Humble Artistry

I came across this blog via Facebook, and this post really caught my attention:

"Collaborating with a 4-year-Old"
(http://busymockingbird.com/2013/08/27/collaborating-with-a-4-year-old/)



I love unpretentious art. I recently wandered through a local museum and found myself wondering why some art is considered "masterful", while other pieces may be obviously amateurish. I mean, I have done some things in a sketchbook with watercolor that I thought were really interesting to look at. Not refined, certainly, but interesting. Like this:



I actually do think it's pretty childish when I look at it. But what's wrong with childish art? Art is a window into how the artist views the world. And I'm all for anything that promotes and produces empathy.

So, getting back to this blog post I read, I just loved the writer's confession that sharing a sketchpad with a four-year-old was not easy. I feel the same way when my daughter and I are coloring together, and she suddenly wants to color on my page. I have worked so hard to stay in the lines and have even accomplished some nice shading (hard to do with crayons), and here she comes with her wild, scribbling hand. With neon orange, no less.

But the writer of this post was able to move beyond that initial ownership into co-ownership. And the art that came out of the collaboration is really interesting. Some will love it and see it as innovative and insightful, and others will feel uncomfortable looking at it. I think it's really great. I love that an artist was able to redefine what kind of art was "good" enough to make it into her sketchbook and on her blog.

We should all open those areas of our lives where we want to control the finished product...and let the 4-year-old in. The result will most likely be something you never could have thought of, and it will most definitely be something interesting. And that's really more than we usually get.

Impressions

If you are not a fan of impressionism as an art form, I suggest you go back and take another look. The effect of color, lines, boundaries, shape, light, etc. on our senses is fascinating. It's especially fascinating to discover how different people respond to the same painting or photograph. We often come away with these different impressions because of past experiences, desires, moods, or even distractions. When I look at the works of impressionist painters, I always wonder if the impression I'm getting is the one the artist was hoping to produce.

What impression do you get from the picture above?

It's an edited photograph. It's one of my favorite pictures that I have ever produced. I took it with my iPhone and edited the colors a bit, but the impressionist feel was produced by the mere fact of looking out a rainy window.

I want to tell you the effect I hope this picture has on people, but I won't. Because in the end, it doesn't matter. I enjoy this picture in a particular way, but who am I to impose that on someone else? Neither would I want someone to tell me how a particular song is supposed to make me feel.

You know, I have been thinking of myself as an impressionist lately. I often ask myself, "What impression are you hoping to make on people today?" I might choose a more severe and dramatic set of eyebrows for the day, or a certain pair of shoes. There are countless ways I construct my "look" to produce some kind of overall impression of who I am...or who I want to be. At work, I like to give the impression that I am composed and mature. I find that the clothes best suited for this are buttoned blouses, turtlenecks, shoes with low heels and pointed toes, bracelets, and my scarf in a bun. When I am walking in my neighborhood and want to give off the impression that I belong in the 'hood, I like anklets, a scarf with a long tail down the back, big earrings, maybe a cap over my scarf, and a fairly tight T-shirt.

The gist is, I try to arrange colors and textures in such a way as to give an onlooker a certain impression of reality. I don't have one "look"; I have as many styles as I have moods, fears, hopes, or purposes.

The thing is, I can't totally control what impression people have of me at any given moment. I may try to give off a certain vibe, but it often backfires. I might go into work thinking I look professional, when coworkers end up making comments about how "fashionable" I look, as if I valued that. I might try to look like the consummate sports fan at a Cubs game, but the die-hards around me probably sense my boredom and ignorance as the game goes on.

The lesson in all of this, if there has to be one, is that impressionism is about the artist as much as it is about the onlookers. It is about reflecting some sense of reality that is true for the artist and may find resonance with some viewers. If not, then a new sense of reality can be constructed between and among differing impressions. Not to philosophize fashion, but perhaps we should consider that the act of choosing how we will dress and arrange ourselves every morning is an act of impressionism. And impressionism is simply (or brilliantly) a way to boil details down into the most important sensory experiences.

