Art Adventures, Part 1
Last Thursday my friend B. and I were sitting at a coffee shop working on a design project together. B. and I are both freelance designers, living in St. Johns within about 10 blocks of each other. This gives us the freedom to meet off and on when we have a lull in our day, or to easily get together for a drink when our work is done. Lately we've been enjoying the ease and comfort of each others' company, spending a day here and there working at a local coffee shop on our projects thanks to the luxury of our Powerbooks, breaking up the sometimes lonely monotony of the freelance lifestyle through a bit of banter across the table.
On this day, we each got a cup of coffee and chatted for a bit. It was our usual chat. We've been having grand dreams of becoming fine artists and spending at least half our weeks in a studio. Over the last few months the conversation has slowly shifted. It started out with the feeling of "this could never happen" or, "we could never make money as artists". Then it started into the territory of, "well, maybe if we planned it right, we could make it work a little bit." Soon we were convincing each other that making money off of painting and art was as much about business savvy and an attitude of self-belief and self-promotion as it was about having talent and a body of work. It still seemed unattainable, something for the far off future, but we were building on the dream in a more positive way. More recently we had given ourselves simply permission to say that we really WANTED to be artists for a living.
You know the question. "What's your dream job?" We often do the grown up thing and douse our real hopes and dreams in practical thinking. We pick the next best thing, the one thing that's sort of like what we really want, the one that could make a "real" living, and then we shove the real dream to the back of our mind and convince ourselves we never really wanted that in the first place.
Because, if we really let ourselves want it, we start to think...
What if I don't like it as much as I thought?
What if I go broke?
What if I look foolish?
What if I am terrible at it?
What if I don't like all the things that come with it that don't fit my ideal picture?
What if I'm just being selfish?
How does what I want to do help mankind in any real way?
We've stopped ourselves before we even get a chance to start dreaming big. So the big hurdle that we recently overcame was just saying, "I want to be an artist. I would love to be an artist for a living, creating personal expression in a visual way on a daily basis."
I think that was really the beginning of the beginning. After that, we started talking about how we don't really go to our offices enough to warrant keeping them. Then we "joked" about getting a studio to share together someday.
"Oh, but how can we justify such an expense when we aren't making art as it is? That's silly."
In between all of this hemming and hawing, we were also bitching and moaning about how we never got to do what we REALLY wanted to do. There wasn't the space, there wasn't the time, there wasn't the inspiration or inclination. But every day we made some mental progress on the idea, we pushed ourselves a little further on the road to realizing what we wanted and how we might achieve it.
Then that Thursday came along. Coffee in hand, we did our usual complaining. It would feel SO GOOD to make some art and get it in a show. I complained about how I had this May deadline set in my mind to finish at least one series by, and how May was upon us, and NOTHING.
Wouldn't it be nice to just have a week off to make some art? One week, locked up in some strange new place, some place we rented expressly for creativity? How could we do it? We were both busy. Maybe if we planned. June? July?
B. thought about her schedule. Her next week had a relatively light load, probably the lightest she'd ever have. I cringed when I looked at mine... Booked next week, and the next... I didn't seem like I'd ever be free. It was impossible.
But what if? We looked at each other. We broke out into laughter. "No way. We couldn't possibly. It's ridiculous! It's irresponsible!"
Where could we go? There wasn't exactly a place designed for artist retreats. I thought of how offices weren't renting out much these days... Maybe someplace would have a vacancy and be glad for even two weeks of rent money? Then I remembered Cathedral Park Place down the street from my office. They had artist spaces.
We looked at the web site. Amazingly, they had photos from several angles of the entirety of a 500 square foot space for $500 a month. Floor to ceiling windows with tons of light. Tile floor that you could mop up easily. The price was right, and there was plenty of light, our two primary requirements. "Too bad there's not a sink!" I joked.
Thirty minutes after the conversation began, I was on the phone with the place making an inquiry. It didn't hurt to investigate, right? They were keen. We were scheduled to look at some spaces in two hours.
I got off the phone. We stared at each other, then laughed, then stared at each other again. And laughed some more. "We're crazy!"
This became our mantra for the next four days. Just imagine the next several paragraphs scattered with the words, "We're crazy!"
