Category: Art

Search, Seek, and hopefully find.

The title seems to go with the word FOCUS? I read a blog/website called Daily OM. I get daily emails from them, sometimes I skim it, sometimes I don’t read it at all, and sometimes it grabs me. This one caught me and today’s post I am merely reposting…

path in a clearing
Lots of options – many paths.

I started reading it because of the title “Empowered Storytelling” – I am ALWAYS looking for ways to help me figure out how to tell the story of The Botanical Beauties & Beasties. But of course, the piece was about a different kind of storytelling. It was about our own life tales/stories. A good topic-I often wonder just how many more times I am going to be “reinventing” my story?  I recently realized I am not necessarily “reinventing,” I am just trying to get the story adjusted to the route I would like. Never easy, but I feel worth the effort. It would be MUCH easier to go along and  ‘bounce’-but I am trying for a conscious path.  I choose the image above left for it is definitely about paths: It is right here where I live, I added Beau for he is Minister of Wisdom, Gordy for he is a local artist and the recent sketch I created of an Maryland Whopping Crane flying in the trees-seems to cover the bases!

The piece is written by: BY MADISYN TAYLOR

Empowered Storytelling

“We all have a story to tell, but sometimes we get stuck in that story and become our story.”

“We all have our own life story. It is filled with relationships and events that help shape who we are and what we believe to be true about the world. Depending on our perspective and willingness to grow, our experiences can become fodder for negativity and patterns of playing the victim, or they can fuel a life of empowerment and continued self-development. It is the story we tell ourselves about what happens that makes all the difference.

Take a moment to look at the life story you create for yourself on an ongoing basis. If you generally feel peaceful about the past and trust in your ability to handle whatever comes your way, then you are framing circumstances in a manner that serves you well. On the other hand, if you retain a lot of guilt or resentment and often feel weighed down by life, you may want to start telling yourself a new version of past and present events. No matter who the characters are in your story or what they have done, you are the only one who can give their actions the meaning they will have for you. You are the only one who can define what role you will play in your own life. By taking responsibility for your story, you are able to learn and grow, forgive and find compassion, and most importantly, move on into a brighter future.

From now on, you can choose a life story that supports you. Let it be proof of your own resilience and creativity. Be kind with the roles you give yourself and generous with how many chances you get to learn what you need to know. When you remember that you are the author of your own story, you are free to create a masterpiece.”

http://dailyom.com/cgi-bin/display/articledisplay.cgi?aid=61036&aff=0

It’s spring time-Use your noggin!

Engaging your brain in new tasks is a key to boosting brain performance, or at least that is what the website of “Brain World Magazine” says. I will summarize the webpage here to get to my point: Most fabulous inventions happened when someone asked themselves- Is it possible and how can I do it? When you ask the hard questions, you expand your brain. This makes sense for it forces you to think and problem solve. As healthy humans, we WANT to discover-to search for new. This process keeps our brains active and functioning. “True creativity comes from an integrated brain that establishes new, robust connections between the parts of your brain dealing with cognition, emotion, vital functions, and crosstalk between the two hemispheres of your brain.”  ( http://brainworldmagazine.com/ask-brain-spring-creativity-within/)  My thoughts today are about creativity.

Think about a snake, a crab, a caterpillar. They all shed one skin and start anew. If we don’t keep trying to rejuvenate ourselves, we too can get stuck in our old skin. It’s SPRING, the season of renew-Go For It! The transformations we create and abide by change with the times and what is going on within ourselves. It is this pursuit of transformations, this metamorphosis, that forms the very base of the process of LETTING GO!  I believe this shedding is the core of what I will call creative imagination. My imagination most often happens when I just “DO”, when I don’t worry too much about what I may be creating.  I might not know “the hard question” and that’s ok. My brain is stretched by the creative process regardless of a conscious question. The process relaxes me and lets the questions flow. Right now I am working on an array of new projects. That alone is maxing out part of my mind. Creativity churns and keeps my imagination going full steam. (Or would it be imagination churns and keeps the creativity going?) It’s hard to dial my brain down and do things like sleep sometimes.  One project is my third children’s book which is indeed about imagination. I am struggling with a cover design. Resisting the usual exploding of things from a cloud, or a head, is difficult. Colors are about the only thing I have come up with. I might resort to the ‘norm.” After all, it is tried and true- but, it doesn’t feel very creative or imaginative.

