New Ideas

"New ideas always find me this way way, ramshackle, delightful, and unexpected. And I am convinced that ideas are everywhere, like wild daisies, there for the picking. We all have access. Anyone can snag the corner of an idea and give it a tug, pulling down from the firmament some fragment of greatness. It's not a lack of ideas that stops us from creating great work; it's that we make too many excuses and lack the courage to dream thing real. It's that having the guts to yank an idea out of the ether and toss it into a cycle of rapid prototyping, drafting and revising requires focus and risk. The creative process is always an encounter with the unknown, and demands a willingness to veer off course and be transformed." - Christina Rosalie from A Field Guide To Now

New ideas are finding me. I am working with them, chipping away and bringing them into form like the new series of prints in progress pictured here on my studio work table. I am practicing diligence and patience. And I am feeling very blessed to have the capacity - the space and the time (though I always crave more) - to take my visions and make them tangible and real.

Clearing the River

"Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is made up of divine paradox. To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down." -Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run with the Wolves 

I have been blessed this week with time to "clear the river" --  meaning large chunks of time in the studio to open the flow of creativity. Today I started a new journal with this quote above, cleaned my space, and shot fresh images of my hands. I am excited to see where all of this will take me. 

Image above shot this past Saturday at Muir Beach with my iPhone 4S ©marydanielhobson

New Year, New Life

We celebrated the arrival of 2011 with the birth of our second daughter - Jessica Ann - born on January 2. Since then we have been living in that tender space of nurturing a newborn - not much sleep, but lots of grace. I love how well Andrea Sher describes this time in this quote from her blog, The Superhero Journal...

"There is a way that birth opens you up, not only physically but in other ways too. This birth cracked me open, not in a traumatic way, but in the sense that I am more open now than I have been in a long time. The feeling that this is a window of opportunity is almost palpable-- a crack letting more light in, more love, and more healing than I ever could have imagined. I am treading lightly with it, not wanting this window to close, wanting to be as conscious as I can to take advantage of all this moment has to give. I almost don't want to say too much about it, just to acknowledge that this time feels sacred and fleeting, and that the possibility of miracles feels unbearably close."

Inspiration from the Open Studio

My Open Studio earlier this month was one of my favorite I have ever done. The weather was warm and bright. There was a steady stream of almost 100 terrific folks who inspired me with their interest and appreciation of my work. Above all, having the Open Studio at my home studio in Muir Beach allowed me to integrate my home/family life with my art/professional life. My mother signed her books on the deck. My daughter played and laughed in the yard with the other young children. My neighbor sold her wonderful plants. I felt so wrapped in the spirit of community and family in the midst of being a professional artist. It was a magic day for me.

I hope to keep that magic alive by offering another one of these events in October, partnering again with Wendy Johnson and her Dragon's Bend Nursery. I will keep you posted as soon as I know the date - we are thinking late October when the pumpkins and apples are ready for picking.

While preparing for this last open studio, I could feel my creative energy rise. I wanted to share some of that enthusiasm. So I printed up copies of my 11 favorite quotes on the creative process, folded them, stamped them with a red butterfly, placed them in the white basket picture here, and added a note that invited people to select one as a gift of creative inspiration. It was my way to say to visitors that day "thank you for coming and inspiring me to keep going on this exquisite & challenging path of making art, and may you too be inspired to follow your own calling." Many of these quotes I have shared on this blog before. I share one more now...

You’re a song

A wished for song

Go through the ear to the center

Where sky is, where wind, where silent knowing.

Put seeds and cover them.

Blades will sprout where you do your work.

-Rumi

Dialoguing with Nature

“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

Today was so warm again that I could actually sit in the hammock and read outside (a rarity in West Marin). Peter London’s Drawing Closer To Nature: Making Art in Dialogue with the Natural World is a book I bought a few years ago, and today it yelled at me from the bookshelf – “Read me!” I am so glad it did. He writes so well about how to attune oneself as an artist to the natural world and to use that connectedness to nature as a way to make deep, authentic and meaningful work.

