School House Craft Conference

I'm getting very excited about the upcoming School House Craft Conference happening here in Seattle next month.

I was lucky enough to find out about it last year in time to attend the very first one and I have to say I wasn't holding out huge hopes for a stimulating, let alone constructive, experience. It wasn't personal.  I didn't know any of the organizers then. I guess it was mostly a knee jerk reaction to the fact that it was something put together by well meaning individuals and low profile groups as opposed to some giant, corporate machine. Old assumptions die hard I guess.

I smile now at myself. I have such tremendous respect for the handmade, small creative business, independent artist, movements. I LOVE the story of creative types of all kinds just doing what they love to do, telling their stories on blogs, and selling their work on once tiny upstart venues like Etsy, all the while unconsciously innovating and paving the way for thousands of other creative types to embrace their passions and gifts. I LOVE the way it all evolved. I LOVE that brilliant minds too introverted to shout from soap boxes have voices and are heard because of blogs, because we need them, their minds, their passions. I LOVE that handmade has strengthened the desires to act more locally, to support artists of all kinds, to see the value in objects made with true care and true quality of time and material. I LOVE that handmade has offered up support, information, instruction, and hand holding that we all sometimes need to brave the doubts in our pasts and try to make something of our own. I LOVE that handmade has reminded us that it is okay, no - it's good, to mend and make due with what we have.

But I digress......

That first School House Conference was amazing and it changed my life forever. I know of at least one person who ended up with a book deal as a direct result of attending that conference. Nothing so dramatic happened to me, but as my personal growth style would dictate, the information slowly seeped into my being. I began to take myself more seriously and to use the tools I gained to bolster that seriousness with things I could actually do to go from sitting still into movement.

I started a product photography business. While that is a work in progress and I am paying my dues, learning quickly how to do it better, it has given me a sense of legitimacy as a photographer and creative professional. I'm not making bank. I'd be surprised if I were making any kind of profit right now. But, it feels good to be on that road, to be paid to do what I do. There is a kind of pride in that that's hard get any other way.

I haven't given up on my first love, the more artistic photographs that I love to make. I'm gaining confidence there too, in part due to SHC. It's just a more mysterious route to success there. 

So, I'm getting excited for this year's conference. There will be many familiar faces and new ones too. The class schedule seems to hold much promise and my only apprehension this year is in deciding which classes to choose. They all look so good.

Consuming words rather than images

On a rare occasion I feel like I get overloaded with imagery to the point that I become numb to sights that would have left me sighing and my heart thumping just a week ago. So, I'm trying to take a break, a vacation, from Pinterest, Etsy, Flickr, Blogs, etc. It's not easy. That's a lot of time and room in my brain to fill up. 


On the other hand, I have been craving words. Luckily for me, my husband prophetically gave me a book for mother's day which I'm trying hard not to devour in one giant gulp. It's called, If You Want to Write: A book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland.   It first appeared on bookshelves in the late 1930s and has inspired generations and while it appears to speak to writing specifically, in truth it's about all kinds of creativity because it's all related.


I thought I would share a little from the first chapter.  (paraphrased except where indicated)

Everybody is original:

If one speaks from themselves and not who they should be, they are an original. This is important because self-trust is one of the most important ingredient in creativity.

Creative power and imagination is in everyone, as is the need to express and share it. But, it often disappears sometime in our growing up. How?

"...we let dry obligation take its place; because we don't respect it in ourselves and keep it alive by using it; and because we don't keep it alive in others by listening to them." p.11

"...the only way to love a person is by listening to them and seeing and believing...in the poet in them... by doing this, you keep...the poet alive and allow it flourish." p. 11

Critics undermine us because:

 "...all people who try to write [be creative] (and all people long to, which is natural and right) become anxious, timid, contracted become perfectionists, so terribly afraid that they may put something down that is not as good as Shakespeare." p.12

"It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egoists that survive." p. 13

Her advice:

"...you must practice not perfunctorily, but with all your intelligence and love.... Work freely and rollickingly as though talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at the know-it-alls, jeers, critics, doubters." p. 14

I think what I like most about this book so far is that it is helping to confirm some very basic, deeply originating beliefs that have been part of me since the beginning of time, but which I call into doubt on occasion.  Those beliefs are that everyone is original, that we all have something to say, and that we are all creative beings who often forget that fact. 


Color me inspired. How about you?

Thank you technology.

I haven't been visiting Flickr very often over the last year or so. No real reason really.. just part of the ebb and flow of my attention span. But today I uploaded a few things and poked around my contacts gallery for a bit. 

With fresh eyes, it suddenly hit me hard and clear, that this is nothing less than an abundant celebration of life. Whether it be tree, rock, child, cloth, graphic, paint, body, sky, light, dark, sad, happy... it's all such a pounding, throbbing, screaming declaration of love for life. 

Passion is what I love most about creative folks, and I'm astounded at their ability to communicate such deep, rich, profound emotion in pixels and light. 

My husband and I were recently discussing the relative merits of the online world for those of us who happen to be introverts (of which he and I are two ripe examples), and it helped to clarify for me why I get so uncomfortable when I hear folks lamenting the dangers of an "artificial" connection to others via the computer. My flickr contact gallery is a prime example of why I think the online, artistic, creative, community is so valuable. There I am inspired not only to own and nurture my own artistic development, but my development as a human being. 

Pretty pictures can be a pitfall of unrealistic expectation for one's life, since life is utterly messy and pretty pictures are not. But, if one can firmly plant one's feet to the ground and realize that pretty pictures are the lens through which to view the world, we find we choices. Divorce, loss, finances, stress can all be real and difficult, and noticing the way light passes through a glass or water, or how beautiful even a weed can be doesn't change that difficulty. It does, however, give us a wider context, a focus on what is right along what is wrong in our lives. Without the online creative community, without Flickr, Etsy, Pinterest, etc., I for one would be missing so much beauty and so many reminders to find the beauty in the "real" world. 

So, thank you technology, for making my life richer, deeper, wider, more passionate, more rooted in the world around me, in the earth and dirt and nature that gradually gave rise to you. Thank you, in all your artificiality, for bringing me closer to the natural, the actual, the literal... for being the lens through which I discovered a world, outside your magic screen, that I never would have known existed.... and a me that I thought quite impossible. Thanks computer, and everyone who ever contributed to you.

I think we will be alright. I think we know how to stay human no matter how much technology we surround ourselves with. I think we know, in our cells, what's most important... and those who don't, probably never would have... regardless of what happens to sit on their desk.