It's another TA-DA! Tuesday in Studio Lakeside. Seems sometimes I really hafta dig deep to pull out a TA-DA! of significance. I REALLY did feel like it was a TA-DA! when I found the sketch pad I KNEW I had bought at the beginning of the year and really hadn't seen since. Well, in fact, when I moved it aside yesterday on the shelf over my desk to place the NEW one I'd recently bought after giving up on finding it I actually said outloud to myself - "Welllllllll, LA DI DA!!! You were right here ALLLLL this time!" Now I have two, guess I'm 'invested' in actually practicing some drawing, huh? Some whimsical and wonderful faces for some soft sculpture figures, my self-portrait mermaid I've been fantasizing of - think the world's ready for a plus-size mermaid?
Sunday, after wrestling with my dial up internet access and then waiting not-so-patiently for it to FINALLY allow me live access to blog talk radio, I listened to the better part of the last half of Connie's conversation with Christine and Andrea - the other 2/3 of the leadership for Creative Dig Workshop coming up Sept. 26 in Cleveland, OH. TA-DA! I knew they'd likely talk primarily about the workshop, which I would dearly love to be attending but will instead be in flight the 'day of' enroute BACK to CA from OH. I also knew there would be cheerful chat about just being your creative self every day and I hungered for that affirmation enough to be persistent when Internet Explorer kept telling me I was NOT connected to the internet and therefore could not access the website. AAAAARGH! I was not disappointed, except that it took so long to gain access that I only got to listen to part of the show.
You see, I was never much of a fairy-tale believer as a child and never engaged in 'princess' or 'queen' role play and dress-up. I didn't care much for Disney or cartoons or any of the other fantasy child play either. A good friend once asked me if I was EVER allowed to BE a child because there just didn't seem to be any child in me ---- I'd have to dig MIGHTY deep to find my 'inner child'! So it strikes me as kind of amusing that now as I'm actively involved in 'perfectionist recovery' and developing my creative self, my mental picture of 'the process' is building or restoring my 'creative castle'. I think we all must have a mental image of our own 'creative castle' - maybe not as elaborate or ornate as the one in the world recognizable famous Disney logo:
But it's there - our personal vision of where we fantasize going with our individual creative pursuits, our soul's eyes picture of the 'creative castle' we want to inhabit. Maybe you're envisioning publishing a novel or non-fiction work, garnering a blue ribbon/big money prize at International Quilt Festival, being recognized as up and coming amongst painters of your genre or medium or choice or being in demand to speak at gatherings of peers - or any thing else on a wide spectrum of accolades or accomplishment. Or maybe your dream is to teach others to follow theirs or guide an expedition to somewhere adventurous or I dunno...my thinking here is limited, I know. People I know in everyday life don't talk much about their dreams and the ones that do do it with hesitation and reservation. That's one of the reasons I so LOVE the blog world and the creative community I've found within it! Creative bloggers are mostly wide open - like children frolicking in piles of colorful autumn leaves, gleefully heaving huge armfulls of them up in the air and laughing delightedly as the breeze scatters them farther than the velocity and force with which they tossed would have alone.
Hopefully, every day in some way, you find yourself making progress in building your own creative castle. In recent months I participated in a book blogging group going through Keri Smith's "Wreck This Journal" which was such an excercise in stirring up so much in me that had been sunk within - like all the fruit and nuts that separate and sink to the bottom in an unstirred batter left sitting too long while one gets distracted in the middle of a recipe. One of the prompts in the journal was simply to doodle over the title page and not being a doodler and having seen some AMAZING drawings and such from other bloggers journal pages, I pulled out my colored pencils and began to draw a picture like a child in elementary school might. I was craving some sea air and salt water on my skin and so let myself draw a representation of the shore with a cheery sun shining down on it. I remember thinking if I had the talent, it would be pretty to draw scattered sea shells on the sand but what I did instead was put a sand castle on my shore.
Like the sand sculptors on popular beaches, I'm slowly but surely working with bucket after bucket and detailing like crazy my 'creative castle' of my life. Seems I'm about to get caught by the tide rolling in lately...but I'm not giving up. My mission this week - in time for next Tuesday to share here, I hope - is to finish getting the actual studio across the hall from my bedroon into working shape. Just in time to walk away from it for nearly a month. But I look forward to being able to walk back in and be queen of my 'creative castle' then. In fact, it just occurs to me, my first full day back to it will be my 'half birthday'. Think I'm gonna hafta have a party and a giveaway for that - don't let me forget!
What's your TA-DA! in your creative life this past week?
1 comment:
I think we are both on the same path. I am learning to create with my new found inner child too. I did not get to be a kid with faerie tails and ply either. So I assume now would be the best time for me too. I have been painting drawing and so on. I do something every day now. And love it. I so hope you show some of you new art. I would love to see your self portrait.
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