Inspired by him and by my respite under the pear tree yesterday, today I began a conversation with the apple trees in my garden. I had a vision of the trees themselves acting like easels. I went outside with a big white piece of paper and used the recently trimmed sapling branches to weave the paper onto one of the trees. I had brought crayons and pencils and pens, thinking I would draw. But something magical happened as soon as I attached the paper. The wind blew and the tree's own shadow danced across the paper – like a photogram. I went running back to the studio for my camera and shot 80 pictures of paper dancing in the wind – one of them here. I have no idea where this is taking me, but it feels fresh and exciting. I look forward to where this conversation with the apple trees will take me next.

www.marydanielhobson.com

The Art of Sitting Still

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 looked around and saw how often my perception of my garden is colored by all the work I see that needs to be done. I am almost always outside with clippers and digging tools in hand – keeping busy, not missing a moment to improve on this place. Today was a like a mini vacation – I relished the beauty of the natural world around me as it is right now, with no need to change it.

So often as an artist I forget the importance of sitting still. My time in the studio feels limited and precious. I tell myself I must be productive and busy to justify claiming this time for myself, time away from my family and other responsibilities. Yet today I was reminded how stillness is in itself an action. With it, comes a deep sense of renewal and connectedness that makes me a better artist and a better person.

Coming back into the studio, I took heart from Mary Oliver’s wise words tacked to my bulletin board…
“Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.”

The Artist's Way For Today

“As artists, we must learn to try. We must learn to act affirmatively. We must learn to act as though spring is at hand – because it is. We are the spring that we are waiting for. Wherever creativity is afoot, so is a blossoming. All creative acts are acts of initiative. In order to make art, we must be willing to labor. We must be willing to reach inside and draw forth what we find there. On an inner plane, we are all connected to a larger whole. This is what is meant by inspiration, this connection to something greater than ourselves. But it begins with where we are. It begins with possibility.” – Julia Cameron

This quote is the bit of inspiration for March 15 in Julia Cameron’s new compilation called The Artist’s Way Every Day. I turned to her book this morning to help invoke my creative spirit. I have a week in which I have carved huge chunks of time out for the studio – four days, 7 hours each. How bountiful it feels. Everywhere around me nature is blooming. Fruit trees are flowering and new leaves decorate the branches of deciduous trees. Spring is here. I want to use this time of rebirth to catlyze something new and tangible in my creative work.

Lost

I have been feeling rather lost lately – my mind scattered by the unpredictable rhythms of new motherhood and the attempt to pursue (perhaps too much of) what I did before I had a baby. Today I found myself a quiet moment under our apple tree, on a blanket with my daughter who takes endless delight in staring at light filtering through tree branches. A poem I memorized years ago floated back into my mind and gave me comfort.

LOST
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

-David Wagoner
(published in David Whyte’s The House of Belonging)

Blink

Poet and painter Kirsten Rian has a wonderful practice of emailing a poem to her friends every Monday. This is one she recently sent me - it took my breath away.



Blink
by Morton Marcus

You’ve got to love life so much that you don’t want to
miss a moment of it, and pay such close attention to
whatever you’re doing that each time you blink you can
hear your eyelashes applauding what you’ve just seen.

In each eye there are more than 80 eyelashes, forty
above and forty below, like forty pairs of arms working,
80 pairs in both eyes, a whole audience clapping so loud
you can hardly bear to listen.

160 hands batter each other every time you blink.
“Bravo!” they call. “Encore! Encore!”

Paralyzed in a hospital bed, or watching the cold rain
from under a bridge—remember this.

(Image: Vision II, ©1999 from the series Mapping the Body)

Navigating the Imagination

“The notion of a curious, wistful man walking the city and turning up treasure in debris, seeing the transcendent in the forgotten, the discarded, the mundane – such a notion is intrinsically hopeful.” – Leah Hager Cohen

This morning while flipping throught the Sunday NY Times, the Book Review section fell open to page eleven revealing an illustration of Joseph Cornell’s “Parrot for Juan Gris” (pictured here) and a review by Leah Hager Cohen of the new Cornell catalogue, Navigating the Imagination by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. I was blessed to have received this book as a Christmas gift from my parents – my father having been mesmerized by the exhibit as much as I was. For those of you who read my earlier blog post on Cornell, I did indeed make it back again to see this show two more times before it closed last week, and I was richly rewarded for it.

One thing I was struck by was Cornell’s use of containers within containers, such as a box that contains little drawers that one must open to discover the treasures inside. Unfortunately the museum does not let you actually touch the pieces, but I could imagine the delighted curiosity that would accompany opening each of the drawers in a piece like Untitled (Aviary with Drawers) from 1949. I myself as an artist have been consistently fascinated by the concept of containment – often using containers as the starting point for a new piece – whether that starting point be a new bottle or an elegant frame. The idea of doubling the concept of containment by adding containers within containers sparks new creative ideas for me.

