dyeing for some creativity

on the last night of my vacation, i went to a shibori/tie-dye dyeing session with my local creative group. i took some odds and ends of cloth. most of it from the fabric we used at sabin's confirmation in 2014, which was a bit stained by food and wine. now you can't see any of those stains. the piece on the left was a remnant of white linen. i put it in the second round of the dye bath, so it came out lighter, but still cool.

i played with shibori techniques - folding in triangles and using cardboard and plastic as resists, as well as putting a ton of small rubber bands on one piece. i wish it was indigo, but it was navy blue batik dye. i really love how it turned out. i brought them home and washed them. the smaller piece is one of the fabric bags my sister made for wrapping everyone's christmas presents a couple of years ago. 

i've been saving husband's old shirts to make a quilt for some years now and i think they would look great with these bits and pieces, since most of them are shades of blue. and i already pinned about 50 inspiration pins for the next time we have a dye evening. i think it would be great to work with some natural dyes the next time, rather than commercial batik dyes. 

these are a couple more of the linen bags my sister made. i used the second round of some red dye that the others had used - i really love this salmon color that came out of the pot. this is giving me so many ideas, i definitely want to do some more. and the next time we do an indigo pot down at the museum, i'll definitely be taking some cloth along. i feel like being on vacation opened up my creativity again. now, to try to hold onto it and keep it going. 

making pottery is hard

three whole days of creativity. turns out operating a pottery wheel successfully is rather difficult. and while you can manage to make something in only three days, it might be a bit on the wonky side. but i enjoyed decorating my creations very much. and i enjoyed spending three days in a wonderful creative space.

the weather was crazy over the weekend, covering all the seasons in the space of a few minutes. it was good to be inside at the wheel. even if the wheel was very difficult.

a few of the pieces i ended up making. they'll be glazed and fired and i'll be able to take them home in early june. looking forward to seeing how they look when they're finished!

and now, packing up my suitcase and getting ready for the week ahead. yoga, seafood and brussels on the horizon. it seems life is as ever-shifting as the weather around here...

another successful drink & draw weekend

i had a little weekend getaway with a few friends. one of them has moved over to fyn (the island between us here on the "mainland" and the big island where they keep copenhagen) to an idyllic little village and opened a gallery and B&B. so charming! and she's got a beautiful studio, where she showed us how to do the monoprint technique she's been working with of late. we used "china paper" - a thin, but surprisingly strong paper that can take a lot of layers of paint and texture.

so much fun. we each chose a color palette and after a walk, to gather bits and bobs from nature, we settled in to work. we used a variety of techniques - painting with acrylics, using gel pens, printing with feathers and plants, slowly building up texture on our pieces.

i found myself working with mustard yellow, teal, payne's grey (it looks quite black in these photos) and a peachy color that i mixed, plus the odd metallic gold accent. it was interesting how we were each drawn to a specific palette that i'm not sure any of us consciously knew we had in our heads.

some of my pieces worked and some didn't. some worked for awhile and then stopped working. it was an interesting process and one which i thoroughly enjoyed, but never really felt i had control over.

through it all, we laughed and drank some wine and enjoyed some good vegetarian chili, told stories, shared and laughed some more. we had moments of silence, deeply concentrating on our work, and then more laughter and sharing. it was that kind of powerful feminine medicine that you just need once in awhile.

i was surprised by the direction some of my pieces took - these two got rather dark after i became inspired to use a bit of dusty grey pastels on them, giving them a very different look than my other, bright pieces (underneath, the palette is the same). and some of my old favorite helleristning motifs came out from somewhere in my subconscious. it felt right, like moments of flow always do.

here's the end result of one of the others - i think you can tell that she's actually educated as an artist.

this friend did two rounds of the small sheets of chinese paper, with very different color palettes. she felt the second round went much better than the first. but sometimes it does take warming up when you're learning a new technique.

and our hostess, who had been working with the technique for some time, made some beautifully textured, multi-layered pieces. beautiful to see the individual ways our creativity manifested itself, expressing something utterly unique, using similar materials. magical. we definitely need to do this more often.

