Tilting the Void

I'm posting the Etsy link again and hoping to have some new items up before too long.

All items in my Etsy store are handmade by me, with the exception of prints, which are (duh) prints of original artwork. I work in colored pencil, watercolor, pen and ink, wool, silk, beads, wire, and just about anything I can get my hands on which will satisfy the current project. I haven't been too productive of late; most recently, I drew a Christmas card, but that was about it. I'm expecting to be much more creative in the following months. I love color, texture, and whimsy, and I hope that comes through in my work.

I had wanted to do the Anacortes Art Festival this year, but I think I'll save it for next. The process is a bit complicated; you have to submit to a panel and be juried into the show. Once and if you're accepted, the booth fee is $300.00, and you must have a wind-proof shelter (think pop-up canopy, as in a farmer's market), which usually run about $200.00 new if I can't find one used. This year, I think I'll keep for a research & development sort of thing and maybe save some money aside for a run at the show next year. On the plus side--if I don't get in next spring, at least I'll have some money set aside!


Expect updates. Ideas, they be percolatin'...

I'm trying to clean up and re-fit my studio (i.e. the bedroom where a kid would live, if we had a kid). My boss is redecorating his office and bestowed on me the drafting board that had previously served him as a desk, and while I was only too happy to accept it (since it was the one thing I'd asked my husband for as a birthday present), it does mean that my boss (lovely man though he is) will be sharing a portion of my new desk at work until he finds a suitable work surface of his own. Sigh.

The trade-off is worthwhile, however. You can see (or not, perhaps) how large and useable it is:



It's large for the small room, but it tilts, and I look forward to using it.

Now I feel the need to shake off the laziness and blockheadedness that's been tangling me up these past few months and get to work. In light of that, however, I've been feeling a certain oddness--a reluctance-- to which I can't put any name. I've been trying to research the subject online, but as far as I've seen there are no catchphrases or taglines to summon the proper adjectives. To put it bluntly, I don't know sometimes if I want to make anything else--drawing, story, figure, whatever. I don't know if the world needs one more piece of crappy art, since we're already groaning under the immense weight of an incredible eternity of things. I wonder if other people have felt the same way.

It's just that you get an idea, say--a picture pops into your head, or an idea for a story, or maybe a certain arrangement of colors and lines. You're inspired to an act of creation--never mind how worthwhile--or not--and you get to work, since the urge to create is somewhat of a compulsion. The idea gnaws at you, nibbling at your consciousness in the dead of the night, disturbing your sleep, until you just can't bear it anymore and take up brush, pen, keyboard, or what-have-you. Of course there are misgivings and self-criticism; there always are, I suppose, and that's just something to be dealt with. Then you're finished, and it's either satisfactory or not--but then you have it, the thing, the finished item which is somehow less compelling or beautiful than the process itself.

Perhaps I'm more enamored of the process? I don't know. Perhaps it's ambivalence to criticism, lack of confidence and technique, minimal sales. It certainly has something to do with the reluctance to work. I don't necessarily see the point in producing things just to sell them--especially when they don't sell, and then I've got a pile of random things lying about staring at me accusingly, and to which I've got no great attachment to except in the sheer brief glory of creation. Same with stories, too--and it could explain my bad habit of revising things before they're finished--or, worse yet, not finishing them at all.

A horror, then, not of the object, but the ending, of the finish. Interesting concept and certainly not my own, I'm sure--someone somewhere must've written something about it. It's a difficult thing to explain, and one reason I hesitate to describe my avocation as 'writer' or 'artist'. If I was either of those things really, shouldn't I be less diffident?