MuddArt

Genesis and the Creative Process: Part I

2008-06-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

The Concept

When I wrote the original draft of my last piece on Art & Fear in 2004, at the end I had this thought: What could be learned from looking at the Genesis account of creation from an artist’s perspective? At the time, I wrote some notes on what happened each day in the Genesis account, including application of these events to the creative process. It was pretty powerful. However, I think the Roaring Lion (See "Art & Fear" article, where I compare the Creative Process to a savage beast) began to scare me, and I stopped myself.

I mean if there is a God, and He had some sort of hand in creating this Beautiful World we live in, maybe we could learn something from how He did it. Maybe rather than looking at the story of Genesis as something to argue science and religion over, maybe instead we who are artists, writers and creative people are in a unique position to understand what the author was trying to say about the act of creation, and maybe in turn we can learn something ourselves as well as teach others about what it means to be a creator.

Think about it for a minute. Genesis is saying that God is a creator, AND that we are created in His Image! Do you get what I’m saying? We, humankind, all of us, if we are indeed created in the image of God are also meant to be creators!

When I was a child, my parents enrolled me for a time in free schools. The idea behind these schools was noble, and partly worked. The main idea (at least in the schools I attended) was that children start out right, but we (meaning adults) ruin them. I say partly right, because I do think we do a lot to ruin children, mostly through selfishness, but what the schools failed to understand is that kids do in fact need some structural framework in which to work. Boundaries are needed. We in the free schools were truly boundary-less, and thus we as children did probably as much to ruin each other as any adult did.

Though the experience was a mixed bag for many of us, I learned a lot of really good things that I am sure I would not have in a more traditional school, among these lessons one is that children are all born creative. So, if we are all born creative, what happens?

What happens is we (all of us: adults, children, society) ruin this inborn creative impulse. We do it by laughing at their ideas, by saying “can’t” “won’t” “don’t”. We do it through school systems that discourage creativity. Sometimes I think it’s because we too fear the Roaring Lion, and when we see our children roaring its roar, the same roar we stifled in ourselves years ago, we become afraid. Maybe it will devour them as we feared it would devour us. We may have caged the lion, but He is still not tame.

Even those of us who call ourselves "creative people", often don’t let the beast totally free. We may call ourselves “lion tamers”, but just as the lions “tamed” by Sigfried and Roy showed themselves not to be truly tame, so is this inner beast we call the Creative Process. While we may not be able to tame the beast, maybe we can at least learn to understand it.

So back to Genesis, as I read the story of Genesis like an artist studying the process that another artist goes through, it really hit me that there’s something there – something rich and powerful. So, my next several posts will be reflecting on how each of the 7 Days in the Genesis account have something to teach us as artists. Even if you usually don’t care for the Bible, come back, because I think it’s really pretty cool what I saw there. I’ve only gotten through Day 3 in my own processing so far, and don’t know if the other 4 days will be as rich in imagery as the first 3 were, but there’s only one way to find out…

Art & Fear

2008-04-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

What is it in creating that fills an artist with FEAR? The flow of the creative life force is too much. It often feels as if it will overwhelm the artist – i.e. me. Sometimes I feel as if I will be eaten alive, devoured, by this thing inside me that is crying for release. Is it good or evil? Will it consume me? Is it a roaring lion that fools me now into thinking it will be benign, but when I release it will it tear me to pieces.

In the book Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland speak of the fear of annihilation, but they focus on this fear having to do with not creating. There is another fear of annihilation, however – it’s the fear that if one really completely surrenders to this creative life force that one will be swallowed alive and will find no way to turn back. The creative force is frightening – terrifying.

The day I first started writing this piece (actually several years ago now), I had a very strong manic episode. I felt like a madman. I was running around and could barely stop myself. I would sit down to write in my creativity journal and then find myself jumping up one minute later to go search the Internet. I went down to my studio to work and suddenly started rearranging my house to display my art. Am I the ONLY one??? Or is it we just can’t admit to anyone that we are NUTS sometimes.

I did get some insight into what this “artists mania” is – and it’s not all good. I think sometimes when creative energy, fear and anxiety mix together they create this kind of weird manic energy. But what happens if we remove the fear and anxiety. I would like to feel the creative energy without the fear, without the anxiety. Would it be more peaceful? I think so. Thinking about it, I've had moments when I've experienced the creative force without the crazy weirdness. I call it "being in the groove". Still the Creative Force is nothing to be trifled with. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis' Aslan, the benevolent ruler of Narnia, about which the other animals have a saying: He's not a tame lion! This creative force is not tame, it can be quite frightening in and of itself even without the inner critics (not to mention the outer ones). It is a bit like a Consuming Fire, yet if one simply surrenders oneself to it, peace does come.

