Hot Off the Presses!

Friends Deryn Mentock and Catherine Witherall have just published a brand new zine, Jewelry, the Zine for all you handmade jewelry enthusiasts out there. I am very excited to be a part of this project, even if only on a small scale. My advanced copy is winging it's way towards me right this minute and I expect it should be appearing in the magic mail box this week.

If you're wondering who else is in the ground-breaking zine, here is a list of what's inside: (Click to enlarge, I think.)

According to Catherine, the zine is a delicious spiral bound 128 pages and includes 17 how-to projects and idea pages. There are also specialty pages chock full of inspiration in full color. If you would like to pre-order yourself a copy, you can find all the info here. You'll want to get right on it though-it's a limited edition publication so when they're gone, they're gone!

As soon as my copy arrives, I will tell you what I think. I can't help but feel that this is going to be extraordinary, given the deep pool of talent involved and Deryn and Catherine at the helm. I wish it were Monday already-I am itching to get my hands on my copy!

And So

So things have been really busy with a flurry of workshops over the last two weeks. Today was the last major one, not just for February, but for some time. I have decided to make some changes in my life and so I am stepping away from workshops for awhile in favour of freeing up some time to follow the yearnings of my own heart.

I've been teaching mixed media for about 5 years and before that, textiles. I like teaching. I like sharing information and meeting people. I enjoy inspiring my students to find what's special about themselves and express it through art. I like seeing someones face light up when they get an idea. I like watching people relax and unwind and find the zen of creating. I enjoy the camaraderie, the laughter, the give and take of teaching and learning.

At the beginning of the year, I decided that what I really needed to do this year was to "be the leaf". This meant trusting myself and the universe enough allow my life to unfold. It meant not worrying so much about looking for something to do, but to simply just be and see what happens. It also meant allowing myself to go wherever the currents of life take me and to be okay with it. In being quiet and still, it became clear that I need to take time for myself.

Just the other day, in a workshop, I said to my class that people always say they don't have time for art and that I don't believe that is true. I believe that if something is important enough to you, you make time for it. I need to make time for myself to rest and rejuvenate and to make whatever art the spirits move me to create. I think it's impossible (and foolish) to keep giving from the well of creativity without taking time to fill it up again. So for the foreseeable future, that is what I feel moved to do.

I want to do more writing and I want to get paid to write. Writing is another way of teaching and I have ideas and thoughts that I think are worthy of a salary. Nothing would make me happier than to be paid to sit here in my jammies and write articles, to help empower others in their lives.

When I was a little girl, I thought I would grow up to be a writer. (That dream came after wanting to be a forensic pathologist, by the way.) I never dreamed I would be making a living as an artist and it certainly never occurred to me that my name would end up in books in libraries in my community and beyond because of art. It's funny the twists and turns that life takes and how your dreams can come true in ways you never thought possible.

So this is me trusting. I believe in the power of saying YES! to myself. I believe that when I let go of one thing, I open my hand to receive something else and I believe in the possibility that that "something else" will be better than anything I can imagine.

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

~Helen Keller

Thinking About Creativity

Goodness! Is it February already?! Hard to believe we're already into the second month of the year. It's a busy time here in my studio. February, has traditionally been a popular month for workshops for me and I am teaching three in the next two weeks.

I've been making art, but a good chunk of it has been for publication so I can't share it just now. I've also been busy writing, which I love to do. Speaking of writing, it's come to my attention that before too long, I will reach my 1000th post! Can you believe it? When I started this blog, blogging wasn't as mainstream as it is now. Incredibly, that was just 4 years ago! How quickly things change. I'll have to think up something special for my 1000th post when the time comes.

A few weeks ago, a friend pointed me towards an online video of a talk given by Rice Freeman Zachary on Google Authors. It's here and you might want to check it out. Essentially she talks about her experiences with interviewing other artists about creativity for her book, Living the Creative Life . I was interested in what she had to say so I ran the video while I was working in my studio and listened.

One thing she talked about was how one artist said he felt that everyone was creative and that he feels creativity gets expressed through whatever each person's gift happens to be. I started thinking about it, turning that idea over and over in my mind like a small pebble and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed. I thought about it like this:

One of my favourite movies of all time is Apollo 13. The reason I love the movie so much is that when the space ship gets in trouble, the NASA engineers have to use their deductive reasoning and problem solving skills to figure out how to get the astronauts back safely. Every time I watch that movie, I am awed that men who have never been in space can figure out exactly what to do. It's fancy mathematics that I couldn't even begin to understand-I'm an artist after all, not a rocket scientist, but those guys worked the problem and somehow managed to solve it. It boggles my mind.

When I think about that movie, I see the creativity of science and I have to agree that this is creativity being expressed in the way that these men were gifted. We always think of science as such a left brain thing. Science and math are not traditionally what we would think of as creative-they don't involve paint or prose, music or stage lights, but it's creativity just the same.

I love architecture and I have often wondered why that is. Now I realize that it's because it's the genius of both the mathematical and artistic world coming together to create something of both beauty and integrity. One of my own personal heroes is Leonardo Da Vinci and there is no more perfect example of both the left and right brain thinking. That man was creative with every fibre of his being. He was fuel by an insatiable curiosity about the world and he never stopped wondering "What if...".

I haven't read Rice's book yet-I have to track down a copy, but I thought I would mention her video because you might enjoy it as much as I did. Happy viewing!