[-process, essay-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

As we create, we use up media, materials, tools, ideas, time, and our own creative energy. Working from abundance means having a well of resources—more than we need—to create what we want.

My son used this expression in a conversation about the new songs he had just recorded. I mentioned how much the phrase resonated with me and he said that he had heard it from a professor who used it in terms of writing. In both instances, they were talking about accumulating, creating, way more than is needed for a project and then winnowing it down later to a more refined level.

Not everyone creates this way. I have a friend who writes sparsely and then fleshes out the story after she has the skeleton of it constructed. I’m the opposite. I overwrite and then must be brutal with myself about taking out everything that isn’t necessary.

However, the crucial aspect of abundance isn’t the number of words we write or the collection of materials on our worktables or the amount of paint we have at our disposal. It’s not even about time.

Time is necessary and without it we can’t create. But, there are people with loads of time who don’t use it to record music, make art or write novels. So having the time will only work for us if we have an abundance of what will motivate us to work, to play, to innovate.

Working from abundance is more about a certain attitude. This attitude incorporates elements of openness, generosity, fearlessness, confidence. At times, whimsy and audacity. It involves letting go of negatives, so there can be no sparsity of spirit. It’s about not worrying that we will use up all our good ideas if we throw everything we’ve got at a project. It’s about having faith that creativity is a renewable and sustainable resource.

There’s also energy to consider. Creative energy doesn’t have to be about being upbeat and feeling energetic. Many depressed people, who didn’t have the energy to bathe, have created masterpieces. It’s about using what we have to put into the process of creating.

While it’s true there are those instances when the more we create, the more energized we feel, it does have a limit. We have to always be aware of when we begin to feel like a worn-out battery. At that point, the idea is to get away from what is depleting us and re-charge ourselves. Working from an abundance of creative spirit will always result in a more effective creation.

And perhaps, that’s all we need to remember about abundance. If we can accumulate a deep pool of the attitude of abundance, then we will have what we need to create what we want.

[-photography, process-]

red carnation

Originally uploaded by nuanc.

This photo is one I took over two years ago. It came up this morning while I was playing the game Free Association! on flickr. The game involves posting an image in response to the last one posted by someone else. I did a flickr search through my photos for “window” and “silhouette” and this popped up. I hadn’t seen it in a long time and I found that I enjoyed it—really for the first time.

It has unexpected qualities. The distorted shape of the window. The gradation of blue from the top of the window to the whiter light at the bottom. The reflection of green on the window sill and the way the light between the tree branches seems to slide inside into to the corner of the window. The pop of red! And there’s something going on between outside and inside. That’s open to interpretation, of course, but either the flower faces the window as if yearning to be outside or perhaps the bare birch tree is admiring/envious of that splash of living colour. I’m not sure, but there’s certainly a hint of communication between the two.

All of this, of course, was unintended.

I took the photograph with my LOMO LC-A. It’s a refurbished version of a cheap camera made in Russia decades ago and it gives erratic and often impressionistic results—which is why LOMO’s have become popular and lucrative long after the cameras stopped being manufactured.

This photo was of a truly unremarkable scene. My step-son had been visiting and left an empty can of 7-UP on his window sill. Also in his room (this was after he’d gone home) I found a red carnation that he’d picked up in some restaurant we’d been to. Rather than toss both of them immediately into the waste basket, I put the carnation in the 7-UP can and took some LOMO’s.

This morning when I really saw it for the first time, it made me think about the act of creating as one of constantly expecting the unexpected. This image isn’t just about the unpredictability of the LOMO, though that’s a big part of it. It is also about taking the time to photograph an unremarkable scene and to chance shooting a dull, unsuccessful photograph in order to come up with something that has something different to offer. It took combining the colours of what was there: the metallic green 7-UP can and the red carnation against the white and blue background and taking it from a low angle in order to catch the super blue of the highest sky. It took depending on the unpredictability of the little Russian camera.

Each act of creation is an act of faith. We don’t know if it’s going to work out or not. That’s never the point. Doing it is the point. Doing it with an open heart and sense of expectancy that will allow us to recognize—once it’s done—when we have indeed caught the unexpected.

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Check out This Month’s Goody, a featured article from our archives!

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Thanks go out to all our great contributors who’ve enriched and given depth and breadth to this zine. Bravo!

Scroll down to find this month’s sampling of Oldies but Goodies.

You can find guidelines on submissions on the About page in the navigation bar under the header.

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[-alterations, art-]

Jack

Originally uploaded by wireguy.

I love this construction from wireguy. Dare we call it PopArt?

He says of his “Jack” creation:

With all the waste in the office, this became the (obvious?) first prototype. It’s amazing what you can do with plastic junk. Drink up and enjoy.

Indeed!
I hope some of our readers will take us up on the Alterations Challenge. And once you have, show your work! to us, to everyone.

