Wabi-sabi Wastewater

Here in the studio, it’s warm, but outside it’s snowing. One of the interesting things about Lemuria is that it’s not a 4-season kind of place. It’s the weather you need, but you can’t control it. So today I’m inside, working on handmade paper bowls.

One of them has been painted gold on the inside, and I’m rinsing the brush in water, when I notice how beautiful the water looks. I swish the brush around again, and the gold flicks along the surface in spirals.

I’m entranced. Then embarrassed. Wasting time. Not being productive. As I pour the waste water down the drain, I have another idea. What would it look like to paint with this water–to use it instead of throw it out? Won’t know, I just rinsed it down the drain.

But there are more bowls to be painted, so I salvage some paper scraps, crumple them up, and dip them in the wastewater. Straightening them out, I hang them on the towel rack and work some more. Use the same paper, dip it in another bucket of wastewater. Hmmm. Looks like I have a collage background, or maybe paper for a notecard.

Yep, wabi-sabi works in art. Maybe just as well as life.

(c)2007 Quinn McDonald. All rights reserved. Images by Q.McDonald.

The Power of Not Knowing

If you work in a corporation, you may have noticed how dangerous it is not to know something—the latest office news, your boss’s thoughts, your own job’s newest development. You may spend a lot of time gathering information so you can be in the know. Someone who admits to not knowing is branded as ‘stupid,’ ‘not ambitious,’ or, more dangerous in a corporation, ‘not someone we would promote.’

How did knowing everything become so important? Particularly since not knowing is the way we get information, the way we learn how to do something new. In the business world, the importance of knowing could lie in the time- and money-cost of training. It takes longer to train someone who doesn’t know than someone who already does. And for a beleaguered supervisor, training takes time away from the job, so hiring someone who already knows the job seems the best route. A reasonable shortcut is on-the-job training. To the person looking for a job, it seams reasonable to exaggerate skills, education, and experience. That makes us know more and get hired. And then perform poorly. How much more exciting if we could admit we didn’t know, but were eager to learn.

The problems start when the job expectations are out of reach of what we know.
This is no different for an artist than a corporate employee. An artist who tells a coach, “I know how to work with galleries,” or “I know what I need to do,” may be covering an important part of their life that needs work.

Knowing and not knowing is closely related to control. The more we try to control every minute of our lives, the more we have to know. Not knowing relinquishes control. Not being in control can be a big relief, less responsibility, less worry.

What a relief the phrase “I don’t know” can be. It opens the door to getting more information, to new experiences, to new perspectives. There is a great release of pressure when you are not in control of every second of your life. You are not so disappointed all the time when you don’t know, when control is not the driving force in your life.

In the next few days, when you feel as if you are being pecked to death by ducks, try saying “I just don’t know” to yourself. Take off that heavy backpack of knowing and controlling and instead take three deep, slow breaths. Then decide right now. In this moment. And leave the backpack behind.

Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach and a life coach who helps clients through transitions and life reinventions. (c) Quinn McDonald 2007

Venus and the Moon

It was warm enough to walk today. The sun went down while I was walking and I saw the new moon and Venus right after the sun set. The moon was turned like a cup because it’s winter still. (c) Quinn McDonald 2007. All rights reserved. Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who specializes in helping people through re-invention and transitions.

Robyn Gordon, back at work

Connections
“Everything is connected.” The first time I heard it I both believed it and didn’t believe it. I could see how war tore apart the whole world, no matter within which border it is fought. Or how a death, no matter how private, can touch a heart across an ocean. But then again, we really don’t know people we have lived next door to for years; we don’t understand the actions of our own family.

Occasionally, belief in amazing powers of creativity blow through my window–in the form of my computer screen. Several weeks ago, I got a note from a woman in Africa, a woman I have never seen or talked to. She reads my blog. Something in the line of words, in the shape of a sentence, made her want to reach out to her own creativity again. When I read something like this, my heart stutters. I want it to be true. I don’t want the responsibility of it being true.

But then I remember: it’s not about me. Creativity is never used up. It is available to everyone who takes the spark and fans it into a flame. Sometimes it just requires a puff of air, sometimes an enormous force of will to begin creating. Or begin again. We return to an unused studio, and sit down. We choose to make meaning in our lives and we pick up the tools to do it.

Robyn Gordon exercised that will. I knew she had been awake at night, and rose to sift through writing on the busy air that hold the Internet. She came across my blog and she made a decision. She began creating again. Today, several weeks after the first contact, she wrote again. I asked to see some of her work, and she generously shared it.

Imagine how impoverished we would have been without this work. Imagine what it means to Robyn to have made this with her heart and hands. We are all connected. Thank you for your art, Robyn. Thank you for being awake and night and sending it to someone you have never met.

–Totem images by Robyn Gordon

To see another image of Robyn’s work, visit my “Connections” post at the Taverna.

Life’s a collage

Collage is a flexible, satisfying art form. It’s particularly gratifying for artists who are not illustrators. Using the vast palette of magazines, journals, books, graphic novels, and newspapers, we create stories, convey emotions and display ideas.

The issue of copyright lurks in the background. Those images might be someone else’s. Early photographers faced similar issues–photographers who took pictures that included buildings were told they needed to get permission first. And before we shrug that away as ancient art history, it was not too many years ago that the first camera phones caused concern because people were secretly taking pictures in bars without permission. Now the pictures arrive on YouTube for the world to see, no permission needed.

