Unplanned Obsolescence

 After years of [somewhat] adequate service, I recently bid farewell to a key member of my team here in this studio. I was not prepared to part ways. I spent several months and dollars seeking a resolution. But the matter simply could not be resolved favorably. 

Different But the Same

The days of sameness are passé. We are human beings. Individuals. And what makes us interesting are our differences.

I recently read a book that discussed evolutionary psychology. It talked about modern man's reasons for certain behaviors and choices and how they are linked to survival instincts we've had hardwired into us for millennia. It also touched on the possibility that some of those behaviors may no longer serve us.

Week's [Rear] End

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot." - Michael Altshuler

My week had a dizzying clip to it. I think I blinked and it was Friday night.

Things I Make for Me: Glasses Wall

As a creative person, I often find myself falling into DIY projects for my own needs and for others. While I'm not on the level of doing things like electrical work, I can do a mean faux stone wall, make a lamp, or set up a decent home theater. 

Twenty Twenty Forward

 Happy New Year! 

Did you hit the streets for the holidays? Me? Lolol oh, absolutely NOT. I saw the new year in from the comfort of home. With champagne glass in hand, I opened the vertical blinds of the back porch wide, turned off all the lights, kicked up my feet, then enjoyed fireworks courtesy of my neighbors...

All [Green] Thumbs

Fair warning: this post is a little off the usual creative rails because, well, I suddenly had to tackle some things concerning my garden. Creative in its own right, but different.

I feel weird even calling it a garden

Up, Up, and Away

A few weeks ago I decided to raid my inventory of stored work to find something to put in an empty spot on a wall. These are paintings that are (or have been) available for purchase online or elsewhere. 

Perfection vs. Balance

Here it is Thursday night, and I'm trying to get back on track after missing a few of my projected content items. I think I mentioned it here, but definitely on Patreon. 

To NOW

As I recently rode through my neighborhood looking at the homes and the people buzzing around, each in their own space puttering, playing, doing various things, I realized that I was witnessing many individual universes in action.

To-Do: on Tasks

Are you a list maker? Some might call me a hardcore list-maker, lol. But I need to ensure I don't forget to do certain things. And that might have stemmed from my years-long habit of jotting notes and making sketches when I had project ideas but didn't have time in the moment to execute them. My

first and foremost!

pet peeve is thinking of something important to me and forgetting to do it, or even forgetting what it was I wanted to do.

Monday on Target- Focusing!

The other day something made me realize that I forgot to plan. Yeah, that sounds pretty silly.

Many of us are good at setting goals and putting new things into practice, like exercise, reading, starting a garden, etc. But then we get busy and sometimes lose sight of what we meant to do and why we started.

I've had success with something that I'm sure many people dispel as "hokey", silly, or pointless. But for me, it's been effective- I've seen results. And with new developments in my personal and professional lives, it occurred to me that I was falling off in one area in particular. One that seems to affect all the other areas. My vision boards. 

Pandemic Living

Recent weeks mired in the mess of a global pandemic have basically meant an upheaval of life as we know it. For some of us.

What I mean by that is that as a professional artist, introvert, (okay,  add Scorpio to the list of offenses), and general homebody, the idea of staying/working/eating/exercising/existing from home is, by no means a stretch. It's actually pretty routine for me, (and many of my introverted artist friends!). Don't get me wrong, I love to explore, interact with other humans, get fresh air as much as the next person. But doing all the major things of life from home is not uncommon for me, it's sometimes preferred.

Things I Make for Me: Nesting Instincts

What is it about a rainy Sunday at home that inspires a certain range of activities for me? Reading, relaxing, snoozing, and today, nesting. Post late morning coffee and a few magazines, I found myself drawn to clean up and pretty up a little corner in my bedroom. This corner was already a spot that held a nightstand and a little gallery of elders. A sort of abstract family tree of parents, grands, and great grandparents, arranged in a manner loosely guided by feng shui (courtesy of Google University) to watch over and inspire me. Today I carefully disassembled most of it, cleaned and dusted, and reassembled with some additions. I was already happy with this corner, but allergies and ideas motivated me to address the state of it. Here it is now, clean and reworked.

