Oh, The Possibilities

Today, I want to talk about possibilities. Mostly, I’m writing this because I need to hear it, but also, I think there might be someone else out there who needs to hear it.

I want to hear these words hanging in the air, I want them dangling from every tree. I want everyone to fling the doors open wide, and let the possibilities in, I want to fill this place with:

This is just a friendly way of saying that too often, we focus on what is not possible, but truly, anything is possible. I am telling you, it’s true.

I will get specific and tell you that I need to hear this because sometimes I focus on the ticking of the clock in my art career instead of the possibility. It hasn’t been long since I went full-time with my art, but I went into it with a time limit: if I couldn’t start making a full income by the beginning of 2010 (allowing myself just a few short months to amp it up), I would have to re-evaluate and find some other way to make money, and return to pursuing art part-time (until some future unspecified date, when I did find a way to support myself at it).

I put this in here not as my sob story, but because I want to be honest with you—honest with anyone out there who is in a similar situation. You are not alone. Truth be told: I love making art (I love it, I love it), but I am not yet making said full-time income.

So now, more than ever, with the holiday season dangling very near in front of me, the season during which many artists make a large chunk of their income, I am singing out to you and to me this message: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Don’t forget it. You wouldn’t want to.

[The above "Hope" drawing is one of my new, as of yet un-released drawings that I will be bringing to a local craft show this weekend. If it doesn't sell, it will be showing up here on the blog next week.]

Art as Play

What do you do in your free time when you’re an artist? Well, more art of course!

When I was still working at my day job, I often wondered, what will I do with my free time once I’m doing art during my work time? Obviously liking to make things is really a life-encompassing personality trait, not just a work interest, but I did wonder how it would all shake down. Could I get sick of art-making? Could I need to take a break?

So far, the answers are: no, I do not get sick of art-making, but yes, I do need to take a break from my art business. But that doesn’t mean I won’t want to make other things.

At the end of last week, I found myself itching to get my hands dirty. My pen and ink drawing is the opposite of messy, so sometimes I find myself wanting to mush wet media around. I decided that I wanted to make something with surface texture, something more three-dimensional. The first medium that came to my mind was grout—you know, that sort of smearable, cement-like medium used in between tiles, and often for mosaics.

So this past Saturday I took a trip to one of my favorite art supply stores, otherwise known as the hardware store, and found myself a bag of grout. I already had some old paintings that I was ready to paint over (I had finally faced the reality that I would never finish them), so a $7 bag of grout, a little water, and some old paintings to use as surfaces, and I was off and running in the lovely Fall sunshine of my backyard. Here is what came out of this adventure:

I ended up doing two pieces so far. I smeared the grout on with a paint stick and my hands and then started “texturizing” with a small piece of wire mesh I found in my collage box.

Here are some closeups of the two pieces:

Oh, what fun to create without any intention of getting anywhere—to just put your hands in and go. To lose yourself in the process. To act like a little kid and get dirty. I suppose I’m not getting too far away from my Blue Bicicletta tendencies because I don’t intend to add color—I love the white. I’m hoping to do a few more pieces like this and maybe hang them somewhere in the house, just for something a bit different.

This creative feeling continued for me later on Saturday night with another more easily accessible project (and one you might want to do if you’re looking for a fun and easy way to get creative). Last week, I read this post on a blog I love called Ink on My Fingers, and the subject of the post, an amazingly creative woman named Gwen Bell mentions making vision maps on her blog, which reminded me how much fun it is.

I’m not an expert, but as I understand it, a vision map or board is basically a collage—you go through magazines pulling any images that call out to you, then you make a collage out of them, and then you look at the collage and use it as a tool to see what you value in life and where you want to go. Even without the philosophical analysis part, this is a REALLY FUN thing to do. I love collage—it’s just so creative, accessible, and fulfilling. I highly encourage it—and all you need is some magazines, some piece of heavy paper or board, a pair of scissors, and some glue (I’m a fan of mod podge). Here’s the vision board/collage I made. Please note, all of these images were torn from magazines, so I can’t claim credit for them.

