Cross to your creative side

“Creative energy is energy. When we are worrying about creating instead of actually creating, we are wasting our creative energy.” Julia Cameron

In 3 weeks take the opportunity to step away from worrying about creativity and start a creative practice with the support of fellow creatives. Join the structured class that uses Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” exercises to examine the patterns that keep you from expressing your creativity and then just play with a great variety of art materials.

Julia’s book contains the quote “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.“  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Taking the Artist’s Way Experiential can be that beginning. I hope to see you Sept 10 & 12 at the Carriage House.

Every now and then I turn my house and studio upside down and inside out. The stuff that accumulates if you have a magpie mind and mixed media tendencies can leave an artist either gleeful to have an abundant set of choices or stuck in a morass that has buried what could delight your artist’s eye. In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s way she says,  “People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or the specifically imagined.” There is a specificity to creation. For me that requires both abundance and order. I prefer to spend my energy composing rather than searching. It’s hard to find the “yes” you’re looking for in a pile of anything. So sorting many things this week and disposing of dross.

The word dross comes from a word in Middle High German (German spoken between 1050 -1350, hows that for specificity) that means husks. Exactly!

Husks by MAy Yang

Shovel out the husks, keep the kernels.

Kernals

That’s what this week is about.

Getting ready for Artist’s Way workshops in Sept.

If you attempt, as I do, to make a living as an artist, you will find yourself, as I have in this past couple of weeks, struggling with skill sets that have nothing to do with the wonderful hand eye connection that is present when a piece of art comes together. You will be typing. You will be taking an x by x pixel tiff and changing it into a jpeg @ 72dpi & 300 dpi and filing it away in a folder with a name you can remember.  Then when you get a call about a kind of work you do you can find it and shove out on in an email or use it to update your website or your fanpage . Because yes, you now have a fan page. And though you feel pretty good about writing, because you do morning pages every day. And you feel pretty confident about talking about your art process because you actually spend time reflecting on it. You then have to turn the reflections into an artist statement. Then into an artist statement that has 150 characters, not words. And all of it you have to type. I bless spell check daily and am happy with cut and paste because I sometimes build my sentences backwards. I think it’s good to write what I think about my work and it’s good to refine it. But, I will never ever be a good typist. My fingers and brain just don’t connect in that way. Expressing my self in a format that forces me to practice a skill that will never progress beyond the rudimentary is something to be aware of and find patience with. I have other gifts, and they need to be supported so I type on to share my thoughts and images.

Peony in curb garden

Peony Drawing

This is a 2 part sculpting class. You will learn sculpting techniques I have used in my  20 years as a Doll Maker.  Session 1 concentrates on heads and faces. Session 2 covers hands, feet, and body options. Polymer clay and very simple tools gets you into the wonderful art of doll making. Doll Making Fall 2011 (pdf)  Held on 2 Weds. evenings in mid Sept. 6-8pm

I spent a couple of days just being quiet. I found a new spot to sit by the river on the east bank by the channel that flows behind Nicolette Island. There is a deck to sit on and there is an old cottonwood that was dipping it’s new full leaves into the water. The river was high and running fast. It had rained all weekend. There was something quite playful about the flickering leaves trailing in the water. The trunk has the deep gnarly bark of an old cottonwood and part of it was broken and hollow the way they get with age. It was bent over the water and the image I had was age and youth combined. The young green leaves playing in wind and water while the roots held the rough old trunk and branches in place for now. I was thinking about a book I ran across recently called” How to Fish” the author Chris Yates talks about approaching a river and having a conversation 1st gathering the news from the river while leaning against a tree. I recommend taking in what the tree has to tell as well. News from the Mississippi river this week: fast high water moving south. The Tree seemed to be saying play in the sunny breeze while you can.

Cottonwood on the east bank of Mississippi R in Minneapolis

Cottonwood On Mississippi R In Minneapolis Mn

There was a completely grey day last week, drizzly rain most of the day, the sky was fixed, dull, dark ….until the evening.  The clouds began to have  different densities and to move.  The sun was setting  as this happened. I looked out my east facing window at a high rise building about 1/2 mile away that is concrete and glass and it was a glowing red. I have never seen it that color.  It often gets a nice gold glow as the sun sets but it was red against a dark sky. I went to a west facing window in our studio lobby and that horizon was a streak of peachy orange sherbert light under the dark cloud bank. The bank was still a dark line hovering above the light, but parts of it were less dense and that created fields of glowing blue with a touch of green in it blending into deep blue with reflected red that read purple. All of it changing slowly as the light on the horizon dimmed,a slow motion light show at the edge of the day.

The last session of the Artist Way Practical class was this last Weds which ended with a good feeling of having witnessed change and progress. I have also just finished a show in St Paul & I had begun putting away all the things I have to drag about  to do a show earlier in this week. So, finally on Thurs. I got to see what fresh thing my hand and eye could come up with. I found a couple of birds.  I used oil pastels in gray green paper. 1st I went through my stash of images saved, did some sketches, choose my paper, and a scale. Then I broadcast my sketches to the wall to produce a larger sketch on my colored paper. I brought out all my oil pastel sticks and blenders.   Time to apply surface to the lines!  The always satisfying process of  looking and applying creamy color and blending and looking, that sometimes ends with this: There it is! what looks right to my eye. 2 birds from my hand Thurs. evening.

Hiding in the Grasses

Grackle

I am the featured Artist at The Grand Hand Gallery in St Paul for the month of April. I have both fiber pieces and drawings  on their feature wall at the front of the gallery. Some of my Crow drawings have flown but stop by and have a peak at River Leaves and my Crane Pair drawing.

(c) Deborah Foutch, Crane Pair

(c) Deborah Foutch, River Leaves 2

The 13 week course that began in early January finished this Monday with smiles and congratulations for the  creative progress that the exercises, thoughtful reading, writing, and playful art material exploration provides. My studio-mate Maris Gilbert and I have taken the proven exercises and reading of Julia Cameron’s ” The Artist’s Way” and added hands-on art material exploration to each of the 12 chapter sessions. I had a  Monday class, Maris had a Saturday class, those ended this week. Our joint Weds. AW Goal class continues for 3 more weeks.

Take Flight!

We painted, stamped, wrapped, wove, built, wrote, did collage, talked about what keeps us stuck

and what let us move, supported each other, and made an artist date each week to go do something we love to do. All while (mostly) writing morning pages everyday to free ourselves from mind clutter and let ourselves know what we think.  These classes were full of dynamic creative women and men who gave as much as they received it was a joy to spend the winter with them.  Happy Creative Spring!

If you’ve ever thought you’d like to try the Artist’s Way process laid out in Julia Cameron’s book send me a note and I’ll let you know when the next sessions start.

I am working to finish pieces for the American Craft Council show in St Paul next weekend.  I have been pulling out fabrics that I have a step or two already applied to them. I had 2 versions of Summer River on two different green felt squares. I had painted in blue where the river will be and stamped the surface with 3 leaf stamps I’ve made. I also had like 50 leaves from those stamps on papers

Summer River

cut out and ready with fuse-able web on them ready to be set in place with heat. I picked several green, blue, and green gold threads to use to add “flow” to the river part. When you add acrylic paint to felt it’s a rough surface and not very water like. So here’s the thing I noticed tonight as I sewed, there was a moment after adding several layers of threads that the water appeared. The kind of raspy blue surface flowed with the lines of threads. I’ve done it before so I knew it would happen but this time I noticed the change from thread line to waterline. I had a river, so I needed a leafy shore and moved to the process of the placing the leaves. I try to be random while being intentional.