roadrunner

The economic recession going on in the world right now brings change for people, and for me personally, this is a welcome change. My usual work is renovating peoples properties and with that at a slow crawl I have the opportunity to work in my studio nearly full time. For the time being I have very little income and truthfully that frightens me. But, with that comes the time I have needed to set up my studio and work in it. I have longed for uninterupted chunks of time to work to ride the wave of an idea out, pots in fugue. I want to explore the subleties in a particular pot shape by making that shape again and again. One would think that I would jump at this delicious opportunity to make art, to make pots, but I have spent time running scared. I went to my land in Taos New Mexico and that was a tough journey, I drove 35 all the way through Oklahoma in an ice storm, but it needed to be tough because the trip was about running until I'm through running. I looked out my truck window at a rest stop after I had made it through the ice storm and there was a road runner just standing there staring at me. I came back to my studio and started to work, to just make something, anything. Julia Cameron, that wrote 'The artists way' and 'the sound of paper' says we have to be willing to work badly. We have to be in our studios working when inspiration shows up. Talking about this stuff with friends helps and especially if the friends are creators. I wrote this to a friend the other day. 'For me having the courage to set foot in my studio every day and get my hands on some clay or on some digital composition opens the door for the passion to flow. And it doesn't always, but thank God I am not walking dead, that I get to live art. One would think that just showing up willing would be easy but it is not. I comes with a lot of fears around survival, fears around the validity of what I create. Sometimes I look out at a world who is saying 'How come you get to do your hobby while us responsible people go to work every day?' But this is not a hobby, this is who I am, this is the journey that my soul has chosen, and to live in harmony with my hearts agenda I make art..... or maybe its making me. If I am doing something else my heart will beat just enough to keep me alive and that is it. 80 percent of what an artist does is all this mundane, routine stuff that has to be done so the art can be made or so it can leave the studio, and that stuff is not much different than anyone elses jobs. Then there is 10 to 20 percent that gives life meaning for me the artist and shares that with the world through the work.That part I have no control over, the work creates itself. Ideas flow from someplace not limited by thought, I hope my skills are honed enough to recieve the inspiration, that I have nurtured and put in the work so I can make what comes.' I know that having a bunch of time to create is luxurious that most of us artists are squeezing our art making in between making money, taking care of kids or pets or our houses or our health or whatever. I am grateful for this time.