I’ve recently been experiencing the peaceful creative flow without the anxiety as I am writing a novel. I’ve never written a novel before, and I have no idea if it will even be publishable when done. I’m not writing it for that, I’m writing it because I have to. I have been writing for the pure joy of it. Of course, I made the mistake of telling friends about it, and so now they expect something from me, and I can feel the anxiety coming in. I am walking forward anyway, and silencing the voices that seek to silence me.

Anxiety is not a popular word these days. I think few of us like to admit that we have it, but I think most of the time it’s become such background noise in our hearts and minds that we don’t think it’s there when it is – we just call it by other names – usually these days we call it “stress”, but calling it by another name doesn’t change its nature or its dynamics.

So what would it feel like to create without fear or anxiety? Without the voices in one’s head that say “What the hell are you doing, you fraud?” Or whatever else they decide to say in the moment to derail us from being creators, from acting in the image that we were made. What did God feel like when He was moving over the waters, over chaos, over void? What did it feel like, God, when you began to create? It must have been PURE joy.

Been Writing (almost) every day!

2008-03-25T12:21:00.001-07:00

The following was originally written on the 43things.com website, under my goal of "Write Every Day".

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been on this site… sorry to all the people who’ve cheered me that I’ve ignored.

Anyway, regarding this goal, I have now been doing this for some months – maybe at least 3 months straight. I started by making sure I wrote in my journal at least 4 pages if I didn’t write on my other projects. That led to writing 31K+ words in the past month, on a novel for which I’ve had the idea for years. The original idea came to me in high school, and then about 6 years ago, I got a whole framework for the story. Now, for the past month, I have actually written good portions of it.

It will need a lot of work in the second draft, but I have already reviewed a few chapters, and I feel it has promise. Even if it doesn’t – is unpublishable or something – right now I don’t care because I am having a blast writing it. I’ve long had a sort of love/hate relationship with my writing. I love it, but it also was grueling at times.

This experience, on the other hand, has been pure joy. I think it’s because I really have been able to turn off the “inner critic”, and not worry about if the writing is good or not (until I’m ready to assess all that), but instead just enjoy myself discovering the narrative and the characters as I go. I have never written a novel before, but have read of novelists describing their characters like little autonomous living beings who don’t always do what they want them to do. That is the part that is so interesting for me: I have this general direction I’m going in, but as I write stuff comes out that surprises me. It’s fun, like watching a movie. It’s coming out of my imagination, but it’s deep from my imagination at times, so even “I” don’t know what’s going to happen until it does. Weird!

I guess I’ve experienced this before in other creative works, when I’m in the “trance of writing” as Eric Maisel puts it, BUT I think the phenomena becomes much more pronounced in a longer piece of fiction where the characters have more times to act and develop.

One last observation: I believe the act of writing every day for two months was a direct cause of this creative burst now, even if it was forced, and even if it was just random thoughts in my journal. The act of free writing anything somehow turns on a part of oneself. The “task oriented” me, thinks it doesn’t count if it’s something I’m writing for “my eyes only”, but the creative side counts everything because she knows she works best when she is allowed to come out and play every SINGLE day!

See more progress on: Write every day

The Creative Process

2007-11-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

I like Eric Maisel's model of the creative process as described in his book Fearless Creating. Rather than focusing on mysterious processes of "inspiration", "incubation", "illumination", he defines the stages of creativity as:

Wishing
Choosing
Starting
Working
Completing
Showing

These stages are more action oriented than descriptive. It's not that those other "mysterious" processes don't exist. They do. It's just that knowing about them doesn't do much to help you when you hit a roadblock. By contrast, Maisel's model is extremely practical. When I first read Fearless Creating, I was sharing a studio with another artist friend. We began to refer to it simply as "the book". Each time, either one of us felt a block, we would go read "the book" and come back a few hours later ready to work. The model enabled us to recognize which stage of the process we were in and exactly what associated anxieties were causing our block. It then gave very practical advice on how to face and overcome these anxieties.

I'm still walking out this process of being a creative person. Sometimes it's been through my ceramics (currently my studio is in storage). Sometimes it's been through writing (right now I've been doing a lot of that). Sometimes it's been through other venues - music, song, poetry, etc. I have realized more and more that if I don't create, I'll die inwardly. So, I choose to create.

Links:
www.ericmaisel.com

Living Hope

2006-12-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

This is a flower on my Easter Cactus. The plant it grew on has a special story behind it.

Years ago, I got a clipping from someone. I rooted it, and then planted it. But then for a long, long time nothing happened. The branches of the plant were a dull green, and semi-wilted. They neither thrived nor died.

One day, as my life was quietly shattering all around me, I sat in my living room and looked at that plant. It seemed so pitiful. Perhaps I identified with it, feeling neither alive nor dead. Quietly, I let out a prayer: "If You can make that plant live, perhaps I could have hope again."

Not long after, I glanced over at the plant one day, and the branch was spouting another leaf! Soon the little transplanted clipping began to grow. And grow and grow and grow. And then surprisingly one spring I looked at it and it had budded, and the buds opened into flowers.