 

It is still a work in progress, and I hope to find more old pictures to add. As a bonus, I had the time to clean the dust off of the ceiling fan in said room. I'm NOT lazy about cleaning, lol. In fact, the control freak in me requires that I clean throughout the week. But, like pretty much everybody else, I'm always busy.

But home is my sanctuary, my escape. So I'm happy to have found time to make it even more comfy. And now back to my regularly scheduled Sunday stuff. Which, after I wrote this, involved me concocting an apple pie cinnamon roll cake thingee from my overactive imagination for my sister-in-law's birthday. So much for a lazy Sunday (what is wrong with me?), lol.

Walls of Wisdom

If you hit a wall, stop. Common sense, right? 

More than good advice for everyday life, this nugget of wisdom applies to things in my studio, too.

Years ago as I attempted to develop discipline and greater stamina in my work, this approach emerged. I would be attempting to complete a project within a set time frame, but would often hit a stalemate before I could finish. I was surrounded by pieces that had been started and completely abandoned. Even work that had begun highly charged with inspiration, motivation, and a feeling of urgency to see it done would sometimes come to a crossroads of not knowing "what next?".

Thankfully, for the sake of my sanity, I began what I refer to in my mind as "flitting". 

Picasso reportedly once said 

"inspiration exists, but it has to find you working". 

That concept resonates with me to my very depths, and has proven true for me over and over. When I hit a wall with one project or piece, I simply "flit" around my studio, spending time on others until a solution, answer, lightning bolt, whatever, comes to me about the one that has stalled out. I get to continue the joy of creation, without banging my head against said wall. And I get to still feel productive. It is the main reason that on any given day, I could walk into my studio and fiddle with one or several of ten or more works-in-progress and get creative satisfaction. One gets some paint, one gets details sculpted, one gets photographed, one gets finished and put away till it's sold (and so on and so forth).

Nothing forced creatively ever really works out well (for me, at least). So, for years now, it has been common procedure in my studio to just STOP. And fix or focus on something else entirely. Just let it go. It works like a charm! And I'm getting better at it all the time.

How do you/would you apply this approach?

{Sharp} Silver Linings

gaahhh!!!

Whether it is apparent or not, it feels like I am constantly working on making progress in some aspect of my art or my business around my work. It's really an almost daily commitment for me. But sometimes things throw me off track, only to set me back down even further along than I planned. For example, about a week ago, this happened→

I was sitting at my desk in my studio editing pictures, and I kept hearing a funny tapping sound. I ignored it at first, but it kept up, so I got up to investigate. And I found that one of the two windows in my studio had somehow shattered, or buckled, or imploded- whatever. Glass dust and particles were slowly falling in. 

Good thing (and I warn you there are a number in this post) I've had enough years of mishaps that I've now trained myself to bypass the freak out and the thoughts of inconvenience, productivity setbacks, general pain in the..., etc. (at least initially). Yes, I finally learned what a waste of time and energy moaning, groaning, and getting all upset is. Instead I used the energy to quickly move things away from the window and focus on making things as safe as possible. So I dragged out the ladder I keep in my studio and rigged this up until someone could come and take a look at it.

 sidenote: A few weeks back (with skepticism) I bought a roll of duct tape from the Dollar Tree store in my neighborhood.

It had a chance to prove
 itself here, and it did.
Not only does it have a snazzy
print, it seemed just as strong as the
more expensive stuff. #yestothat

pardon my dust

Later that day, a guy showed up, took measurements to have a new pane of glass made, and complimented me on my studio and my tape up job. I felt better knowing that things were moving towards a fix, and once he left, I added a tarp to catch any stray glass. I really didn't want to spend the next few weeks making bloody discoveries of tiny pieces of glass that had fallen in and on things. Once the tarp was up, and the place where my white box (that I use for picture taking) was cleared and covered in plastic, Good thing #2: (3?? I don't think I've included them all) I was able to go back to working on things that don't take place in that corner (no excuses!). 