spring exhibition - works in progress

our local art group's yearly exhibition is on the horizon. which means that we've stepped up the creativity around here. i'm putting together some rusty bits and pieces with driftwood, to fit the "skrot" (scrap) theme.

these are going to hang from something or other in a way that's still but a vague and blurry (partially due to my eyes being very affected by the birch pollen in air) picture in my mind.

i like that this one ended up having a kind of talisman feel.  it has slightly less rusty bits, but that's just the direction it went in.

tho' i'm still composing in my head, i know that the pressure of the deadline and an otherwise rather busy week will work together to make it happen. that's how it always is. i'm a girl in need of a deadline.

this old bottle of ink i got in a box of goodies at the autumn flea market a couple of years ago. rather fun to put it to use .

this broken pot is a piece that our drink & draw group worked on together on friday evening. the hostess of the last drink & draw dropped it and thought it would be a good idea to paint the shards and try to reassemble it. so that's precisely what we did.

i love how it turned out, even if it did take me 2 days to glue it together. we've got plans for it as well, involving some old shoes, a horse hoof with the shoe still one (the rest of the horse was long ago fed to the lions at a nearby zoo - that's how we roll in denmark, after all, we do like to keep our lions fed). due to all of us using the same inks, it harmonizes but bears the style of each of us. i like that. i'll be sure to share the final version once it's finished. i've passed it along to another from the group now.

skrot on the brain

skrot - it's a danish word for scrap, not something naughty, tho' it does look a bit naughty somehow. for me, it also has the connotation of being scrap metal, so it conjures images of fetching bits of rusty wire and iron. so i was very excited when our local art group, creagive (get that, we're creative in give) chose skrot as the theme for our yearly spring exhibition.

i didn't participate in last year's exhibition, as i felt like i really couldn't since i'm not a painter, but with this theme, it lends itself more to the mixed media/collage-style that i like. and with five days off here for easter, i'm getting down to business in earnest on the pieces i've been mulling over in my mind for several months. i got permission to go explore the container above (which i had sneaked a photo of a couple of weeks ago) and take what i'd like for the pieces i have but a vague picture of in my mind. alas, i went today to have a look and found, to my horror, that the container had been emptied. i'll be honest and tell you that i almost cried. i could picture one of my little fobots (found object robot) with curly hair made of those metal shavings and now that they're gone, i'm not sure what to do.

some members of the group were quite horrified by the theme, coming up with all kinds of violent and sexual connotations for the word (there is a meaning of it that's along the lines of up yours). but i say there's still potential to artistically explore those meanings as well, even tho' the word doesn't bring such things to my mind when i ponder it. perhaps i'm a little too in love with shipyards, as those are the images that come to mind for me - enormous, rusty bits of metal, lying around, looking fetching. i can see all kinds of potential in those. and i find myself also pondering ways of working some lego into my pieces - the contrast between the rusty metal and the colorful plastic could be very interesting.

in addition to a little grouping of fobots, i've also ordered this photo of a ship that's being scrapped in a large size. husband is going to help me make a frame that echos the scrap theme as well. i've found so much inspiration in the notion of rusty hunks of metal. i'm lucky there's no limit this year to how many pieces you can contribute. but we'll see how many of the ideas floating in my head and on my pinterest board, make it into reality and how they look when they do. inspiration is a wonderful thing.

lego as artistic medium

JCDC Versus LEGO from Bad Winners on Vimeo.

in light of bill's comment that LEGO isn't really that creative or unique when it comes down to it, i had to share this 3D animation based on a real fashion show featuring LEGO-inspired fashion from french designer jean charles de castelbajac back in 2009. although i will grant that i will likely never create something new and unique from LEGO (i'm a building-instruction follower), there are many people who make unique creations using LEGO as an artistic medium the same way that people use wood or paint or textiles. often with amazing results. 

creativity and co-creation

this morning an article with the shocking headline of ted talks are lying to you caught my eye. my initial thought was, "say it isn't so!" but then i remembered that brené brown drivel on which i once spent 20 minutes of my life that i'll never have back. brené - what kind of a pretentious crap name is that? but thomas frank lays out a pretty good case for the pop phenomenon of self-help/business books on the topic of creativity. they're formulaic (like most business books), they're filled with the same stories (invention of the post-it with a few bob dylan lyrics thrown in) and they're not really about creativity at all, but about conformity and societal norms. and that made a lot of sense to me. because i've experienced myself how truly thinking outside the box will get you thrown out of the club, because what people really want is to be surrounded by people who think as they do, not by people who push them to think differently and behave in new ways.