The plant has now been budding and flowering every year for the past 10 years at least. I call it my hope plant. Yes, a bit corny I know, but if you were living my life when the plant first came to life, you'd understand.

This picture is of its most recent flowering. The flowers are very small and I wanted to capture their delicacy up close. I took a number of pictures of these flowers but this one came out especially nice because of the dark background.

Poetery

2006-09-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

"Poetery". I coined this phrase by accident. It was a typo in my first blog. But since I was writing about art including poetry and pottery, I thought poetery might be a new term describing either:

Pottery that is visual poetry, OR
Poetry that is verbal pottery

I can imagine the first more than the second. I think I've seen (and maybe occasionally created) poetery pottery.

But what would poetry that is verbal pottery sound like? Earthy? Fragile? Full of form? Or maybe it would be functional in some way -- like a serving bowl is communal? How might one write a poem that feels like a well crafted ricebowl in the hands?

Muddart

2006-08-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about the Biblical account of creation. It says that man was formed out of the "dust of the earth" and life was breathed into him. As a potter this story holds powerful imagery for me, as I alluded to in my first post on this blog.

Whether one is religious or not, this is kind of an intriguing idea. I seem to remember from college biology 101 that our bodies are mostly made up of carbon and water. I'm no geologist, but might we think of carbon as "dust of the earth", and if we mix that with water might we think of the mixture as mud? And if we breathe life into this mixture might not we consider it art? Certainly that's the process I go through to create a piece of ceramic art such as my raku pot. What turns it from a piece of mud into muddart is the breath of life that I "breathe" into it. Interestingly, the English word "inspiration" comes from Latin meaning "to blow into".

So when I speak of Muddart, there are three aspects of it: (1) the piece of art (some might say "piece of work") that is myself, (2) the art that I, as muddart myself, create, and (3) my appreciation of you other "pieces of work" out there. I am the muddart creating muddart. And if you can receive it, so are all of you!

Blogging mirrors the creative process

2006-08-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am again... Trying to be a more conscientious blogger! I had actually started writing some blogs which I never published.... I don't know why. Here is one short one which I first wrote April 26, 2005:

Blogging Mirrors the Creative Process
Blogging really mirrors the creative process of writing for me. Typically full finished works don't just spring out my typing fingers. No, it's trial and error. I write stream of consciousness, and then go back and edit, and out of that comes something really good... maybe... sometimes...

I love the movie Adaptation, because it captures that inner dialogue so well, that not only writers but many (all?) creative people go through. What I like about blogging is it allows this inner dialogue to spill out on pages.

It's Been Awhile

2005-04-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in this blog for some months. Actually, since the day I started it. Here I am promising myself to do better...

Been writing a lot lately actually. And realize I need to write on this blog regularly, or the few who might stumble across it will give up on ever coming back. Maybe this needs to be my weekly practice?

So far have done very little to promote the blog -- haven't even told my friends or family or colleagues of it's existence. Or if I have, I've given out minimal information. I guess I'm perhaps wanting to touch a different audience than I typically do. But then again, if I don't write in it much what audience will I touch? And if I don't do anything to enable the audience to find me?

But maybe that's what I want? Just a place to go and type for a phantom audience. Not knowing if it exists or not. I can write as if the entire world were my audience (or at least the entire internet-surfing world), but also write for myself alone. Perhaps that would be where the best writing would come?

2004-12-11T20:41:00.000-08:00

Raku pot

My Name is Mudsy

2004-12-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

When I was a baby, my dad wanted to nickname me Mugsy, but my mother wouldn't hear of it. She didn't want a daughter growing up being called Mugsy. So I was preserved from that fate in my formative school years. However, my brother thought it was hilarious. He tormented me with the name, and insisted that all his children would call me Aunt Mugsy.

When the idea for this blog began to be shaped in my brain, and I began to mull over what name to post under, the idea of mud really appealed to me. Why mud? Well, several reasons. First, I love ceramic art. From the time I was a teenager - when I took my first ceramics class - till now la-da-da years later the place where I find the center of my being is in my studio. However, this blog, I hope, will not just be about ceramic art, but about art-making in general - including writing, poetry, music, the creative process, dancing, drawing, singing. Mud appeals to me on that level too, because mud is not just the material I work with, it's also me. Maybe that's not a very flattering image to think about, but only if you don't like mud. I do. What are we anyway but carbon and water and various other minerals and elements all mixed together? What's that? Mud. I like the thought of the first man and woman being formed from the mud of the ground, and then the mud gets a big breath of life, and wow that art starts moving, breathing and talking. So the mud is both the art and the artist.

Thus as all this pondering went through my brain, and I considered how to sign my posts, suddenly my babyhood nickname came to me, but with a twist -- so... meet Mudsy.