{every day is a blank slate}

I know I meant to post sooner than this, but it becomes easier, once you allow a day to lapse, to let another, then another. Picking up that lost thread can be difficult, and I think, sometimes, we feel as though we've already failed, when it comes to missing that day going to the gym, meditating when we wake up, or trying that new diet. So much so that we convince ourselves there's no use in trying again, picking up where we left off, allowing a new day to be a blank slate. 

It's said it takes around three weeks for something to become a habit, and rarely do we have the patience to try for something for that long. 

But I still know it can be done. That there is worth in trying again. So I challenge, you, then, to apply this to your artistic and creative pursuits. Create a calendar, hang it on the wall, mark the days. Give yourself that visual satisfaction of striving for more you time in your life.

If I could get to where I am, artistically, today, by simply creating a new daily habit of drawing every day when I had no idea how to draw & had never taken an art class, you can paint a bit in your journal every day, take up a new medium, tape in an inspiring image, or sketch a bit. 

Get back on that horse. Soon, you'll be flying like the wind on a crisp autumn day, happy you didn't give up. 

{one united moment}

Ten years ago, I was a senior in high school sitting in first period consumer ed with a teacher who’s name I can’t remember — she was seven months pregnant, with shoulder-length brown hair and a soft pink sweater. She was sitting in the back of the classroom while another student gave a presentation when the door opened and a boy poked his head in. The boy with the poster board stopped, and we all turned toward the interruption. 

His news was of the first crash, in Washington, D.C.

It’s amazing that, of all my days in high school, or even that half year, this is one day I can remember with almost perfect clarity — sitting in the cafeteria to watch CNN, the way the classroom felt cooler because my history teacher had turned off the lights and left the TV on, our English teacher refusing to postpone a quiz because she didn’t want this to be a huge mark in our lives. At the time, we couldn’t understand her, but now, I can see how that little slice of normal helped ground all of us. 

We all watched CNN almost obsessively for weeks; I can remember it being on in the background at friend’s house. 

Last year, I was at Jun’s apartment. I’ve never been one to watch those programs about what happened, reflection upon reflection on an event burned permanently on my retinas, but Jun had been in Japan when it happened. It was almost as though it isn’t as real for her as it was for me, hearing my Japanese teacher talk about her son escaping by sliding down a stairwell, wall collapsed down making it easier. She watches the programs because that is as close as she’ll ever get. 

And even though I was miles and miles and lightyears away, tucked into my high school in Chicago, I felt like I, too, like the rest of us, was there, if only for one united moment. 

{the journey thus far -- august, via my journal}

{dream-spinning into reality}

Edge of Reality; 10"x8" acrylic on canvas

“The poet’s pen/…gives to airy nothing/A local habitation and a name.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (act 5, scene 1, lines 15-17)

I’m reminded of dream-spinning, of the ability to create something from nothing. We are, as creative beings, conjurers of magic, giving that which exists only in our minds — loose ideas, emotions, memories — a name, a representation in the physical, through word and song and paint and pen. 

And how are we to define this “reality” we live in? Aren’t our dreams, while we’re in them, as real as daytime? What separates that fiction from the fact we live in? I’m drawn to the idea of  ‘cold, hard reality,’ that place we must return to when we dream too much, when people say our feet have left the ground. Why? What marks this reality as the one that matters, over the one we dream? And aren’t we allowed to escape into the thoughts in our heads? 

If I can take these thoughts, these bits I think, and give them voice, give them, as the quote suggests, a place — a physical place — and a name, then does that make them real? Or does me thinking them make them real?

What happens when we hit the edge of reality, where one fades into the other, the magic floating in that rift? Do we, like the early explorers believed, simply fall off the edge of the world in the dark, swirling abyss of — what?

I think that sitting down and showing up and crafting that magic with our hands is one of the most amazing things in the world. I feel it when I make journals — when I take paper and thread and board and create a book that someone can hold and explore in — when I do paintings — a white canvas transformed into a message — when I take a blinking cursor and craft words in an order that says something. 

Think on this today. Give an “airy nothing” a solid place in reality. It’s the first step in living your dreams. 

{art journal + inspiration book = ?}

Not that I’m happy about a certain bookstore chain biting the dust (in fact, I had a few months left of my Plus membership), but it did help to spur on this new wave of journaling juju I’m working through.