We went to the space. The guy showed us some rinkydink no light office, thinking that was what we wanted. I pressed him to show us the space in the photo. He said that there was a guy moving in at some point that may choose that office or another one, so it might not be available. I reminded him that if we got the space, we wanted it next week... So was the guy moving in next week? He buckled and showed it to us.
He opened the door. It was perfect.
There was a sink.
My friends, I promise you, the pictures on the site were thorough. There was no sink in the pictures.
B. and I gave each other knowing looks. Woohoo! We manifested a sink!
We were in love with that space. The sun was streaming in, warming our giddy faces.
He showed us the other potential option. No sink in that space, a little less light, but there was a communal utility sink we could take advantage of.
We left feeling more than a little crazy. We talked to our significant others. We stewed on it a bit. We didn't know for sure that we'd get the one with the sink, but we went for it anyway. Then we went back to a coffee shop to work the rest of the afternoon. As we bought our tea, we both had glazed looks on our faces. We were elated and terrified. What if work actually got too much in the way and it turned out to be a waste? What if we hated it? What if, what if?
"I feel really weird," I said to B.
"Me too," she answered. "Everything feels so different all of a sudden."
It felt like we had stepped into an entirely different universe.
What was even more amusing, is that when we started to initiate all of this change in the morning, we had totally forgotten that we had scheduled that evening to go to a little group workshop weeks ago called "Test Drive Your Dream Job" in which a gentleman who owns a business called Vocations Vacations, which is set up to help people find mentorship and to literally get to test drive their dream job for three days, would help us set up steps to get on our way to allowing ourselves to do the same. He was actually ecstatic about our little adventure and wanted us to keep him up to date in how it went. And the group session just helped to fuel our fire and give us things to stew on as we went along.
We worked like the Dickens that weekend to wrap up as much work as possible. The person I had the most work scheduled for at the time scheduled a meeting with me. I was going to do the professional thing and keep it all under wraps and just take it in the chin, do the work as it came, get up at 6am every morning if that's what it took... But I decided not to keep it to myself, because I realized that I didn't need to be so wary of other people and how they might react to my decision. I was being overly protective about the whole thing, way too afraid of looking silly and unprofessional, and what I needed to do was recognize that the people who are actually in my life are friends more than colleagues, and to open up my heart and desires to them. We finished the meeting, and I confessed it all to him. He was extremely supportive, and said he would move all of my work until after it was done, and he'd work it out with the clients. I saw him again the next day, and he told me how excited his business partner was for me and what I was doing. They were both proud, not offended, not judging me as unprofessional. My wariness turned out to have no place.
In fact, everyone we told was very supportive. Grant the most of all. I was a little nervous to tell him because I knew that I had told him how swamped I was about to be with work, and he would of course remember that and worry for me, and he was a bit worried. But it felt so right, and I told him that I felt like I really needed to do it. After that we talked about it a few times and he told me he was proud of me for taking a leap for the sake of my art. I can't tell you how much his support meant to me. I knew I looked more than a little crazy on the outside, but I have made leaps like this in the past that always turned out to be so amazingly good, and this one had the same vibe to it. And so far, it has all worked out so well. And, true to form, Grant has been such a dear about it, like he always is. I feel so lucky.
Monday morning we came back to the building, check in hand, nervously wondering if we got the space we wanted. If we didn't, we were considering calling the whole thing off. "Don't break our hearts, Rob, tell us we got the one with the sink," I laughed as I said in greeting. "It's yours," he replied with a big smile.
We did the paperwork, got our key, got the tour, then went back into the room and just stared at it for awhile. Rob must have been able to sense our giddy energy, because he said, "Hey, gimme a hug!" before he left us to our own devices.
We went to a coffee shop and worked through the afternoon, wrapping up projects and loose ends. The next day we did the same... One last project to wrap up, plus a couple of long-ago scheduled meetings that I didn't feel I should miss. In my free hours I got an amazing amount of work done. Things felt so effortless. I knew I was working toward something important, and it made everything else feel easier.
I had woken up that morning, still feeling unsure and unsettled. I thought about why I felt this way, about all the "practical" questions that usually swarmed through my mind and took the fun out of wanting to do it in the first place. Then I told myself the following:
I give myself permission to make an utter fool of myself.
I give myself permission to make crappy art.