In our culture, sampling is part of creating music. Open source information gave us Wikipedia.   The collaging of experience, ideas and words, gives us new songs and books. But sometimes time and contents aren’t in balance.

In 1916 Heinz von Lichberg wrote about a traveler who rents a room as a lodger and is smitten with the young daughter of the homeowner. “Young” is the operative word here; she is not yet a teenager. A child molester? A story worth tipping off Dateline NBC?   Not quite. The young girl’s name was Lolita, and so was the title of the book. Surprised? I was, too. It was published a full 40 years before Vladimir Nabokov’s novel made the name Lolita famous–and vice versa.

Johnathan Lethem, in an article in Harper’s, says, “Inspiration could be called inhaling the  memory of an act never experienced. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out  of chaos. . .”

So life imitates collage. We hear and see snippets of information and they become the wallpaper of our lives. In May of 1996 folksinger/songwriter Bob Dylan wrote “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” which contained the much-discussed line, “To live outside the law you must be honest.” Oddly enough, it caused no raised eyebrows at all eight years earlier, when Stirling Silliphant wrote almost the same words  for Don Siegel’s film noir, The Lineup.

So the collage artist stands in the middle of a loud, chaotic life with scissors and glue. We make sense of it by cutting it apart and reassembling it so that others can recognize it and make meaning of it.

–Quinn McDonald is a collage artist who makes handmade paper that is transformed to notecards, journals and bowls. See her work at QuinnCreative. Collage image from uiowa.edu.

Choose Your Sorrow

 Norine Dresser was married to Harold for three-quarters of her life. They had an intimacy that was both amazing and funny; they knew how to make each other laugh and could drive each other crazy. Harold chewed cigars long after he quit smoking them. Last week, Harold’s heart wore out. It wasn’t like we didn’t see it coming, but no one wanted to split up the two, and no one wanted to say goodbye to Harold. His death was a loss for his family, for humor, for a little gentleness in the world.

The day Harold died, I was teaching. At noon, I was about to call the lunch break when I smelled cigar smoke. The business location was a strict no smoking area, so it was strange to smell smoke, but it was distinctly cigar smoke. At the same time I realized I hadn’t heard from Norine in a while. I called the lunch break and went to check my emails.

When I got home, I found the message on my cell phone. I keep it turned off during class, and there was Norine’s daughter’s voice, serious and tired, as if she had made many of those calls.

I began to make the card I had hoped never to make for Norine. When I make cards, I almost always make two at the same time, in case one doesn’t work out. It’s an old artist trick, to make one you care about and one you don’t.

Almost always, the one you don’t care about turns out to be far more interesting–you weren’t overthinking it, and it becomes the more natural, easy card.

One of the cards (above) is dark, in grays and mauves. A quince tree shadow is on the bottom, and two curved lines cross above it. The big dipper is above, and three tears in marbled paper are on the left side.

On the other card, a moon with a tree’s shadow across it (thanks, Robin!) is eclipsing a jeweled globe. A severe leaf pattern balances the blank stripe on handmade paper.

So now, one of these goes off to Norine and her family, the other one stays with me for a while.
If it were up to you, which one would you send?

You can vote at my other blog site.

Sunrise on Art

After almost a month of working on taxes, I have the big spreadsheet completed. That means it’s ready to go to the CPA who will compile it all into a neat book of taxes.

It also means today is an art date. Art dates, which I learned about from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artists Way, is a time you feed your head, heart and soul on art or artistic trips. You stay out of the studio, and enjoy what feeds your spirit.

There is a Joseph Cornell exhibit at the American Art Museum and I’m off to take it in. Cornell was the father of American collage and assemblage, and the exhibit includes his poetry and some film clips.

Should the exhibit pique my interst in more art, the Sackler has a great exhibit of 13th century tea bowls. Beautiful, intricate work. And, if I’m still not finished with art, there is a dim-sum restaurant not far from the exhibits. I’m off!

Taking care of the edges

Taking Care of the Edges

My Father was always studying, taking notes, learning. So much so, that my predominant memory is of the back of his head, bent over a book. He spent each evening reading, studying, working on projects he brought home. His office was also our dining room, so we knew to clear the table quickly after dinner, slide the table back into the slot in the wall, and leave my father to his work. He was neither a tyrant nor a pal. He was, in fact, a rocket scientist.

Occasionally, he would become briefly involved in his children’s lives. One afternoon, I was destroying a slice of bread, trying to get cold peanut butter on the freshly-baked slice. He surveyed the scene, took in my frustration, and said, “Take care of the edges, the middle will take care of itself.” He was right.

The sturdy crust helped the edges hold onto the cold peanut butter, and as I carefully applied it up to the edges, the spread warmed and made it easy to hit the soft middle.

Turns out that this advice works well in the rest of life as well. Fitted sheets attached by the corners, pull the wrinkles out across the middle of the bed. Start the glue on a collage at the edges, work it carefully toward the corners, and the middle won’t be overworked. Start a story at the edges–with research, character development, a plot line, and the middle of the story won’t be a problem.

And while we are on the topic of problems, they, too are best solved from the edge in. When we jump in without thinking of the cause, trying to fix the heart of the issue, we allow it to creep out along the edges, we face more work. Squelching a rumor with a loud assertion doesn’t have nearly the effect as living a credible life.

Who knew that a peanut butter sandwich, observed by a rocket scientist, could echo so well over time?

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who helps people through transitions in life and re-invention. She is also a life coach and workshop leader. See her work at QuinnCreative.com (c) Quinn McDonald 2007 All rights reserved