Inspiration

" When we engage in what we are naturally suited to do, our work takes on the quality of play and it is play that stimulates creativity."

-Linda Naiman

It's been a difficult summer spent mostly focused on my daughter's continuing struggle with chronic daily migraine syndrome, working on filling her up with tools to manage her pain so that she could go into the 8th grade feeling empowered in spite of a headache that won't go away.  Normally we would have escaped LA,  to spend some time in Minnesota with my family, allowing her to run free with her friends and cousins, to be a kid in ways that living in a scary city doesn't permit.  In many ways I believe that having that time would have been more beneficial in relieving the anxiety that seems to be the cause of her pain...but we opted for a strict schedule of acupuncture and doctor visits instead.  People who care about me have been commenting on how exhausted I appear....that I need to take a break, suggesting quietly sitting on a beach somewhere.  I am very tired...but I think my exhaustion comes mainly from my brain straining for all of the creative time that has been given over to the stuff of life over the summer.  Now that school has begun again, I have a bit more time to lose myself in my work, which is the thing that sustains and calms me.  Every minute that I am allowed to be creative is a mini vacation for me.  My work is my play.

Achievement....

" Trust yourself.  Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life.  Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner spark of possibility into flames of achievement"

- Golda Meir

I received a lovely gift in the mail yesterday...The Fall '12 issue of Altered Couture, in which I have the honor of exhibiting four of my pieces over ten pages.  It's exciting to be included within and applauded by a community of other artists who embrace a like passion and goal.  Altered Couture gives us a beautiful forum in which to not only share our work, but also share musings about ourselves and our creative process....and hopefully inspire others to fan their own creative spark.  Most of my days are spent in relative seclusion, quietly reveling in the sound of a needle and thread being pulled through fabric.  I've never been someone who has needed the sound of hands clapping in my honor, or pats on the back to feel fulfilled by my craft.  I realize that in order to financially make what I do pay off, I need to do what doesn't come naturally and that is to promote myself....constantly!  I struggle with this every day.  The past year, the publishers at Stampington have helped me to explore new avenues of self promotion and I am so grateful to them for that.  I've made some new friends along the way; readers who were inspired enough by my work to contact me in person....the exchanges I have with these people are really the payoff in the end.

Pace....

" If a man loves the labour of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him."

-Robert Louis Stevenson


I've been struggling to quiet the noisy marching band of thoughts racing through my head this week.  It's difficult to write when my focus is scattered in so many different areas. I've come to the realization that a lot of the tension I feel is because the manner in which I work is in conflict with the sensibilities  of the world that I work in.  In a world where nothing can be completed quickly enough....instant gratification at the push of a button, fast food, 30 minutes or less....the way that I work is archaic.  I prefer to hand stitch nearly everything.  Listening to a needle and thread being pulled through fabric is like a gentle reassuring whisper in my ear telling that there is still one place left that I can hide from the rest of the world that is trying to pull me apart at the seams.  It can take me weeks, months or years to finish a single piece, which is why I work on several pieces at once.  I become very emotionally attached to nearly every piece that I work on as I pack them up and take them with me to continue working wherever my day takes me...they are like my children; little parts of me that I am coaxing along, preparing to send out into the world when they are ready.  I have the most difficulty when a piece is finished and it is time to release it, not because I've become too attached ( although there are some pieces that work their way into my own closet...I'm a walking billboard after all!), but because I need to put a price on my work.  It's difficult to compete in a world where quantity often wins out over quality, where hand made isn't as valued as inexpensive and " good enough".  Other artists urge me to raise my prices, because they understand the time that I've put into every piece.  But if pieces don't sell, because the world is gauging everything according to Walmart pricing, I'm lost.  Trying to work out a price somewhere in the middle is the challenge.  I rarely am paid for my time with dollars. There are sacrifices that I've had to make because of this.  But what is my time worth?  I am paid by not having to fight traffic on the 5 freeway every day, by having the experience of raising my own children, as well as other peoples'.  Being paid daily with the peace that I receive from the whispers of a needle and thread make me very rich...I wish it could also pay the rent....