I give myself permission to find out that I have no time to do this at all, and it turns out to be a complete waste of money.
I give myself permission to decide I totally hate it.
Most of all, I give myself permission to have fun.
I can't tell you how much better I felt after that. It started to dawn on me that this actually wasn't all that crazy or irresponsible. We had talked things through with the people we needed to talk to. We were getting all the work caught up. We were making a plan. We had chosen an affordable option... One night at a B&B would cost us each the same as two weeks in this space. And we weren't just quitting our jobs and becoming artists. We were trying it out, kicking ourselves in the ass and actually getting in gear. We weren't waiting and complaining anymore. We actually rocked!
That afternoon we started moving in art supplies and enough furniture to get us by for the next couple of weeks. It turned out to just be the first load, as we found we needed other various things, but it was so nice to sit in our folding chairs and have our Bohemian brand beer with lime in our bohemian space. After all that work to get there, just decompressing in the room for a bit was nice.
For fun, I decided to pull a card from my tarot deck. I pulled the eight of pentacles. In my deck, it depicts a lovely Indian woman bent over a canvas, smiling as she paints a lotus blossom. B. and I agreed that the tarot is pretty darned crazy. Like us!
We decided to get dinner, then come back and do just a little bit of prep work for our next day, to get the ball rolling. Our space has A/C, so we left in on to cool the room off. When we got back, we experienced the first real down-side of the space. Our neighbor, who we had not yet formally met, was leaving, all bundled up and expressing irritation with us in a strange, passive-aggressive way... Apparently if we turn on the A/C in our space, it causes her tiny little space to turn into an icicle. Of course, we had no way of knowing, and indicated as such, as the landlord had not warned us of this. We hadn't been gone that long, but I suspect her irritation goes beyond the cold she endured in our absence. She seemed already a bit irritated with us, as if the last thing she wanted was people having fun in the office next to her while she had to slag away in front of a computer all day. When I told her that we were there for only two weeks doing an artist retreat, she stiffened a bit and her demeanor seemed only stranger. But, she has nothing to worry about, as we are good neighbors, actually very quiet for all the fun we are having, and are now quite conscientious about how much we use the A/C. It makes me sad, though, because this one fact of the A/C being practically unusable may mean that we can't keep this space for more than the two weeks.
Anyhow. To the next day. And then, after that, I hope to be able to write a blog entry for each day, to chronicle our progress.
Wednesday we started a bit slow. B. is getting the cold that I had (and am still fighting), and I slept a little late because I woke up in the middle of the night coughing and didn't get back to sleep too easily. I picked her up. She had made some awesome salads and trail mix for us, packed us some wine and kumboucha drinks. We got settled into our day. She started on some very textural collages using a bit of paint and pastels, and I worked on one of the little pastels in my tiny pastel series.
This series is very controlled, but I enjoy working with the colors. It takes me a couple of hours to finish one. Even though they don't really take up a lot of space to make, it's actually nice to be able to spread out all of my pastels to work. I really enjoyed making the piece, though when I was done I needed to do something larger and more explosive to let out some of the bottled up energy I had.
I pulled out a bit sheet of paper onto one of the easels and started drawing a giant self-potrait in charcoal, Phil Sylvester style. Then I got bored with the charcoal and pulled out some white paint, since I had never played with the two together. Before I knew it, I had decided to spontaneously pull out some color... Just red, blue, and yellow. Normally I'd mix colors and try for some interesting combos, but those were the main colors I had in the tubes and I felt too lazy at that point to mix. I just tried to paint shadows in blues, highlights in yellows, and then capture any particularly pink areas in the red. It turned out to be quite interesting! I had prepared myself to make crap, and I actually liked what resulted and felt I had a good time experimenting. I danced around the room as I stood back to observe my work, then dab at it again here and there. It was nice to really be able to go to the back of the room to get perspective for a change. We had music on, and I sort of felt myself lilting all about the whole time. Until I declared it done.
I pulled another tarot card for the day. King of wands. The interpretation was that we were full of amazing creative energy, on fire and ready to show ourselves to the world, to actually make something amazing and be larger than life. To do something out of the ordinary and to show ourselves what we are capable of.