I’ve become slightly obsessed — okay, I’ll admit it - there’s no such thing as ’slightly obsessed’ — with thinking of household items that I can transform into art and vice versa. So far, I’ve made artistic items from dried up gelpens and useful items of old photos but that’s only the beginning. I’m thinking lamps (though I haven’t quite settled on what to use), clocks (a glimmering of an idea that came from a clock I bought that looks as if it’s made from a cookie tin), fans (women of a certain age will understand my obsession with this) made from my paintings that are sitting in drawers, photograph boxes made from photos, windchimes, suncatchers….. can you catch the fever?

What I’m enjoying is the twist of mind that this challenge has given me. It brings on a new way of thinking about e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. I don’t regard a heretofore tossable bottle cap or cork or dried up gelpen as trash… I think of it as a possibility. What can I use if for?

On the other hand, I look at treasures of mine, things I never wanted to part with but had no immediate use for such as little bits of embroidery, or beads, or silk thread, or paintings I did years ago, or photos I took of museums or scenery from somewhere I can’t remember, or ones that are out of focus, or broken china or mirrors. What am I saving them for?

I guess I saved them for now. I’m not only happy to have some raw materials around to use for this challenge, I’m also thrilled to be using stuff up - whether it’s a stash of beads, or pens that don’t work or - like wireguy - plastic bottles.

Let’s turn the trash into treasures and the treasures into more treasured masterpieces that work for us instead of just taking up space in our drawers and on our shelves! Join me in my obsession. I guarantee that you’ll enjoy the creative buzz!

thanks, wireguy, for your Jack and your inspiration.

Originally posted in the original Practically Creative blog, March 2006

[-art, alterations-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

Garden Fresh

Originally uploaded by clementine mom.

Our Alterations Challenge has to do with changing our thinking about art and design, to use objects in new and creative ways.

This morning’s post is from Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette. It’s called Garden Fresh and is made from garden hose and copper wire. It took Second Prize in the Greenbelt , Maryland, USA, Labor Day Art Show 2004. You can see another example of Elizabeth’s clever use of materials in her work “Hornet’s Nest” on the New Again: Alterations Challenge article.

Be sure to visit Elizabeth’s flickr site and see her other art work. Just click the image.

Thanks, Elizabeth.

Originally posted in the February, 2006 Practically Creative blog; edited slightly for re-publication.

[-poetry, art-]

poem by Sherry D. Ramsey
images by Travis Sutton and Flikr

They’ve made me comfortable, or tried

arthritis-pocked bones protest every surface now

muscles fatigued beyond resting

Death beckons a bony invitation–

I decline.

I choose the upload.

A week now, neurojacked into the console

threadlike filaments tracing

the secret convolutions of my brain

compiling the message that is me

Eighty-nine year-old ET

phoning myself home.

Today.

I write this poem because

I have ciphered my life in poetry

the only immortality

to which I dared aspire

So many words, so many years

and now reduced to words–

is it such a poor reduction in the end?

Is this the last poem I will write?

Will my uploaded self

still think in the cadences

of line and stanza

emotion and image?

Or will I compile/compute/calculate/respond

in precisely packeted bits of data;

filtered through thought loop and memory engram code

of this particular elderly female poet

but emerging as something other.

This poem will be

uploaded like all the rest

will I read it later and wonder who I was

to write such a thing?

Who will I be?

Decoded/recoded/encoded/uploaded into my new APC

Ambulatory Personality Console

intuitive interface, self-directed motion

best they can do right now,

but in ten years, they say, we’ll have RPR’s

Robotic Personality Repositories

arms, legs, face

Save a picture

it can even look like me.

The preparations pause

one last chance to reconsider:

death or discontinuity?

My daughter is here

truest poetry I ever wrote

She holds my hand, smiles through tears

Will she recognize me

talk to me still in keyboard stutter

fingers skittering over the keys of my APC

if she finds it too unnerving to speak to a machine

while I blink-flash my responses

upon the screen of my face

answer in synthesized mother tones

Will she still read love in my pixellated, digitized eyes?

I nod.

The neurojack tugs at my scalp.

Somewhere, someone taps a key.

Eighty-nine years of

thought and word and memory and me

stream out of my brain

like atmosphere pushed rudely aside by vacuum

like blood welling up in a vial

I still feel my daughter’s hand…

[Darkness. With a silicon flavor.]

Sensory inputs blink into being

I see the room [too sharp, adjust filter]

And there is my [beautiful] daughter

She hesitates, torn between the husk on the bed

and the ergonomic contours of my new APC

“Mom?” she asks.

“I’m fine.”

[synthesized mother voice operating

within normal parameters]

[soothing]

I offer the pre-programmed equivalent of a smile.

More tears. But I think she understands.

Her mother is still here.

I take stock.

[no pain]

[no fatigue]

No blood, no heart, no hand, no breast, no brain

but still the words, thank God;

I am reduced to words

but the words are enough.

Travis Sutton’s work can be seen at flickr.com/photos/travissutton.

Flikr’s work is here.