If you want to make an impression on someone, give them something to experience. Let them see colors that reflect how you see yourself that day. Let your impressionist art be about communicating the core aspects of your "person" rather than the stereotype you are actually trying to stuff yourself into. Allow yourself to be released into a community of onlookers (who are also artists themselves, don't forget) whose impressions of you, no matter how varied or deviant from your intentions, will enrich your human reality and produce empathic responses all around.

So, what impression are you trying to make today? I challenge you to ask that question every day this week.

Princess Overload

The obsession with Disney Princesses in our society is becoming more and more evident to me as I look for topics to write about on my blog. They are ubiquitous, both on the web and on store shelves. I get it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to wear extravagant, colorful gowns and have adventures with talking animals and roguish men all the time?!

What is really fascinating about the Princesses is how many people have tried to reimagine them. By that, I suppose I really mean “re-image” them. As in, give them a new image. I have seen the Princesses bald. Fat. Old. Bespectacled. Depicted as suburban moms. Dressed in historically accurate costumes. Placed in dark settings of human suffering.

Why are so many people spending so much time trying to insert the Princesses into so many different contexts?


(lookmatic.com)


(deviantart.com)


(weheartit.com)


(fanpop.com)


(Dina Goldstein)

No wonder it's so hard to get my daughter to think about something else--anything else--besides Princesses. They are no longer one-dimensional, fairy tale characters. Now, they have walked in our shoes. Or at least we like to think so. We like to imagine the Princesses in less-than-perfect situations--maybe because we so desperately want to believe that the perfection they exude in their original context is really unattainable. If we could see from all other angles, maybe we would realize that we don't have to keep hoping to escape into the world of a Disney Princess.

We want them to step into our lives for awhile, if we can't step into theirs.

Are these re-imaginings helpful? I don't think so. I think they only serve to keep us fixated on these "characters". I appreciate the idea behind all these efforts to humanize the Princesses. Just as I appreciate how the latest Princesses have starred in stories which are about more than just love and marriage. Still, these stories and these new images are all pointing to a particular definition of "beauty"--whether by modeling it or depicting its antithesis.

Lately, I have heard some words coming out of my seven-year-old daughter's mouth that disgust me. I'll just be honest. And I have threatened to take Princesses completely out of the picture for her if I feel they are distorting her perception of others around her. I have allowed Princesses to be part of her life to a certain extent, but I'm discovering how quickly they can become an obsession. An obsession promoted and capitalized on by our culture.

Instead of reimagining the Princesses, I would like to refocus the lens on women (men too, but women in particular) who need to feel a little more brave, beautiful, deserving, talented, adventurous, and all the wonderful qualities celebrated in the Princess archetype. Let's get over the Princesses and the efforts to give them more and more "original" or "realistic" looks, and let's focus on actual reality.

I want my daughter to spend her time appreciating what she sees in real people, not surfing the web to see how many different kinds of Princesses she can see.

I want my daughter to see different body shapes, sizes, colors and ages as equally beautiful parts of a spectrum, not as novelty affectations on a Princesses body that make her giggle and/or sneer.

Most of all, I want my daughter to believe that life is valuable because it is given by God, not because the Princesses have endorsed certain aspects of it.

To Tatt or Not To Tatt...or Too Tatt?

Well, another birthday has come and gone without me getting a tattoo. I've wanted one for years. I had decided to get one for my thirtieth birthday, but two years later my skin has yet to be touched by a needle. I still want one, but there are so many factors to consider:

~~What if I turn out to be allergic to the ink? I would so not be surprised.

~~I work with international students. What if having a tattoo offends them and compromises the trusting relationship I try to hard to build with them?

~~The designs I am considering will not fit anywhere where I would be able to see them. Do I rethink the design, or the location?

~~My husband is not crazy about this idea. Do I respect his preferences, or go ahead and do something to my body that he will have to confront every day?

~~How will I explain to my kids why I can get a tattoo but they can't draw on their hands with magic marker? More to the point, how will I explain the healing process without scaring them and revealing that I will actually go through pain in order to look a certain way?

~~Is this really something I want to spend money on? Does it really reflect my spending values?

~~Not knowing any tattoo artists personally, and not having a design on paper to go in with, how can I be sure I'll be happy with what I get?

~~The big one--why do I want a tattoo so badly? Am I trying for a personality upgrade? Do I want people to think I'm edgy? Do I want to mark a significant revelation and/or period in my life?