We were amazingly quiet for most of the day, deeply absorbed in our respective creative work. B. finished two of her collages. The cold was starting to wear on her, though, as she was beginning to feel the unfortunate aches and lethargy associated with it at that particular stage. We took stock of our work and chatted about our intentions. Mine had shifted. I thought I just wanted to do dry pastels, but I found myself craving a canvas to paint on. I never really had painted on canvas much in the past. In school I just couldn't afford it. Now, if I was going to actually paint on our retreat, I needed to seriously consider buying some canvases.
We decided to go to Utrecht in the Pearl. "Maybe they will have a sale," I joked. Though I was only half-joking... I was secretly hoping that if I said that, it would miraculously happen.
We arrived at Utrecht at amazing speed despite the rush hour traffic. We found a parking spot right in front of the door. And someone had left a parking sticker on the meter with plenty of time, so we didn't even pay for parking.
We went inside.
They weren't just having a sale. They were having a HUGE sale.
I smiled like a maniac the whole time we were in there. The canvases were 55% off. I picked out several, a couple of really large ones. I felt so free just picturing the swooping arm movements I'd get to make on those. Maybe it's a symptom of always working on the computer that I get excited about getting to use my whole body in making art. I also bought some delicious acrylic colors that had jumped out to me.
We were a bit giddy on the way out, proud of our little art trip manifestation. It wasn't just exciting for me because of the sale... It was even more exciting because it felt like the universe was supporting our little quest.
I dropped B. off at home then went home for a bit, wrote the bulk of this post. Later that evening Grant came home and we ate dinner, then headed off to the studio so I could show it to him. We both worked for a bit. I prepped some canvases and actually started on a piece, which I am excited to announce that I hate. I knew I'd hate something at some point, which is why I brought along two self-portraits I did in high school to remind me of how far I have come as an artist. Grant worked in pastels and had a grand old time mixing colors in a flame pattern. We did our best to ignore the noisy skateboarding happening downstairs while we worked. Another unfortunate mark against the place.
So ended another evening. Last night I slept well, and I had an interesting variation on a dream. Since I've visited my grandmother in Vegas a few times, now, I have had recurring dreams of playing the Wheel of Fortune slot machine and winning a nice little chunk of money... $200 here, $300 there. Nothing gigantic, but it's always nice. I seem to have a sense for exactly what machine to go to in the dream in order to win the money. (As a note, that was my favorite machine to play on in Vegas, because I liked getting to spin the wheel and win a bit more than the usual slot sums.)
I also had a dream two nights ago that seem to go with this one, where I found a bunch of old ceramic things my mother had made for me when young, and I felt really excited about discovering these relics of her creativity. It was sort of nostalgia and a connection to my mother rolled into one, and because I dreamed it the day before we first went into the studio, I knew that it meant a childhood vision was being restored within me. In fact, it went hand in hand with the tarot card I drew the day we decided to go for it and get the studio... The six of cups, which meant that we were looking to our inner child for once and listening, remembering how it felt to be a child and make decisions based upon our dreams instead of worrying about grownup practicality that sometimes stifles more than it grounds. I was remembering my mother's stifled creativity, and knowing that somehow she would want me to pursue my art, because she never really allowed herself to do the same. I always loved her creative products as a child, so finding them was a bit of a reminder that it was my turn again.
In the dream last night, I was actually in Vegas with my mother and father. She was happy and vibrant and wandering about the casino floor with me. We found a wheel of fortune game, and there was a quarter in it already. That one didn't win, but we thought it interesting that it already had money in it, so we stayed and put in another dollar. I decided to go for the 3-quarter spin to see what we got. I had a good feeling about it.
This time, we won $10,000. Never in my dreams do I win this much. I always win just a little bit, with a vague, nagging disappointment that I didn't hit the jackpot. A little more money is always nice, but I generally would feel like I was missing something, that I took a wrong turn somewhere. In this dream I knew that part of why I won was because my mother was with me, helping me manifest this winning. She was my good luck charm.
When I woke up this morning, I knew exactly what the dream meant. For once, I wasn't going for the little bang for my buck in life. I was going for the jackpot. I was doing what my mother would have wanted for me and for herself. On some level, this is actually what I really want. And not only that, if I find a way to keep up with it, I do think that the money will come. Of course, I'm not talking about dropping everything and doing this full time. I'm just talking about continuing to make space for it and to stick with it. I have a lot to learn still, I need to develop my skills further. I need to get back into the flow and start being haunted by ideas again, now that I'm not sticking them in the closet. I need to find my natural curiosity and wonder again. But I'm onto something.
