.  I've been going to these fairs off and on, for over twenty years, and they really are top of the line and well worth attending as a buyer or spectator.  

I've only chosen a few displays from the hundreds there because I'm focusing on the unusual and the practical with regard to our readers and members.  There were many professional and elegant displays by full time craftspeople and artists that most of us could neither afford nor build ourselves.  The following displays show what some artists with a wonderful imagination can do with a modest budget and simple carpentry skills.

 Jessica Weiss Jewelry Studio

Jessica's clean modern jewelry is set off by her gleaming silver booth.  Sheets of metal give her booth the clean lines of industrial chic, echoed by etched grey plexiglass shelves and boards.  I forgot to ask where her metal sheets come from, but I know I picked up one for my lampworking table from the local Home Depot, and any drill with the proper bit can drill through the soft aluminum.  They're thin, light, and easy to clean, which make them great for the traveling craftsperson.  Bravo!

 The clever use of a perforated panel for her beautiful earrings, with even a mirror attached!   Jessica Weiss Jewelry Studio

Seeka

Stavit and Nachshon are Israeli artists working in Brooklyn combining painting, resin, and crystals on laser cut stainless steel to make their one of kind judaica and jewelry.  I was entranced by their beautiful and delicately detailed work, but their display is very interesting as well.  Matching frames display their work but they are held in place by sturdy metal piping attached to the tables.  As our weather gets windier and more unpredictable, this looks like a splendid answer to that problem.

The white and pink was unusual and fun!  Seeka

Hoist Away Bags

Laura Cleminson of Hoist Away Bags, comes from Maine and makes some of the nicest recycled sail bags I've seen, adding more color and lively design than other makers.  A sailor herself, she knows how the sails were used, and how the bags will be used - they look really tough and well made.  She's also taken her sailing experience into her display, all of which easily fits into her car.  Everything is hung from ropes and wooden boards.

I completely love her tote bag display, which idea came from the cabin of a big boat she was sailing on.  The totes are right at the level for customers to look at, and with one hand you can pull the left knot up and out of the slot, freeing the bag for trying on or closer inspection.

And here is a rope and dowel ladder for her beautiful bookbags.  Her display is everything a craftsperson could want: windproof, rainproof, light, easy to transport, easy to set up, charming and clever.  Hoist Away Bags


I find the ingenuity of others inspiring, and I hope others can discover ways to improve their displays through these posts.

Jody Lee

a Studio by the Sea

Signs and Guideposts for the Creative Life

Sometimes we find ourselves wishing for more stillness, serenity, control, or order in our lives.  Those are good things - they have their benefits.  But then Friedrich Nietzsche comes along and says "One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

As I mull over this quote, I think of elements of chaos that he may have been referring to: upheaval, dissatisfaction, confusion, hunger, conflict, exploding energy, pain, excitement, disorganization.

An image from nature that might be relevant is the way a butterfly comes into being.  When the caterpillar goes into its pupal stage, I used to think that it just shed it's external skin, somehow made some wings, and popped back out - like changing outfits.  But then many years ago I learned that when it pupates, it undergoes total transformation.  The internal organs and bodily tissues lose their integrity, become a cellular soup, then reorganize into the organs and structures that will be needed by the butterfly.  That concept blew me away.  

Are you able to think of instances when you've observed something amazing that has come from  utter confusion or disaster?  Have you recognized chaos within yourself that later resulted in the creation of something deeply alive and totally unexpected?