I’m shocked to see that it has been nearly 2 years since my last post here. This is because my life has been taken up with sustaining a restaurant business in covid and now post-covid times, and caring for my 88-year-old mom. Not much time for creative work. That is if you see these responsibilities as non-creative. Takes me back to the days of having small children and grabbing a few moments for creativity while sitting at a soccer field, waiting for a traffic light to turn, in between delicious but exhausting attentions to my kids. And my mom. And my husband and business partner. And my yard. And a little yoga and maybe a walk in the neighborhood. Mostly housework. I carried a ziplock with blank index cards and pencils. I drew quickly, boldly, greasy with graphite and smeary from erasures. I drew figures, mostly, and then started to take photos. On the run. The abstractions of the places I waited, the streets, the fields. I loved the stripes on the tracks! So emerged an active creative life made from tiny moments, strung together, binding the years. The aloneness of covid quarantine inspired the small books, made easy on my photocopier, bound easy with thread, and sent around the world. To date, I have made 4 different books and sent about 500 of each out via regular mail. A made thing in the hand. I’m due for an envelope addressing session to get the last of Book 4 out, and mulling the content of Book 5. Just wanted to share a bit of how a tiny creative life can be, and how it can blossom and sustain. I do dream daily of a bigger life; I do have terrible fits of jealousy, envy, feelings that I am not really doing “it”, and not really an artist. You’re an artist by the way you see the world, my Dad would tell me. I’d say, yeah right. What about the gallery shows? You know, the dream demon, the awful self-talk. The destroyer. Seeing Wild, that’s my mantra now. Thanks, Dad. 27 years gone but giving me solid advice every day.
Art Making and Fine Jewelry