Another thing that impressed me was how richly Cornell fed his creative spirit. An incredibly well read artist (the catalogue contains a selected bibliography of 150 titles in his library), he often drew direct inspiration from figures like Emily Dickenson. He also created “folders, slipcases and small valises with loose arrangements of ‘imaginative pictorial research.’” For example, in his portfolio, “Portrait of Ondine,” Cornell spent 20 years gathering ephemera such as illustrations, photos, newspaper articles and more all in homage to the nineteenth century ballerina Fanny Cerrito in her role as Ondine. As Hartigan says, “the combination reveals how far Cornell ranged in creating a new poetic context for his subject.” I love the idea of researching an area of fascination over a long period and allowing the research to be poetic, rather than linear and multimedia, rather than purely verbal.

As the book reviewer describes with this catalogue on Joseph Cornell, Lynda Roscoe Hartigan “doesn’t navigate his imagination so much as map the explicit tributaries that fed it.” And in doing so she has created a new tributary that is feeding the river of my own imagination.

A Fresh Start

“In fact, the ability to start out upon your own impulses is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again – never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment…Getting started again – in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm” – Seamus Heaney

The new year offers the gift of freshness. Now that December’s social festivities are complete, I turn inward and cultivate my inner world. Today this has looked like cleaning, sorting, organizing, integrating…laying a solid foundation for the year to come. Soon the studio will feel like a clean slate, ready for 2008 to fill it with new ideas and impulses.

Image above is #008 from the Evocations series.

Gift Giving and Guerilla Art

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is gift giving – thinking about each person, brainstorming gift ideas for them, making or acquiring the gift, and then wrapping it in colorful paper and ribbons. There is creative thinking and some handiwork involved that is very satisfying to the artist in me. In fact, during the holiday season, I usually derive more pleasure and excitement from the act of giving than the act of receiving.

Lately, I have been thinking more about the relationship between art making and gift giving. One person said to me recently “Art is a gift to society that the artist pays for.” This was a rather world weary response addressing the fact that artists are usually not well compensated financially for their hard work and dedication, and yet the art gets made anyway. My more optimistic attitude is that the artist is compensated in ways other than financial – namely the satisfaction of having expressed something from deep within that in turn can connect and communicate with others, sharing beauty, insight, and new perspectives.

One of the more provocative ways art can be a gift is anonymously. I have been so intrigued by the work of Keri Smith and her recent book, The Guerilla Art Kit. She defines guerilla art as “any anonymous work installed, performed, or attached in public spaces, with the distinct purpose of affecting the world in a creative or thought-provoking way." Her book includes great ideas and tools for guerilla art projects – some as simple as arranging a pattern of leaves in a chain link fence or chalking a favorite quote on the sidewalk. I love the idea of art like this that is ephemeral, generous, and perspective changing. I was delighted to interview Keri for the Arts and Healing Network’s current isuse of AHN News. As Keri explains in this interview…

“Coming across something that is unexpected helps to pull us out of our habitual ways of thinking and reacting to the world. This goes for the creation side of things too - we must tune in to the environment in order to allow it to speak to us and to notice the little things. This, in my opinion, is the greater purpose of art - to pull us out of our unconscious behavior and make us aware of something we might have missed. It asks us to pay attention, and, as I mention in the book, guerilla art says, 'the human spirit is alive here.'"

Keri also writes a wonderful blog, called The Wish Jar, which I often read with my morning coffee before heading to the studio. Her writing reminds me to slow down mentally, think creatively, experience and appreciate the details of nature, and enjoy the exploratory process of creativity. What better gift can art give.

The Rhythm of Open Studios

I had a really lovely Open Studio last weekend – lots of people, nice conversations, and some good sales too. One thing I have learned after doing these kinds of events for almost ten years is that each weekend I open my doors to the studio is a unique experience with its own distinct rhythm. Some have a steady trickle of people all day long, other weekends they come all at once and then leave me with long lulls. This one had a very nice, gentle rhythm – some overlapping visitors and also some nice breaks. In between visitors, I got to catch up on my photography reading. I subscribe to many photo/art publications including Photograph, Photo-Eye Booklist, Art on Paper, Camera Arts as well as newsletters from photography non-profits. Here a few of my favorite quotes from the weekend’s reading…

“One might compare the art of photograpy to the act of pointing…” -John Szarkowski, from his NY Times Obituary

“Art is an additive process and the thing about photography is we go out and we’re at the mercy of what we find. That’s the real discovery. The important thing is quality of attention span and to use it for acceptance rather than for negation.” -Frederick Sommer quoted by Emmet Gowin

