What really matters

This post is not really about art, but I felt the need to share pieces of my life that feed the undercurrent for my work.

This weekend I had to face the fact that our lives are fleeting and temporary. I spent time with a family member who has stage four cancer. She told me she just hopes for more time. That statement keeps haunting me as I sit here and perseverate on all that happened in the last few days. It got me thinking about what matters in life and what really counts in the long run.

Over the last few years, my husband and I have had a lot of conversations and made a lot of changes. We live a quiet life in the country and try to keep things simple. We bought an old farmhouse and have spent the last five years renovating. We keep a garden in the summer and try to provide as much of our own food as we can. We reduce, reuse, and recycle every day. We help each other make time for our passions; art for me and music for him. We work hard to make the focus of our lives spending time with people we love, and doing the things that bring us joy.

We started making these changes as we became more and more disillusioned about what was going on around us. Our society spends too much time being consumers and worrying about having shiny cars and big houses. We want to look like models and live like celebrities. And if that isn't enough, there is no focus on the here and now. Just when you get something accomplished in your life, people are asking you about your next move. You graduate college, it's when are you going to get a job. You find the "right" person, it's when are you going to get married, buy a home, have children, and retire. And god forbid you don't have a five year plan and a desire to climb the corporate ladder.

I'll be the first to admit that these things all used to have meaning for me. I thought that was what we were supposed to strive towards. As I grew into myself more and more, I realized it was not what I wanted.

Even with all the changes my husband and I have made in our lives, it still give me pause to hear those simple words; I just want more time. With as much as I think about making this life count, I still have to remind myself to slow down and enjoy all the little things that make up my day.

I have to put tasks out of my mind and enjoy watching my daughter play and walk across the room for the first time.

I have to put my day job out of my mind when I get home so that I can enjoy my family.

I have to shut off the television and make my way to the studio and pick up a brayer and some ink.

I have to put my need to "produce" work out of my mind and just truly enjoy the act of creating.

So the gift from this incredibly emotional weekend is a lesson; Enjoy each moment in time because it may be your last. Savor it, live it, and love it. Do what really matters.

New Focus

It has been a long time since I have been able to post on this blog. So much has been going on in my life over the last year since baby girl came into our lives. I still cannot believe it has been almost a year! I have lived a very blessed life to nurture and hold that little girl as close to my heart and as much as possible. I have had little time for art, although I grab a few moments here and there. In order to keep myself engaged, I entered a print exchange with the Four Oceans press which I worked on late at night and when I was able to get some precious studio time. Nothing like a deadline to get one motivated. I have also continued to work on the series of prints based on the silhouette of Mount Mansfield. I have pulled several prints, but have yet to find the time to photograph them in order to share them with you. I promise to get to it soon!

This leads me to the direction that I have been contemplating over the last few weeks. Due to the lack of time I have in the studio, I have been trying to devise a plan to meet all my studio needs as well as my need to nurture baby girl as much as possible. Although monotype is one of my favorite modes of expression, it takes a lot to get into the mindset in order to let my muse begin to work it's magic and channel my fullest creativity. With a now crawling and almost walking baby, its hard to find extended periods of time in the studio to find the groove and develop some work that reflects my minds eye.

I have been reading up on some blogs of other artists with the same issue of balancing art and motherhood. One common link of answers has been to find 'hidden moments' to steal away and work in the studio. Given this, I have decided to really focus on relief work over the next year. I work in several mediums but I am finding it hard to fully explore each idea or design without a lot of time to commit to each form of printmaking. My challenge has been getting completely relaxed and into the mindset late at night to connect to my creativity after giving baby girl my attention all day long. So, I am now choosing to focus on relief print because I think I will have the most success with using 'stolen moments' to fully explore the medium with each design or idea that comes from my muse.

With this new focus, I will also need to work on doing a lot of sketching to get the creative juices flowing. When I do monotype, the magic happens in the process of creating the plate and messing with the inks. With Relief, a lot of this happens on paper. The beauty of sketching is that you can do it anywhere, anytime. I can then work on cutting the plate in stages. Although I like to keep some spontaneity in my cutting process, I can easily do it in stages when there is a need for interruption to attend to my non-art life. Printing can be done late at night or when I have some childcare available to give me the time to pull the prints.

The other stage of this exciting new plan is to work outside the box of the formal edition constraints. Since running large editions can take a lot of time and is not the most enjoyable part of the work for me, I need to rethink how I can explore this medium. There are a lot of contemporary printmakers out there who follow the beat of a different drummer and fully explore each plate by layering different designs and utilizing different colors to make either monoprints or small editions of prints with repetitive images. This allows you to maximize each design by changing colors, composition, and layering other designs to create even more compositions. I think it also adds a really creative and joyful way to explore this medium, which is why I love printmaking. There is so much you can do with it!

I added this print above because it is entitled "hope". I have a new hope for my artwork as well as a new hope for our world and our country. So Happy New Year and here is to hope!