I call this collage “Zest” for obvious reasons. It is now hanging on my office/studio wall to delight and inspire me. If I did decide to analyze this as a vision board, I would say that it shows that I’m looking to lead a passionate, playful, creative life [bright oranges, reds, and yellows, the lightening strike, laughing woman, lots of art and illustration in the collage, the word "zest"] with an ample dose of calm and slowness [the bicycles, (surprise, surprise), natural elements, the bedroom].

I wanted to share these projects with you because taking time to be creative can be such a breath of fresh air. It gets your mind out of the old ruts and opens it up. When you’re making something that is actively engaging your creative brain, you are right there, in that moment, in that project, and it is a wonderful free feeling. I think this is really true for everyone who is willing, whether or not you think of yourself as creative or artistic. Once you let go of expectations, or the judgmental ideas like “I’m not creative,” and just go with it, being creative will take you to a new place.

Life as an Artist: update 3

Hello there! I’m just rounding my third full week as a full-time artist, and I thought I’d give you an update on how it’s going. If you’ve been following my blog, you will have noticed some new projects popping up, and when I was first thinking of a photo to take for this post, I thought of scattering my desk with various said projects, but instead, I settled on a calmer idea:

This is a “to-do” list for my upcoming weekend. I have learned quickly that I still look forward to and need weekends, even when I’m doing something I love for work. While I do not spend the hours of the week counting down until Friday anymore, the weekend is still a much needed mental break.

Other than the reality of having many new projects going, how is it really going over here at Blue Bicicletta? Well, if I had to choose a word to sum up my Life as an Artist right now (at least the more business-y part), it would be choices. I find myself constantly faced with choosing—which projects to work on, which projects to let go, and which projects to plan on doing in the future.

While I love that I have no shortage of ideas, it is my current challenge to learn how not to drive myself crazy about making each little choice of how to spend my work day, and bigger choices of how to structure my career.

I’m often reminding myself that it’s also a choice to relax, be calm, go with the flow, and trust yourself to get the job done. I am trying to make that choice as often as possible.

On the flip side, I am so excited about all of the new art ideas that keep coming into my head, and I’m so grateful to have the time to pursue a number of them. The creativity keeps coming, and it really fills me up.

Happy weekend to you, and I wish you days full of inspiration and calm!

Oh, and for those of you new to this blog, you can see previous artist life updates here

Something New: a monthly art club!

Have you ever wished that a little pocket of creative inspiration showed up at your door every month to excite and delight you? Look no further because I have just started a monthly art club! I call it the Little Bits of Art Monthly Club, and I just unveiled it over at my shop.

You might now be wondering, “what is the Little Bits of Art Monthly Club? Well, let me take you on a tour.

If you become a member of the Blue Bicicletta monthly art club, you will receive a neat little packet like the one above, each month of your subscription.

Here’s a look at the contents of the very first month, December 2009. The contents of the package will vary each month, but they will always include:
-2 greeting cards or postcards
-a set of monthly to-do lists
-a pair of monthly calendar bookmarks
-a unique piece of miniature art in the form of a mini book (as you see here), or a tiny original drawing
-and a little packet of creative odds and ends (like little bits of patterned fabric, handmade paper, buttons, old postage stamps, words, quotes, and anything else I discover).

All of this will be neatly packaged in a handmade envelope (and shipped in a bend-proof mailer), and all illustrations are, of course, completely original and created by me.

Here are some more peeks:

December’s unique piece of tiny art is a little book I made called A Bit on Buttons, with button drawings, little facts on buttons, and even button-related expressions. The odds and ends packet will remain a surprise for each recipient to discover when the get their packets.

For cards in the December package, I will include one each of my new Thankful card and my Winter Poem card. Of course, if you’re from the Southern Hemisphere, you’ll get a less Winter-y card in exchange for the second.

To help you add a little more creativity to your day, I will also include some fanciful to-do lists and a pair calendar bookmarks.

