November 1st marks the beginning of Art of Everyday Month! I have never participated before, but was intrigued this year after listening to Leah Piken Kolidas, the founder of Art Everyday Month in an interview with Britt Bravo for the Arts & Healing Podcast. The premise is fairly straightforward - do something creative everyday for the month of November - no matter how small or what the form. It need not be serious Art with a capital A, but rather any creative process you choose. For example, one woman kept it simple and purchased an itty-bitty sketch book and put at least one line on a page per day.
I just received a nice package of 10 copies of the new issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, which includes reproductions of my series Evocations. They have paired my images of bottles, maps, and bodies with an article on the 5th precept of Buddhism - the non-use of intoxicants. I am still not exactly sure how my work connects to the writing, but I like the poetic stretch of having it appear in a new context. Also in this issue is a great article on the Gulf Oil Spill by my neighbor & gardener Wendy Johnson, plus an inspiring piece on "Yoga and Creativity" by Anne Cushman. I love what she says here about writing, which is also applicable to photography: "I used to believe that writing was a way to create a kind of back up life for myself, to pickle reality in paragraphs for future consumption. I thought I could capture life's precious, fluttering moments in a net of words. But through yoga - and growing older - I know that writing can't trump impermanence. What I've mounted on the head of my writer's pin are just cocoons. The actual butterflies have flow away long ago."Until today, I had never read Tricycle before. They contacted me out of the blue to ask permission to use my work in this issue. What I love is that my art is exposing me to new ideas - it's as if the pieces themselves have a life of their own, traveling out into the world and connecting in new ways with words, ideas, and people - giving me back the gift of new experience.
Yesterday I spent a blissful six hours at the San Francisco Center for the Book ripping, sewing, gluing, and cutting -- transforming books into art objects. It was with a little trepidation that I made my first tear into a book called The Long Tomorrow, but after my initial hesitation, I got quite into it - sewing pockets, gluing pages together, and even dismantling books entirely to discover their beautiful string bindings. The instructor, Jody Alexander, offered all kinds of great tools, examples, and techniques for working with found books. As an artist who loves containers (i.e. bottles and frames), I really love the idea of using the old discarded book as another form of containment. In particular, I really enjoyed turning this book (pictured here) on Australia into a "safe book," with all the pages glued together and then an opening cut out where some kind of art or poetic meaning could be placed. So many possibilities....such fun to open up to new techniques like these.
Early last Saturday morning, I took my inner artist out for a morning drive to Mill Valley for Maison Reve's French Flea Market. I am already a big fan of Maison Reve's aesthetic, and over the years, have found some wonderful gifts here. Once a season they fill their back yard with french-inspired treasures, and open their doors at 8am. My creative mind gets inspired just by being around all these wonderful objects - bottles, weathered wooden boxes, french street signs, cigar cases, hat boxes, bird baths, bicycles and much more. This time, I found a few treasures to take home to the studio including a bottle with a bright red metal lid, another bottle filled with blue sea glass, and an old book on mathematics that I want to take with me to this workshop next weekend and turn it into an art-altered book. All in all a soul-inspiring excursion.
The path to my studio is covered with weeds. Walking here today I was filled with the urge to pull them and create beauty and order everywhere around me. But instead of pulling, I stopped, took a deep breath, and acknowledged what the weeds can teach me. They are an invitation to prioritize in the midst of a busy, chaotic life. I can't do everything. I can, however, sharpen my focus on the things that really matter most to me. Rather than be reactive to my environment and all its overgrown disorder, I can instead walk through the weeds to the studio, where I can do the work that truly calls me today. Once inside, I made a handmade birthday card for a dear friend, packed up my art for the next venue of The Seduction of Duchamp exhibit this time at the Museum of Los Gatos, CA, and filled my journal with new ideas for my art. These activities made my soul smile.
“Wait. Observe. If you are very still, not impatient, quietly receptive, at some point Nature will make the first move to initiate the conversation. To the exact degree and moment that you are ready to receive, Nature will ever so slightly disturb the equilibrium between the two of you, will reach toward you.” – Peter London
This week has been graced by gorgeous weather. Today, the warm air called me outside where I took root under this blooming pear tree. I sat still there for an hour and half – journal in hand – occasionally jotting down an insight or an idea. But mostly I just sat, and let the earth hold me while my mind emptied.
I find myself at a place of new beginnings in my art. Ever since my daughter was born in May 2008, much of my creative energy has gone toward parenting. Now, as she is getting bigger and a little more independent, I find myself itchy to dive more deeply into my creative work again – yet I feel like a novice, hungry to make progress and yet uncertain of how to proceed. So this morning I did some journaling about how in the past I transitioned from one series of art to the next. I discovered some commonalities…1) It seems to take about 2 years for me to fully develop a new series - two years of experimentation, some false starts, some breakthroughs and then refinement.Sitting here today, this list becomes a kind of road map for me. I am setting out on what may be a two-year journey. I am looking for two ideas to work on in tandem. I will play and experiment and gather the things my intuition says to collect. I will look for some new tools and materials to inspire me. When I get a little further down the road, I will set up a deadline to accelerate the creation of new work. In the meantime, I am going to do my best to relax and trust and enjoy the process.
2) I like to work on two projects at one time, so that when I get stuck working on one, I can move over to the other one. Bottle Dreams and Milagros were both born together and so were Evocations and Sanctuary.
