I’m Just, Like, Inviting You To Join Me In Watching This, You Know?

Enjoy this poem by teacher/poet Taylor Mali, which photographer Ronnie Bruce has “animated” typographically.

Everything and Nothing

There is an exquisite timing in creating art, like when you realize you must stop and allow those beautiful brushstrokes and textures to set in order to preserve them, even though your hands long to keep painting.  Even though you will be adding another layer, or another ten layers, later. The discipline of that is breathtaking, and empowering. You are able to hear the art tell you what it needs, and act in accordance with that. To listen.

Or when you find the energy, the impetus to keep going, and you overcome the temptation to give up ~ like a runner close to the end of the race who suddenly surges ahead. The art piece isn’t working, it looks awful, but you’re on a quest for just the right colors, a highlight here, a shadow there, a shift in emphasis, to pull the whole thing out of the trash heap that the judge insists you consign it to. You make yourself retrieve it ~ you slam the lid on the trash can and the judge. And you aren’t satisfied with just pulling it out, either. You want it to burst into flame, ignited by your passion. To be luminous.

And then there are the times you ride that sheer, exuberant flow, when the colors pick themselves, the shapes emerge and recede in perfect harmony, your hands dance through your supplies with such confidence, choosing the materials and techniques that express exactly what is pouring from your heart of hearts. Exaltation. Ecstasy.

And it is everything and nothing if anyone else feels the way you do about your work. It is everything, because communicating with others through your art allows a connection at a level that is difficult to reach with mere conversation. And when it happens, you feel exultant. Your work has spoken! And it means nothing, because whether or not someone else feels what you put into it, even if it is a foreign language to them, you were able to experience and express it. For yourself, for your own expansion.

That, alone, makes it exquisitely worthwhile.

Empowered (collage painting) ~ © Carol Wiebe

Let’s Party

I am learning Lightroom to organize my photos. I am using, and learning, Pages to create the templates for my eBooks  and Keynote to prepare presentations, along with Photoshop Elements. Soon, I hope to design a website, with iWeb. It is taking shape in my mind. You can do some very neat stuff with computers even if you cannot navigate anywhere close to the borders of Geekdom.

I am also writing a magazine article, and finishing up 3 paper quilts and 6 art journals (#7 was recently completed).

I am incredibly grateful that I have such a stimulating and satisfying array of artful activities to perform. They are a labor of love. My life is rich and full ~ full to overflowing ~ with many outlets for my creativity. It is exhilarating to realize that every step builds towards the next, as I make art, write about it, and share what I did and how I did it. It’s like putting together scaffolding which eventually allows me to leap a tall building (or design roadblock). It’s great fun to figure out ways to communicate all that I assimilate, and to welcome those who are drawn to what I have to offer.

It is inconsequential that I am hardly a “professional” programmer or using high end programs. What matters is that I am coming up with methods that work for me, that help me articulate what I want to express. If they also provide some direction for others to express their own ideas, I call that a cause for celebration. They will then expand what they have gleaned from me, and share further. The teacher ~ student relationship is always reciprocal, as far as I’m concerned.

That’s how I like to party.

Inspiration Art Journal Cover Has Undergone A Makeover

Remember Art Journal 1? Well, the cover has changed. It now sports a coppery patina that looks somewhat oxidized.

Here, then, are the before and after pics:

BEFORE

AFTER: Inspiration Journal Cover

I have actually completed one of my art journals! Unless, of course, I decide to write words in it. This one is presently wordless, an amusing format for a poet, don ‘t you think?

Giveaway Inspired By One World, One Heart

I visited a lot of wonderful blogs that participated in this event last year, and decided I would take part this year. Talk about a one stop giveaway bonanza: visit One World One Heart logo to find out more (the logo is also clickable).I am offering a collage painting for the giveaway: Invoking Clarity (10″ x 8″). In order to be eligible for the draw for this painting, you simply need to leave me a comment on this post. I will pick the winner on February 15th (by drawing a name), so leave your comment by midnight, February 14 (Valentine’s Day).

Invoking Clarity ~ © Carol Wiebe (right click for a bigger view)

Invoking Clarity ~ side view. (This piece is ready to hang on your wall.)

With the full power of the moon behind her, this woman invokes clarity. But clarity does not necessarily arrive quickly, in an easily discernible package, hovering just above our gaze before wrapping us in its bright tendrils. Rather, we piece all the various small revelations together, and begin to fathom a more spacious vision with each shining quilt, or painting, or poem that we complete.

Perhaps completion is not the direction we want to move towards, with its suggestion of closure.

What we really seek is a perpetual opening, a ceaseless unfolding, until we become so expansive that everything else is part of us, and we of it.

Add Some Jing To Your Art Teaching (No, That Is Not A Typo)

I took time out for a while from my frenetic pace of writing, so that I would have more time to simply create art, but also to think about how I wanted to approach writing. I knew I loved to write, and that good content is important to me, but decided that I had slipped into writing more about what everyone else was doing than about my own processes. It is important to learn from others, and have them be a catalyst for your own ideas, but if you really want to connect with others, you have to share your self. I’m ready to do that. I feel that I have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, in terms of connecting with you, the person who has taken the time to read what I have to say. I deeply appreciate your attention and would be thrilled to dialogue with you, if you care to go that extra step and leave me a comment.