it's an interesting read and it makes a lot of sense to me and articulates the aversion i've found that i have for books on cultivating creativity, without really knowing why i found myself rolling my eyes at them. what he doesn't go into is something i've been pondering of late and that's whether it's even possible to be truly creative and think outside of the box (i hate that phrase)? i'm beginning to think that creativity has much more to do with regular, even dogged, practice than it has to do with any epiphanies. the possibility of developing something unique and which is truly yours or truly an expression of what you'd like to, well, express, is nearly null. anything we make is somehow a conglomeration of influences and experiences and contains grains of them all, rather than being something completely new and unique. even a post it is really just weak tape and a small piece of paper, it's not anything new.

but that said, i do believe in a creative practice, tho' i admit that i do it myself in fits and starts and not very consistently. and i believe in the power of co-creation - where a group of people from different, seemingly diverse fields, come together and put their ideas into one big pot, where they are stirred together and become new and improved ideas. and i'd say that one of my main talents lies in an ability to put such groups together and have magic come of it. but it's unpredictable and the magic is always, always different than you imagined it would be. that's actually the magical thing about magic. to co-create ideas with other people also means being very open and willing to throw an idea into the mix and see it change and morph and become something else that only carries a kernel of what it originally was. and it's there that a lot of people have problems. they're not willing to let go of their precious baby ideas and really let them outside of their original box. i think that's where the dogged persistence and the actual nitty, gritty work come in. you have to keep going and pushing and seeing what happens. just like in real life.

and ultimately, it's why i still think ted talks are a good thing - ideas are floated into the world, consumed by people, who combine them with their own ideas and they become something else entirely. life, it's an act of co-creation.

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always pondering libraries, so i liked this guardian piece by neil gaiman.

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fantastic photos and stories of a forgotten russia.

spring exhibition - movement

i probably didn't really tell you that at last i found a group of creative people to hang out with. it's weird,  i'm no longer compelled in the same way to share every aspect of my analogue life here (probably because i spend a lot less time alone in a hotel room). but i have indeed found a group of creative people to spend time with. yesterday, i helped out with setting up for the spring exhibition, which takes place today. i mostly helped out by photographing the process and then sharing it on facebook and encouraging people to attend.

i don't have anything of my own in the exhibition. i have to admit that since the vast majority of the group are painters, i didn't feel like anything i might have contributed would fit. i hadn't really seen one of their exhibitions before, so i also wanted to get the lay of the land before jumping in. that, and i've been very busy with work-related things of late. i know. that's quite a collection of excuses. but suffice it to say that i didn't feel ready to be part of the exhibition this time around.

but i will be the next time. because if there's one thing that i learned, it's that there is an enormous variety of styles involved. the theme this time around is "movement" (bevægelse), so i could easily have contributed photos of horse feet, nicely framed. i also had an idea of making a whole lot of teeny tiny origami birds and hanging them by threads, so that they would move when people passed by. but all of the writing i've been doing this week on various projects and proposals prevented that idea from materializing.  (hmm, there's those excuses again.) i am content to be the official event photographer.

there are talented painters and some less talented, but what's common to all is that they dare to show their work and that the group is open to everyone's level. all of the works were cheerfully accepted and something positive was seen in all of them. they have been carefully hung to their best advantage and today, there will be a reception where friends, family and the whole town can come and have a look. they represent a diversity of styles and passions and i find it comforting to be involved with a group where there is room and a welcoming spirit for all. it's so refreshing and it's what this whole culture house thing is really about.

next year, i'm definitely going to show some of my work too. who knows, maybe i'll even paint something!

a crafty day at home

my sis wanted to make some felty-stitchy bits for her bathroom back home. so we enlisted child labor. they don't have anything better to do since there's no school.

turns out you can pay the child labor in chocolate. of course there's the small issue that you have to get it at the chocolate café in the airport in amsterdam.

