Book: Art and Fear

I highly recommend this book to any artist!

Confidence builder, sympathetic sounding board,

No, you are Not crazy.

 Encouragement resource.

This book is all of this and more.


Any creative person can benefit from  this book.  Read it through or take snippets to ponder.

Dip into when something doesn't go right.

Artistic frustration can be as sharp as a knife.  If we didn't feel it; we wouldn't be artists in the first place.

When you are at a low ebb and all around you are crooking their eyebrows and looking at you sidewise, read it.


Available from Amazon and as a PDF version at http://www.libertyeyeschool.com/ap2d.cfm?subpage=1655939

GET IT!

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2009 Results

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor'east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May", a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish' for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

The winner of 2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is David McKenzie, a 55-year- old Quality Systems consultant and writer from Federal Way, Washington. ...


For more hilarity, go to http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm

Writer's Work Habits

Writers are a solitary sort. They establish their own Rules of Discipline and Goals, be it a certain number of hours, pages, or words. Most strictly control their work space and routine. Kipling did it, Woodhouse did it and King does it.

It's the same with a lot of artists. Control your surroundings and set work parameters, then creativity can run wild within it.

They also allow themselves an equal share of dream-time and downtime Most walk. A lot.* It seems a good balance. Mind and body; equal time allowed. One flows into the other and feeds the missing half. A lot of good ideas come when you're driving or in the shower or just before you either go to sleep or are just waking up. Going into the Alpha brain wave state.

I usually have a pen and page of paper at the bedside to jot down ideas, dreams, or thoughts before they get away. One of those recorder/writing pens might be a good idea. The pens do come with earphones. But to put the earphones in and write with the pen attached to the other end of the cord? I don't think so. That would make a good Mr. Bean episode.

So I'm thinking about using these writer's work strategy to improve and to streamline the process of making art.

Another thing: King doesn't talk about the work while he's writing. He feels talking about it dilutes the inspiration. He doesn't let anyone read it (not even himself) until he has let the manuscript 'mature' in a desk drawer for 6-8 weeks. He then looks at it afresh and does the first edit.

I feel criticism during the making process has got to be your own. The very last thing you want is someone swanning in and suggesting changes while you're making something.

Things that you think are wonderful--that you totally fall in love with might not look so great down the stream of time as you progress in the work. You may look at it later on and wonder why you thought was so great.

Conversely, you could have made things that you thought were awful. When they came out of the kiln, they were not at all what you thought they should have been.

Resist the impulse to take the hammer to it! It's happened enough to me to temper my reactions now. I still regret the destruction of a very large majolica pitcher I judged too quickly. Let your verdict rest for a while. Put some distance between you and the time of the work. "In the fullness of time" you will know.

But---Bad work should not live. Faulty construction, unskilled results, artistic eyesores, dangerous glaze results, cracked or fatally flawed pieces should not be offered to the public. Ever. I once saw a piece made by a nationally known potter offered for sale. The foot had collapsed on one side, there was a crack in the base. I'm sure he would have been horribly chagrined to know that pot made it into the market.

You should keep work that can serve as a 3D reminder for repeat work or to explore the form further at a later date. I have a few of those in my studio. That would be the only justification I can see for sparing the hammer.

You are the first critic. There are plenty of others who will have as many opinions and there are leaves on the trees. And they will be more than happy to share those with you. Trust me. (Where's my irony emotocom.)

*Although for King, this almost proved to be fatal. In 1999, he was struck by a van and nearly killed. A long recovery ensued and he completed "On Writing" during the healing process.

Stephen King on Working

King writes that when he is working, he visualizes himself in a special setting:

"I'm in another place, a basement place where there are lots of bright lights and clear images. This is a place I've built for myself over the years. It's a far-seeing place. I know it's a little strange, a little bit of a contradiction, that a far-seeing place should be in a basement place, but that's how it is with me. If you construct you own far-seeing place, you might put it in a treetop or on the roof of the Empire State Building, or on the edge of the Grand Canyon. It's your little red wagon, as Robert McCammon says in one of his novels."

Now, there's a thought.

I'd never approached creative thinking that way. Oh, yes, I'm a master of the Slide-out-of-my-body, Appear-to-be-conscious-except-for-a-slight-glaze-of-the-eyes.

The Old Exit Trick.

Been doing that since the second grade when things got boring and I had to behave.

And when I take a workshop, walk into a museum, put myself into a place where there's a lot of mental buzz going on, it turns my mind into a turbine and all sorts of ideas fly. I used to fill my college notebooks with lecture notes and margin drawings. At work, I might be answering the phone and dealing with whatever was on the other end, but I was also exiting through my right hand via a pencil and a doodle pad. Serving two masters, so to speak.

