Tag Archives: creativity

What’s in Store

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Sometimes even a partial notion will do!

mixed media painting

I told you recently that I was preparing to offer some of my work for sale online, and it’s time for the first revelation. I know that so many of you who read and converse with me here are also artists, writers and other creative people, and thus virtually by default are also (a) somewhat challenged by the technology and know-how of operating in businesslike fashion, promoting and marketing and selling your work; and (b) not exceedingly wealthy, as a result. So I did what I know a few of you, and many other people nowadays do, and turned to an existing, established production/marketing mechanism online and am going to let Zazzle help me with the ‘dirty work’. It means I’ve made a few business choices already, and I will share my thinking with you here because we really are all in this together!

First of all, this is far from a get-rich-quick scheme, not only because this is work I’ve spent most of my life learning to do and producing, but because as a business model it’s even less remunerative than the 30%-off-the-top commission that’s fairly typical among artist representing galleries and agents I’ve known in the past. But I am willing to take a very small amount (in many cases, the standard 10% royalty fee) from a company that will cover the grunt work I’m not willing or able to do myself. That is, of course, if they prove they can and will do it. I chose Zazzle because they have a certain established reputation and track record, easy to use interfaces, and while they are not high-end and going to capture for me any exclusive and wealthy clientele, they produce a decent quality range of products and so far have been very responsive in our interactions. This also makes me feel confident in their interactions with anyone who would come to view and buy my work, and that I can price the work as low as possible so that people like me (many being of the aforementioned impecunious creative sort) can choose from a variety of items that they might actually be able to afford without horrific trials.

I have begun posting my designs to the store fairly recently, but have made an effort to put up a reasonable representation from different sorts of my work: photography, drawing, painting and mixed-media images, and a fair range of topics from the abstract to absurdist, from factual to fantastical. There are a small few images with text (prose or poetry) on them, and many of those offered as prints can be purchased not only in different sizes but on different kinds of paper or even as stretched, ‘gallery style’ canvases, that is, with the image wrapping the sides so that the pieces can be framed but do not require a frame for hanging. I have offered a few of the designs as T-shirts, too, because it’s generally considered a good thing to wear clothes, and if we require clothes, then why not wear ones that aren’t terribly expensive? T-shirts are a pretty affordable option. But I’ve never been fond of wearing anything that advertised someone or some Thing (object or cause or concept)–if I want to promote a cause, I’d rather do it with my own words and my actions than with worn signage. So you will find very few slogans or words at all on the T-shirts, just pictures for the most part. I have made a number of them simple black-and-white images, often using my pen-and-ink line drawings, and I would encourage those who like color to consider getting a set of fabric coloring pens and having a good old time coloring the T-shirts like coloring book pages to suit taste and need. Might be a very fun thing to do with children, in fact, as the T-shirts can be ordered not only in a range of adult sizes and styles but many children’s ones as well.

I’ve configured most designs as the largest print version for which I think they’re suited, but most can be scaled smaller for your smaller space or to be more affordable. As it is, there are a great many prints under $20 a piece, and quite a few under $10, so I hope that a larger number of people can afford them without feeling a terrible pinch. There are a whole lot of other designers and artists represented in Zazzle stores, and a really wide array of objects and items that can be customized with your, my, or others’ designs and images, and I will see if and when I’m ready to branch out further with my own. For now, you should know that there is lots of work posted to Zazzle by someone under the name of ‘artspark’–pretty nice stuff, from the look of it–that’s not mine; I tried a huge number of store name options before finding one Zazzle accepted as not already in use, so I’ll just stick with this one even if it’s a bit close. I titled each of my designs KIW Sparks: [Title] to differentiate a little, hoping that helps.