To become a part of my Little Bit of Art Monthly Club, click here. I’m currently offering memberships of 1 month and 3 months, and if you get a 3 month membership starting this December (2009), you’ll get a fourth month FREE, as a little gift for being a part of my introductory month!

This would be a GREAT and unique holiday gift! If you are buying it as a gift, I will have a certificate of membership available soon that I can email or send to you or the recipient in advance, just let me know that you would like this when you place your order, or contact me directly.

I will take off my business-y hat now and say, I’m really, really excited about this new item/experience/cool thing and have been excitedly planning it and putting it together (and hinting at it on this blog) for the last couple of weeks. It is the bringing together of many of my interests in art and design (obviously), but it also brings in my hope to help people sneak a little more creativity and inspiration into their everyday lives. Thanks so much for sharing this view into this new project of mine!

One more thing: Monthly packets will be sent out at the beginning of each month, so you must purchase your membership by the 22nd of the month to receive your packet at the beginning of the next month, or else your membership will start the month after. Here’s an example: If you purchase a membership between now and November 22, you will receive your first packet at the beginning of December, if you purchase a membership between November 23 and December 22, you will receive your first packet at the beginning of January.

Another Perspective: Inspired Stone

I just wanted to give you all an alternate perspective on yesterday’s post about my hike with Mike (my husband) in Desolation Wilderness this past weekend. My husband started a blog a little while back to chronicle his love for the outdoors (specifically rocks and rock climbing) and photography. His blog is called Inspired Stone, and his most recent post is about our hike.

Although I know there is no way to not be biased, I think he’s a very talented photographer. He is also a scientist (in graduate school right now for Materials Science), so he has this extraordinary combination of scientist and artist (and outdoorsman) that come together quite nicely in photography. Check it out. There is even a very silly picture of me.

Natural November

The first day of November here in northern California, was a beautiful sunny day, and we thought it called for a hike—so we headed up towards Lake Tahoe for some natural inspiration. My husband (who is an outdoor guru) chose the location: we started out at Wrights Lake in the desolation wilderness and hiked up to two nearby lakes called Grouse Lake and Hemlock Lake.

What a gorgeous day—the temperature was just fine—t-shirt and pants weather with open blue and sunny skies. Perfect for lying on a rock and letting the breeze and sun carry you into a nap (one of my favorite outdoor occupations). The thing I noticed most was the expansive amount of quiet. I live in a pretty small city (Davis, CA), so I can’t complain about big city noise, but I must have needed the quiet because I really felt the luxury of it. Here are a few pictures that unfortunately, don’t really capture the feeling of walking outside in the quiet sunny afternoon, but isn’t that always the way.

Life as an Artist: update 2

Why, you may be asking, is there a photo of my ugly, dirty, sneakers at the top of this second post about being a full-time artist? Well, this morning when I was jogging with my dog, I got to thinking, as I often have, how jogging is a metaphor for my new career (and any career for that matter, or life in general).

You see, I don’t really like jogging, so I often find myself thinking while I jog about the nature of my relationship with jogging, and why I find it so hard to get motivated to jog. Don’t get me wrong, I like making art a whole lot more than jogging, I love it in fact, but the elements are the same: some days you wake up and feel great, you go out on a run, and you feel like a well-oiled machine. Other days, you can barely summon the motivation to put your sneakers on. This is life—it will always be like this, there will always be up days and down days, and how do you get through it? You put one foot in front of the other.

It is the importance of “putting one foot in front of the other” that I have been realizing so much about my art career this week. As I mentioned in my last post on this subject, this week was my first full week of being a full-time artist. How did it go? Some great moments, some scary moments, and a lot of in between—just the doing part of the art (the putting one foot in front of the other).

The great moments can be summed up by: “I can’t believe I get to do this all day every day (and not set foot in a boring office job for one second of the week) and “Wow, I’m really doing this!”

The scary moments can be summed up by: “Oh gosh, what will I work on next? I don’t want to do that. But I must, because I’m doing this all day, every day.”