And that's the download up until now. We have a week and a half left. It should be interesting!
On this day, we each got a cup of coffee and chatted for a bit. It was our usual chat. We've been having grand dreams of becoming fine artists and spending at least half our weeks in a studio. Over the last few months the conversation has slowly shifted. It started out with the feeling of "this could never happen" or, "we could never make money as artists". Then it started into the territory of, "well, maybe if we planned it right, we could make it work a little bit." Soon we were convincing each other that making money off of painting and art was as much about business savvy and an attitude of self-belief and self-promotion as it was about having talent and a body of work. It still seemed unattainable, something for the far off future, but we were building on the dream in a more positive way. More recently we had given ourselves simply permission to say that we really WANTED to be artists for a living.
You know the question. "What's your dream job?" We often do the grown up thing and douse our real hopes and dreams in practical thinking. We pick the next best thing, the one thing that's sort of like what we really want, the one that could make a "real" living, and then we shove the real dream to the back of our mind and convince ourselves we never really wanted that in the first place.
Because, if we really let ourselves want it, we start to think...
What if I don't like it as much as I thought?
What if I go broke?
What if I look foolish?
What if I am terrible at it?
What if I don't like all the things that come with it that don't fit my ideal picture?
What if I'm just being selfish?
How does what I want to do help mankind in any real way?
We've stopped ourselves before we even get a chance to start dreaming big. So the big hurdle that we recently overcame was just saying, "I want to be an artist. I would love to be an artist for a living, creating personal expression in a visual way on a daily basis."
I think that was really the beginning of the beginning. After that, we started talking about how we don't really go to our offices enough to warrant keeping them. Then we "joked" about getting a studio to share together someday.
"Oh, but how can we justify such an expense when we aren't making art as it is? That's silly."
In between all of this hemming and hawing, we were also bitching and moaning about how we never got to do what we REALLY wanted to do. There wasn't the space, there wasn't the time, there wasn't the inspiration or inclination. But every day we made some mental progress on the idea, we pushed ourselves a little further on the road to realizing what we wanted and how we might achieve it.
Then that Thursday came along. Coffee in hand, we did our usual complaining. It would feel SO GOOD to make some art and get it in a show. I complained about how I had this May deadline set in my mind to finish at least one series by, and how May was upon us, and NOTHING.
Wouldn't it be nice to just have a week off to make some art? One week, locked up in some strange new place, some place we rented expressly for creativity? How could we do it? We were both busy. Maybe if we planned. June? July?
B. thought about her schedule. Her next week had a relatively light load, probably the lightest she'd ever have. I cringed when I looked at mine... Booked next week, and the next... I didn't seem like I'd ever be free. It was impossible.
But what if? We looked at each other. We broke out into laughter. "No way. We couldn't possibly. It's ridiculous! It's irresponsible!"
Where could we go? There wasn't exactly a place designed for artist retreats. I thought of how offices weren't renting out much these days... Maybe someplace would have a vacancy and be glad for even two weeks of rent money? Then I remembered Cathedral Park Place down the street from my office. They had artist spaces.
We looked at the web site. Amazingly, they had photos from several angles of the entirety of a 500 square foot space for $500 a month. Floor to ceiling windows with tons of light. Tile floor that you could mop up easily. The price was right, and there was plenty of light, our two primary requirements. "Too bad there's not a sink!" I joked.
Thirty minutes after the conversation began, I was on the phone with the place making an inquiry. It didn't hurt to investigate, right? They were keen. We were scheduled to look at some spaces in two hours.
I got off the phone. We stared at each other, then laughed, then stared at each other again. And laughed some more. "We're crazy!"
This became our mantra for the next four days. Just imagine the next several paragraphs scattered with the words, "We're crazy!"
We went to the space. The guy showed us some rinkydink no light office, thinking that was what we wanted. I pressed him to show us the space in the photo. He said that there was a guy moving in at some point that may choose that office or another one, so it might not be available. I reminded him that if we got the space, we wanted it next week... So was the guy moving in next week? He buckled and showed it to us.
He opened the door. It was perfect.