“I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can’t know exactly what it is we are doing…It’s cool to be wrong. It’s so essential, so necessary. It’s so appropriate to be confused, to be muddled, to be unsure. We preach clarity. Get your ideas organized. Get your thinking straight….But it is the aliveness of the unguarded intuition and the persistence of our own feelings that guide us to our discoveries.” -Emmet Gowin interviewed by John Paul Caponigro

Living Inside Books

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner, wind themselves around your limbs like spidersilk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you, they work their magic…” -Margaret Lea in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This summer has given me the time to dive into words again. I feel like the child I once was who spent hours living inside novels. The first of several books on my path this summer was The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I listened to this story unfold on my iPod. It was so well read that the world around me disappeared and I was wrapped in the twin stories of book-lover Margaret who is recording the life of writer Vida Winter. There are such wonderful passages about the joys of reading. In one stretch, Setterfield describes Margaret’s mundane tasks leading up to 8pm when “the world came to an end - it was reading time…. Against the blue candlewick bedspread, the white pages of my open book illuminated by a circle of lamplight were the gateway to another world.”

One of the other worlds I traveled to this summer was an island off the coast of Maine. A friend lent me her copy of Joe Coomer’s Pocketful of Names about an artist who lives and works in solitude on an island until one day a dog washes up on her beach, then a teenage boy looking for a place to a hide, and soon others…Her solitary life gives way to one of connectedness. There are some great passages about the creative life.

I also succumbed to the Harry Potter craze, and re-read book 6, before reading the new book 7. Although these books are not perfect, they cast a perfect spell. They rendered me half alive to my own life while I was engaged in their plot. It was pure escapist pleasure.

Diane Setterfield warns, “Reading can be dangerous.” For me, the danger is that the worlds in books begin to shine more bright than the world around me. It is as if I must shake cobwebs out of my brain to get back to work (of which is there is plenty). I have to tell myself that later in the day – after I have organized my inventory, shot new images for Evocations, responded to my email, etc. – then I can find my way back to the yellow armchair in the sunroom and open a fresh new book and see where it takes me.

"Ode to Stillness"

“Is it possible to make a living by simply watching light? Monet did. Vermeer did. I believe Vincent did too. They painted light in order to witness the dance between revelation and concealment, exposure and darkness. Perhaps this is what I desire most, to sit and watch the shifting shadows cross the cliff face of sandstone, or simply walk parallel with a path of liquid light called the Colorado River. In the canyon country of southern Utah, these acts of attention are not merely the pastimes of artists, but daily work, work that matters to the soul of the community. This living would include becoming a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind, where each dialect is not only heard but understood.”
-Terry Tempest Williams from Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert

Summer has opened up space and time for me. In that new openness, I find myself not wanting to add more doing, but more being - time to watch the fog paint changing colors on the hills out our front windows, and time to sit and re-read some of my favorites, like essays by Terry Tempest Williams.

Creative Chaos

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star." -Friedrich Nietzsche

The studio is a mess these days. I have excavated my drawers, piles, and files, discovering maps, photographs, and other symbolic objects buried in my studio. Now they flood my main worktable, inspiring me to try new directions with my Evocations series. It is a healthy chaos they have created. The kind, that I hope and pray, will lead to the creation of a “dancing star” or at least some strong new images.

Behind the Scenes: Hiroshi Sugimoto at the DeYoung

Last week, I had the supreme pleasure and surprise of being invited to the press preview for the Hiroshi Sugimoto retrospective at the De Young Museum. I say pleasure because I have always loved Sugimoto’s photographs for their masterful beauty and powerful concepts. And I say surprise, because I was quite shocked (thrillingly so) to get an email invitation from a media relations officer at the Fine Arts Museum to attend the press preview with the artist, because she had read my blog entry below about the Legion of Honor. When I started my blog months ago, I never realized the potential for such benefits from it – it made my week.

So last Friday found me in a museum conference room with four kinds of coffee, cucumber sandwiches, press packets, 40 or so members of the press, a museum director, one of the exhibit’s curators, and the artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto himself. After introductory remarks, we all headed to the galleries – which Sugimoto described as his “spookiest” venue of this traveling exhibition yet. Sugimoto designed the installation, and it is quite remarkable. The lighting is such that the large photographs (many of them close to 4 x 6 feet) seem to glow as if illumined from within while the dark walls evaporate into shadow. It is as if you are standing inside a giant camera – each photograph becomes an aperture through which his ideas are imprinted onto the viewer.