See Sherry Ramsey’s other work in The PCQ:

I, Galaxy
Accidents Happen
Seven Creative Ways to Enjoy your Garden

Originally re-published (poem) and published (artwork) by permission of the poet and artists in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations

[-just for fun alterations-]

You may think you know what altered books are all about, especially if you’ve taken a close look at Karen Hatzigeorgiou’s tutorial. However, here are some other possibilities you may not have thought of.

idea for a birdhouse made of books from landscape designer, Maureen Shaughnessy

:

Sherry Ramsey made this lamp base out of books from a library sale:

If you like these, you’ll love Jim Rosenau’s creations. He makes whimsical and literal BOOK-shelves. These are book shelves (as well as other furniture) made of books: This into That gallery

these photos are © by the artists/photographers - all rights reserved

Originally published in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations
edited for re-publication

[-tutorial, process, art-]

words and creations by Karen Hatzigeorgiou

One of my favorite altered book techniques is to use the text from a hard cover book as the base for developing poetry and related imagery.

When I choose a book to alter, I am most often guided by the title of the book. I pull the book off the shelf and look more closely at a few things. I look to see if the binding is stitched securely and if the pages are heavy enough to stand up to some gluing, painting, stitching or whatever else I might try to do to them.

When I’m ready to start, I scan the first few pages of the book, looking for words and phrases that speak to me of a poem waiting to be found. I discovered these words of gold on page 9: “. . . swam away on another wave of dream. . .” This phrase appeared on the ninth line of text, so I looked above it for a pronoun to start the poem. There was the word “she” on the very first line. Perfect.

From there, I look at each line of text, trying to find ways to connect words and phrases to create my found poem. I search for imagery and word combinations that I like. I write the poem down on paper as I go along, referencing the paragraph and line numbers so that I can find the phrases again later.

Creating found poetry this way is an exciting process for me. Of course, I am relying on the original author’s ability to use descriptive language in his or her writing. A lot of the prose written in the earlier part of the 20th century was very flowery and overdone, compared to much of what is written today. These works are wonderful for found poetry because I can pare down the dense text and create something new, spare, and sometimes beautiful. But just as playing with the text on the page can yield exciting results, it can be the source of frustration as well. Many times I’ve gotten into the rhythm of a poem that seemed to be turning out nicely, only to come to a dead end with no text left on the page to create a satisfying conclusion. Sometimes I can wriggle my way out of it; other times I have to turn the page to make a new start. That’s the beauty and the challenge of creating poetry in an altered book.

When I’m happy with the poem, my next step is to mask the text out so that I can create artwork around the poem without obliterating it; this is one of my favorite altered book techniques. I use liquid Masquepen for this. It’s a little bottle of blue liquid that feels like rubber cement when it dries. It’s rather expensive, but a little bit goes a long way….Once the masque has dried, I create the art for the page.

Here, Karen shares with us the most personal kind of altered book. A tribute to and remembrance of her mother, in a book called, The Gift.

My mother has Alzheimers, and I am watching the woman I knew vanish before my eyes. This altered book is about what that feels like to me. I use a bird’s nest and eggs that she threw away along with images of her as a child and young woman to create one of my Found Object Assemblages :: The Gift.

This found object assemblage was created using a very fat children’s board book that I got at Half Price books for a few bucks. The fact that it was so thick and that it had a window in the lower half of the cover made it perfect for this altered book project.

I went through my usual preparations for altering a board book. I sanded the pages that I knew I would be working on and put down two coats of gesso to cover up the original text and illustrations. I used my monster Exacto to cut down about an inch into the book to make a niche for the nest and eggs. Then I glued that block of pages together. I don’t glue the top page until the very end. That makes it easier for me to work on and to wrap papers around to the back side of it.

The nest and eggs were glued into place after I had completed the cover and finished every other part of the book. The nest and eggs are extremely fragile. I sprayed the nest with matte fixative, hoping to keep it from unraveling, but little flecks of it continue to fall off. I had seven eggs when I started, but broke three while making the book. I suppose that was fate, since four eggs in the nest makes perfect sense–one for each of my mother’s daughters–me and my three sisters.

Check out the Practically Mperfect article that Karen did for The PCQ -
You, Me and Leonardo da Vinci
Other related PCQ articles:
Found Poetry
Other kinds of altered books
Nancy’s first [and perhaps, last ] attempt at making an altered book
Altered photographs:
- Maureen Shaughnessy - thread of winter-quiet
- Baywhale - how to make a photosandwich
- Angela Petsis - Polaroid transfers

about the artist/writer:
Karen Hatzigeorgiou is a wife, mother, seventh grade English teacher, an artist and a writer. You can email her at karen@karenswhimsy.com. Karen has carefully chronicled her altered book process on her webpages, Altered Books Gallery. Her website is karenswhimsy.com.

Do yourself a favor, go there and spend some time with Karen and her creations. Thank you, Karen, for sharing your work with us here.

Originally published by permission of the artist/author in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations

[-photography, art-]

These images were among those featured in The PCQ’s first issue, April 2005. Our theme was Inspiration.
Read the rest of this entry »

[-cartoon-]

The Adventures of Ohmiomyo and Karma

Read the rest of this entry »