Soaring gardens and stimulated creativity

Before going to the artist retreat I had to prepare for a show at a new gallery in town.  The dealer came to the house to see the work.  I dragged out all of my big pieces and lined them up for her thinking she would make her selection but she asked me to put up digital images on my website of all of the pieces.  I groaned silently.  There were over forty large pieces in room and I was leaving town in a day or two. I took a deep breath to put space between me and my thoughts and said,'ok'. I worked late into the night the day before I left but got them all up.  I felt invigorated and excited about the trip and the show.  A slow realization was starting to come over me. 

   I hadn't worked on canvas in years.  After I pulled out my work I began to understand  what cause me to stop working on canvas.  I could see the change and then I remembered.    By now I'm in the everlasting mountains of Pennsylvania meditating every day.  I worked on five works on paper till I couldn't anymore and then I used the Andinkra symbols to create paintings on green crinkled paper.  

  Upon returning I had to take the selected paintings to the gallery.  Now it's time to get ready for the show.  Time is tight. I like to send out several invitations but this show is being quickly organized, so I have to wait for the Gallery's invitation.  All of this arrive two weeks before the opening.  I need to check my distribution lists and pray for strength.  I continue to meditate which helps to keep me calm.  I send out the first invitation via email this is usually a save the date announcement.  Since  it was so late I sent a regular invite.  I mailed the post card to my collectors also.  Meanwhile the dealer has hung the show and asked that I come and take a look at it.  I walked through the double doors and broke into a smile holly shit I say, I forget how good I am.  The show was wonderful, beautifully hung, which is an art in itself.  Looking at it I understood.  When I create my art I use a form, the challenge was to create something from this form,  I didn't realized it but all art is created from a form.  Sometimes we know it sometimes we don't.  I'm just realizing this myself.  Five or six years ago since I consider that I am a colorist I just thought it was all about the color. But now I see that I also need a form.  I used keyholes in the beginning and made some good paintings. At some point the ideas stop coming or I was just bored with what I was doing, who knows?  So genus that I am I decided to forget about form and just make marks on the canvas and go from there.  I created some decent paintings but some duds also.  These I saw when I dragged the art out for the dealer.  

As I sat in the everlasting mountains I wondered about my avocation whether I should continue, it's hard being a artist. I am extremely thankful that I don't have to support myself with my creations.  It's tough out there for an artist to make a living, It's a continous struggle.  Some are successful but most are not.  For those of us who are not dependent on our art for a living the question becomes what do we do with all this art.  We do not want our life's work put on the sidewalk after we are gone.  

  After meditating at the retreat I was very open, after seeing my work in the gallery and doing an inventory of some one hundred and eighty nine paintings.  I understood why I was not working on canvas, I had loss my way.

Soaring gardens and stimulated creativity

I have been struggling with my art for a few years now.  Before I left for my artist retreat, I was asked to show my work with two other women in a new gallery in Dumont NJ.  I met with the dealer at my house to show her my work.  She liked the work and asked me to put up digital representives of the images on my website.  Given that deadline and since I was leaving in three days I got to the job and got the images about forty up on my website and notifed the Dealer via email.   Off I went to the everlasting mountains of Pennsylvania.  Soaring gardens is such a wonderful place, isolated, quiet and can be a little creepy at night. No street lights, unknown animals braying in the dark and foot steps on the roof which kept me awake one night.   I had decided to meditate each day while I was there  and I still can't believe that I actually did it for ten days and continue to do so today.  Tsugio Hattori my teacher and mentor use to say. " Cassandra before you paint you must sit in studio and meditate!" This is what he did before each of his studio sessions.  It's apart of his culture I thought at the time.  Now  after several years in spiritual centering it's becoming apart of my life though I haven't included it as part on my studio practice yet.  

  The studio is huge able to accommodate the four of us with amble space on the second floor.  I had plan to work on five works on paper while up there.   I started working and as most artist recognize, you come to a place when painting comes to a halt, your brain is not giving up anything for you to put on the canvas or paper.  Once I reached that point which was the second day, I think, I looked around for something else to do while waiting for inspiration to guide my brush.  Some times it's right away other times it's weeks.   When this happens I usually start working on something else. So  I picked up my iPad and looked at the Adinkra symbols I previously drew.  I have about fifteen of them on my iPad.  When I drew them I had no idea what I would do with them.  Just so you know Adinkra symbols are used to make adinkra cloth.  It is made in Ghana, West Africa and is often worn by the Ashante people who live in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.   After looking at them for awhile I decided to use them in a small painting.  I started working on them and a great pleasure passed thru me, I was delighted. I also brought with me this handmade green crinkled paper which I planned to leave in the studio closet for others to use.   I started working on that paper and a smile crossed my face as I saw the results.  I was entering a happy place.

  The first thing we do after setting up in the studio is check to see what's available in the closet. There are always good stuff in there, so I planned to make a contribution.  But soon I was using almost all of it, I think I left a dozen pieces up there.  I believe that when I'm ready what I need will come to me.   And I am needing inspiration desperately.  Meanwhile in the back of my brain the show is grinding on.  I needed small pieces for sale.  I have many works on paper, time to get them ready for selling. I made some business calls so that I can prepare them for sale.  That made me feel good. The packaging was waiting for me when I got home.  So was the list of paintings from the dealer.

  As I wandered around our environment,  acres of green, a few ponds, butterflies, all kinds of rodents running around but no humming birds this time.  I felt so fortunate to have this opportunity.  Last time I didn't appreciate it so much. I was excited about the work I was doing with the adinkra symbols.  My mind starts to come up with ideas for new paintings.   