The Journey

" There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives."

   -  Josephine Hart

Discovering what you feel passionately about....something that defines who you are and drives you forward every single day....is an adventure that I urge everyone to take in their lives.  For some people, this is an easier task than others.  For me it has taken hitting bottom, repeatedly, before the smoldering embers of my creative spirit took hold of a warm breeze and turned into a roaring flame.  It has taken patience to quiet the voices in my head that were screaming at me about the work that I 'should' be doing,  so that I could really hear the more gentle, nearly silent voice of my soul.  I can honestly say that  fire has saved my life....saved me from some really dark places that I have needed to travel through, and stood as a beacon of hope in a calmer harbor.  Everywhere I look I see little landscapes of what inspires me.  I am always aware of the dark places, but my mind is filled with color....and the beautiful sound that a needle and thread make as they are pulled through layers of cloth calms me so that I hear more clearly where my soul wants to sail....

Friends....

" Good friends are like stars...You don't always see them, but you know they are there."

-Anonymous

The end of the school year is a strange time for me.  I am excited for having survived all of the car pool time and the homework and at the same time I feel an ache in the pit of my stomach for the friends that I  rarely bump into outside of the school setting.  They are writers, animators, poets, fine artists and teachers...ridiculously creative deep thinking people with wonderful stories and interesting, humorous perspectives about life, art and parenting.  I have never thought of myself as a very good friend.  I watch how other people keep friendships; meeting for coffee, having dinner, throwing parties, going shopping....spending real time.  I'm not very adept at spending time that way....I am easily overwhelmed by the  demands of my "real world", and when there is any time that isn't filled with requests, I take a running leap off of the end of the dock and cannon ball into the world of "my head", which at this point is beginning to look like an episode of " Hoarders" for all of the unfinished work that is stored there.  I lose track of the real world when I'm in my head....being forced to resurface from this peaceful coral reef of color, texture and possibility with a chorus of, "I'M BORED!" , quite frankly makes me want to throw a shoe !  I hope that my friends know how much I feel blessed in every moment that we spend together.  How much they mean to me.  How much I miss the texture of our conversations and the impact and influence they have in my life.   I think about you every day, and look forward to and treasure when we happen to run into each other while racing through our days.  I am comforted to know that we look up at the same night sky....

" I work in a meditative manner.  My visual language is pulled from my unconscious and I express in my work what I cannot express with words."          - Pat Gentenaar-Torley

Resuscitation

"As one gets older one sees many paths that could be taken.  Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a freedom or a confusion."  - Jasper Johns

I've been going through my years of archived photos today. It will be 10 years this Fall that Kafuffle Designs was born out of a need to find my creative voice again so that I could survive my failing 16 year marriage.  After my first daughter was born, I had decided not to go back to the 16 hour days of movie advertising.  I continued to do freelance from home, generating all of the artwork for KROQ calendars and events,  hand tinting photography for advertisements and greeting cards, creating logos, and even illustrating a book.  When computers deemed my skills archaic, I stepped away from advertising....a bit sore from being replaced by a machine pretty much overnight, but also a bit relieved because I HATED what I was doing.   I didn't hate all of it...KROQ was great, and they paid quite well, but everything that I created was about reading other people's minds...trying to extract what was in their heads and getting it down on the page.  Ever since I could hold a crayon, my creativity had been my voice, as I was terribly shy, quiet, anxious kid.  I preferred to say things with artwork than with words...and as an adult, that is one thing that hadn't changed.  As my marriage was ending I immersed myself in paint and paper and found objects...I became obsessed with resurrecting broken things and breathing life back into them, and they in return filled my lungs with the fresh air that I needed to find my voice again.  When I look back at my archived photos I am reminded of all of the different stages of growth I have gone through.  It's difficult to describe " what I do", because it kind of looks like a shotgun blast of unfocused creative output.  I find it easier to say what I need to say if I combine a lot of different mediums....I don't like rules very much, which is funny coming from a person who keeps her anxiety under control, not with drugs, but with a ridiculous amount of structure and planning.  Art is my release valve...it is the one place where anything and everything is possible and I let my hair down.