i made a soft leather pillow cover. i'm actually pretty pleased with myself on this one.

it has a ribbon & button closure.  i like that too.

bright bits for my sis's bathroom.

more soon.

rainy day ponderings

early mornings like a painting. the rest of the day, one wonders if one probably shouldn't have gotten to work on that ark. the wind yesterday was crazy, whipping leaves and loose branches from the trees - leaving the road strewn with debris and husband's half-finished sawmill a bit in disarray. today, there's just steady rain, but not so much wind. and we battened down the hatches of the sawmill, so it will be ok.

after a busy few weeks, things have slowed down a bit. i'm writing proposals and developing new ideas. and even writing a press release for my local photo walk that's a part of scott kelby's worldwide photo walk october 13! it's interesting, getting used to the rhythms.

i'm participating in stephanie levy's creative courage course. it just started yesterday and already it makes me feel both peaceful and purposeful. there's a link to it on the sidebar if you're interested, i think it's not too late to join in. i haven't been making anything lately and i can feel that's not a good thing. why is it that the creativity (actual physical creativity) is always the first thing to go when i get busy? i know that's bad for me and yet i let it happen.

the first exercise in the creative courage course asked us to write down what we'd like to create in the coming weeks and what we'd like to release. we should actually physically get rid of the piece of paper with the things we'd like to release...a sort of symbolic release of the words. i think these are powerful acts. and while i haven't done it yet (i'm still pondering and wondering if i can fit everything on one piece of paper), i will. i think i'll burn up that piece of paper when i'm done - what more cleansing way to release than fire? tho' i have an image in my head of a rain-spattered piece of paper as well, with the ink rinsing away. goodness knows we've got plenty of rain.

one of the things i want to release is negativity - yesterday, i ended up coming across several articles (i will admit to a certain fondness for the phrase rugbrød fascists) and blogs about expats living in denmark who were very unhappy and after reading them a bit too long, i found myself feeling negative and unhappy as well. and tho' some of what i read rings true, not all of it does. and even tho' i do occasionally despair that i will ever understand the danes, largely, i like it here and it definitely doesn't do me any good to read a bunch of arrogant, bilious ranting from someone who doesn't.

what's interesting is that one of the proposals i'm working on is for a program which helps alleviate some of the things described on that blog, tho' i do have my doubts whether danes will ever behave nicely in a queuing situation. and i have little hope for my little troglodyte buddy (who behaved even more abominably than ever last evening). i do think there's hope in other ways.

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do you have a method of physically getting rid of the negatives in your life?

do you burn or rip up or bury or scribble them out or release them on the wind?

on a creative binge

some kind of weird planetary alignment made today, the first official day of autumn (at least here), the most creative and productive day i've had in recent memory. i don't think i've had these many creative synapses firing since we moved away from my beloved blue room. i'm almost loathe to go to sleep, because i don't want it to stop. but i've learned that sleep is also good for creativity, so sleep i shall. and all of that gorgeous fabric and thread and butter-soft red leather will be waiting for me in the morning.

happy autumn, one and all!  i think it's going to be the best season yet!

messenger bag in a morning

 

i work best under pressure. sabin declared last week that she wanted me to make her a new gym bag for school.  she even got out a stack of fabric she wanted me to use, but do you think i started the bag?  this morning, she declared that i was going to be in a lot of trouble if i didn't finish it in time for her to use it tomorrow. and suddenly i was motivated. i got straight to work, making it up as i went along, using bits and pieces of natural linen and bright echino fabrics and here i give you the end result. a sort of messenger-style gym bag. i only used the fabrics she selected for the lining on the inside - i hope she won't mind! if she doesn't like it, i'll definitely use it myself.

what's interesting is that making it feels like it cleared out a creative block i've had, feeling a bit stuck on my cut out & keep quilt project.  while i was sewing this, the back of the cut out & keep quilt popped into my head, fully formed. i've had about six different versions of it laid out, but none of them seemed right, but now, i know exactly what to do.

i'm going to remember this the next time i'm stuck...i'll give myself permission to work on something else. sometimes i deny myself that pleasure because i have a tendency to be a serial project starter and a bit of a reluctant project finisher. but it seems my creative process needs multiple projects and quick wins. like a messenger bag in a morning.

