Tuesday, September 5, 2017

A Creativity Break Versus A Break from Creativity

"Reverie," John William Godward, 1904.
Digital image courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program 


Hello friends,

For a long time I've always thrived on creativity breaks.  Breaks from everyday life doing boring, non-creative things where other people are the boss of me when I can tell all that stuff to chill out and take time to just sit down and make something awesome.  Something that's completely under my control, purely an expression of my feelings and desires.  These creativity breaks have been essential. Sometimes what gets me through my workday sometimes is knowing a project I'm in love with is at home waiting for me.

But sometimes being creative can get overwhelming, especially if you put constant pressure on yourself to do so. That includes keeping a creativity blog (heh - note recent respite).

For the past several weeks, I have been swamped.  And in a way it can be good to be swamped - it means you're active, needed, and not bored.  It can even be invigorating, but only when that swampedness is being counterbalanced with a healthy dose of R&R.  I have not been so much with the R&R having lately and what I have learned about myself is that for me, creativity is kind of like work more so than R&R.

Part of it is because I put pressure on myself and create all these internal deadlines that really don't need to be there (honestly, Emily, nobody cares if you get that scarf finished this weekend, including the person you say you're making it for).  And part of it is that I view my creative pursuits and crafting as a kind of twin-from-a-parallel-universe career, the career that I would like to be having if I thought I could make any money at it and weren't totally risk averse instead of my actual one that's not as fulfilling as I would like it to be.  Maybe that's why I put the unnecessary pressure on myself.  Or maybe it's that my bedroom has been completely taken over by craft supplies and I'd like to finish some projects and get them out of there!

In any case, while crafting is certainly fulfilling it isn't necessarily fun. And, low on time and energy and emotional resources, I haven't been doing much of it lately.  In fact, I just spent the last week in Florida having a non-vacation helping out my parents, and I brought several creative activities down with me that I didn't even touch.  Instead I spent what little alone time I had on my phone playing this silly cartoon choose-your-own-adventure romance game, and another one where you have to save up to buy furniture and then enter into realistic looking interior decorating challenges (that's actually kind of creative, right?)

In the past few weeks I've also bought a new computer - long overdue - done some networking, severely neglected my poor boyfriend, dealt with work drama, taught a music class that I had been preparing for months, started attending choir rehearsals again, attended a launch party for an amazing new natural beauty shop in Georgetown, gone to several Mary Kay parties and participated in a poker tournament.  And I'm pooped.  And I keep coming home and taking a look at my new loom that I was so excited about and I just don't want to do it.  I don't even want to cook.  I want to order delivery, crack some wine, and play Dice Smash for three hours.  Is this what adulting looks like?

I'm trying to tell myself that this is self care and not failure.  And I'm getting better at it every day.

Am I abandoning creativity?  Certainly not.  I'm sure one day I will wake up and be excited again. But right now, I'm tired!  So I'm giving myself some time off.

To be frank I think I've always labored under the misconception that every moment should be spent doing something productive.  People ask me how I manage to do everything that I do and I explain that 1) I don't sleep (true) and 2) I don't watch TV.  Or rather, I only watch TV if I'm doing something else in front of it, like making jewelry or knitting.  And I think that's part of why I don't read for pleasure - can't hold a book and craft at the same time.

This is the first time in my life that I've finally understood that this is bullshit.  Maybe this is just the first time in my life that I've been this tired.

In any case , I'm confronted with a new kind of challenge, one that is in its own way creative: What is this R&R I've been hearing so much about?  Or, rather, what does it look like for me?  Bubble baths? I hear it's supposed to involve bubble baths.  Sounds kind of boring.

I'm inspired here by my friend Kim's recent blog post on the importance of fun breaks.  She talks about what she does (or would do) to just have fun and be silly, and encourages others to share their thoughts on this.  I, however, suck at this, so I've created my own exercise: just a list of things I like to think about that make me happy - without me having to do anything or put any pressure on myself. Baby steps, you know.  And not just vast, obvious categories like "puppies" and "chocolate."  Oddly specific, idiosyncratic, utterly me happy things.  Weird stuff.  Frivolous stuff.  It's tough if we're talking about this in the context of taking a break from creativity, because the stuff that makes me happy is inevitably linked to creative projects and ideas I have, whether as supplies or photography subjects or inspiration sources, but in my head I will do my best to separate them out and just appreciate them for themselves.