There was a sink.
My friends, I promise you, the pictures on the site were thorough. There was no sink in the pictures.
B. and I gave each other knowing looks. Woohoo! We manifested a sink!
We were in love with that space. The sun was streaming in, warming our giddy faces.
He showed us the other potential option. No sink in that space, a little less light, but there was a communal utility sink we could take advantage of.
We left feeling more than a little crazy. We talked to our significant others. We stewed on it a bit. We didn't know for sure that we'd get the one with the sink, but we went for it anyway. Then we went back to a coffee shop to work the rest of the afternoon. As we bought our tea, we both had glazed looks on our faces. We were elated and terrified. What if work actually got too much in the way and it turned out to be a waste? What if we hated it? What if, what if?
"I feel really weird," I said to B.
"Me too," she answered. "Everything feels so different all of a sudden."
It felt like we had stepped into an entirely different universe.
What was even more amusing, is that when we started to initiate all of this change in the morning, we had totally forgotten that we had scheduled that evening to go to a little group workshop weeks ago called "Test Drive Your Dream Job" in which a gentleman who owns a business called Vocations Vacations, which is set up to help people find mentorship and to literally get to test drive their dream job for three days, would help us set up steps to get on our way to allowing ourselves to do the same. He was actually ecstatic about our little adventure and wanted us to keep him up to date in how it went. And the group session just helped to fuel our fire and give us things to stew on as we went along.
We worked like the Dickens that weekend to wrap up as much work as possible. The person I had the most work scheduled for at the time scheduled a meeting with me. I was going to do the professional thing and keep it all under wraps and just take it in the chin, do the work as it came, get up at 6am every morning if that's what it took... But I decided not to keep it to myself, because I realized that I didn't need to be so wary of other people and how they might react to my decision. I was being overly protective about the whole thing, way too afraid of looking silly and unprofessional, and what I needed to do was recognize that the people who are actually in my life are friends more than colleagues, and to open up my heart and desires to them. We finished the meeting, and I confessed it all to him. He was extremely supportive, and said he would move all of my work until after it was done, and he'd work it out with the clients. I saw him again the next day, and he told me how excited his business partner was for me and what I was doing. They were both proud, not offended, not judging me as unprofessional. My wariness turned out to have no place.
In fact, everyone we told was very supportive. Grant the most of all. I was a little nervous to tell him because I knew that I had told him how swamped I was about to be with work, and he would of course remember that and worry for me, and he was a bit worried. But it felt so right, and I told him that I felt like I really needed to do it. After that we talked about it a few times and he told me he was proud of me for taking a leap for the sake of my art. I can't tell you how much his support meant to me. I knew I looked more than a little crazy on the outside, but I have made leaps like this in the past that always turned out to be so amazingly good, and this one had the same vibe to it. And so far, it has all worked out so well. And, true to form, Grant has been such a dear about it, like he always is. I feel so lucky.
Monday morning we came back to the building, check in hand, nervously wondering if we got the space we wanted. If we didn't, we were considering calling the whole thing off. "Don't break our hearts, Rob, tell us we got the one with the sink," I laughed as I said in greeting. "It's yours," he replied with a big smile.
We did the paperwork, got our key, got the tour, then went back into the room and just stared at it for awhile. Rob must have been able to sense our giddy energy, because he said, "Hey, gimme a hug!" before he left us to our own devices.
We went to a coffee shop and worked through the afternoon, wrapping up projects and loose ends. The next day we did the same... One last project to wrap up, plus a couple of long-ago scheduled meetings that I didn't feel I should miss. In my free hours I got an amazing amount of work done. Things felt so effortless. I knew I was working toward something important, and it made everything else feel easier.
I had woken up that morning, still feeling unsure and unsettled. I thought about why I felt this way, about all the "practical" questions that usually swarmed through my mind and took the fun out of wanting to do it in the first place. Then I told myself the following:
I give myself permission to make an utter fool of myself.
I give myself permission to make crappy art.
I give myself permission to find out that I have no time to do this at all, and it turns out to be a complete waste of money.
I give myself permission to decide I totally hate it.
Most of all, I give myself permission to have fun.