ArtSparks

Even if you have no interest in–or money for–buying anything, I invite you to spend a little time visiting my work at Zazzle. It can serve, in part, as my online gallery for now, where you can see many of the works I’ve used to illustrate my blog posts, as well as a few artworks you’ve not seen here before, and I am eager to share them all with you. I hope that you, too, are finding the courage to ‘put yourself out there’ artistically and creatively because we have this fine forum among friends in the blog-world and online businesses, because even though it’s generally a tough way to make a living, financially speaking, it’s a glorious way to make a Life.

graphite drawing

I don't know if I can claim to have accomplished anything yet, but I'm at least underway in the process of taming the dragon that is my fear of the business side of the creative life. Hopefully, having chosen Zazzle as my squire, I'll figure out how to battle my way through the whole process more successfully over time!

Lullabies and Parallel Universes

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photoI have said that music transports me to Other Places. Indeed, all art has that potential for me, for internal travel. It’s one of the great joys of art. As I write this, I’m listening to a live broadcast of this evening’s concert from the Swedish Radio Choir‘s (Radiokören, or RK) concert, one that travels particularly far and wide–and deep–in my heart and mind for a whole lot of reasons.

The note from chief conductor Peter Dijkstra:

Tonight at 1930h I’m doing a concert, live on Swedish radio SVT2 and on Webradio (http://sverigesradio.se/sida/default.aspx?programid=3989, at least in the US) , with the Swedish Radio Choir and Orchestra with an ‘alternative Passionprogram’:
Ligeti – Lux Aeterna
Bach – BWV 12 Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen
Poulenc – Stabat Mater
Highly recommended!!!!

Right at this moment, the radio host is interviewing Maestro Dijkstra, and hearing both of their voices, I feel almost as though I’m in the concert hall watching them chat onstage, myself. I’m quite sure I recognize the lady’s voice as that of the same well-spoken broadcaster who interviewed my husband when he was conducting on that same stage at Berwaldhallen at this time of year a few years ago for RK’s Vårkonsert, or Spring Concert. Peter Dijkstra had fairly recently signed on as RK’s chief conductor at the time, and was in town part of the time rehearsing the choir; it’s amazing how quickly the miles disappear when we hear familiar voices or sounds–and the Radio Choir’s distinctive choral sonorities are certainly a part of that equation for me, as well. Their recordings have been for decades among those most widely recognized worldwide for consistently outstanding quality and depth in an incredible range of literature.photo

So here I sit, listening to music sung by a beloved choir and conducted by a truly fine, familiar conductor, and despite being at my desk in my own house, I am traveling to worlds and galaxies far beyond the view of my window. The György Ligeti piece is a perfect vehicle. It’s best known for being that magical, eerie and ethereal sound heard in the famous scene of approach to the monolith in Stanley Kubrick‘s seminal film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and on a personal level is memorable and imaginatively inspiring even more directly because I have heard a couple of groups conducted by my spouse, in both rehearsal and concert, of this famously difficult piece. Each time, the piece itself transforms the performers as they work to ‘get inside’ and master it, and in turn is transformed by their performances, by the acoustic and atmosphere of the place where it’s being sung, and by the expectant and electric energy of audiences who are constantly challenged and awakened by its dramatics, both distinctive and subtle.

Johann Sebastian Bach and a great many of his works are widely familiar to audiences all around as well, and both in spite and because of their very familiarity bring us to an array of places remembered and imagined each time we hear them sung or played. The more famous and oft-played a composer’s works, the more variants we’re likely to come across in style and interpretation, in levels of technical expertise and period accuracy, and especially in the performances’ potential for transportation. I find it profoundly intriguing to see and hear how deeply performers can immerse themselves in the math and mystery, the dancing joy and bottomless grief and resounding laughter and historical drama of Bach, and to experience the accompanying journeys offered to me as a listener. I go to places of Biblical and Apocryphal history, yes, but also to more abstract aspects of the music and the texts: to dark forests and sunless night, and to soaring starry space; to drought-quenching fountains and streams; to realms of green and warm and welcoming respite and meditation.photoThe Stabat Mater of Francis Poulenc, in his characteristic tonalities and performed here with exquisite power and emotional richness (and with a supernal soprano soloist’s voice soaring over the top of the intense and wildly beautiful waves of the choral singing) pulls us into a specific story, but is nonetheless large enough in its musical generosity to allow visions of many other places and states of being. This, too, is a strength of music and of outstanding moments of swimming in it–that it allows us to transcend what is and see, hear and feel what may be.