The in between moments can be summed up by lots and lots of little steps and uneventful, but wonderful consistent work that helped me bridge the gap between the great moments and the scary moments and come out feeling successful. I am struck again though, by the jogging metaphor. I think we all focus a lot on big accomplishments, but I realize, especially during this week, that it’s the little accomplishments that are amazing—being able to say, “I finished this small step, now what’s next?” and then actually succeeding at going onto the next part.

It really hit me earlier this week that I am now the master of my own time, for better or worse. I have to face myself head on, every day. It’s completely up to me now, whether or not I get the work done—there are no more excuses like another job getting in the way. This is no surprise to me, but the reality of it is different than just thinking about it before it happens. Your neurosis don’t vanish, they exist, and you have to learn to work with them, or around them, or despite them. This is where “putting one foot in front of the other” really helps: when things get overwhelming, I just remind myself, “all I need to do is take one little step, do one little thing.”

And now I will salute all of you self-employed people—I have so much respect for you, especially now that I’m living this reality.

In summary, this was a wonderful week of learning about myself and creating. Unfortunately, many of the creations I am working on are not bloggable at this point because they’re part of larger projects that I will unveil all together when the time is right, but here are some ideas of what I’ve been up to:

-greeting card designs for a greeting card company that approached me in the summer
-a small book (chapbook/zine size) I’ve been scheming for some time and now actually have the time to work on
-some tiny artworks for the upcoming holidays
-one other new idea percolating about a way to expand Blue Bicicletta in a little bit of a new way

That brings me to one of the things I love about being an artist, and now being a full-time artist: you can build your work around lots of different, wonderful, creative things that you love.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is fast approaching for all of us in the U.S.—woohoo, I do love this holiday of rejoicing and eating. A while back, I started thinking about that age-old Thanksgiving question “What are you thankful for?” and here is one of my answers, in a card:

I know that we all don’t say this enough, you can never say it enough. I am thankful for all of you reading this blog, and for my amazing friends and family who are always there, no matter what, and for all of the people I see who are making life happen, because they are inspiring me to make my life happen. I mean it! If I ever doubted that people are out there to support me, my recent wedding (see this post about it) proved it to me, big time. I mean people came out of all corners of the country and worked like crazy to make my wedding happen. It was amazing.

I have often been asked about where I get my ideas for art, and I have to say (and have probably said it here before) that most often I make things that say something I need to here. This is one of them. So get off your bum and thank someone. Give them a call, send them a letter, text them for gosh sakes. Or you could send them a card!

These cards are now available in my shop—great for Thanksgiving, the holidays, or any old day of the year!

October Love

The weather here is so fine—I wish I could put some in an envelope and send it to you, but this is the best I can do—greetings from by back yard.

I hope you are all having a wonderful day and appreciating the out of doors, rain or shine.

On Tying the Knot

I promised a photo from our wedding once I got them, and here you go—there I am, in the white dress just after tying the knot. The handsome fellow on the right is my new husband Mike.

We got married in a beautiful park on the edge of the golf course in Aspen, Colorado, where my immediate family lives. The weather was absolutely stunning that day, after a week full of rain and gray skies. Family and friends came from all over the country to join in a whole wedding weekend of events, including a couple’s shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding day, and day-after breakfast.

Some especially unique wedding tidbits:

[disclaimer: I got a bit long-winded below---I won't be offended if you don't read every word---but there might be some interesting thoughts on alternative wedding ideas for those of you getting married soon]

1) The park we are in for the picture above was our third ceremony location site! Months before, we had reserved a park in downtown Aspen, but when we got there the week before the wedding and finally got to physically stand in the park, we realized it was too loud with downtown traffic, and to be honest, just not what we had imagined. So, we switched to a park a few blocks away (a cute little park with a little grassy hill), only to find out (two days before the wedding and thanks to Mike’s mom who saw “No Parking on Saturday” signs in front of the park) that they would be doing construction on the street in front of the park on the day of our wedding. Many calls later this info was confirmed, and my sister and brother-in-law (Aspen locals) suggested the park above (Tot Lot Park), and that saved the day. The park has a beautiful view of the mountains and was very quiet and calm. My main lesson learned was “be flexible.” The day turned out so beautiful, despite the last-minute changes.

