Tag: art

Reboot.

 

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(my kid is a master at the pause…and pause…and…you get the toddler point:)

excerpt from this blogger’s forthcoming book via Prodigy Gold Books: “Reframe Your Artistry,” on the topic of artistic renewal: 

Unclog this moment from aiming for something. Opens your beginner eyes. Embrace what is. From that angle, sparkles and shine emerge. If you don’t want to get that romantic, pause and see life through a child’s point of view which provides a similar state of wonder.

Otje van der Lelij summarizes the tale of a student seeking feedback from a Zen master in her piece titled, “Why Life Looks Better with Beginner’s Eyes,” included in A Book That Takes Its Time. The student arrives to the master with a head full of scholarly information and opinions for which he wishes to gather more knowledge. After a period of mindful listening, the master responds by sending the student away, stating “…Your head is so crowded with thoughts and questions that there is no room left for my answers. Please go away, empty your mind, and only then come back here. First create some space in your head” (p.100).

Go, my curious pupil. Like that Zen student, go to that open space. Sort out junk, dump teachers you no longer have use for, and erase rules that no longer apply. In your open space, be the artist that you are. Frame your creations off-center or however else you light up.

 

Breaking News: Open Spaces Soon Available.

Take a Pause and Apply Within!

 

Dedicating time and energy to pausing, we expand productive energy. I’m not saying think like this all the time or go on a permanent pause (though I hear silent or knitting or couples retreats are quite delicious). I’m encouraging carefully curated moments to pause from thoughts, feeling states, circumstances, and routines, in order show up, renewed for an artistic moment.

Grow permission and ability to pause. Trust in your artistry and the universe, let go of the rest of life for a set amount of time. It is okay, even, to let go of any thoughts and ideas that emerge. If a creative idea is worth dedicated, active time, the idea will resurface.

by honigjq

Please Do Not Disturb the Sand

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Look what happens when museum culture intersects with an installation?

Urban legend tells that the creators of the FedEx logo had no idea they’d created an arrow in the middle. Happenstance, so the legend goes, the logo took on a life of its own, earning design awards for the subliminal message.

I like to think that this installation at the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College has that same kind of potential. The main exhibit hall is dedicated to Sci-Fi through October. And be it that this museum is free of charge and kid friendly, you have no excuse not to check things out if you live in the greater Philly area.

While I want to believe this artist – Andrew Yang – is my next besty in the efforts of artists to make bold statements to bridge gap between climate issue and global tipping points, I think this is merely another FedEx happy accident**.

Yang – a Georgia native and now residing in Chicago, Illinois – composed this piece allegedly as a tribute to Carl Sagan and his celestial regard.

“…each star is represented by one grain of sand.”

A Beach (For Carl Sagan), 2016

But what drew me to the piece, pardon my ignorance Mr. Yang and Mr. Sagan, was a funny-ish fusion in my mind between the museum prompt, “Please Do Not Disturb the Sand” and a running melody in my head – of late – that art sometimes imitates life. Art, sometimes, even in a happy accident moment like this, says exactly what I’ve been trying to formulate and spread as a message re: climate and Earth’s native inhabitants (like stone to dust or sand, land just the way it was born, or water in its infinite states and placement).

So, when I went to the free museum on a typical Sunday for family time, I left with much more. I had that transcendent experience that art and nature provide, expanding my own growing points of view and marrying that with imagination.

Congrats to the Berman Museum of Art and Andrew Yang for sharing this vital masterpiece with me, my family, and my virtual world.

Go forward, friendly readers, and create your own clever thing of natural genius!

 

** FYI, despite what people have told me over the years, I just looked it up – and seems like the subliminal arrow in the FedEx logo – created in 1994 – by Linden Leader and Landor – was quite deliberate in its genius. But, my story is better told with the suspension of reality. No?

by honigjq

New Routine: Face Art Anxiety with a Beginner’s Curiosity

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depending on your outlook, art?