I can't tell you how much better I felt after that. It started to dawn on me that this actually wasn't all that crazy or irresponsible. We had talked things through with the people we needed to talk to. We were getting all the work caught up. We were making a plan. We had chosen an affordable option... One night at a B&B would cost us each the same as two weeks in this space. And we weren't just quitting our jobs and becoming artists. We were trying it out, kicking ourselves in the ass and actually getting in gear. We weren't waiting and complaining anymore. We actually rocked!
That afternoon we started moving in art supplies and enough furniture to get us by for the next couple of weeks. It turned out to just be the first load, as we found we needed other various things, but it was so nice to sit in our folding chairs and have our Bohemian brand beer with lime in our bohemian space. After all that work to get there, just decompressing in the room for a bit was nice.
For fun, I decided to pull a card from my tarot deck. I pulled the eight of pentacles. In my deck, it depicts a lovely Indian woman bent over a canvas, smiling as she paints a lotus blossom. B. and I agreed that the tarot is pretty darned crazy. Like us!
We decided to get dinner, then come back and do just a little bit of prep work for our next day, to get the ball rolling. Our space has A/C, so we left in on to cool the room off. When we got back, we experienced the first real down-side of the space. Our neighbor, who we had not yet formally met, was leaving, all bundled up and expressing irritation with us in a strange, passive-aggressive way... Apparently if we turn on the A/C in our space, it causes her tiny little space to turn into an icicle. Of course, we had no way of knowing, and indicated as such, as the landlord had not warned us of this. We hadn't been gone that long, but I suspect her irritation goes beyond the cold she endured in our absence. She seemed already a bit irritated with us, as if the last thing she wanted was people having fun in the office next to her while she had to slag away in front of a computer all day. When I told her that we were there for only two weeks doing an artist retreat, she stiffened a bit and her demeanor seemed only stranger. But, she has nothing to worry about, as we are good neighbors, actually very quiet for all the fun we are having, and are now quite conscientious about how much we use the A/C. It makes me sad, though, because this one fact of the A/C being practically unusable may mean that we can't keep this space for more than the two weeks.
Anyhow. To the next day. And then, after that, I hope to be able to write a blog entry for each day, to chronicle our progress.
Wednesday we started a bit slow. B. is getting the cold that I had (and am still fighting), and I slept a little late because I woke up in the middle of the night coughing and didn't get back to sleep too easily. I picked her up. She had made some awesome salads and trail mix for us, packed us some wine and kumboucha drinks. We got settled into our day. She started on some very textural collages using a bit of paint and pastels, and I worked on one of the little pastels in my tiny pastel series.
This series is very controlled, but I enjoy working with the colors. It takes me a couple of hours to finish one. Even though they don't really take up a lot of space to make, it's actually nice to be able to spread out all of my pastels to work. I really enjoyed making the piece, though when I was done I needed to do something larger and more explosive to let out some of the bottled up energy I had.
I pulled out a bit sheet of paper onto one of the easels and started drawing a giant self-potrait in charcoal, Phil Sylvester style. Then I got bored with the charcoal and pulled out some white paint, since I had never played with the two together. Before I knew it, I had decided to spontaneously pull out some color... Just red, blue, and yellow. Normally I'd mix colors and try for some interesting combos, but those were the main colors I had in the tubes and I felt too lazy at that point to mix. I just tried to paint shadows in blues, highlights in yellows, and then capture any particularly pink areas in the red. It turned out to be quite interesting! I had prepared myself to make crap, and I actually liked what resulted and felt I had a good time experimenting. I danced around the room as I stood back to observe my work, then dab at it again here and there. It was nice to really be able to go to the back of the room to get perspective for a change. We had music on, and I sort of felt myself lilting all about the whole time. Until I declared it done.
I pulled another tarot card for the day. King of wands. The interpretation was that we were full of amazing creative energy, on fire and ready to show ourselves to the world, to actually make something amazing and be larger than life. To do something out of the ordinary and to show ourselves what we are capable of.
We were amazingly quiet for most of the day, deeply absorbed in our respective creative work. B. finished two of her collages. The cold was starting to wear on her, though, as she was beginning to feel the unfortunate aches and lethargy associated with it at that particular stage. We took stock of our work and chatted about our intentions. Mine had shifted. I thought I just wanted to do dry pastels, but I found myself craving a canvas to paint on. I never really had painted on canvas much in the past. In school I just couldn't afford it. Now, if I was going to actually paint on our retreat, I needed to seriously consider buying some canvases.