3) There are false starts, there are one-offs that never become a series, and there are pieces that never go anywhere, but making them was really important in the overall development of new work.
4) Gathering and collecting are a big part of my process. Getting the right bottles, maps or other objects around me in the studio is essential.
5) New technology, tools and materials helped me grow as an artist – whether it was taking classes on alternative photo processes that eventually helped me make Mapping the Body, or getting a digital camera which led me to make Evocations and Sanctuary.
6) A deadline has been a key factor in moving the work from experimentation to manifestation. Having a solo show on the calendar usually does the trick for me.
7) I don’t work on my art everyday. I never have. With a child in my life, this is even more true. My creativity lies dormant within me and then explodes with the right combination of prep work, materials in place, concentrated time and a deadline. A lot can come to together very quickly.
Today I sit in my studio and think about my garden. This year’s vegetables are beset by weeds and critters. Gophers have eaten whole heads of lettuce and bunnies have gnawed down kale and broccoli. As the parent of toddler, I just don’t have the kind of time I used to have to devote to weeding and tending. Yet, things still grow, and this weekend, I harvested fresh lettuce, some broccoli shoots, a couple zucchini, fresh herbs for tea, and three artichokes.
I am so grateful for this view from my studio. This time of year, it might not look like much – overgrown, dormant, chaotic. There are weeds and gopher mounds and plants that have gone wild. Yet amidst this disorder are fruit trees about to blossom, butterfly bushes that will burst into flower in a few months, dahlia bulbs hidden in the soil that will send up bright spots of red and yellow, strawberries waiting for summer to bear fruit, and artichokes thick with leaves promising edible flowers. This view sustains me – it mirrors my own creative life – overgrown, chipped away at by details, projects gone dormant. But spring is coming and there are roots, seeds, and bulbs – ideas - just waiting for a little care and the right timing to flower. There is a season for everything.
Two important parts of the creative process are feedback and community. Portfolio reviews can be a great way to get both. I blogged a while back about my experience at Photo Lucida and why I find such reviews so helpful. Here in the Bay Area two of my favorite arts organizations are hosting portfolio reviews, each with its own distinct flavor. 
Last night, I left cozy Muir Beach to head toward downtown San Francisco for a gathering of photographers at Gallery 291. One of the hardest parts about living in Muir Beach for me is leaving. It is such a beautiful, soothing place to be, and it takes a fifteen minute drive on a windy road to get over Mount Tam to Mill Valley and then onto the city. Most often, once I overcome the inertia, I am truly glad I ventured out. Last night was no exception. 
I have been thinking a lot about what inspires me lately and making sure I fill each day with a hit of inspiration. This word is also on my mind because I am going to be on a panel on this very topic on the evening of November 14 for the SPE West Conference in San Francisco. Today, I share a short list of things that have inspired me in the last 24 hours. 
Lately, my creative energy has been channeled into a whole new kind of endeavor. I am almost eight months pregnant with my first child, due on May 14. It is quite a miracle to feel this little being kicking around inside me. One unexpected side effect of this pregnancy has been that the more my belly swells, the less verbal I feel. Rather than initiate anything new, I have been filled with the burning desire for closure and completion of anything in progress. I imagine on the other side of birth, in the midst of parenting, new ideas for art will come to me. For now, I sort and organize, getting my nest ready to welcome this new life. 
For the past several months, I have let my vegetable garden go wild. The result has been a jungle of weeds and plants sending up tall shoots, going to seed. The other day, I traversed wet grass to the far corner of our yard to pay the vegetable garden a visit and was shocked to discover that even in the midst of this growing chaos, there was still bounty to be collected – a bouquet of purple broccoli, a few stray, slow-growing beets, and even a head of lettuce that somehow miraculously avoided the frost. It was heartening to see that things find a way to keep growing despite neglect or absence. If this can happen in the garden, I tell myself, it can also happen in the studio. And that makes my creative heart more at ease. Life these days has pulled me in many directions away from the studio – both the physical space of making art, and even the mental space of dreaming new work. I like to think that when I do return to the studio, some creative seeds planted in the past will have germinated and perhaps even grown into fully formed ideas – surprising and delighting me with their beauty and possibility.
I spent several days this past week absorbed in the computer, prepping files for printing new images in the Sanctuary series (like this one here). There was something so absorbing and meditative about the process of spotting out dust and light reflections. And there was also the overwhelm of the infinite choices one has to make working in Photoshop - the marvels of technology open the door to so many, many options. In the end, it is the accumulation of all these myriad choices that create the artwork - which image to bottle, which bottle piece to photograph, which digital file to print, which light flecks to leave, which to spot, which degree of color shift to make.... In the end, it is really about releasing perfectionism and trusting instinct - until that magic moment when the piece coalesces and becomes Sanctuary for me.
One of the benefits of the creative life is being able to shift my working rhythm in response to new opportunities and internal needs. The new year has already offered me the experience of changing pace several times. January started out fast and furious with teaching a new class at JFK University and planning for upcoming exhibitions. Then mid month, I shifted into vacation mode, traveling to Florida with my husband to visit his parents. There I shed the detail-minded thinking of my professional life in lieu of an enhanced focus on the present moment – fishing in the mangroves, piecing together a butterfly puzzle, reading one novel and then another, and napping most afternoons. I did a little shooting while there, taking photographs like this one while wading in shallow water, fishing for red fish. Maybe the memory of that cloud-covered morning will make its way into a Bottle Dreams piece someday.