The primary key to unlocking your artistry requires pulling back the cozy comforter and making art. Show-up, pay attention, and make art. Make art, any art, make art. It’s not about getting rid of anxiety or curing it. For those who struggle with either more general anxiety or Art Anxiety, specifically, the primary goal for both involves learning to live with and give less credit to our anxiety, rather than anxiety dictating our lives. We also do not want to repress or reject anxiety because it will show up in other ways such as excuses or inauthentic gestures. And remember, whenever possible, turn off the mindless social media and memory chatter. It fuels unproductive anxiety.

Move toward your artistic side, right now:

  • Re-examine an abandoned project or a portfolio with beginner eyes. Add material to the old material you have neglected or forgotten about.
  • Set a timer for five minutes. Play around with scraps, clay, newspaper, or non-recyclable-whatever-you-haves (better as art than landfill), and see where your imagination takes you. Place less emphasis on defining your project, and instead – focus on showing up to art making; be playful, curious, and directionless.
by honigjq

Play Around with Dirt

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Dirt 2002

This is a favorite go to, for me: play around with dirt. Besides the metaphor as wildly inspiring, dirt offers our inner-artist much guidance.

Step outside, place your hands in the first patch of dirt or mud that you locate. Smother as much of your skin into the mud. Paint a portion of your body. Consider jumping up and down in muddy puddles, as my daughter and Peppa Pig have invited me to do. The celebratory energy has a twofold effect: 1, you are stirring circulation needed for creative focus; and 2, it brings an inherent appreciation to something too often thought of as a problem spot in the world. “Watch out for the muddy puddle. You don’t want to get messy,” sounds different to me than, “Look for muddy puddles to jump in. Let’s have some fun!”

One of my favorite creations arrived one sullen afternoon. I was depressed (triggered by a grieving coming-of-age-self-absorbed heart), and moodiness oozed over my plate of life. I walked into my parents’ backyard and smeared dirt over an old canvas. Then, I dusted the dirt with a coat of paint. It remains a piece of abstract wall art of which I am most proud. Go on. If you read this far, make your own masterpiece with dirt.

Share with us – submissions accepted at reframeyourartistry@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

by honigjq

Avoiding Your Artistry?

 

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Vent in need of cleaning? v. Black hole of rediscovery?

If You Currently Avoid Art Making:

Allow nature, just as it is, to inspire. A blade of grass has masterpiece potential. Refrain, respond, or repurpose nature for simple avenues back to creativity.  Allow for imperfection throughout your artistic and non-artistic moments. Cheer yourself onward through coffee spills,  painting smudges, or social snafus.

 

 

Breaking News:

We are humans, and by nature of being a human, we are imperfect. Mistakes do not make us less valuable. Rather, they affirm exactly who we are, with all our natural human potential. Feel inspired by mistakes, as often as possible. Mistakes are teachable moments or discoveries in the making.

 

 

Allow impermanence to remind you that every moment ends and leads to a new moment. As mindful artists, we do not have to feel trapped by any one project or style. Lessen the pressure on any one moment and, subsequently, quiet the avoidance meter.

Allow incompleteness to guide you back to previously abandoned projects. Or take a break from a project deciding at some future moment if it is beautiful just as it is or needs some TLC.

by honigjq

Change Your Frame of Reference, Change Your World.

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Bananas, by Brenda Honig

Your mind might go in any which direction with art. Some see what is before them with an explicit lens. Bananas are bananas. However, with the gift of art: you may see way past the the surface (and come back again, to it, if you want).

This is a painting conveying bananas and to people open to the representational frames of reference it also conveys intimacy and sensuality. Representational frames of reference create a narrative. The narrative is a tango between the image, the imagination of the audience, and the boundless freedom of interpretation.

Be an explorer, let me know what you see. There is no right or wrong, again – to me – the beauty and healing power of the arts.

Today, I challenge you to create something that has surface meaning and infinite meaning and no meaning, at all.

by honigjq

Begin again.