We decided to go to Utrecht in the Pearl. "Maybe they will have a sale," I joked. Though I was only half-joking... I was secretly hoping that if I said that, it would miraculously happen.
We arrived at Utrecht at amazing speed despite the rush hour traffic. We found a parking spot right in front of the door. And someone had left a parking sticker on the meter with plenty of time, so we didn't even pay for parking.
We went inside.
They weren't just having a sale. They were having a HUGE sale.
I smiled like a maniac the whole time we were in there. The canvases were 55% off. I picked out several, a couple of really large ones. I felt so free just picturing the swooping arm movements I'd get to make on those. Maybe it's a symptom of always working on the computer that I get excited about getting to use my whole body in making art. I also bought some delicious acrylic colors that had jumped out to me.
We were a bit giddy on the way out, proud of our little art trip manifestation. It wasn't just exciting for me because of the sale... It was even more exciting because it felt like the universe was supporting our little quest.
I dropped B. off at home then went home for a bit, wrote the bulk of this post. Later that evening Grant came home and we ate dinner, then headed off to the studio so I could show it to him. We both worked for a bit. I prepped some canvases and actually started on a piece, which I am excited to announce that I hate. I knew I'd hate something at some point, which is why I brought along two self-portraits I did in high school to remind me of how far I have come as an artist. Grant worked in pastels and had a grand old time mixing colors in a flame pattern. We did our best to ignore the noisy skateboarding happening downstairs while we worked. Another unfortunate mark against the place.
So ended another evening. Last night I slept well, and I had an interesting variation on a dream. Since I've visited my grandmother in Vegas a few times, now, I have had recurring dreams of playing the Wheel of Fortune slot machine and winning a nice little chunk of money... $200 here, $300 there. Nothing gigantic, but it's always nice. I seem to have a sense for exactly what machine to go to in the dream in order to win the money. (As a note, that was my favorite machine to play on in Vegas, because I liked getting to spin the wheel and win a bit more than the usual slot sums.)
I also had a dream two nights ago that seem to go with this one, where I found a bunch of old ceramic things my mother had made for me when young, and I felt really excited about discovering these relics of her creativity. It was sort of nostalgia and a connection to my mother rolled into one, and because I dreamed it the day before we first went into the studio, I knew that it meant a childhood vision was being restored within me. In fact, it went hand in hand with the tarot card I drew the day we decided to go for it and get the studio... The six of cups, which meant that we were looking to our inner child for once and listening, remembering how it felt to be a child and make decisions based upon our dreams instead of worrying about grownup practicality that sometimes stifles more than it grounds. I was remembering my mother's stifled creativity, and knowing that somehow she would want me to pursue my art, because she never really allowed herself to do the same. I always loved her creative products as a child, so finding them was a bit of a reminder that it was my turn again.
In the dream last night, I was actually in Vegas with my mother and father. She was happy and vibrant and wandering about the casino floor with me. We found a wheel of fortune game, and there was a quarter in it already. That one didn't win, but we thought it interesting that it already had money in it, so we stayed and put in another dollar. I decided to go for the 3-quarter spin to see what we got. I had a good feeling about it.
This time, we won $10,000. Never in my dreams do I win this much. I always win just a little bit, with a vague, nagging disappointment that I didn't hit the jackpot. A little more money is always nice, but I generally would feel like I was missing something, that I took a wrong turn somewhere. In this dream I knew that part of why I won was because my mother was with me, helping me manifest this winning. She was my good luck charm.
When I woke up this morning, I knew exactly what the dream meant. For once, I wasn't going for the little bang for my buck in life. I was going for the jackpot. I was doing what my mother would have wanted for me and for herself. On some level, this is actually what I really want. And not only that, if I find a way to keep up with it, I do think that the money will come. Of course, I'm not talking about dropping everything and doing this full time. I'm just talking about continuing to make space for it and to stick with it. I have a lot to learn still, I need to develop my skills further. I need to get back into the flow and start being haunted by ideas again, now that I'm not sticking them in the closet. I need to find my natural curiosity and wonder again. But I'm onto something.
And that's the download up until now. We have a week and a half left. It should be interesting!