There are four of us working. So lunch is up to us and one of us make dinner each night. The others clean up afterwards.  Each night before we eat we start with grace, which always supprises me, each of us takes turns saying it.  I do this with other friends and am surprised that there is no grown up grace.  Everybody says the same grace, the one we learned as children.  It's different each time depending on how well its remembered.  

 Ten days, two travel and eight days creating art.  Every day some of us got up at seven, others got up at ten.  We eat, have a lot of conversation about life, family, music and art.  Then we go to the studio and work until lunch which is about one or two.  Then we are back in the studio by three, we work until   Six thirty. While one of us stop working around five to prepare dinner.  After dinner and cleanup we are back in the studio, some of us work till midnight. I usually stopped around 9:30 to be in bed by eleven thirty.  It could be exhausting.

Soaring gardens - artist retreat

I couldn't wait to get here.  I have been very productive and am overly stimulated.  I worked on 5 paintings but did not finished them.  I created close to a dozen images using adinkra symbols some if which I completed the others I will complete at home.   I am over here in PA with 3 other women.  We get along well  and all work in different media.  We had long conversations about art and people. We spent hours working in Ora Lerman's  studio and produced a lot of work.  

It rained every day that we stayed there. This place is so beautiful that it takes my breath way but it is isolated. It takes us a half hour to get down out of the mountains to go to the restaurant. My GPS finally works out here, last time it got lost.  It's a completely different way of living here.  People do not lock their doors and are not worried about fracking affects on their water, they are happy to receive the checks. 

 The house we live in is a historical farm house which has been modernized, it lies on acres and acres of land. It is beautifully landscaped with lush vegetation and a pond which use to have coy fish. Last time I was here a crane came to the pond every day at four o'clock .  It didn't visit this time.  

The studio is a two story building with light sources all around.  It is big enough for the four of us to work in and not be on top of each other. Another four people could have worked in the lower level.  This woman has a large collection of books on diverse subject matter, I find it hard to believe that she was able to read all of them during her lifetime.

Painting using the IPAD

I got an IPAD this past Christmas. I thought that I might use it to show my work to galleries and curators.  Then an artist told me he used it to sketch.  Then a gallery opened in Teaneck that offered classes using the IPad to create art. So  I took classes.   The two apps I use are art rage and sketchbook.   I enjoy both of them.  This past winter I spent time researching and drawing adinkra symbols of west Africa.   I created them all on my iPad.  I am thinking of a way to use them in paintings for the future. I want to use my iPad as a sketchbook, my one drawing a day.  That way I will not have all of that paper around for others to shift through when I'm gone.  Oh! did I touch a nerve, many of my art friends are wondering what will happen to their work when they are gone.  A friend of mine just gave me an inventory sheet to track paintings sold so you know who have them.  I use to know each person who owned my paintings but now either I sold too many paintings or I'm just too old to remember.  I am working again, thank God!!!

Dry Spell

Today is a rainy day. didn't bother to go into the city to see the Affordable art show. I wanted to go to see what it was all about. Thinking about renting a booth for the next show in the fall on 2013. Meanwhile am just sitting here watching TV, thinking I should be painting. Leroy Campbell goes to thrift shops and collects old frames which he buys liners for and creates a painting which relates to the frame. I didn't think about using liners for my paintings on wood. which I plan to do soon.

Art Inventory

How to keep an inventory of your art. The first thing I do is keep track of the paint I use in each painting. The reason I do this is so I know what colors to use if I ever have to match the paint. I use a cheap watercolor or drawing book as my pallet for this. In the book I put the size, the year and month I start working on the painting. When I finish the painting I put the month, year and name the painting. If I don't name the painting at that time I usually forget what I would have called it later. At some point during the creation of the painting I put an inventory number on the back of the painting and on its page in the pallet book. As I add new paint to the pallet I write the name of the color and the company at the end of my work session. This is how I know exactly what color was used, no need to guess. When the painting is finished I go to my inventory spreadsheet with the inventory number and name, there I add this information along with size, year, media, genre, location and calculate the price (formula discussed in Pricing without emotion, an earlier post). The painting is photograph, no signature, the jpeg is saved on my computer in a file depending on whether it is canvas, paper, board or wood. When the painting is completed and ready for exhibition or sale, I tag the back with the same information including the number. This way I can always identify the painting, I use to remember all of their names but not anymore. By the way the number is a combination of a letter and a 3 digit number followed by another letter (no letter means canvas, B means board, P means paper.) the letter indicates the year the painting was created, I figure that when I get to Z, I'll start with AA. The number indicates the number of paintings completed that year. For instance, H10, this year I am using H which is 2009, 10 is the tenth painting completed this year and no letter on the end means canvas.

Networking is cool

About three years ago I decided to attend a networking function for people in the financial industry(insurance, mortgages, banking...), I figure I would take my art where the money was or so I thought. I wind up meeting a lawyer who was an collector and curator for the New Jersey Law Center. Thinking I could interest him in my paintings I went over to talk to him. I gave him my card and showed him work on my palm pilot. He was interested alright but in a show for Black History Month at the Law Center. Disappointed I jumped at the opportunity, who knows what could happen. I sent him an email the next week, he responded with instruction of when, where and how. He suggested that I get in touch with him 2 months before February 2007, this was 2006. So the end of January 2007 I sent him an email. Meanwhile during the year I kept him apprised of all shows and activities I participated in. I get an email back starting with an apology so I knew the rest was bad news and it was. There seems to have been a miscommunication between him and the NJ Bar president who found another artist for the 2007 show. After a few emails and phone calls between the three of us we settled on the 2008 Black History show. The end of January I helped hang the February 2008 show. They provide everything, I just brought the work. It was quite a lovely space, we hung 11 medium and large paintings. About 50 people attended the reception, the food was delicious but no sales. I introduced new people to my work, who knows where it goes from there.