It is important to know that you don’t have to be painting the frescoes on a cathedral ceiling or sculpting massive public installations to recognize yourself as an artist. Art can and does happen everywhere and everyday in countless small ways.
These past few months of school and grant work have swallowed most of my personal creative time. I usually get two long days a week of stitching, piecing, drawing, and making, but as I look back across the recent months, I only worked in the studio for little 2-3 hour chunks. I was not operating in a creative vacuum. I was making plenty of music, podcasts, and artwork with my students, but that work is not my own.
With school out and the aftershocks receding, I am feeling that familiar gathering of energy. Like rising water, an expanding balloon, a ringing in my ears, I feel it and ‘wonder of wonders’ I have time to respond.
I started small yesterday, by painting a blue wall in my bathroom, then framing and rehanging old work. The taproot of my creative self is about making something I want to look at. There is great calming, healing medicine in aesthetically beautiful spaces. After painting and hanging I sat on the edge of my bathtub and drank in the vivid color and curious forms of this old work in a new light. My effort was no magnum opus, but it was aimed at beauty. I felt the same bath-like flood of brain juice I get after hours of studio work. I am still peeking into my bathroom as I pass down the hall, getting a rush of satisfaction at the new beautiful space I created. We can be artists everday and everywhere!