Music can fill me with passion, and it can also empty me so completely of passion that it lulls me into the abyss of restful peace where I feel nothing can touch me at all.

The images in this post are not based on any of the music in this program at all but rather are documentation of one of the small worlds I myself created a little while (well, a teenager’s lifetime) ago. I wanted to make a place that would act as a safe haven, fantasyland, and visual lullaby for the baby boy my sister was carrying. More than seventeen years later, our younger nephew his brother still has the same little woodland clearing in what’s now his room and seems not to be overly anxious to erase it under a more sophisticated or grown-up paint scheme and decor. So I suppose that perhaps it still offers for him adequately what I myself will never grow too old or mature to want: transportation to other places and planes, times, spaces, moods, hauntings and hopes and happiness. I hope that the luminous-paint stars that I sprinkled on that bedroom ceiling still light up after the lamps are turned off at night.photo

I Know I’m a Clod, but I Feel Like Dancing

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Just because I can’t do it myself doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the wonders of dancing. I adore it, merely safely so from the sidelines where I cannot harm innocent bystanders with what they are not prepared to experience. And I can always create my own dance in a different format for the vicarious treat. Those of you who are dancers, if you’re willing, please continue! I’ll be right over here working on my variations.digital graphic + text

I was Going to Write the Great American Novel, but I Looked out the Window for a Second and . . .

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My attention has drifted awry once again,

Has shifted from matters of weight among men

To things of no import, exceedingly tiny

And so insignificant–Hey! Look! It’s shiny!

I set out to do some magnificent thing,

But what it was? I can’t remember. The sting

Of memory loss in old age will be naught

Compared to the blank Inattention has wrought,

Distraction, and phantasmagorical dreams;

To focus and think is more work than it seems,

So, though I’d meant well and begun my great task,

My progress dried up like a sot’s whiskey flask,

And instead of inventing great stuff, plodding darkly,

I did something else–Hey! Look there! Something sparkly!

mixed media on glass

Look! Up in the air! It's a bird! It's a plane! Hey, it's my attention flying way off course again!

“Mama, Where Do Baby Ideas Come From?”

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graphite and colored pencil on paper

Ingvar Lidholm

Well, Honey, when a mommy artist and a daddy medium love each other very much . . . .

I can’t imagine that there is an artist or creative person alive who hasn’t been asked many and many a time where he gets his ideas or what inspired her to make this piece of artwork, write that song, take whatever photograph or choreograph any given ballet. In many cases, the answers are hard to condense into sound-bite-sized, manageable pieces for the occasion, because much creative endeavor is the tangible end result of a whole lifetime’s experience and train of thought, and we all know how often and how easily that particular train gets rerouted, redirected, diverted and derailed along the way.

But in general, most of us can point to pivotal moments that shaped our thinking, whether on an individual project or about our artistry as a whole. We can cite particular persons and their artistry that inspired and enlightened us and informed our own work as we grew. And for many of us, even we who are relatively late bloomers, a lot of the fodder for this inspiration begins early in life and creeps up on us subliminally to a certain extent.

I’ve already mentioned my long-ago irritation at being ‘bundled’ with Edvard Munch because of my Norwegian roots–and, of course, how ridiculous I realized that irritation was once I discovered that contrary to my belief, the more I got to know his work the more I actually admired it. Now, naturally, I take it as high praise (if perhaps hyperbolically so, though I’m happy to take it anyway) when my stuff is seen as meriting any such comparison.

My personal Style, if there is one, is defined more by a tendency toward slightly aggressive lines and bold coloration and faintly eccentric leanings when it comes to subject treatment than by any distinctive media, techniques or actual subjects. My affections in art are too fickle and my attentions too fleeting for me to be easily contented with any defined set of materials and topics and applications. But I find ideas and encouragement and guidance in the work of many painters, poets, draftsmen, printmakers, essayists, storytellers, architects, boat-builders, jewelers, botanists, lycanthropes . . . dear me, have I wandered again?