I am VERY excited about a program I found, called JING. I will now be able to share, easily, how I manipulate images on Photoshop Elements. It seemed impossible before, because I couldn’t be creative AND write down what I was doing at the same time. The other alternative was to just create away, trying this filter, and that brush, and this layer and that enhancement ~ and THEN try to re-create my steps. Let me just say that I do not possess an eidetic memory (I wish) and leave it at that. Having a camcorder sitting on my desktop did not seem feasible either.

Of course, the applications of this application it don’t end with Photoshop Elements. Go to the Jing link above, or the Jing blog to find out more about how you can use Jing to your adavantage.

I have to go and try this out. Why don’t you do the same, and we’ll compare notes!

Give Yourself the Hugs and Kisses

We all remember the kisses and hugs (Xs and Os) we were required, as children,  to dispense at an adult’s command. Some of us were aware of our own power even then. We refused to squander our affection, reserving it for those we really cared about, or whom we thought we could not survive without. We demanded a choice.

Or, perhaps, we were not as demonstrative as some of our contemporaries, or felt shy around others. The look or smell of another might be interpreted as threatening to a child. Why would we want to kiss something that was threatening us, or throw our arms around it?

However you experienced love in your life, I hope you came to a place of loving yourself. I completely understand that for many of us, loving our own self proved exceedingly difficult. It still may elude us. The reasons are legion: it is not difficult to find excuses, people to blame, circumstances to curse, hurts and grievances to nurse.

Eventually, or suddenly, the realization dawns that self love is the way to freedom. Everything and anything barring access to it must be extracted, expunged, expelled.

Or, we merely reside in a very ordinary, mundane place of obedience and obligation, following an agenda that did not originate with ourselves. Because to truly know what we want and need, we have to love ourselves.

Breaking Boundaries ~ © Carol Wiebe

So, give yourself the hugs and kisses you so deeply desire.

I Am DREAMING About Xs and Os Now!

I woke up with fleeting visions of Xs on O fields and Os on X fields and leaped to my computer to try and capture at least a sense of those graphic dreams.

Here are a few examples:

Black X on O page ~ © Carol Wiebe

Red X on O page ~ © Carol Wiebe

Bleeding X ~ © Carol Wiebe

Other associations are coming to me as well: a treasure map, for instance. X marks the spot. What kind of treasures are these images releasing in my consciousness.

When I look at the bleeding X, I think of X-rated. Movies with a certain degree of violence are considered X rated. What should be x rated is doing violence to ourselves by refusing to believe in ourselves. We become expatriates from our own inner realms, divided from who we really are, from all that we could become.

This just keeps going deeper and deeper.

Exhilarate In How Your Chosen Subject Keeps Expanding

The other day I wrote a post about X and O marks. They are marks I often produce, and an art video I was watching reinforced that other artists use them too. The artist in the video commented that she made them frequently, and didn’t know why.

I had put an X and O design on the front cover of one of my art journals, and decided I would fill the entire thing with X and O designs to see where it took me. Then it struck me that I could take the X and O post, print it out, cut it up, and use the words as collage material for that journal (I enlarged the words in Photoshop Elements). This idea really struck me: I could use some of my posts to explore ideas, which could then turn into themes for my art journals, and subsequently produce an art quilt or two from my thoroughly investigated subject.

Perhaps I am exaggerating how much investigation was involved, but at least I will have examined the subject to some degree. I can then go as deep as I care to venture with the confidence that I have chosen a subject with some purchase for my imagination to grab hold of. For me, just collecting words is inspirational. Every word is a springboard for any number of associations.

X and O Exercise ~ by Carol Wiebe

Once my mind starts cogitating in a certain direction, numerous events and references begin to manifest around me. I might hear a song on the radio about someone’s ex. I might read an article about omens, or a lot of people will offer me their opinions on this exact subject. These events would not have impressed me with the force they now do due to the orientation of my mind. I find this process thoroughly enjoyable because it is so enriching. My chosen subject just keeps expanding. With any luck, poetry will begin to overflow, or exude.

Even an Artist Has To Be Practical Sometimes

The flaky artist stereotype lives on. Those who get to know us soon realize that we are creative, innovative, and passionate about what we do. And, we can definitely be practical. For instance, my extra time this week has gone into sewing drapes for our newly remodeled bedroom.

The bedroom has two large windows, facing the back yard, that need covering. First came the shopping for hardware, which we managed to buy at half price (finials and all). Then there was picking out drapery material. Because we want a minimum of fabric on either side of the window (when the drapes are open), we opted for the large grommet look.  This involved making a template of paper which mapped out grommet holes, and testing it on the curtain rod to help us estimate how much fabric we needed. Then the 4 rectangular pieces of fabric had to be hemmed on all 4 sides (16 sides in total). I’m almost finished with that. Tonight I hope to cut out all the grommet holes in the fabric (40 in total). My husband Ted will be putting in the grommets, and hanging the hardware. As soon as the job is done, I will show you the results.

Unless, of course, the drapes don’t turn out well ~ in which case, I’m hoping you’ll forget about it.

I’m sure you’ve all seen those aprons and bumper stickers that read: I’d rather be (you fill in the blank). I’d rather be making art, of course, but I sleep better in a dark room. I also don’t want to shock (or scare) the neighbors behind us.