Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been writing a ton. But I certainly haven’t been writing here, have I?

It’s been a wonderful, yet incredibly busy fall season for us around here, meaning me and my family. I continue to struggle, as we all do, to fit it all into these 24 hour segments we call days… and have yet to find the formula that allows me to do it all and stay present enough to enjoy it.  Such a work in process… and I guess that’s where I’m at these days, trying my best to give myself to the priorities that I’ve set for myself and then seeing the beauty and accomplishment in the messy incoherence that ensues. I figure if I can do that, I’m in pretty good shape.

Well, this is my habit, to take stock toward the end of the year. Not a bad habit, but it can turn melancholy if I let it, so I won’t. A few of my favorite things that I did this year- that sounds more cheerful.

I attended the IEA retreat in Carmel Valley… What a fantastic group of artists. Such a beautiful place.

I developed a body of work that I am in love with… a rare thing for me; I am so critical of my own work. The slow down in sales has facilitated my spending more time on and with my work. So there is a silver lining.

I participated in NaNoWriMo in November… 50,000 words in thirty days, with only a few vague ideas in my pocket- it felt like jumping off a cliff, and I survived! I created my parachute on the way down. Challenging, invigorating, terrifying. I’ve never written that much in my life. My daughter did it too- I couldn’t have been prouder.

So what did I learn the most from? Definitely NaNoWriMo- hands down. I’ll be taking every skill I practiced back to my studio. For example: you don’t always need to know where you are going to get somewhere. Let surprises happen. Let the work take charge instead of bending it to my expectations. Spend time with the work every day. Sit down and work, even when it’s the last thing I feel like doing. Trust that I have something to say. I usually just have to get quiet enough to hear it myself.

I’d love to hear from you- what did you do that was new this year, and what did you learn from it?

I’ve had a few weeks now sans think/dance activites in the studio, but I thought that I would share a little about an activity that we did at one of our recent rehearsals.

Now that I’m sitting here, I really don’t remember the details, where the numbers came from, what I do remember is how much the completion of the activity made sense to me.  There was a method used to come up with numbers that involved movement.  I remember that the warmth of the sunlight glowing in the room was fantastic and that the music felt like me.  I remember that the somewhat nondirectional task of assigning values to the numbers and then performing some sort of mathmatics, whatever I chose, made sense.  Sometimes I feel lost in these sorts of activities, like I don’t even want to make a choice in how to compelte the activity.  This time I felt like what I had to do was very apparent and simple.  I liked that feeling.

Well this week has been thrilling in the Culinary Arts room, or perhaps it could be called the Croquembouche Factory. Yesterday all but 4 students of a total of 32 have finished their tower of chocolate drenched cream puffs, filled with whipped cream…..with variation on the traditional shape. We had some cream puff bowls filled with whipped cream, some bumps, some logs. The fondant project went from leaves and holly berries to sharks, skate boarding figures, huge roses, the grinch, penguins, bears, soccer balls, doves, and a purple snake.

This is a great project providing practice in very specific recipe following, speed, and creativity. Some parts of the plan I insist they follow, some parts I ask them to imagine their favorite animals, colors, something about their life that they might reveal to the world.

The speed part is always troublesome for me…..we only have 55 minutes each day. One for fondant work, or maybe a bit more the next day when we make the pate choux and squeeze the little puppies out. I usually finish up the baking….and who tell me, who teaches their children to finish dishes and dry them, put them away? None from what I can tell. Sorry guys but you are falling down on some simple skills. And who knows about scrubbing the sink out once in a while so that killer bacteria doesn’t crawl up the sides and attack an unsuspecting teenager in a really bad movie? OK, this is about creativity and the holiday spirit……I enjoy the thought of all these beautiful-in-their-own-way Croquembouches , puffs filled, assembled, decorated on the third day…..going out into the world to parents, if  they get that far, or eaten on the bus on the way home despite the no-eating rules set by the Transportation Manager.

All this from butter, eggs, flour, cream, and some sugar and chocolate. What could possibly be more thrilling than pastry work during the holidays I ask?

Oaks tree in Cumbria

Alain de Botton writes both fiction and nonfiction. His books are engaging, clever and just downright fun. Although I’ve never read any of his three novels (not sure why that is) I have every one of his nonfiction publications. His titles make picking up his books irresistible (IMHO), with names like How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, and The Architecture of Happiness.