Part of the trick in pinning down who has been an influence on my work and where I’ve gotten my inspirations and ideas is that I’m very much a holistic, integrative and analogous operator, so in true Liberal Arts fashion I pull my many threads together from many divergent and possibly unrelated sources. The only consistent thing is that I try very hard to steal from the best.

My gifts are not musical, but I love music. So although my piano skills are fit only for personal amusement and my singing limited by spasmodic dysphonia and lack of practice to in-car singalongs and serenading my spouse with occasional outbursts of bent versions of formerly-familiar songs, I often work with music as my inspiring accompaniment. My paintings could be said to derive more from Aretha Franklin or Felix Mendelssohn, The Real Group or Tomás Luis de Victoria, than from Munch or Vincent van Gogh, though both of the latter have lent me many of my ideas about brushwork and coloration. My writing is more directly writing-derived, perhaps, but all of the favorite writers that spring to mind (Ogden Nash, Vladimir Nabokov, Dr Seuss, JRR Tolkien, S.J. Perelman, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tomie dePaola, Geoffrey Chaucer) are on my hit list because of the lyrical, even musical, qualities with which they treat poetry and prose. I love children’s books as much now as I did when an actual child, because the best of them of course comprise a perfect and literal confluence of verbal and visual imagery, something that becomes more deeply ingrained in me by virtue of drawing the senses together. And in that way, my writing is often led to incorporate certain textures and moods and colors or to carry a particular ambience by either pictures (real or imagined) or simply the weight of a visual experience I’m hoping to evoke with words. I’m no synesthete, but all the same I do depend on the interaction of all my senses to shape each of the creative works I’m developing.

I did once make an entire exhibition devoted to portraits of people (mostly historical figures) who had had influence of some significant sort on my art and my creative life, and perhaps the most telling thing about the gallery besides that I had deliberately filled it with nothing but portraits (a form I’d studiously avoided all along in my artistic journey until then) was that very few of them were of visual artists. Most were of composers, singers, and writers. A few were agents of social change, a couple were people I actually know, and a handful were influential in the philosophical or spiritual realms. The writers and musicians ruled the room. I doubt that would change hugely if I were to do such a survey of inspirational influences again. I do know that there would be a new character added, but I’m not certain how exactly I could represent in a portrait my network of online muses in blogdom.

acrylic and graphite on canvasboard

Igor Stravinsky

Gone in an Instant–or Maybe Not . . .

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Since some of you have inquired about the possibility of seeing a portrait of Watch-Cat, I shall oblige. But let me tell you, being as stealthy as he is in his work, he is mighty elusive. The following is the only sort of glimpse we get of him most of the time, and certainly the best I’m ever likely to capture with the camera–he’s much too methodical in his rounds to hang around waiting to pose for the paparazzi.

Isn’t that how we all are in life, somewhat? Set on our appointed paths, head down, moving forward with only the rare thought given to change or breaking out of the known and predictable, even rarer the courage and spirit of adventure to follow through on the thought. Why not surprise yourself with one deviation from your expected path today, doing just one small thing that will bring greater enjoyment or move you toward an alluring new horizon?

photo

With a twitch of his tail, he's gone again . . .

He Who Never Overdid It

Howard, a fine, well-rounded cat,

was neither skeletal nor fat,

nor was he far too forceful or

behindhand, coming through a door–

not garrulous but neither mute,

nor glabrous, yet not too hirsute,

and when the milk poured, as you’d think,

was neither fast nor slow to drink.

The strange thing, you may be amazed

to know, knowing that he was praised

as a feline so fine, well-rounded

and refined–you’ll be astounded

–and I say it not in jest–

old Howard died, like all the rest.

So, if it means no jot or tittle,

I say: rock the boat a little!

photo (Calendula)

Cave Painting for Dummies

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photo

Who was it that first looked at a rock and thought, "Now *that'd* make a great TOOL"?