You see, Becca and I visited the nearest Borders still open, which was near her place, but 40 minutes from mine (I’ve become a huge fan of used bookstores in this Borders-less era, which works since I live across the street from one of the best-known used/new indie bookshops in the state) and wandered the very crowded store for whatever we could find. Being as I work for myself (scraping by as I continue to morph and change and figure out my place in this digital artistic landscape) and Becca is underemployed in child-care, there wasn’t much we could afford — Amazon has lower prices, anyway — but we could afford the magazines.

I haven’t really been into womens’ magazines past Bust and Bitch — two amazing publications, the later of which is a non-profit media machine funded by women all over the country — only buying, and this is fun, Japanese fashion magazines for years as I love Harajuku fashion, as it is. But my darling Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine was on the cover of Nylon, and at 40% off, I simply had to have it.

Let’s backtrack a bit. This isn’t a story that can be told linearly, rather, my mind doesn’t think in a straight line — what is that quote? Time exists so things don’t happen all at once?

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein

There we go.

A month ago, I went to Art Unraveled to meet up with Dina and finally get to meet Traci in-person, and got the chance to page through the Journal Fodder Junkies journals while the other artists were speaking.

(Rice asked questions of the artists gathered, about inspiration, which you can see here. Extra credit if you can spot me for a few seconds!)

I think I’d already been thinking about how my journals had gradually moved away from where I started; a few years ago, I decided to stop using magazine images in my journals, and even did a radical experiment of creating an entire journal without any outside imagery. It wasn’t that I don’t like journals with magazine bits in them, just that I was in a different place — I, personally, didn’t like the aesthetic in my own work.

From an entry back in 2009:

So, today, I sat in the studio, turned up my iPod, and started painting. It looked great. And then, I kept going, and going, and BAM -- I could feel the teenager inside me screaming and crying, telling me to destroy it. "No, I can't do that," Older Me told her, "It is valuable in it's imperfections. It shows us what we don't like." "But we know what we DO like," she shouted back. "Why can't we just go back to that? To the way it was?" "Because how will we grow?" I said. "I was getting bored with acrylics and paintbrushes and drawings." "Then pull out the magazines," Teenage Kira advised. "You thought you were being all smart, deciding to not use them, but you really do like them sometimes." So I did. And made some awesome pages.

Oh, how clever I thought I’d been. But, in looking through those journals, with all those scraps of paper from the places they’d been, found walking around the block (Dave had a quote about this, about walking around your block and picking up the bits you find before getting started in the studio), I recognized a yearning that beforehand didn’t have a name, that I was missing that bit of journaling that more resembled a book of inspiration than a painting on each page. I knew, then, that I’d be taking a new turn by going back in the past — think of it this way; I was using something I learned in school I never thought I’d ever use. We’ve all had moments like this, that surprise at using knowledge we thought useless, that we’d never visit again.

Except now I’m a new me, which means it isn’t the same person looking at the prospect of using magazine images in her journal, so it’s turned into something new. Instead of being a journal full of only paint and artist’s pages, it is now a place where anything I find inspiring is taped or glued down right beside experiments with stencils or even the stencils themselves!

And I like this hybrid return to my roots. It coincides with some soul work I’m doing with the blog, and my identity on the internet as part of Gwen Bell’s Align Your Website. I told you last week that I’d be making changes in real-time, and you’ll soon be seeing the bare-bones as I work to figure out the content and framework for a new digital sanctuary.

As part of this, I’ll be stepping back from social media (such as Twitter & Facebook), so if you’d like to visit or keep in contact, check in here or the weekly newsletter. I’ll be posting daily, either long or short bits, and sending out the newsletter. And as True to You 2’s last lesson will be posted on Monday, I’ll be back to offering videos. I don’t know how long I’ll be taking a break from social media, but figure I’ll know the end when it happens.

{an attempt is simply an unfinished canvas -- my final 2 canvases for Out of the Journal August!}

  

An attempt is simply an unfinished canvas. 

But it is a started one. 

I’ve never worked on the thicker canvases before, but they’re on sale this month at my local art shop, so I grabbed two smaller ones on Saturday, intent on working and finishing them on Sunday. 

Except I ended up creating text and rendering video from 9am to 8pm yesterday, with little time for art (I did, however, take a much-needed nap, choosing sleep over art — rather, my back chose sleep over painting); I worked on one of the canvases while filming a bit, using the extra paint (I hate leaving paint un-used on a palette!), but that was pretty much it. I didn’t have time, then, until this afternoon to work on the other, and according to Dina, starting a canvas counts in our little challenge, here. 

