Walk with me.

This is a bit from mail to Ben:

What I need, more than anything else, is time. I need time to rest and think and get over things. I need to clear my head so I can get back to meaningful work and have some life.I'm not even seeing a break for that any time soon. I'm on a wheel and I can't get off. I've gotta tell you, I feel pretty close to breaking.
Thanks for the email. Helped.


What I needed wasn't time, but balance. Balancing inspiration and obligation. Long term goals vs short term. Want to vs Have to. Which idea to act on? Which to write? Which might be lost? What's the right choice? So many decisions...so little....wait. maybe this is about time. Work? life? friends? family? play, love or art? The choices, the juggling, the running, the guilt ....the wheel and the tsunami of minutiae--the noise, the noise, the noise

the fear.

all that you love will be swept away

Silly human!

Right. So. Here's something I struggle with as an artist and a human being. I get out of balance and my inner gyroscope starts to wobble. Sometimes the wobble is mild, sometimes it can knock me right out of orbit.

All that said,
added 11/11
{I'm thinking that if this is an issue for me, it very likely is for lots of other people too, including you. I'm thinking we can try a group collaboration of a sort and explore this struggle (we can better define it together on the forums)

I'm hoping you might want to take a closer look with me. You can use any medium you choose in any creative discipline.
The only thing I ask is that you don't participate without fully exploring the subject. The most important ingredient in this soup is the human element.
Ravyn tells me we can make a place on the forums to post work and comments.

Now, here's my question to you for the moment: what will we call this place?



g'night

Chipping Wisdom 2.0

Today I had a(nother) dental appt. Afterward I drove Pete to a gig in Indian Wells. Driving back, I listened to reports of the devastation and sad loss of life after the quake in China, reminded again that the filter created by distance has gone. Technology has brought every event into the here and now--makes us more aware of ourselves as members of the human family. At the break I switched to some Pink Floyd, and at the precise moment the music started, the numbness in my jaw fled suddenly and this fresh pain put bright edges around everything.

By the time I got home I was genuinely bummed out. So I settled in at the computer to work at minute image details for a project, feeling more and more overwhelmed as my mind wandered off to other projects---and the deadline trailing behind each. I remind myself to employ chipping wisdom when I'd rather curl up and sleep off this gloom.

It's sort of working.

I'm working on a number of projects, with a number of collaborators. The projects are each very different from the other, as are the collaborators. I send bits of ideas or images to them and they send bits back and once in a while that feels a lot like solving a jigsaw puzzle with a best buddy on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

That's pretty okay.

Just keep swimming...enough with the multitasking...collaborating

My earliest introduction to the art of multitasking would have to be watching my mother prepare holiday dinners. Wow. That woman was efficient. A dozen or more dishes timed to emerge magically, arriving on the table at the same moment, each at the peak of its 'done-ness'.

Later it was in the laboratory, with labeled timers ticking all around for adding this reagent or that, starting a centrifuge or taking readings. With practice, it becomes almost automatic, even for this human.

In the studio at any given moment there can be glue setting, castings curing and paper mache drying, clothes in the washer, water boiling in the kettle and me dry-brushing a panel while working out a paragraph in my head.

But not always.

Some things must be done simply, with no distractions, and with every bit of my attention, like listening to Gorecki's 3rd, or watching the stars come out, or making a piece of art.

And some time must be devoted to just being . Swimming falls into that category.

Find what your just being things are, and take time to be. Trust me on this one.

There have been periods in my life when I didn't direct my attention to one thing.

This way is better. I got that from my mother too, though I "got it" years later. I can see her on the beach, sitting in the sand, looking out at the water and smiling. Sometimes, she just was.

********

Writing this, I recall making the poppet diving videos with Orion and Ravyn. (and, of course, Poppets) We started it on a complete whim, with no planning or preparation, and it turned into this really fun collaboration (aka, really hard work with laughing.) We agreed we both learned a lot from the experience and decided to delve into it on the Poppet Planet forums so we could tell you more about it and talk about the whole concept of artistic collaboration----especially the spontaneous sort.

Hope you'll join us here for "Collaboration Happens."

********

The Gallery will be open on June 23 for Summer Solstice. There will be more Alice in Wonderland Poppets and in the spirit of the season some visitors from "A Midsummer Night's Dream."

*******

And now, of course, swimming. Go and be.

g'night!