Sunday, September 16, 2007
5:15 PM
I'm reading a terrific book right now- "Living the Creative Life" by Rice Freeman-Zachary. It features 15 different artists, and discusses their inspiration, their work space, their work habits, etc. It also has little exercises sprinkled throughout the chapters designed to help the reader integrate their creativity with the rest of their life.
This topic is really relevant to me at the moment since I haven't had much creative time since Gracie came home. I'm getting more and more time in my studio now that Gracie is older, but when I get in there, I have no idea where to start. I either organize, clean, or do busy-work, like label finished jewelry, answer email, or putter around. It seems like such a tremendous waste since I generally feel really inspired and am always itching to get to my desk and *work*.
A great idea from the book is to have a little ritual to mark the beginning of creative time. Some artists light candles, some write in a journal, some do a quick sketch. I'm trying to figure out one that might work for me. Since I'm a list maker, and I keep a big sketchbook with photos, sketches, and notes about what I'm working on, I think it might be a good thing for me to list what I have been thinking about, what I *want* to try, and what I hope to get accomplished that day in the studio. Maybe it will help me get going.
I HAVE been working- I have been busy finishing several projects I started a while back. I finished about 40 photo/art pendants. Right now, I finally am finishing a project I started months and months ago- the "candy pop" beads (see photo to your right). I have had a lot of requests for them, so I am making over a thousand. It's VERY time consuming to wrap and decorate every.single.bead, but it's sort of hypnotic and soothing.
My lesson from this? When you start a project, finish it. It's okay to put it off a bit, but it's not so fun when you have 40 unfinished projects floating around and have ideas for 50 more projects you can't really start because of all the stuff going on!
very cool beads!
Posted by leslie @ September 29, 2007 12:41 AM
CUTE beads - they look like they were TOTALLY worth the work!
Posted by lauren hagerman @ October 31, 2007 11:18 AM