So here we go:

1. Farmers Markets
2. Lavender branches
3. Alpacas, specifically the caramel colored ones, especially with funny haircuts
4. Marble surfaces
5. Space cats, especially space cats posing with burritos
6. Scented candles that smell either like men's cologne or fairy tale forests
7. Walking through the perfume, beauty and accessory departments at high end department stores
8. Shooting bobas through the big straw like a spit ball (have done it, will do it again)
9. Metallic gold nail polish
10. The 1920s


How about you friends?  What do you do to take not just a creativity break but a break from creativity?  And what is on your list of things that make you happy just to think about them?  Discuss in the comments.

Emily


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Thursday, July 20, 2017

Similar but Different: Synthesizing Multiple Crafts Into One

"The Weaver (La Tisserande)," Francois Bonvin, 1861.
Courtesy of the National Gallery Art Open Access Program.

Hello friends,

As you may have gathered by now, I love fabric.  Not sewing so much, not crafting garments, but making fabric itself.  I love all things tactile and textile.  I started off as a knitter, when I was still in elementary school.  Convinced that all grandmothers *must* know how to knit, I asked my grandmother to teach me.  She had no idea, so she bought a book, some knitting needles, and some cheap pink yarn, and sat me down on the love seat in her condo in Florida.  She consulted the book, performed a step, and then handed the needles to me to instruct me on what to do, so on and so forth.

Later on I decided it would be helpful to learn a little crochet to supplement my knitting with lace edges.  Crochet allows for a much more freestyle, sculptural approach and isn't confined to lines and rows of stitches the way that knitting is.

These skills taught me an appreciation for fabric.  Colors, fiber types, density, tension.  I found myself caring less about what the end product would be and much more fascinated by the process and the minutia.  What happens when I blend these two yarns together?  These two colors?  Using this stitch, or that one?  What if I use this needle size, does that change the texture and drape of the fabric?

I think this fascination comes through in my finished work.  You'll note that my pieces themselves tend to be simply constructed with few bells and whistles, mostly flat rectangular shawls.  But the fabrics themselves are highly detailed, with lots of focus on texture and the play of the different colors and fibers.





The above piece, for instance (which happens to be available for sale in my Etsy shop) features three different yarns - two different colors of super fine silk and cashmere blend yarn, and a hand-painted pure silk that alternates between many different colors.  I alternated the different fibers and selected a slip stitch pattern that causes the different rows of stitches to peak and trough into one another.  But quite frankly, I couldn't have cared less about the length or shape of the shawl.  That was totally eyeballed.


As I grow as an artist I find myself fascinated by more and more fabric techniques.  I have learned to dye with natural indigo, using the ancient Japanese art of shibori.  This technique allows me to focus less on the construction of the fabric itself, relying on pre-finished silks and other fabrics, and to instead turn my attention to the color and surface design of the piece.



These scarves are also available on Etsy and are also for sale at my favorite Washington area boutique, Proper Topper (where they've been selling like hotcakes!).


Even when I'm not planning to apply a new technique I've picked up to fabric at the offset, I end up thinking about ways to apply it to fabric.  I took a block printing class many moons ago so that I can learn to carve my own designs to apply to my cards and journals instead of using pre-made stamps (See my mother's day cards I made using my own carved "Mom" block here). My instructor mentioned that the inks we were working with could be used on fabric, and that notion has been stuck in the back of my mind ever since.  What if I were to block print designs on top of my shibori designs?  And then add a little embroidery on top of that, maybe to outline the designs or add details?  What kind of fabric would that create and would it actually be a fabric that anyone would want to use for something functional?





Most recently, however, I turned to the ultimate fabric-making craft: weaving.  I have been curious about weaving for years, especially after I learned about the existence of "knitter's looms" designed specifically for use with knitting yarns.  As serious knitters are wont to do, I have accumulated an impressive yarn stash that is taking up a dramatic amount of space in my home.  Knitter's looms are touted as the ultimate stash-buster.  These looms are tiny versions of the big fancy whoosh whoosh looms that have the uppy downy things (known as "heddles"), made to accommodate standard thickness knitting yarns.

