Gratitude

If you're looking for a good, no-pressure warm-up exercise for getting the creative juices flowing, and also for giving yourself a gentle attitude adjustment, get a stack of 5x7" paper and if you're lucky, a roll of "thank you" stickers from some long ago grocery store, plus a bunch of other scraps and pens and crayons maybe, a pair of scissors and a glue stick, and make some one-off thank you cards. Here's a few from my latest batch. Click on the horizontal ones to see them full-size..

One more here...

Number Three

Here We Go Again

Maybe this time it's a collage-every-other-day series...

Sixty

Here it is. The is a long belated post - I've finally scanned the last of my two-month, sixty-day series of daily (okay, not quite daily) collages.

I've also scanned a batch of drawings. Those coming soon...

# 60

More Dailies

Someday I'll label these properly and make the for-sale links, but for now, there are so many things I'd rather do. Suffice it to say: I made some more collages. I wanted to share them with you. If you want one, email me. Happy spring!

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#52

Collage Burst

The urge returned and I've done a few more, six, to be exact, and even went so far as to give them titles, so here goes:

#46 - Pinhead Love





#47 - Beach Party





#48 - Work





#49 - Nightfall on the Northside





#50 - Interior Fireworks





#51 - Sea Change

Daily Collage

Four more:

#45





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#42

More Collage-a-day

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#42

Two More

Again, two posts in one day (because blogger doesn't seem to like it if you try to put more than five images on one post.)

My latest collages:

#35 - High Tides - SOLD





#36

Moving Forward

I went to a workshop this weekend. I knew I'd have little time for collage, maybe no time at all, but just in case, I packed along a glue stick, a small pair of scissors, and a very small grab-bag folder of scrap paper. As I suspected, I didn't have time to make my collage, but this morning I restricted my palette to the contents of that folder.

A little more than half way through this project, I've begun to think: what's next? Will I continue to make collages? Maybe one a week instead of one a day? Will I take on a different one-a-day discipline? I definitely do want to follow this effort with another. I'm not sure exactly what, though I have a few ideas. I'm thinking about it.


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More to come...

Today's Collage

(Two posts today - see below.)

#29

More Daily Collages

This week, I hit that point I've been waiting for, wishing for: The I Don't Care Anymore crossroads. It's an important moment in art making, in any creative effort. It's where you decide to either plug along in boredom, making more "safe" choices, or to acknowledge your boredom and stop making altogether. But there is one other alternative: it's about staying engaged in the work, and at the same time, letting yourself off the hook. It's about daring to make a mess, messing it all up, letting go of expectation that everything you make must be genius.

Thomas Edison is famous for saying that "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

If you decide to stay engaged in the work at the point when you've run out of inspiration, you have to stop expecting everything you make to be great. You have to be willing to sweat, to work, to start taking bigger risks, maybe even ruining the piece entirely to invest in discovery, so that you have something new to bring to the next one. The surprising thing is, the labor feels good! It's a reminder: Ah, so this is play. I forgot! It's exactly where those elusive kernels of inspiration come from.

And so, the cycle continues.

This is exactly where I find myself, four weeks into my Daily Collage practice: Alternating between getting reckless, making a mess, and finding something new. And feeling inspired to be careful and thoughtful again, too.

#24 - Storm Moving In




#25 - After the Storm




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#28

Every Darn Day

Keeping up with these daily collages is challenging. I'm still having fun making them, but squeezing in everything else I want to accomplish in a day is HARD. Not that I don't have this same trouble WITHOUT the collage practice to blame. So okay, I guess I can't blame the collage project at all. Darn.

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#22




#23 - SOLD