diving for inspiration's treasures
So, I am thinking about inspiration today and how it can come in both planned and calculated ways, as well as entirely unexpected ways. Take the piece above, called Sunken Treasure. This was a piece I made right around this time last year. It was the first Collaboration Exploration I did, with Cindy Gimbrone and Jean Yates. This was a project, where all three of us had some of the same elements to work with (namely, Cindy's glass spiral beads and my porcelain shell charms) and where we all had to make something. Sometimes, a limitation such as that is a good way to find inspiration. When you are limited, it makes you think creatively about how to solve a problem, and all three of us did very different things with our sets of beads. It was a very fun project!
I liked my piece from the Collaboration so well that I submitted it to Simply Beads Magazine. It is out in the summer issue right now as a project! It is so rewarding when something you do for fun and play ends up turning into something bigger.
I have been feeling very inspired lately by many things, which makes me feel very fortunate. My brain is definitely storming! And it is swimming in the ocean, discovering sunken treasures of imagination, things that I didn't even know I was looking for. It is an exciting time, when an artist can experience this, it is sometimes hard to be open to it, especially when wrapped up in other projects, or working on mundane details.
I would like to encourage you to discover inspiration's treasures too...to keep your eyes and mind open to them. You may never know where they will be swimming in the ancient ocean of creativity! It might be in a collaborative project that presents itself to you, it might be in a studious and calulated effort, or it may come in the form of an unexpected instant message one morning before you have even had your first cup of coffee...