In keeping with this very practical approach to life and its complexities, Alain and some colleagues recently started The School of Life.

From his website:

The School has a passionate belief in making learning relevant – and so runs courses in the important questions of everyday life. Whereas most colleges and universities chop up learning into abstract categories (‘agrarian history’ ‘the 18th century English novel’), The School of Life titles its courses according to things we all tend to care about: careers, relationships, politics, travels, families. An evening or weekend on one of its courses is likely to be spent reflecting on such matters as your moral responsibilities to an ex partner or how to resolve a career crisis.

Life done fun.

His latest book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Highlighting 10 different professions ranging from care ship spotting to rocket science to biscuit manufacturing, De Botton observes the pleasures and the pains of people doing their jobs. One of his subjects is Stephen Taylor, a representational artist who lives in Colchester U.K. Seen through De Botton’s non-artist eye, Taylor’s process takes on a mystical quality. Although I do not spend long hours pinioned beneath a 250 year old tree (one of Taylor’s favorite subjects to paint) with my canvas and oils, De Botton’s description feels apropos to my work as well as many other artists I know. Whether representational or not, the intention seems to be shared.

As the night wears on, the human world gradually recedes, leaving Taylor alone with insects and the play of moonlight on wheat. He sees his art as born out of, and hoping to inspire, reverence for all that is unlike us and exceeds us. He never wanted to paint the work of people, their factories, streets, or electricity circuit boards. His attention was drawn to that which, because we did not build it, we must make a particular effort of empathy and imagination to understand, to a natural environment that is uniquely unpredictable, for it is literally unforeseen. His devoted look at a tree is an attempt to push the self aside and recognise all that is other and beyond us—starting with this ancient looking hulk in the gloom, with its erratic branches, thousands of stiff little leaves and remarkable lack of any direct connection to the human drama.

To see Stephen Taylor’s work, click here.

For anyone who is susceptible to the energetics of color (my hand is up), reading about it can also be intoxicating. Here are a few great books for those who revel in this inexplicably mysterious and lush bennie of life on this planet:

***

Written by a journalist who travels the world exploring the original sources for artist palette colors, Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay is a fascinating and readable account of everything from the ochres to the bone blacks (which originally came from burned human bone remains…I know, eaw.) Finlay makes her search an adventure.

***

Amy Butler Greenfield comes from a family of dyers. Combining her family background with an expertise in Renaissance Europe, A Perfect Red traces the rich and varied history of the color in Western culture. I have always loved the story of how the red found in Mexico baffled Europeans for years. Animal or vegetable? As hard as the Spanish tried to keep it a secret, the true source for that highly desirous red—the tiny cochineal insect that thrives as a parasite on the nopal cactus—was eventually exposed.

***

Blue does not have the ancient pedigree of the reds and yellows. In fact some historians have posited the possibility that ancient people could not decipher the color at all. Blue: The History of a Color is written by historian Michel Pastoureau who also wrote The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric. (What a title—who knew!)

***

These two books, The Primary Colors and The Secondary Colors are written by Alexander Theroux. A literary stylist rather than an artist or historian, Theroux has written an extended poetic meditation on color more than a factual and informative account. I love to just pick up either of these two books and open it at random. Every paragraph is an invitation to a revelry of color.

For the last couple of years I have been purchasing my sprinkles for cookies from Market Spice in the Pike Place Market. They have the large size and a wonderful range of colors. And the retail price is very good. I usually get about $80 worth for all the events we make cookies for. I like to buy things from India Tree but they have a big minimum price for shipping. I used their decorative beads, sugars and snow flakes, etc. when I owned my own bakery. I miss making the star cookies with pale blue icing and big white crystals….Or the angels with pale yellow and blue.

Last night was the Tree Lighting ceremony in LaConner. I couldn’t be there because of a prior commitment to read poems….but the cookies were a big hit with the kids. Here are some of them, just finished and waiting to dry for packing.

Somehow that little teddy bear cookie seems appropriate, slightly out of focus as though reeling from too much sugar, not sure what the decorator’s intent was with that last big button of red. We had fun and you can tell. And at this point in the semester we are looking for fun. Just wait for the Croquembouches coming next week. WoooHoooo!