But I have also noticed that another form of artistic tapestry weaving has become all the rage among the crafting community recently:






These pieces are made on a frame loom, which forgoes the heddle and instead relies on the weaver herself to interlace the weft fiber (the horizontal fiber) through the vertical fibers of the warp manually with her hands.  It's much more rustic and slower going, but offers so much more flexibility in terms of shape and experimentation.  It's basically freestyling it.

Well lo and behold, I found myself a loom by an independent businesswoman on Etsy that converts from frame to heddle loom and works with regular knitting yarn.




And here's my first project!  I'm starting off with the frame loom and working my way up to the
heddle.





What has been really interesting about this adventure in textiles is the degree to which all these crafts are similar and yet also different.  My one day fantasy is to synthesize them into one big project or personal artistic style that incorporates a multimedia garment or wall hanging made up of my own woven fabric, knitted embellishments, and my block printed and/or embroidered shibori.

A synthesis:



In many ways, it has been easier to pick up each new craft than the previous one, kind of like learning new languages.  Certain building-block skills are the same.  Understanding color and how fibers of different colors blend together.  Understanding the structure of different fiber types, for instance the fact that silk is always going to drape differently than wool.  Understanding the concept of "tension" (how tightly you hold your yarn or thread), which is a near universal factor in all fiber crafts.  Too much tension and your thread will snap or your fabric will pucker.  Not enough and things will be too loose and your piece will fall apart.  Just having a natural feel for running fibers and strings over my fingers, feeling comfortable pulling yarn from a ball without getting it tangled, holding a needle. The crochet hooks and tapestry needles I already use to finish off certain aspects of my knitting have come in very handy as I use them to add fringe to a woven piece or pull the weft back and forth between the warp strings respectively.

And yet so much is new.  And those new challenges that I have to handle like a beginner really throw me off because I have come to develop a certain expectation about the ease with which I'll be able to tackle a textile-related project.  Shibori is messy. Learning to deal with indigo dye splatter all over the floor (and walls) was a real challenge, since I don't have a yard.  With the weaving, getting a sense of exactly how much yarn I need to complete a shape is totally new because weaving uses totally different amounts of yarn, plus I'm struggling to keep my loom from dipping in on the sides where I pull too tightly.  You would think this wouldn't be an issue for me since I mastered the art of evenness with my knitting long ago.

But perhaps the greatest thing about this is the differences on my physical body.  I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and my hands go painfully numb sometimes when I'm knitting.  Weaving doesn't do that at all!  But it hurts my back.  So I can switch back and forth between the two, giving my hands and wrists a break when I weave and my back a break when I knit.  Block printing I do standing up.  Indigo dyeing - with all the different steps that involve dunking the fabrics in different buckets, rinsing, hanging, blocking, stirring - is a full body exercise.

I really do feel like I'm at a place in my artistic non-career where every new skill I learn is with an eye to integrating it into my existing work style, improving the things I'm already working on.  I'm very excited about the idea of watching all these different elements coalesce until I've woven (haha see what I did there) them all into a single, uniquely personal artform.



How about you readers?  Have you ever synthesized multiple skills/crafts/art forms together to create one, singular type of project?  What new skills would you like to learn that you feel could improve upon artistic activities you're already doing?  Do you also find that you tend to gravitate to crafts or other hobbies that share a lot in common or are you more inclined to go after something totally new because that itch has already been scratched?  Discuss in the comments.
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Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Challenges that Occur When Teaching Your Passions



A Young Scholar and his Tutor, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, c. 1629-1630
Digital Image Courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program

Hello friends,

I've mentioned my always-has-ideas-friend Kim before.  One of Kim's many great, creative ideas is a D.C. area program called Little Academy.  Little Academy offers affordable, one-session classes for adults curious about various creative, intellectual and socially conscious topics - art history, poetry, music, film, women's studies, you name it.  The classes I've taken so far included a class on how to film an entire, high-quality movie using your smart phone and a class on the history of protest music in America.  The classes are meant to be easygoing and social, so if you're in the D.C. area and like cocktails (after all, they're taught at a bar) you should absolutely check it out before this Summer's session is over.

Kim also knows that I'm a Jewish music nerd, and so one thing led to another and I am now going to be teaching a class titled "Challah Back: A History of Jewish Music in the U.S. and Beyond" on August 8.

All credit goes to Kim for the clever title and the enticing course description on Little Academy's website; if I had had my way the title would have been something like, "Jewish Immigration Patterns and Ethnic Diversity and their Lasting Influence on Modern Popular Music."