After a few days of not being able to work in that corner, I decided to take the white box outside to try getting some pictures done.  I set it up on a plastic deck chair in the sunlight, and it worked like a charm (yeah, another good thing!). 

My new pane of glass was installed a couple days ago, and much of the broken glass cleared by the glazier. I still had the task of removing the plastic shield I had created, which had a bunch of scary pieces still just hanging there in it, all sharp and stabby. I finally got my mind to the task, got up on my ladder with goggles, dust mask (just short of a hazmat suit), and the long hose on my vacuum cleaner and tackled it. Once I had removed all the glass I could find, removed the tarps and all the plastic, and given the whole spot a good obsessive compulsive vacuuming, I was ready to start putting everything (especially my white box!) back, so I could get back to photos, etc. over there.

And once you start (here comes another one) something like that, it often just snowballs. And this case was no exception. So I ended up putting things back better than they were before, including some bonus cleaning and purging things I don't need any more. And now I am sitting here typing this, and looking at that corner thinking of what else I can do to make things more efficient, neat, and productive. That stupid broken window helped me fix something else! #Perspective, my friends. Perspective.

PS: It is so true, that a clean, organized work space is very inspiring (time to make some messes!)
PPS: I never figured out what broke the window. Meteor maybe?
PPPS: I got my white box years ago. You can find a similar one (plus links to other tools I use) in my tools storefront on Amazon.

Life Hack: Cheap Luxe

One bouquet = 3 arrangements

I love little things that come together to make a rich, happy existence, and I don't think having that kind of existence needs to be expensive. I'd like to share something I call a "life hack" that I enjoy doing from time to time. 

I love having fresh flowers around, but as a self employed artist, I don't devote much of my budget (or time) to rolling in blooms everyday. When I do treat myself to flowers (or receive some as a gift), I like to max them out. Here are some examples.

Grocery stores and markets are often looked upon with disdain when people think of buying fresh flowers. But I love finding pretty blooms to take home with my groceries. Places like this will often mark down bouquets to move out the older ones and make room for fresher buds. When I'm already stopping for groceries, I cruise by to see if any of the discounted bouquets appeal to me. Sometimes I find bunches of a single type of flower. Often, they are assorted bouquets like the one I used to make the arrangements pictured (right). To make the most of whatever I have, I divide them up into several small vases or other pretty vessels. Florists recommend cutting ends prior to putting them in vases anyway, so I go ahead and pick my containers, and trim my flowers down to fit the containers. I like to pick containers that are unexpected and compliment the flowers, so for these, I used a teacup that belonged to my grandmother, a little glass bowl, and a white ceramic bowl. I would have preferred to use a piece of silver from my other grandmother for the roses, but I didn't want to go searching for it, so I chose a white ceramic bowl. Here's another example of the same approach, different assortment, shown in steps:  

from left (click to enlarge): BEFORE, an assortment from a florist, various small containers, screw on jar top, helpful for arranging in mason jars, water additive, trimming stems underwater (cut at an angle)

AFTER: same flowers, sorted into mini arrangements

The trick is to use several small containers that will end up looking full and vibrant, rather than one big vase that might look lackluster and sparse. I trim them underwater in a sink, as recommended, then arrange them into pretty bursts of color.
I often group like flowers together for visual impact. I try to find ways to use most of the pieces in a bouquet, including the leaves, which helps each arrangement look lush and plentiful. Here's an arrangement I did in an old glass jar I saved after I used up the candle inside:

An empty candle jar, repurposed

The size and shape of the jar and its mouth make 5-6 grocery store blooms and their leaves look much grander than they did in the refrigerated case at the store. Use your imagination and what you have on hand!
If I'm using glass or crystal, I will sometimes use leaves, small fruit (like cumquats), or glass gems inside the container to hide the stems and make the arrangement look extra fancy. When I've finished arranging them, I add a little of the fertilizer packet that usually comes with the flowers, to the water in each arrangement. Finally, I put the arrangements in various spots around the house, so it feels like I have flowers and pretty pops of color everywhere.

That's one of my favorite cheap and [I think] easy life hacks. Hope you try it, and I hope to share more of these soon!