I’m fascinated by pioneers, inventors and explorers. Such minds are truly alien to me; how is it possible for a person to look at the same world that every other person has been looking at for ages and see something entirely different, something new? It’s nothing short of astounding that, when presented with what might be the deeply familiar, one person’s distinctive set of synapses suddenly makes a new constellation from the assorted bits of seen-before information to create a completely new idea–and out of this there is a new object or a new skill or a newly discovered country, in that one event changing the known world into a whole different thing.

I’m quite excited but not intimidated by doing that sort of inventive stuff artistically–in imaginary terms–but it’s quite another thing to consider pulling that sort of stunt to get a practical outcome. Those people able to envision a useful and purposeful way to take advantage of existing stuff have provided innumerable advances for human culture. I’m especially amazed by the intrepid andcourageous (or foolhardy) folk that break trail, build roads, cross unknown oceans and so much more, to open up new concepts and ideas to shift our entire understanding of our universe.

photo

Who stacked the stones that made the very first wall? The first road between walled places? The first trek that plotted the course of the road?

What gives me courage is that not only are there stronger and braver souls than li’l ol’ me to do all of the serious exploring and adventuring and discovery, but that somewhere along the line someone had the inspiration to make melodious sounds and so, sang. Made a drum from a log. Painted with blood or powder or crushed plants on a cliff side or a cave wall. It’s a wonder and a grandly glorious gift that these superlative scientists-of-delight chose–or were compelled–to create dance and drama and song and pictorial beauty, and the more so because they decided, somewhere along the line, to pass along their newly discovered links to yet more undiscovered worlds. They taught the next generation to do the same. On the strength of this wonder, we are the long-time beneficiaries of these marvels, and as it happens, the torch-bearers by whom this will be carried into the future.

So I’m not the heroine who’ll be discovering an unknown species of beneficial insect, finding the previously unseen river, designing the DNA modification that cures Alzheimer’s, or changing the course of history in any way, shape or form. But I will be using shape and form, along with color and texture, character and text, to see what I can bring to this world as we know it, to see how a measly twerp with less sophistication than your average cave-dweller might be able to be an inventor and discoverer of my own sort of thing.

photo

. . . and I'll keep my eyes open for inspirations wherever they may be . . .

I’ve Saved Millions on Psychotropics

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digital photo-illustration Why do drugs when the brain is so exaggeratedly colorful and nimbly wacky all on its own! I’ve always felt mighty fortunate that there’s such a party under my hat; not a moment of boredom in sight. Interpreting and making actual use of all the magnificent moonbeams and nutty notions, well, that’s another bag of baloney altogether, but at least the ingredients are there for the taking.

digital photo-illustrationRiding bareback on butterflies and curling up under Enkianthus umbrellas, I learn so many things that no one else has known; how to pass along the knowledge then becomes the deeper part of the puzzle. Shall I present my in-head info as it appeared on my mental screen, in all its glory, and let the world in on my secrets, or is it better to release the brilliance in smaller doses, as poems and pictures, as though it were all mere artistry?

digital photo-illustrationThe mind, one could say, reels. Me, I just try to hang on and go along for the ride. Success is varying. Sometimes it might be simpler to go the magic-mushroom route and pretend the stuff that springs from my innermost is someone or something else’s figment. Fewer questions to be answered, one would think. But I rather enjoy the leaping and wriggling that happen both internally and as an external expression of such fruitful foolishness, so perhaps I ought not to entertain such an extreme premise, but rather stick to my stupendous life of lily-lapped loveliness.

digital photo-illustrationSorry, Big Pharm, I’ll remain on the Funny Farm instead, thank you very kindly. Remarkably fewer side effects, if you don’t count the quizzical inspections by many a well-meaning Normal person or the occasional inability to maintain a facade of ordinariness when it should have been particularly useful. The only mind-altering meds I need are supplied to me by equally offbeat thinkers lending me a loving sip of the nectar of their own merry musings. I thank you all, and invite you to share in this best sort of madness any time you like. Welcome to my psychedelia!

digital photo-illustration

Around the Corner and Off the Deep End

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Being a tad loopy has always worked out pretty well for me. It enhances and excuses the creative output, whatever that might be, and makes me feel a little more at ease about all of those weird dreams I tend to have each and every night–why, what real harm can they do, anyway? So I’ve become quite accustomed to living with my oddities and even embracing them. (No, I’m not referring to my friends and loved ones.) (Though I do very gladly embrace you all, never fear.)