So here’s some retrospecting: I really like where August took me, art-wise. 

In my journal, I’ve gone from full-on art journal to part-art-journal, part-inspiration-book, inspired by the journals of Dave of the Journal Fodder Junkies (I met him, and Eric, quickly at Art Unraveled, and was able to page through his journal during the book signing event; out of all the artists there, he was the only one doodling in his journal — something I tend to do a lot!). There are sketches, paint, papers collected from all over, journaling, magazine images, etc. 

My paintings, prompted by our little challenge, grew more and more abstract until, with these last two, I was paying attention to direction and movement within the brushstrokes. 

And then, there was last week’s, with the big, bold imagery and colors popping off the canvas. 

I’ve been having so much fun being looser with my work, adding soft pastels and oil paintsticks, and oil pastels. Drawing and bending and moving. It has just been so much fun! I really will be finishing these canvases soon, and hope to have them, as well as a few of the other completed pieces, in my Etsy shop by next weekend. 

Until then, I’ll be in the editing bay, finishing up the media for True to You 2. By the end of all this, that workshop will have nearly 5 hours of video content, not to mention 18 worksheets and a 70-odd page PDF. Phew! My longest and most detailed workshop to date!

Consider this an amnisty post -- if you've participated in the Out of the Journal Callenge and haven't commented, or if you haven't for the final week, please do so on this post. I'll be drawing a winner tomorrow!

{the wind of passing footprints - journal inspiration}

Ever since I was a little girl, I have loved unicorns. They decorated my childhood bedroom in way of a border running the walls, in pictures and drawings and stuffed animals. Books bore them on the cover. And yet for all this, the image that sticks out most in my mind is that of the Lady Amalthea clinging to the cliffs just under Hagsgate castle, afraid of the sea; she has forgotten she is a unicorn at heart, a creature of rare beauty and grace and magic. 

I’ve always loved The Last Unicorn, but it wasn’t until a few months ago that I actually picked up the novel and read it. And oh, how beautiful a story it is! 

I found an illustration in a magazine to celebrate the novel, and knew it was for me. I clipped it and put it in my journal. And as I continued to work, to play and paint and doodle, I found a small image of a woman’s feet in water. 

I flashed to the Unicorn, backing up, ready to take her fate. 

The unicorn and the Red Bull stood facing each other at the arch of the bow, and the unicorn’s back was to the sea. The Bull moved in slowly, not charging, but pressing her almost gently toward the water, never touching her. She did not resist him. Her horn was dark, and her head was down, and the Bull was much her master as he had been on the plain of Hagsgate, before she became the Lady Amalthea. It might have been that same hopeless dawn, except for the sea. 

How many times in our lives have we faced our own Red Bulls? Those fears that grip our hearts and take over, squeeze until our chests hurt and can’t take in another breath? Let someone or something in our lives steal our strength and bravery until all that is left is a beauty with her head down and horn darkened by her own lack of belief in her magic?  

Oh, darlings, I’ve been there. The process is gradual. You don’t feel it happening until you wake up one morning and wonder who, exactly, you are, and how did this great beast get in here, trapping you between it and the wall? 

Yet she was not altogether beaten. She backed away until one hind foot actually stepped into the water. At that, she sprang through the sullen smolder of the Red Bull and ran away along the beach: so swift and light that the wind of her passing blew her footprints off the sand. The Bull went after her. 

It may have been only her hooves, but she was woken up. You see, even when we feel powerless, when we feel there’s no magic left within us, when we feel unworthy and can feel that sea swelling around our feet, the foam rising over the skin of our calves, we’re reminded that there’s nothing to be gained by going into the sea. Others have been trapped there, seen only in the crest of the waves, the foam of the sea, specters and warnings of what can happen. 

So the next time you feel beat, think of the Unicorn. She fights for love, for the fate of the rest of her kind, for prophecy, but mostly, she fights for herself. 

{pulling it all out through the screen}

 

If you online know me as a face or name online, this is probably what I look like. Taking it all out of the computer and putting it up for me to see reminds me of college, where I had blue hair on my DL, red hair on my college ID, and blond hair on my CTA pass. 

One girl, three colors, unintentionally for each thing. 

That's kind of what this looks like to me: one girl, a bunch of colors, no cohesiveness.