 

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How do we begin again?

It’s a time of year, and arbitrary energy, and an opportunity (sometimes in disguise). For some, it is an understandably brutal challenge. We crave the familiar before we crave new and challenging breakthroughs.

I have been absent from, for instance, writing for this blog for a month. I took a pause to work on a children’s story. I find that returning, I am aware of resistance. The pause did me good, of course, but in this moment – all it seems to have done if remove me from momentum.

Ah, then I think of physics. That bottled up pause turns into a pop. Discomforts are merely a cue that what you do need is reawakening. The New Year is exactly the time to take stock of what has been neglected and to begin again, fresh, in this moment.

Don’t you dare skip ahead, too far along, toward a destination. It’s easy to compare when thinking how ridiculous it might be to plan the next holiday season other than imagining the possibilities. Like next holiday season, imagine, but do not predict. Instead, redirect energy into the small ways you can experience magic and purposefulness, right now.

Begin again. Every subtle movement counts. You have to begin somewhere.

And back to physics, yeah, there’s that classic principle: “A body at rest will stay at rest…”

So, ever so gently, wake her back up.

by honigjq

Make Art, Make the World a Better Place!

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Artistic Frames of Reference

Explicit ideas: a literal thing, concept, person, place, or time

Representations: seeing more than literal meaning

Points of view: characteristics of the creator or audience (I.e., age, culture, gender, period in history, and education)

 

Imagine if variable frames of reference could be applied to religiosity. Maybe humans could better co-exist? You could have your opinions and I could have mine. You could have an explicit frame of reference and mine could be representational. You could see Christmas as the birth of Christ and I could see it as a day off from work to exchange presents and share food with loved ones. And we can hug out our right to our point of view. Without forcing singular realities, flexible frames of reference make us a less judgmental world from the inside out.

by honigjq

Refrain, Respond, Repurpose. Art as friend to the Universe.

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cigarette in sidewalk snow, boston, ma 2009

 

Mindful art making expands our eco-awareness. The conscious choices for our art making, now, mirror the same choices I try to practice regarding the natural and material world that we all share.

Take a walk outside. Locate a displaced object or slice of nature.

Before doing anything else, PAUSE! Be with whatever you have selected to get to know  more fully. Allow the natural inclination of things – impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete – to be noticed and embraced.

Practice quieting the volume on unrelated thoughts, other places you need to be or what should happen next, and allow yourself to be with this memory, picture, or object for a minute. Go ahead, with steady breathing and a lengthened spine to welcome fresh energy, elevate your awareness. In honor of all ways of life, I invite you to join me – as I try to do myself, about once a week – to reflect on the natural state of things.

Elevate awareness of what you have chosen to notice through your senses and lessen distractibility. After pausing choose from the following: refrain, honoring things just as they are; respond via an original point of view through conversation, journaling, poetry, essay, memoir, or storytelling; or repurpose the thing into a hybrid thing.

by honigjq

Find Your Artopia

 

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I prefer the imaginary places. Maybe that is apparent to you after reading my philosophical blah blah blahs.

My mind longs to go to places to which neither plane nor train can transport.

I imagine kindness as a core currency and what makes us different makes us beautiful. Thoughts of global compassion fire me up. Imperfection is sexy. And I hope these angles come through as distinct elements of my art making. For those elements are true to me and therefore belong to my true art making. Every artist will be different, as will every artistic moment or decade in a true artist’s life.

But what makes mindful art original is the awareness of the creator to be able to identify their personal, community, worldly, and imagined sources. With such awareness, narrow aesthetic values inherently erode, replaced by broader options, because no two people, no two places, no two moments in time could ever be the same.

If you are aware of what it is you like or what is unique to you, act on that impulse regularly. In time, those with appreciation for similar impulses will gravitate toward your work. Your audience may grow. But start with you, you are the base and the original audience to please.

by honigjq