All of them.

Thanks to Mark for steering me to this site for House Industries, a type foundry and creator of too many cool things to name.  But mostly, I’m coveting their fonts, like:

I wish they sold gift cards for fonts.  I would buy them all and type type type away.  Fonts fonts fonts.  I like like fonts. Do de do de do.

My faves are Go Long, Didot, Frutiger, Haetttenschwieler, and Futura.  And Garamond isn’t too bad either, as serif fonts go.

What are your favorite fonts?  If you  say comic sans I will have to un-friend you.

Once again we are baking and decorating sugar cookies for the LaConner Community Tree Lighting on December 5, down at the waterfront park. We have also baked off some Seven Layer Bars, those walnut, coconut, chocolate, butterscotch, drizzled with sweetened condensed milk, gooooey, bars.

Did you know that a can of sweetened condensed milk….that little can, has about 1500 calories? I used to know some serious long distance and time kayakers who packed these in their boats and put it in their coffee and on graham crackers to keep up their energy on long trips.

My favorite place to purchase holiday sprinkles is the Market Spice store in the Pike Place Market. They have great big sprinkles in great colors. Of course, once there it is just a few steps to Delaurenti’s and the cheese counter…….oh for a slice of delice de Bourgoyne or a 3 year old pecorino.

So, perhaps later I will take some pictures of the cookies. Here are the fabulous, community-minded culinary artists at work…..

Salt crystals on the Spiral Jetty, Utah

When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.

–Christopher Alexander, one of my ideological mentors, as quoted by Edward Hollis in The Secret Lives of Buildings.

A mysterious space exists between the need for control and the need to let go, and navigating that terrain is of interest to every artist. Alexander’s comment about architecture is so succinct and accurate, and it speaks to more undertakings than just buildings.

In fact we live in a culture where the proclivity to masterminding in everything from architecture to film making is almost encouraged. And yet the primary thesis of Hollis’ book is that buildings will, over time, take on a life of their own in spite of all our efforts to control destiny:

At the heart of architectural theory is a paradox: buildings are designed to last, and therefore they outlast the insubstantial pageants that made them. Then, liberated from the shackles of immediate utility and the intentions of their masters, they are free to do as they will. Buildings long outlive the purposes for which they were built, the technologies by which they were constructed, and the aesthetics that determined their form; they suffer numberless subtractions, additions, divisions, and multiplications; and soon enough their form and their function have little to do with one another.

Hollis uncovers the checkered past of a number of emblematic buildings including the Parthenon, The Basilica of San Marco in Venice, Gloucester Cathedral, The Alhambra, among many others. In so many cases these structures survived because they were adapted, reinvented and transmogrified.

This exploration reminds me of a quote by Robert Smithson (of Spiral Jetty fame), one that suggests a metaphysical realm for this idea as well: “The artist must go into places where remote futures meet remote pasts”.

I know buildings that feel as if they embody that kind of crossroads of consciousness, spaces that have taken on a life that is so far from what was originally intended. A similar transubstantiation can happen with other art forms as well. Smithson wrote about how he built the Spiral Jetty but then released it into the hands of nature to do with it what it will. For many years it was submerged beneath the surface of the Great Salt Lake. When it re-emerged it was encased in white salt crystals, a very different state from the black, hard-edge basalt rock at its core. And of course the next 50 years will alter its structure even further. Smithson did not mastermind so much as set an energetic gyre into motion.

Here it is Sunday evening, the long weekend coming to a close. Monk the pup has had his romp around the neighborhood under parting clouds, glittering stars, Orion standing guard over us tonight.

And I am thankful for so much, even, and especially the struggles of the everyday troubles. Life is rich with wonder, work, mystery, and my favorites: pressure, patience and surprise.

For all my solitary nature I have the best of family and friends. In moments of difficulty I know that tomorrow all will change and to play my part to the best of my ability and let life proceed. I have learned to see the beauty in just about all things. I am learning to use my mind for the great tool it is and make peace with the dark thoughts that come sometimes.

It has been an extraordinary experience to continue to know and grow with my sister. We had a rough beginning and have had the patience, luck, and perception to keep coming closer. She has become my teacher and confidant.

