How a Prune, a love story and rose petals started a new project

Its amasing how new projects start, how ideas form. Quite exciting that the universe places bits and bobs together to make images start playing in your brain. And the fact that a love story started it all, well, it makes it sweeter and more possible.
When you have on your table fashioned greenware slabs and exquisite shelllike blank substrates of bisque clay, just staring you in the face, not just any project will do. 
I want to tell you a story about how a prune, a reunited love duo, rose petals pressed in book titles created a new project. My ceramic pieces.

Introspective Blues of a Creative

Its been one of those weeks. Knowing you've reached that stage (finally) when you just want to WORK but other normal stuff gets in the way. You know; the doctor who insists your foot really is going to plop off one day if you don't sort out that infected toe or the refund and change of address form you promised to take to Centrelink for your elderly dad sort of scenarios. Where working out priorities, keeping schedules and making people happy really don't go together. Or at least the internal struggle between one half of you and the other splits into four looks like becoming an uneasy reality.  I know; life, right?

All of us deal with that on and off, in varying degrees but when you are a creative person who battles with the 'wants to' and 'its the right thing to do' all the time, you end up becoming grumpy and irritable because you know which voice wins all the time. The internal struggle is real. You see looming deadlines, people and the normal daily grind as an imposition. But you don't want to offend. You know you really must do the right thing first.  The nice creative decides its best to not rock the boat and wait till time and creativity meet in the middle. You practice tolerant discomfort as you reach an impasse with your inner self that ain't pretty.  

Addies' Cardigan

 A couple of blog entries ago I mentioned the fact that I have in my studio items surrounding me that make me feel 'safe'. Safe in the fact that, like me,  they have a history. Oh, they might be missing a bit here and there, look a bit jaded and fragile when the morning sun from my studio window hits them in the face, but don't we all? 

I have teddy bears, a buddha and music boxes. I collect Silver Crane tins.  Old ones of vintage shop fronts which, together with other loved containers, hold pencils, brushes and bits of scribbled scrap. My computer is nestled within a book nook, holding an eclectic range of many books with titles such as ' The Tao of Pooh/The Te of Piglet', The Alchemy of the Heavens to the left and 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', Sacred Contracts to the right. My mothers' bear, a gold-rimmed bowl and old perched on shelve photos joining the heart dots on bad days. Cluttered is not the word really, but take one piece out and it feels like someone has plucked molecules out of my studio structure. 

It's not all about objects or memorabilia, but I'm surrounded by visual narratives created by myself as the years have passed. Interspersed within its walls are paintings I've done over the years, even ones from my childhood, painted well before self-absorption and doubt set in. Pieces I won't part with, not because of their brilliance perhaps, but my connection to them. But there is a little one, leaning on a book that means the most. 

The UFOs (or) Jess's Musical Shoes

There's a little secret once a week Thursday club in the hills of Armadale that only a select few know about. A chosen, delightful and gorgeous few. A word of mouth thing that is kind of like a gentlemen's club but without the gents. I'm lucky enough to be one of the few and included in the mix. 

We call it the 'UFO' club.

No, not women who fantasise about being taken by little green men who fly silver saucers. And we don't dress up funny in furry costumes and chant incessant guttural 'ooms'. Well, some of our clothes may be splattered in paint or dye and we do dress a little colourful at times. Our language and manner of address is a little colourful at times as well, but I think our collective life histories still make us earn the prefix of 'ladies'. 

Just contemplation - 'Sat sitting'

                                                                                                                                  Sometimes just sat sitting, contemplating the holes in your socks becomes
the starting point...

A busy time lately; enforced duties that take hold moulding your week into a mangled mass of medical meetings gives you little time to create. The biggest event was moving an adult child into their own home and dealing with the evacuated space and the sweet memories of a little toddler trying on my shoes or teething on a gingernut biscuit.  I know all parents deal with the empty nest situation differently; 'Mister A' and I certainly did, as he turned the house into its next stage. I certainly found it emotionally hard as she was my constant and made sure I laughed every day. Juxtaposed against that scenario was an elderly parent falling suddenly and needing comfort and support. Odd times. Unsettled times. And once again, the rambling sketch seemed my creative lot this week.

Mainly because my feelings were running high, I found contemplating everyday objects, doing menial tasks and concentrating on my senses quite comforting. Moving bits and bobs aimlessly from room to room, folding old clothes, filling bags and bags of old clothes, misshapen small socks, hair ties and unwanted shoes. Django Unhinged the emotional doggy became needier, Maggie the eighteen-year-old moggie more confused and followed me from room to room. There were moments when I just sat.  Stared. Stared at bits of textured bedding, a tattered towel a mound of washing. Mister A did his thing around me and seemed happy.  I wasn't actually sure what I was supposed to do, but aimlessly being domestically appropriate seemed warranted.   Funnily, observing the small details on everyday objects made me notice other things. 

Moving to the beyond by doing something different...

Challenge Method: Moving to the beyond by doing something different (add or subtract) or Exit formula procrastination. 

Hi all. Well, that was a long wait was it not? I can assure you I was well aware of the days that have flown by since my last post.  Well, I'm back.  Great to be here.  

Funny how a long bout of procrastination fills your brain with so many excuses that you feel there is no ladder tall enough to climb you out of the proverbial poo.  They enter your brain like a fog. 

Creative loss or What Started the Whole Ball Rolling

Blog entry one (not all this long, promise. You might identify with this one)

Social isolation should be easy for artists, they said. The COVID 19 enforced period should be a 'piece of cake' to all creatives as they like to be alone. We are, predominantly, solitary beings, and would be the lucky ones. It was a common assumption that the pandemic would create hundreds of paintings, melodies to melt hearts and novels and sonnets worthy and better than Shakespeare. We would, in our colourful way, make the world sing, and see joy once again.

A lot of my fellow artisans, at the beginning of the whole 'virus thing', scoffed at it. The extroverts disquiet and need for company with an 'oh, that's a norm for me. Can't wait'. We all loaded our carts, not with toilet paper and disinfectant, but brushes, paint, and paper. Writers sharpened their pencils; musos tuned their strings, sculptors wedged their clay. You could hear the expectative rumbling all over the creative world. I, for one, cleaned my studio, my brushes, prepared canvas, spoke of finally breaking a long term artist block. We were all to put it into Australian vernacular, 'tickety boo'.