rock on

it was a banner day for mail at our house. this beautiful little stone - entitled one bright morning - arrived from far away alaska. i've been stalking admiring amy komar's artistinthearctic shop on etsy for awhile now and with my birthday approaching, i decided to treat myself. she's got loads of wonderful painted stones in her shop and i can tell you that they are magical in person. check out her blog as well to see what's she working on and for glimpses of the beautiful alaska nature where she lives.

by amy komar - artist in the arctic

i showed sabin amy's shop last evening on etsy and sabin immediately wanted to paint some stones. we both had to try out amy's dotted painting technique and i was totally blown away at sabin's results. i am seriously in awe of her ability to just begin and not overthink everything. she has an amazing feel and is completely in tune with her muses.

this is my favorite of the stones she did last evening...she painted the heart and had intended to paint more, but she looked at it with the one and she said, "i think it's done, mom." i seriously hope she never loses that childlike ability to just be one with her art.

these fishies were a close second. she was actually painting the white one and she said, "mom, i don't know what this is." and i said i thought it was a fish, tho' it could also be a tooth if you tip it up the other way. and since sabin has a couple of loose teeth at the moment, it may have been an artistic manifestation of those pesky molars. but i love it as a fish.

she did another little heart...with dots coming out of it, a bit like the stitching i once did. so sweet.

the embroidered-looking one on the top left is the closest sabin came to imitating amy's work. somehow she intuitively went in her own direction, picking up the influence of the dots of paint, but going off on her own. i found it utterly magical to watch it.

here in my stone basket is the last one sabin did especially for me, right there beside amy's lovely petite little stone and a couple of margie's, the beautiful stone spudballoo had made for blog camp 2.0,  a few of my own and the feather i bought from geninne once upon a time. it's my basket of zen, right here beside my desk.

finishing friday

if you hang around here at all, you know that i've been on a creative roll of late. this week alone, i sewed two dresses for myself, made my first batch of stitched up photos, mended a couple of sabin's shirts, made bread twice, and worked on adding finery to some clarity birds. our dining table is so covered with projects that we can't actually use it.  so i have declared today (and every friday henceforth) to be finishing friday.

i'm doing a handmade market april 9 together with jude and elizabeth, so it's important that i have some finished products to sell at the market. somehow i just don't think people will be keen on buying half-finished works in progress. so today, i will not start any new project, not even this, which is very tempting. especially because it's still really cold outside.

i have no less than 3 quilts to finish and one of them (the sherbet cupcake quilt) you didn't even know about because i hadn't shown it here yet. so, i've been busy. busy starting things and not so busy finishing them.

i leave you with one more shot of the basket of unfinished garlands, tea cozies and clarity birds, just to remind myself that i need to get to work...

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i'm enjoying the photos here. 

and also the photos here and here.

a few of the things i made today

remember that inspiration i told you about earlier? i could see this wire-y tissue paper butterfly thingie in my mind when i woke up, so i had to make it. you can see some of where i got the idea in my inspiration mosaic below. but i wanted it to be more naive and rough somehow than the ones in the mosaic. i think i succeeded. and in this case, it turned out even better than the picture i had in my head.

then i made a new springy garland for above my desk. this house is so depressing and awful, even the simplest little touches can brighten it up significantly. some bits of a handy little moda hunky dory jelly roll made for a very quick garland indeed. in fact, i made two and i want to give one away! so if you'd like to have a little springy garland for your very own, just leave a comment about how you feed your inspiration.  i'll draw a name at the end of the week and send it to one lucky person!

and lastly, a lilly pulitzer fabric garland for sabin's new room (i got the squares here ages ago). it's not hanging up properly yet, as there is still painting going on. but i think by the end of the week, we will be ready to reveal sabin's new and improved room!

i also painted clouds on the wall, made chicken stock and red velvet cupcakes and even managed to cook a vegetarian meal and completely resist putting in any bacon. and with all that coffee i drank, i expect this creative streak will go on well into the night.

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don't forget the garland giveaway! leave a comment about how you feed your inspiration and you might be the lucky winner of a springy garland to brighten up these grey winter days.