And I am so lucky to have found my sweet heart and made a safe place in the world with him. His heart is huge and beautiful. The best hugs…..gleaming copper pots…….an insatiable appetite for so many things…..courage to change…….finding balance in a violent world…..and he sees me just the way I am.

I get to teach and learn with very special kids. This work is so hard sometimes, letting the right word be spoken, taking advantage of the moment to make space for a kid to grow instead of cramming in one more bit of trivia about the elasticity of albumen. Forgiving them their profanity, being forgiven for my thoughtlessness and vanity.

Lately my mom has been so present with me. She passed away on May 12 of this year. I think autumn will be when I think about her most. She continues to teach me with all I remember…..I had a glorious day in the kitchen with her on Thanksgiving day, making my crackers, putting the turkey in the oven, making stuffing, peeling potatoes, making my cranberry relish.

Here are some pictures of the day.

the crackers, nicoise, morrocan dry cured, and fresh mozz.

the apple tree next door.

our poplar tree

roses on the porch

Variations of a blue pigment were developed at Oregon State University. (Photo: Mas Subramanian)

Blue is sometimes not an easy color to make.

Blue pigments of the past have often been expensive (ultramarine blue was made from the gemstone lapis lazuli, ground up), poisonous (cobalt blue is a possible carcinogen and Prussian blue, another well-known pigment, can leach cyanide) or apt to fade (many of the organic ones fall apart when exposed to acid or heat).

So it was a pleasant surprise to chemists at Oregon State University when they created a new, durable and brilliantly blue pigment by accident.

The researchers were trying to make compounds with novel electronic properties, mixing manganese oxide, which is black, with other chemicals and heating them to high temperatures.

Then Mas Subramanian, a professor of material sciences, noticed that one of the samples that a graduate student had just taken out of the furnace was blue.

“I was shocked, actually,” Dr. Subramanian said.

More

Kenneth Chang
New York Times

Two weeks ago, I went to an evening in New York in honour of the dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham…There was a form to all of it, but in the moment of performance it was ungraspable. Things were in constant motion, like overlapping ripples on a rainy pond. It was mesmerising – and hard to know where to look and who to follow…I meant to stay an hour, and remained for almost four. Sometimes I’d find myself taking respite beside a stage void of dancers, a visual equivalent to Cage’s silent work, finding myself looking at the clear patch of floor as if it might tell me something. I bumped into a few friends, but we mostly kept our distance, not wanting to break one another’s mood. As well as watching, there was space and time to reflect. The best art always returns you to yourself.

A part of me wanted to keep this experience to myself and not write about it. When it was over, I walked into the evening with a kind of aimless purpose – almost tearful, though it’s hard to say exactly why. The experience was complicated, a relationship between setting and dance, music and acoustics, the occasion itself and everyday life beyond…

The art world is in crisis. First there was too much money; now there isn’t enough. Newspapers and print media are in crisis. Theory is in crisis (does anyone have time to do more than look at the pictures in magazines nowadays?). Curating is in crisis. The professional critic is in crisis (they are dropping like flies in north America). Artists – well, they’re always in crisis, drama queens that they are.

But crisis is good. Crisis is sexy. Crisis shakes you up. And if it changes our habits when it comes to looking at art, reading about it, or even making it, then that’s probably good, too. Artists, if they’re any good, are engaged in a war against habit, complacency and indifference.

More

Adrian Searle
Guardian

I’ve heard from many of our readers after the Ultimatum post who’ve shared how they too have many projects they’ve started and never finished, or who have boxes of crafting supplies collecting dust in basements and closets.  It’s good to know we’re all in this together.  I have big plans to create a sub-blog to which I hope all of you out there who have projects and MIGHT get to them can post what they are and your progress in finishing (or starting, or attempting to finish).  It will be a kind of creativity support group for those of us who have either terrible craft-buying habits, or who have terrible laziness…  I have both, sadly, and much progress to make on both fronts.  I’ll try to get to the sub-blogging this week and will share it’s place and info on how to post soon.