Now this does happen: The minute I step over the threshold of my studio it is like going through one of the science fiction space portals where, on entering, your molecules get disintegrated and then re-assembled on the other side. Once through the door, I remember exactly where I was in the work, as if a mental bookmark had been left. I tune into the thoughts left floating in the air like an enticing aroma.

That's reacting to the surroundings; a response to creative stimulus.

But to actually invent a place to go to in your mind--a Receiving Station--that you conjure up and then go through the door and close it? Wow.

King's thinking plan is almost a sort of self-hypnosis. His physical surroundings may be an isolated desk somewhere in his home where he can go and shut the door, but his mental location is a special place where he puts on different clothes, gets out his spyglass, tunes his ears for dialog and feels the wind in his face.

Wow, again.

I'm finding this book really interesting.........

On Writing by Stephen King

I don't usually read Stephen King. No, I've Never read Stephen King, that is until now.

I've seen a some of his work made into movies, like "The Shining" , "The Green Mile", "Doloros Clayborne", "1480", and "Misery". But for the most part, his kind of stories just aren't my choice of fiction.

I picked up this book because I assumed it would be different than his usual efforts and I wanted to know what he had to say about writing.

The first part of the book is about his life, which is interesting enough, but he doesn't get "down to it' until page 95.

That chapter, entitled What Writing Is, begins with: "Telepathy, of course."

It just stopped me short.

And immediately my mind said, "Of Course!" But who would have just come right out and said it?

Although he goes on to say that he is writing this chapter in 1999 and the reader will read his words somewhere downstream in time, his thoughts will transmit over time, space and the ethers to the reader's mind. And therefore in it's own unique way, writing is a form of telepathy.

And so is art. Only instead of transmitting thoughts in words, art is making visual, emotional, tactile aesthetic statements that will be 'read' by another person somewhere later in time and space.

Something magic happens when you are in the state of creating. Call it telepathy, call it a visit from your muse, call it inspiration, ---anything you like. But I'm sure we can all agree that it just ain't the normal, everyday, humming right along. It IS magic. It is living totally in your mind and flying.

When you think about that, it's pretty amazing.

Bulwer-Lytton Entry Addendum

You know the entry below about the elaborately-carved 16th century yadda yadda yadda chair? Well, this is a true story. However some of the facts have been tweeked to suit the contest style.

When we were in the antique business, we were acquainted with a very fine southern gentleman from Georgia who sold exquisitely beautiful and rare French antiques. He would bring these treasurers to a very tony antique show in Portland, Oregon, that we also drug our choicest bits to a bi-annually.

And this story really happened to him. Only it wasn't a domed porter's chair.

As a matter of fact, I don't remember what (as I do remember, it was something rather bulky and difficult to haul) a rarity he had cherished, yet grown to hate because it hadn't been immediately snapped up by an enthralled buyer. He had had the privilege of presenting this jewel of an item and schlepping it around to his show booths and back to the shop for years.


Finally, a lady became interested in this piece and was seriously thinking of buying it, but announced that she would like her friend to see it first. His shoulders slumped and he quietly groaned and as she left, came over to our booth and said, "Believe me, if someone says, 'Let me go get my husband/boyfriend/sister/girlfriend/etc. to see this,' It is the kiss of DEATH."

Sure enough, on their return, her friend came up with the garage sale comment...........

It's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest time again!

The Bulwar-Lytton Contest deadline is April 15th. To quote the famous writer:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

--Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

And in honor of this wordy author, an annual contest is held to see who can write the most lengthy and elaborate bunch of silly foo-fah their minds can string together in one sentence. Each year the website publishes the winning entries. You can find the main page at http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.

The 2009 results will be published there sometime in mid-June 2009.

Hoping to be ranked as the worst of the worst of purple prose, I sent off this year's verbal herniations for consideration. Two examples of which are included below:

Even though she was being tied to the ornately-carved sacrificial post and watching the witch doctor shake fetishes in her face, Valentina couldn't help being impressed by his lavish, yet charmingly primitive jewelry and flamboyantly colorful make-up, all the while thinking he really should do something about his pores and bad breath, but not in that order.

and

"Don't worry Lucille," shrugged her friend Gladys after she had been retrieved from the crowd at the antiques show to view the beautiful domed-top chair, "because if you are meant to have an authentic early example of an astronomically priced 16th century hand-carved rosewood French hooded porter's chair with the original horsehair padding and tooled Moroccan-Spanish leather upholstery and hand-forged brass studs and casters, you'll find one at a garage sale."