The difference between the two titles really highlights one of the biggest challenges for me as I plan my class: Figuring out the line between what is universally interesting and what is just interesting to me as someone who is already super into this topic.  It's particularly hard given that this class is entirely voluntary and something people are doing for fun, so they're not the usual trapped audience there because they need to be there.

I have plenty of teaching, training and public speaking experience.  My big girl job requires me to present trainings and speak at conferences in regard to really dry, technical topics on the regular.  I mean, I'm not a total Ben Stein about it.  I try to pepper in some humorous anecdotes or human impact stories and throw an occasional interesting graphic into my PowerPoints.  But the real difference here is that when you're teaching a technical topic that people need to understand to do their job, the goal is to clearly convey only those the facts and information your audience absolutely needs to know.



But what about teaching something you absolutely love and are passionate about and do for fun?  You would think this would be easier but I'm actually finding it extremely difficult!  I'm not complaining. I looooove the fact that I'm being presented with an opportunity to spend two hours externalizing my internal geek monologue and showing people cool music videos that I'm really into.  The problem, however, is that if I include everything I was originally hoping to say, packing my PowerPoint with with images, article links and embedded videos, the session will last nine hours.




(A little teaser: This video is by an artist named Riff Cohen, a Jewish Israeli of North African descent I just discovered and am OBSESSED with - I'll be discussing another one of her videos during my class that has significantly more Jewish imagery in it, but I love this one, too, and personally am thrilled she sings in French because I don't understand Hebrew or Arabic - look at how her ethnically diverse perspective on Paris differs from the stereotypical one)


How do I decide what to cut?  How can I not embark on the only tangentially relevant but absolutely fascinating discussion of Jewish contributions to the bourbon industry and the fact that anti-Semitism was a driving force behind the prohibition movement, given that the class is taking place in a bar that specializes in bourbon cocktails?  How can I not talk about how, even today, popular culture uses cribbed motifs from recognizably Jewish music to trigger imagery about greed and money, and compare that to similar uses of musical tropes from Black, Chinese and Native American cultures that are used to immediately evoke stereotypes about those groups in settings where members of those cultures are not actually present?  (Here's my favorite overall example of this phenomenon, and here's my favorite example involving stereotypical Jewish musical tropes - nice stock tickers, ladies.)

How do I gauge what parts of my presentation will be interesting to my audience, when I'm mired in this stuff and therefore interested in all of it and they're only just starting to dive into the topic?  How do I make this topic interesting to Jewish people and non-Jews alike?  How do I balance people's expectations that this class is going to be all about Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Paul Simon with all the really other important and very cool stuff that I find super interesting but that isn't as well known and probably isn't what my audience is expecting to learn about?  How do I deal with the fact that most Americans' exposure to Jewish culture involves white-looking dudes from New York or New York-like places, leaving out about 90% of the rest of Jewish culture, which involves Jews of many different races and ethnic backgrounds and geographic locations and a wide diversity of languages and traditions?

As someone whose major claim to be able to teach on this topic is simply the fact that I love it, have spent a lot of time with it, and have compiled a lot of cool information and facts about it, and who doesn't have any professional or educational credentials in musicology, Jewish studies or like fields, how do I deal with a challenge from someone who claims to know more about the topic than I do or who adamantly disagrees with my interpretation of my topic?  What happens if someone in my class expresses a bias or stereotype about Jews that just isn't cool, without even knowing that they're doing it?  Am I qualified to take that person on?

And what do I do about managing people's questions, facilitating organic discussion, and making things interactive but still making sure we cover everything I want to cover during the session?  At presentations for work I always build in question time, but work topics aren't endless and aren't areas of passion for me where I could talk for ages and always have another video to show.

I guess the good news, however, is that most of the people in my audience will probably be a little tipsy :)


What about you?  Have you ever had the opportunity to teach something just for fun, or to teach in a more serious setting on something that's a topic of passion for you?  How do you manage to deal with the challenges of gauging what other people will actually be interested in, keeping yourself from going off on tangents, or cutting out things that you care about because you simply don't have enough time?  How does this type of teaching or presenting differ from other types of presentations you've had to perform, like school presentations, talks at conferences, or briefings at work?  If you could teach on anything, what topic would you want to teach and what would your class look like?  What do you think would be your biggest concern?  Discuss in the comments.
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