And so now that I’ve posted my creativity ultimatum, it’s time to get cracking with this intervention and share with you what I did this week. I’m pretty proud of myself actually.  It’s easier than I thought to put in a little effort towards my projects.  Sometimes I can even do my projects whilst watching TV, which is great.  Because, I’m sorry I must admit, I have a terrible TERRIBLE TV addiction.  It won’t be fixed unless I move off the grid (someday!) or unless someone steals our TV.  (NOTE: don’t steal our TV.  I will find you).

Anyhoo back to the projects:

I finally finished a mini mitten, and then got inspired and knitted three more!!

I also did a few more lines of knitting on my blanket which was good.  I also added some info to our blog on a cool knitting site I found, and learned a new knitting method which I used on two of the mitts above.  Fun fun!

Hmmm… and we also made SOAP!

YAAAAY!  Soap making has commenced!  Mark and I melted up about 20-30 pounds of new soap (lemongrass verbena, lavender vanilla, gardenia, chamomile honey) and put them right up on Etsy.  More to come there.  Very excited about that.  Mark is a very good soap maker and I’m glad to have him around to encourage and support me, not just in soap, but in life, generally .

Week one (or is it two now? Oh well… let’s call it one) went pretty well, I’d say.  Feeling good!  Let’s keep it up!

I haven’t been thinking too much about what to write here for the last month. So much extra work and school activities….you must remember how much drama and excitement pervades the halls during homecoming week. And mid quarter grades, conferences, and the dinner Culinary Arts students cook for staff during conferences…Whew. The spaghetti sauce has been cleaned out of the burners and off the walls.

And I have been thinking. One of my favorite quotes, one I take to heart every day whether I can practice it in tough moments or not, is:

“When people ask about it I say my religion is kindness.” The Dali Lama

So everyday I attempt to meet my students, my world, with kindness in my heart, and kind words from my mouth. Now, sometimes I do have to convey a disappointing bit of news, or ask some difficult questions, state some uncomfortable facts. I can still fulfill these in ways that are honestly understanding and supportive. When the fear of failure is allowed to fade into the background just a bit, the curiosity and risk taking can begin to emerge out of the mental fog.

I think we have to realize that many students come from a home where there is so much scrutiny over grades and behavior that we are a possible small ray of hope for relief…or at least a view into another world where judgment is not so harsh….in fact I am beginning to formulate a new definition of what real true judgment would be a world that operated out of only kindness. Many teenagers are left to their own growing up….parents are too busy or assume that they are smart enough now, or are just too tired to do the potential or on-going battle they see out there with their kids. Some might not care.

One quality that must be present at all times is a sense of calm despite the emotional or mental storm that students can bring into the class room. This is a wonderful practice that I recommend highly.

I don’t care so much about the outcome of some of our class experiments, or the reviews, or answers to questions. The real value is in the process, they are attempting, thinking, possibly inspired. Inspiration is a very good place to get to. Everything else might fall into place once true inspiration is felt. Then thinking becomes more important.

more later. thanks for reading. let me know what you think.

Georgia

Two weeks ago at rehearsal we worked a lot on improvisation.  It might seem weird that we have to “work” at making it up as we go, but it’s pretty hard if you want to know the truth.  It’s hard to keep moving without a clear plan.  It’s hard to know when you’re “doing it”.  Sound familiar?

Anyway, one of the exercises that we did was something that I made up and named “math”.  It goes like this:  Dancers are asked to choose a thing (anything) and count it throughout the duration of an improvisation.  They do this several times (the counting during an improvisation) and write down the number that they counted each time, generating a list of numbers.  Dancers are then asked to assign an idea or story to each number.  Next, dancers total/combine/equate/add/reconcile their numbers into a sum – a new number.  Then dancers improvise again, using all of the data they collected/generated as their source material for the improvisation.  It sounds confusing, and it is confusing.  That’s ok.  We work really hard to welcome that feeling of uncertainty and to use it to push ourselves in new ways and new directions.  If the instructions are clear, the results are predictable – this is not the goal in this instance.

The goal is to make decisions.  It’s so simple.  Just decide.  The thing that’s really hard is the overwhelming desire to clarify the directions and expectations.  We want to be successful!  We want to know when we’re “doing it” and when we’re not.

It’s infuriating at first, but gradually, we get more comfortable with answering our own questions – at being the decider.

That’s the magical and empowering thing about really great improv – it’s just a series of decisions.  Bold, confident, reckless explorations.  As hard as it is, it is really quite something to look at a situation of infinite possibility and find your path – take up your space.