On that note, a few absurd little ditties shall be fired off in your direction forthwith, to wit:

digitally altered drypointSeam Ripping

Little Miss Bride of Frankenstein

I hate to brag, or is that, whine?

But let’s just face it, this here scar

Is uglier and is by far

More showy and impressive than

The accident where it began

mixed media on paperAll for One or None for All

       I think there is no better place

       Than school for the whole human race

To see just how extremely dumb

Supposed thinking folk become

       Who study, yet fail to embrace

The notion that we are, from birth,

Just citizens of one whole earth,

       Not central, magical or best,

       Or totally unlike the rest,

Except perhaps as cause for mirth.

soft pastel on paperMutual Attractions

Wilma, with her dental plate

Encrusted with what she just ate,

Attracts both censure and some flies,

But also Isidore’s blue eyes;

Now, lest you think him over-kind,

Know that he’s old and wholly blind,

And since our Wilma’s likewise cased,

She likes him for his lack of taste.

An Ounce of Invention is Worth a Pound of Manure

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graphite drawing

When you can't BS your way through it, try coming up with a real idea!

Silence is only golden when it’s wanted. If I’m intending or needing to produce words and images, I am none too pleased if they refuse to come to me. You know how irritated I get with my uncooperative vocal cords when I’d like to have a nice ordinary conversation without struggle. Sometimes I’m far worse, though, about being reasonable and patient when it’s the written word that refuses to come out of the starting blocks. Neurological recalcitrance I can blame on some biological bad fairy, but it feels much  more like a personal failure when it’s intellectual drag that keeps me from the productivity I desire. Brain, get up and go!

Drawing combines the two potential frustrators in a perfectly imperfect storm of madness: both brain and body are refusing to cooperate in my scheme to produce. Internal hissy fits ensue. I know enough not to dissolve in a pool of weepy self-pity since it solves nothing and tends merely to make one look more than a little ridiculous and immature, and yea verily, I need no advancement in that department. Getting mad is equally unproductive. Nothing’s fixed. The only cure is to plod forward, idea-less, until a useful thing deigns to appear in my cranium or at my fingertips again.

Last week’s drawing session was a good time to revisit the simplest of basics at all levels as a starting point in my latest campaign for artistic growth. But I’m thinking this week that what I also crave is improvement of my imaginative muscles so that when I flex them in exercise I needn’t always fall back on the expected standard fare to get something to appear. If I must, I will resort to baloney or bluffing to get me through, but is it not very much more amusing, and even fulfilling, to be able to think up something I’ve never thunk before?

My way of getting that muscle at least poised to flex is to tell myself it’s time to make a picture of something no one’s seen before. Me, especially. The easiest way to do that is to invent new objects, scenes and creatures. Often it’s enough to make my own version of recombinant DNA or mutations or contraptions out of almost real parts assembled strangely and unexpectedly. The animals must be unlike any I’ve seen in real life or on film or in a zoological tome; more than that, they should be visibly ill-conceived enough that they would instantly become extinct, if real, for clearly failing to meet any evolutionary standard. The machines should be contraptions with no obvious possible use; more than that, they should appear to be made to produce ill-designed crud and, probably, life-threatening injuries upon anyone foolish enough to attempt operating them.

At least on paper, the only serious threat any of them poses is to my dignity or, at worst, to the sensitive good taste of hapless viewers seeing them without warning. If any one of you has received a poke in the eye today by visiting my blog, my apologies. Though I’m not really very good at being penitent, odd bird that I am.

I leave you with the Edmontonian Contraption, designed during a Pro Coro rehearsal sometime last spring. Fortunately, the choir sang ever so much better than this item will ever run.

graphite drawing

At least it could probably make a good sound if used as a sort of aeolian instrument . . . maybe . . .