So far I have a line drawing of a book open and exploding colors.
I like the “look,” but it does it say – “Hey this story is about the main character, our friend Fuddles, who has lost his imagination and then it’s found! Ideas?

Possible book 3 cover
Possible book 3 cover

Serendipity, the menace of planning?

Serendipity
It a zoo of a world out there – pick your animal and go!

It’s a mishmash, a little of this and a little of that. However, that is kind of what it feels like these days.  There’s drawing, there’s writing, there’s the Beasties, the books, this website: All have components/efforts “out there” in the fields of hope and hard work ….and and and… We all know the feeling. A bit overwhelming. Creatures are expanding and appearing all over the place! So I created the above piece to try to visually express the chaos and the excitement of some of the pieces trying to at least get into the same frame!

We make plans; we use planers-we set out with the BEST OF INTENTIONS! Then-poof-Serendipity happens and our best-made plans at times go kaput. Is that good? Is that bad? Does it matter?  Interestingly enough – the origin of the word  Kaputt is German and means something is destroyed.  The origin of the German is borrowing from the French: être capot, literally ‘to be bonnet’ or figuratively ‘to be defeated’. (At least according to Wikipedia.) Here, in English, it means done, broken, useless, and most probably destroyed. So even the word has serendipity in its flow and the roots of languages.  The paths we take, the roads we follow-they fork and they zigzag; that’s all part of the journey, the fun (hopefully), and ultimately is our individual ‘walk of life.’ The directions may seem obscure at times, but somehow things usually seem to work out.  So if your resolutions have already been ‘adjusted’, unknown/uncharted paths have already opened, new ideas are forming, new friendships are building, and new adventures await you-try to stay open to the possibility that serendipity keeps it all just that much more interesting! Try it out-for really, what have you got to lose?

Can art create vehicles of change?

I was walking with a friend of mine this morning. She has ventured into the world of photography with both feet and her whole heart. I admire that. We were chatting about the statement of: Do you go out with a fixed intent of creating a particular image? Stated bluntly, do you have something in mind when you click the shutter? Do you, as the artist/creator/visionary of the piece, have a focus and do you know what it is? It doesn’t matter what kind of “art” you create, it poses the interesting question of INTENT. As she is growing as a creator, which hopefully we all are in our own ways, she is comfortable not knowing what she wants to photograph yet (?) and goes out and tries all sorts of things. Bravo for experimentation. Bravo for creative growth.

As a creator of anything, how important is the piece/the image/the product? Is there a message? A hidden messages? What are the thoughts you as the creator had/have and what might the spectators views be? What becomes of the piece?  I was back from my walk and was listening to the below TED talk. The title-Can art amend history? caught my attention. I thought it was an impressive 12 mins. and I have placed it below for you. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

I have pulled this quote out of the talk: You can switch out the words “paintings” or “sculptures” for just about anything you may be working on or thinking about. “I want to make paintings, I want to make sculptures that are honest, that wrestle with the struggles of our past but speak to the diversity and the advances of our present. And we can’t do that by taking an eraser and getting rid of stuff. That’s just not going to work.”

As a new year rolls in the topics of change, unspoken truths, shifting focus in whatever ways/means rings true to you seems like the perfect time to post this idea and/or question of- Just what is your intent?

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:  Titus Kaphar · Artist

Titus Kaphar’s artworks interact with the history of art by appropriating its styles and mediums.

( https://ted.com/talks/titus_kaphar_can_art_amend_history?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread–a )

You also may want to check out –https://www.postmastersproject.com – looks pretty interesting too!

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