In mid October, we performed at  Around the Coyote. We had an hour slot and were able to contribute several pieces. We started with some improvistation focused around an “us and/vs. them” feeling concerning space and safety. We talked a lot about what it means when you are in a safe space with an “us” mentality and how that differs if you are in a “them” mentality. Examples we talked about were differences when you are walking down a street with your friends in a safe “us” enviroment vs. walking down a street by yourself feeling alone and not as safe. Also, we talked about the way we dress creates an feeling of “you’re in or you’re out”. It can invite people in, bringing inclusion, or keep people out on purpose.

We also performed a few pieces from our “That’s the Thing” series including Sarah’s solo, “Context Ender”, Greer’s solo, “Sbarro Sharks”, and “St. James Infirmary Blues”. I especially liked performing “St. James” in this space because it had a very starch feel, with white walls and white tiled floors. There was a new presence of sickness and despair that I hadn’t felt as strong before.

Here are a few pictures my husband took from the performance.

Improved Section

Context Ender

Sbarro Sharks

St. James Infirmary Blues

St. James Infirmary Blues

Over the past couple of years, my artistic process has increasingly involved collaboration. Sometimes I’ve worked with other artists, but most often I have worked alongside friends and family members: people who are deeply invested in me and in my work, but who would not ordinarily identify as artists. And I’ve struggled for a while to give words to the deep rightness I sense in collaborating with non-artists — a significance that goes beyond the simple pleasure of doing something I love in the presence of people I love.

I’ve long been bothered by the specialization of art — the notion that only a chosen few should have the power to create objects and meaning, and that their efforts should be appreciated and interpreted by a similarly-elite class of curators and critics. And what happens beyond this charmed circle who have been initiated into the complex code of contemporary visual meaning? We don’t know, and we don’t care, the contemporary art world seems to say.

So cheerfully inviting non-artists into the artistic process is a satisfyingly concrete rebuttal to the image of the solitary artistic genius. The work we produce is no longer the product of my own genius (if I do possess any genius, it hasn’t surfaced yet), but of relationship and cooperation. And the art itself no longer belongs to the cloistered elite, but to the whole of the community — to the critics, yes, but equally to the priests and students and farmers and auto mechanics.

That, to me, is art worth making.

Coming soon: thoughts on the difference between excellence and elitism — does accessibility come only at the expense of quality?

I’m continuing work on my unfinished mittens (I actually started over so I could really do it right.  I was kind of just making it up as I was going).  And so I’m following directions now (for once!) on this training mitten pattern, and came to the direction “Increase 1 after the 6 and 18 stitch.”  WHA?  Yeah.  I don’t know how to do that.  Well, NOW I do!  Thanks to happening on to:

http://www.knittinghelp.com/

They have amazingly clear how-to videos for everything from casting on, adding stitches, subtracting stitches and learning different knitting styles.  For instance, my Mum taught me the Throw/American Method which is what I’ve done for years and been just fine with.  But there are other methods too, like the German Method/Left-Handed Knitting or Combined Knitting, or BACKWARDS Knitting!  German Method is actually easier than I thought, and I just followed the videos and WOW!  I know a new method of knitting.  YAY!

This is all well and good because I just purchased this beautiful sweater pattern on Etsy!

OH MY!  It’s so cute but I’m sure I wouldn’t know all the directions.  SO glad I found this website because I know it will help me along the way.  Yipppeeeeee!

Happy Knitting!

Photo by Sarah Jane Rhee

What are you doing next Friday night?  think/dance will be performing as a part of Dance Chicago’s Fringe Carnival next Friday, November 13 at 8:15 pm at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 West Belmont Ave, Chicago.

Check it out!

More information is available at www.dancechicago.com

I’ve had four solo exhibits in the past 18 months — lots of time spent making art, very little time for thinking. We finish installing the fourth exhibit this coming Monday, and after that there are only a couple of commission projects still on the horizon. And so the unknown yawns ahead in a spreading void; inhabited only by the possibility of all things.

I’ve been looking forward to it. This is, for me, the most mysterious part of the artistic process — the unstructured time of waiting, watching, and listening that must always precede the time of making. New ideas require empty time and open space to take on form and life. And so I wait.

