Time, Imagination, and a Pad of #80

Imagination

The Woman with a Peacock Feather

“Woman with a Frame Drum and Peacock Feather”, a mixed media assemblage

I have not written much in the last couple of weeks, and you may notice that this post has nothing to do with the today’s prompt, “Congregate”. My absence is because I realized that I had not done any sort of painting or other visual art for months, if not a year. I started feeling the urge, but I kept telling myself I was too busy.

Then, this woman in the painting started bothering me. She skirted around the edge of my imagination whispering “Bring me to life. Paint me.” So I had to comply.

This is a collage of original painted elements assembled with some harder elements like feathers, tissue paper, and liquid gold and silver leaf. The painted parts are comprised of watercolor crayons, acrylic paint, colored pencils and ink, with some components on paper and the background on canvas.

Ljgloyd 2018

The Lady in My Studio

“Sophia”, mixed media on paper, 18″X 24″

I was re-organizing my art-making space and I came across this mixed media painting I did a couple of years ago. She is now overseeing my workspace. The painting is aptly entitled “Sophia”. Perhaps her presence will inspire me to conjure new work?

Ljgloyd c 2016, 2018

Thank Goodness for the Yarn-gods

My mother was a fiber artist before the term even existed. She did some embroidery work, but mostly she crocheted. In her younger years when her eyesight was better, she wrought intricate doilies and table covers in fine threads. In her later years, she employed larger yarns and hooks and made beautiful throws and coverlets, stunning in their elegant simplicity. Every chain was crafted in perfect tension and balance.

She tried to teach me to crochet; however, I am left-handed and she was right-handed and most of our learning sessions ended in frustration. So she gave up and I gave up. I left the fiber artistry to other family members and moved to other genres and creative expressions.

Fast forward a few decades: This morning, out of the blue, someone gave me a pouch of crochet hooks. It is almost like my mom is saying from beyond the veil: “Let’s give this another try.”  So this weekend I will go out and get some yarn and give it a go.

What about the whole left vs right-hand conundrum? Well, thank goodness and the yarn-gods for Youtube.

ljg 2018

Noisy Toys: How I Start a New Creative Project, Part II

In yesterday’s post, I shared how I engage in a new creative project. In the process of working the plan I ran into a glitch. Or, to be more optimistic, you could say I expanded my knowledge base on a grand scale. At first, I almost jumped through the loophole I articulated yesterday of admitting the plan was not workable. Instead, I powered through and made the first of I hope many recordings of my own percussion music.

To make a long story short, I had no problem mixing a very short audio clip. The problem came with sharing it. Oh, is that not the bane of the creative’s existence: showing the rest of the world your work? In order to share the audio, I ended up having to make, with great difficulty, a video. Even though I felt like I had enrolled in a crash course in film editing, I was pleased to learn some new applications, and refresh myself in some old ones.

What I learned is this:

1. Pushing the boundaries in my creative process requires hard work and a headache. The idea came easy.   Mastering the tools and technology, well, not so much.
2. It is not enough for me, at any rate, to create. I must also share it with an audience for it to be worth my while.
3. Finally, I will never be happy with just one creative genre. I need to be trying new things on a regular basis. I may never be very good at music making, but I enjoyed the process. And that is just as important as the product.

Without further delay, here is my twenty-four second sound mixing experiment.

Note:  To create and share my percussion work,  I used my iPhone to access Garageband (only available for Apple products) and to shoot the video,  a PC laptop in order to access Windows Movie Maker, my email application to mail the audio and video files from one device to the other and, of course, WordPress. Oh, and the instruments:  A darbuka, an egg shaker, and a cowbell.

Oi.

ljgloyd 2018

A Cow Bell, Two Shakers, and a Strumstick: How I Start a New Creative Project

I am an over-committed person (AKA a workaholic):   I have the day job. Then I have a continuous home improvement project that is going to take months, if not years, to resolve. I do things for my faith community. I drum as much as I can to relieve the stress of the first three commitments. I love to read (see the Goodreads list on this site). I do about forty-five minutes to an hour a day of cardio exercise and yoga for health maintenance.   And, of course, I write.

Sometimes I don’t feel like I can permit myself to try out new activities because of all these other activities. I believe, though, that to call myself a Creative, I must constantly push the boundaries through to new experiences. And once the permission is granted, it is simply a matter of making a plan and then working the plan.

One of the new activities I am considering is composing and recording some of my percussion work. Let me say here that I am most definitely NOT a musician, but nevertheless I have given myself permission to still explore this creative and technical genre.

So how am I doing this? First, I set the intention by granting myself permission to try something new AND, just as importantly, permission to set it aside mid-stream should I find it not a viable endeavor.   Next, I brainstormed the project on a pad of paper, grouping the dump of ideas into actionable items. For this project, I realized that I needed to review the technology I had on hand or could access without cost,  investigate online videos and tutorials for the software, and inventory my percussion instruments* and song sheets. After sorting, reviewing, and prioritizing these actions, I determined that I would start by learning if I could use my cell phone and the Garageband app on it to record and mix MP3 tracks.   Before I start working on this, I started a Project page in my planner.

So my process is: 1) set the intention, 2) brainstorm ideas, 3) sort the ideas into specific actions, 4) implement the first action and make note of the results.

If I am able to get past the first action, then I will proceed to the next, and so on until a finished product is at hand.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

ljgloyd 2018

*FYI:  I have four frame drums, two darbukas, four egg shakers, a flex-a-tone, a strumstick and a cow bell.   That’s going to be one weird and funky track if I am successful.