I have to be at peace before I get this done. And yet, there is no way to know how I will feel about it until I do it. Irrevocably.

Although I know this is ultimately my decision, I would love reader response on this one.

(Check out my new Pinterest board: Tattoo Ideas!)

Shading

One thing I love about photography is the way one object can look like many, depending on variable factors such as lighting, background, contrast, and hue. You can see two different pictures of a bridge and not know you're looking at the same bridge in each.

I love creating moods in the pictures I take and edit. The same place can take on varying emotional shading just because the light is different. Or, more to the point, the filter is different.





I took these within minutes of each other on a single path, but they could easily have been taken at two different times of year, at totally different times of day. Which picture makes you feel more relaxed? Which is warmer?

I also love seeing photos of the same place from two different perspectives. I took this picture...



...and then I turned around and took this one:



Looking at the first one, you might expect a different sort of structure to be in place behind the camera lens (or, if you've been to the Gaylord Resort at the National Harbor in D.C., you would have already known what was standing behind).

Feelings can often be attributed to angles or filters. We only see one perspective, one shading, and we base what we think we know off of that view. What if we could see places, moments and people through multiple filters all at once? Would it help in achieving balanced understanding, or would it overwhelm and mute unique experiences?

My self-image is wrapped up in filters. I see myself in one mirror (literally) and I think "Okay, I am a competent woman, ready to go out and smile at people and get things done". But I look in a different mirror with different lighting and I think "Wow. I'm haggard and tired, and I want to curl up in a hole and eat chocolate because I can't face anyone".

My whole day can be spent in one mood, and then I look in a mirror and get a shock: "This is what I've looked like all day?!" Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

But the face I see in these mirrors does not accurately reflect my while story. Just like the pictures of the tree-lined path above both capture the essence of the scene, externally-imposed edits changed the way we interpret that scene.

I impose positive or negative "edits" onto my reflection when I look in a mirror. The essence of who I am, or what I look like, doesn't change, but the way I interpret my worth changes. I need to see worth in that essence--the defining contours that do not change or waver. Me, free of edits. Or maybe me with all possible edits superimposed at once. A well-rounded view of me in all my various shadings.

What would that look like?

30 Days of Redefining Beauty-Day 20

Writer's block again.

I really enjoyed my dinner tonight. Green beans, green peppers, mushrooms, onions, garlic and slivered almonds sauteed together and served over rice with Rosarita seasoned black beans and pot roast (leftovers, don't ask). But is that beauty?

I helped my daughter make a jellyfish out of paper plates and yarn. That was actually a great couple of hours. We found this amazing Paper Plate Crafts book at the library and the ideas in the book are right up my alley: cheap, relatively easy, and ideal for the "artistically challenged".

When it came time to paint the jellyfish, I had her pour a little bit of tempera paint on a plate, being careful not to let the different colors touch. Of course, the first thing she wanted to do was mix it up. I hesitated, not because I am anal about colors mixing, but because I know she can be. I went ahead and let her mix the colors, hoping she wouldn't mind the mess that would come of it.

She loved the unique shade she had created, so all was well. Then she decided to do another part of the jellyfish in a different style--stripes of vivid, separated primary colors. Now I was really sweating. I could see the blue running into the yellow before she noticed it. I held my breath and didn't say anything...

...and then it happened. The colors mixed as she was painting...

...and she was delighted!

She totally rolled with it. And I realized something. She wasn't painting a jellyfish. Not really. She wasn't going for some end result that she had planned in advance. She was simply painting for the feel of it. She loved feeling the paint under her brush, coating every varied surface of the paper plate. She loved watching the colors change before her eyes. She loved feeling that "exactly right" amount of resistance as she stroked with her brush.

It was all about the process, not the product.

Some days, it's about the product. I need to pay more attention to the cues in order to know which is which.

When it comes to projects like this, I am all about the finished product; and, not being very artistic myself, I am often totally frustrated and disappointed in what I come up with. It seldom matches the blueprint in my mind.

But my six year old beautifully reminded me today to be present in the process. The final product will carry within itself the story of successes, failures and lessons that the process brought about.

Are you a process person, or a product person?