I started a new job recently. It's a second one. They are both part time and both I do remotely. So I am spending a lot of time in front of three computer screens. It's exciting, really fun, and intense. I am enjoying it quite a bit, but it is also taking me away from my art making.
It's not simply as a matter of time taken from art. That's just a matter of re-jigging the necessity of an income with this new daytime schedule I have. No, it's more than that. I've gotten rather efficient at using my computers to make stuff. This blog, some silly images for this year's NaNoWriMo Typewriter Brigade, the illustrated letters I send off to pen friends. I'm no Photoshop whiz but it's easy for me to put stuff together. Too easy in a way. And I realized this morning that I've been letting that ease lull me into a kind of procrastinated funk. I have stopped making with my hands.
I'm not upset at this or angry with myself. Those are useless emotions for this kind of thing. But I am a little surprised. I thought I had some momentum going. I happened on the site above. It's a bit slick for my tastes, but the content is useful for me right now. I read two of their articles; one denoting what makes an amateur artist vs a professional artist; another on how artists can so effectively procrastinate.
The best advice I got from them is this: I need to make some bad stuff and just get over it. Bad stuff. Poorly imagined. Clumsily executed. I am afraid to make bad stuff and that arrogance has got me stopped in my tracks.
The second best advice I took away from it was that I need to calm down a bit. As any of you who use computers a lot know, this kind of work has a way of physically ramping one up. I know this when I see the Firefox task bar superimposed over my dream imagery. I know this when, like last night, my sleep feels too strangely electric and odd.
So, here I go to settle myself down a bit. One good quieting place was this site: calm.com. This was really neat; called to mind some early childhood mornings in Wisconsin's Nicolet National Forest or on my grandparents' farm.
This image above is one of the places you can rest yourself at there.
And I watched this video - at full screen resolution.
Manos, Pottery Studio from Homegrown Swedes on Vimeo.
Next, clearing my art desk and making something
and trying not to worry when it comes out not how I want it to.