Stephen Cottrell describes the act of waiting as “not a waste of time but, as we see in nature, a time of change, growth and transformation.”* For artists — perhaps for all of us — the discipline of waiting is an opportunity to participate in the Spirit’s creative movement over the face of the deep; to listen in anticipation for the sacred Word that speaks all things into being. In waiting, we embody not the creating Spirit, but the boundless void itself: a wide, expectant womb in which the unknown and formless can be made flesh.

I don’t know what comes next. I am staring into the possibility of all things. And I am waiting.

*”Rediscover the benefits of waiting this Advent,” The Church of England, 24 November, 2008. Those at Asbury will recognize this as one of the central ideas behind my recent “Breath” installation.

I feel bad for not writing.  I feel bad for not painting.  I feel bad for not finishing my projects.  I have so many ideas bottled up inside my brain but I get home and I’m so tired.  So. Tired.  I can’t even think.  I just want to do something mindless. Like watch TV.  Or play Farkle.  Once, I played 35 games of Farkle.  In a row.  On Friday night I watched six hours of TV after work.  SIX HOURS.  O me. O Life!  I feel like it’s passing me by, O me, O life.

I spend hours on Etsy seeing so much fun stuff and getting so much inspiration.  Like this:

And this:

And this:

I’m stuck.  Unmotivated.  Bored?  (I hope not!) Tired? (Likely.)

Let me show you everything I’ve started and can’t get myself to finish:

1. A painting of Mark… I started this so long ago (winter 08). Dreadful. It’s acrylic on canvas.

2.  I started this one last winter… March I think?  And it’s just doodles in acrylic on canvas.

3.  This is a knitted blanket (or 1/3 of one).  I’ve been knitting this damn thing since winter 2006. TWO THOUSAND SIX!!!! I have so much yarn collected for this that I could knit sweaters for Jon, Kate, and all Eight.  Plus the Branjelina Clan.

4.  I started this mitten last week.  Hah!  Yeah.  Wishful thinking.

5.  In this box are the piecings for a quilt and my sewing machine.

6.  I worked on this cross-stitch all last winter but see that bottom corner? Not done.  I started it for my cousin Betsy for her wedding.  She got married in June 2003.

7.  This is a mini tote bag for Sammy Pants.  I started it last fall (2008) so she would have something to carry her lunch in for school.

Such silliness!  Such waste!  Of space, of money, of time never spent.  I can’t even believe it!  I have boxes and boxes of stuff like this.  Great ideas!  Wishful thinkings!  Hopeful pursuits!  Most never finished, and some never even begun.

And yet the problem is that deep inside I feel like I want to just paint and paint until I run out of media.  Or sew and sew until my machine breaks.  Or knit and knit until my fingers bleed.  If I could I would spend all day creating.  I have hours before I sleep to spend time doing this. But I just. can’t. get. there.  WHY!?!?!  I get so frustrated with myself. And I’m so disappointed.

And so… today I begin.  Well, tomorrow.  But this blog is the real beginning.  I will do ONE THING every week that is creative, and NOT for school.  And I will post my progress here, on le-petit-elephant.com.  And if I don’t do it, I want you, readers, all 23 of you out there, to email me. Annoyingly. Until I post.  And if, by my birthday, March 14 2010, I have not posted at least 3/4 of the weeks, I will put all of my art supplies up for donation.  Even my two easels.  Because it is a WASTE to have such lovely supplies and not use them.   And a waste of ideas.  And a waste of time to not be spending time doing what I really enjoy doing.  I’m serious.  This is ridiculous.

I’ve never had a more exciting or productive mid-term. Last night, under the cover of darkness, made some art and then it rained! I used chalk for the stencil (pictured below) because I believe in using environmentally friendly products and spray paint is extremely toxic for the environment and artists who use it as their dominant medium (please wear a respirator mask or hospital mask if you are using spray paint).

Installed at Wyman Dell, C.V.’s “premiere” dog park,

In other news, Sarah McCann, a fellow Community Artist and MACA graduate recently installed some work she made with students at The Stadium School Youth Dreamers in Downtown Baltimore. Join the conversation here!

Watch the step by step creation of a New Yorker cover using an iphone:

New Yorker