Dumb (but creative) ways to die

Apparently this is a safety video made by a metro company.  Very funny.

Craft Fair 101

    As part of my artist explorations I took part in a craft fair this November.  There were about 20 vendors, most well experienced.  My table as a newbie was between two jewelry artisan/sellers in their 50's.  They talked a great deal about themselves for 2 days.  An interesting side study in narcissism.

    At my table I had a selection of my paintings, illustrated cards, tiny wood nativity sets and a handful of small fabric art pieces, plus timid hopes of at least breaking even with table rental.

    The hours crawled like molasses.  I kept busy perfecting my mildly pleasant but not desperate chit chat with  passersby. I morphed through feeling like a patient fisherman, an orphanage director soliciting good homes for my art "children" and even had passing moments of wondering if prostitutes get tired of trying to attract customers. 

    In the end I did break even. Even made a bit of money.  Nearly all my paintings came home again with me, though.  Hard to not take that personally.  People looked with interest but moved on.  At home I went through a bout of "never painting again" and "just donate them to the thrift store", but I got over it.  Not sure what to do with the desire to keep painting.  Today it seems impractical and space consuming.  

Do schools kill creativity?

White Minus Green

    Recently in a random conversation about colors someone said to me that the color pink is very hard to make.  I asked isn't it just red mixed with white?  I've been making pink for years.  No, they said, that's just light red.  True pink is actually white minus green.

     How mystical. 

    Continuing to be random, I said that makes me think of my favorite Dr. Suess book "O the thinks you can think" with its impossible curly-cue stairways and especially its forest of white and red striped trees.  Really a wonderfully imaginative, assumption-turning little publication. 

     And now for a final only apparent irrelevance, here's quote attributed to Einstein:

   " Creativity is the residue of wasted time." 

   

Quotes from Gary Molander

Hello readers,

     My life has gotten very blank slate/empty again with a parttime greenhouse job done for the winter, no courses ahead and a drought of music.  Not feeling entirely bubbly about this (to put it veeeerrrrryy mildly) but trying to keep my mind busy and sane.  Here are some quotes from a book I just read on creativity and faith by Gary Molander.  I haven't decided if I agree with all of them but they make me think.

"The first myth is that art is some sort of feeling.  It's a mood to be summoned from the ether.  But creativity is a practice.  It's an action.  To bring it into to being you must act as if it's already there.  It's a lot like love.  You may not always feel it, but the more you act upon it, the more you'll experience it."  

"Art..reminds me that not everything needs to be resolved for it to be beautiful." 

"Beware the artist whose skill level surpasses their character." 

"There should be no difference between our lives and our art.  It is all the same.  We all have but one body of work."

"Creativity, in the Divine sense, is when we see a void, then fill it with ourselves."

"An artist is a heart condition, not a job." 

John Cleese on Creativity

Here's a 35 minute John Cleese talk on creativity. Quite entertaining and enlightening.