2) All of our “wedding services” were done by family! How lucky we are to have so many creatives in our family! We had the reception at my parent’s restaurant with catering done by us (My dad in the lead, along with various other family helpers, us included), my mom did the cakes (we had two–chocolate, chocolate and carrot), my cousin Rose did the flowers (she actually does wedding flowers professionally), and my Aunt used to be a portrait photographer, so she did the pictures. Also, my brother-in-law’s father was our officiant (anyone can marry you in Colorado). It was wonderful to have people who know us doing all of these things! It really gave things a personal touch, and I loved going to the reception and seeing the food that we helped make and the tables that we helped set.

3) Mike and I both walked into the ceremony at the same time with our parents. It was important to me to emphasize that this is a joining of our lives, not me being given away to Mike.

4) E.E. Cummings made an appearance at the wedding—the lovely Era and Jaja read this beautiful poem at our ceremony. It meant a lot of me to have poetry, and two of my favorite poetry lovers in the ceremony.

5) We had a very informal reception set-up. I put this in here for anyone out there who is planning a wedding and is torn between wanting to have an informal/non-traditional reception and feeling they’re supposed to have a full sit-down dinner. My parents’ restaurant is on the small side, so we tried to keep the numbers small–we had about 60 guests. Still, the inside of the restaurant is not big enough to accommodate that many people, so we split tables between the inside of the restaurant and the patio, which we tented in for the occasion.

We did not have assigned seating, and all of the tables were smallish–many were set for 4 people, with the highest number of seats at any one table being about 8. We had two buffet tables that changed throughout the evening from appetizers, to a pasta course, to the meat and vegetables (lots of salads and a whole pig, in addition to fish, prime rib, and grilled vegetables), to desserts (including lots of cookies and two cakes—no tiers or traditional wedding cake—just wonderful, delicious cake).

The whole reception had a very relaxed feeling with lots of movement. People had time to eat and time to circulate, and then we naturally progressed into dancing on the patio (which was so much cooler). Mainly, we wanted an intimate family feeling, and we really had that. I think it’s important to decide what your priorities are and to let go of other expectations (or what other people will think) so you can let yourself have the wedding you want.

6) We wrote our own ceremony based on other ceremonies we read. This is not that unusual, but I will say, it was more meaningful to me to have picked the words. The ceremony was very short and simple, and also very organic—no music, just some kids ringing bells to announce the beginning. I remember thinking, “It’s so quiet” as we walked in. I don’t think I even noticed the audience. The ceremony just flew by. I really think the part that had the most impact on me was the readings—having people we know read things that mean something to me really felt special. In addition to the E.E. Cummings I talked about above, we had Mike’s step-mom read Kahlil Gibran’s chapter on marriage from The Prophet.

7) I did not wear make-up and I did not have my hair done professionally (I mean, I barely have any hair!). I did get my nails done, and I wore a cute headband with fresh flowers on the side (any brides out there with short short hair, feel free to contact me, and I can describe the headband better). I really wanted to throw this comment in here because there was some pressure on me to wear make-up, but I never wear make-up, so why should I wear it at my wedding? Is the groom wearing make-up? This is a very personal choice, but I just wanted to say to anyone out there like me who does not want to wear make-up at her wedding, have courage—just say no! You will look just like you’re beautiful self without it.

Now, I will tell you the one reality I realized, at least for me in the form of advice for people getting married in the near future: chances are, there are going to be some challenging bits, especially in negotiation family relations. It’s going to feel a bit crazy and stressful. People will say it is your day, and it is, but there are also a whole bunch of other people there, and they want to share your day with you. I’ll admit that both Mike and I got stressed at times, but in the end, it was exactly what we wanted, and we were happy that we stuck to our guns on the things that were most important to us (like keeping it small and family-oriented), and let go of others (like our ceremony location and many wedding traditions that weren’t so important to us).