As curator, Kerry Brougher, said so aptly, “Sugimoto is a photographer of ideas.” In particular, I learn from him how photography can expand and collapse our sense of time. For example, in this shot below of a drive-in theatre, the shutter was left open for the full duration of the movie, recording every second, and yet in the end, the compilation of all those moments is simply bright light. It seems fitting then that when I snapped the photo above, holding my camera high above the other heads around me, Sugimoto was illuminated by the flash of someone else’s camera - he is rendered a white, bright blur himself – burning with ideas.

“Divine Dissatisfaction”

I just refreshed my bulletin board – removing what no longer hums and leaving lots of blank space for new quotes and images to inspire me. Keeping a bulletin board in my creative space has been a practice of mine for many, many years. There is one quote that has made the cut every time – this one here by Martha Graham (click on it to view it larger, or click here for a more legible version).

This very copy of this quote was gifted to me upon graduating from college by two good family friends. At the time, I did not understand it yet. It took a couple years in which I grew into myself as an artist before I really experienced that sense of “divine dissatisfaction.” But when I received it at the age of 22, I kept it because I could tell it was profound, and because the friends who had gifted it to me are extraordinary people. I am grateful to them for having known that this quote would serve me so well as I grew more deeply into my creative life. It’s like how a coach can see what you can become before you can even see it yourself.

Today, this quote speaks volumes to me about trusting my creative process. As Martha Graham articulates, my job as an artist is simply to stay receptive and clear -- “to keep the channel open.” I often experience working in the studio as a process of lifting a lid on the top of my head and allowing ideas to pour through me into form. I also love that she spells out “it is not your business to determine how good it is…” This phrase sends sweet relief into my shoulders. Also, this quote and the many others I collect and hang on my bulletin board make me feel connected to a larger continuum of creative individuals. It reminds me that though I work in solitude, I am not alone.

That feeling...

“What I am looking for are sites that evoke a feeling of inner peacefulness, some quality of contemplation. I don’t always get it, and I don’t always translate it, but I certainly know when the feeling comes over me and that’s what keeps me going.” -Lynn Davis, New York Times, Sunday, April 8, 2007

This past Sunday found me with bagels, eggs and coffee, perusing the Arts & Leisure section of the New York Times where I was struck by an article about the photographs of Lynn Davis, called “Travels Abroad Lead to Journeys Within.” Lynn has an exhibit that just opened at the Rubin Museum in New York City – a show which Charles Melcher describes as “taking Lynn out of the white box of the traditional gallery and placing her in a museum that feels more like a temple.” I love that image.

When I read Lynn's quote above, I felt as if she was speaking directly to me. "Evoking a feeling of inner peacefulness, some quality of contemplation" is what I am after in my Sanctuary series (pictured here). I want these images to speak of internal refuge – a resting place for the mind. These days, I am photographing, bottling, then re-photographing, then printing, editing, and re-printing – building this series from the three currently completed pieces into a larger collection. Lynn's words remind me to trust my inner instincts about what has that “feeling” and belongs in the series, and what does not.

Brian Taylor’s Open Books

I first saw Brian Taylor’s Open Book series last July at Photo San Francisco at the booth for Modern Book, where his work was hanging side by side with my collages. I was truly delighted to be in such good company. His Open Books are wonderfully tactile, poetic, and mysterious. I can’t make up my mind which one is my favorite, but I am quite fond of The Good Wife (pictured above), because I am married to a passionate fisherman. Others from the series that particularly touch me are Lake, Boy, Indian and Somewhere A Man’s Shoes Are Wet.

So it was particularly exciting for me when Brian agreed to visit my class at JFK University last week. He gave a generous artist talk, covering his beginnings through to his most recent work - richly textured gum bichromate landscapes. I loved learning more about the labor intensive process of creating the Open Books - they do have multiple pages in them, but are meant to be displayed so that you can see only the center spread. Each holds hidden mysteries.

Brian's presence also sparked good conversation among my students about the meaning of art. I jotted down two quotes he shared. The first was by Henry Miller, who said “Paint as you like and die happy.” The second was a story from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel in which a chess player loses his winning luck because “he stopped moving the pieces with love.” Brian explained how in collage and mixed media work, what really matters is that you "move the pieces with love." He admitted that can sound schmaltzy, but whether you use the word love or creativity, passion, excitement, or energy – it all boils down to the artwork benefiting from that kind of enlivening force. And his Open Books are certainly a testament to the power of that force.