Oregon College of Art and Craft Library

CAMILLE: How are you coping with the situation?

AI: There is always going to be some limitation, good or bad. Under any kind of regulation, an artist can always find his creative space. Creativity itself grows out of a restricted condition. I don’t regard limitation strictly as a negative. When one is denied an immediate sharing of artwork and public commentary, the silence voice becomes another kind of creative form. Silence itself has its own critical force” (67-68).

Camille, J.J. “At Home with Ai Wei Wei: an interview by J.J. Camille.” Art in America. January 2012, No. 1, pgs 66 – 69.

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Do you maybe have sky colour?

I occasionally do creativity “preservation” sessions with kiddies. They are wonderful to work with. I once had a little princess (Isabel) and her chess-champ brother (Adam) over. They made this beautiful castle:

with this beautiful damsel:

and this super-strong superhero on his way to save the day:

We made our own custom tower-heads and carriages. When Isabel wanted me to pass her the blue she asked: “do you maybe have sea color?”.

How nice to see the world in your palette.

Then there was Emily the three-eared giant (so that she could listen better) by the lovely princess Isabel:

She is bigger than my husband (what he wouldn’t do for me:))

I recently had another little girl that came over for the second time. The first time was a little bit hard on me, because the little one didn’t speak a lot, which meant, I had to balance out the conversation ALL IN GERMAN (whew!).

So, we set up another date to play and wonder.

This meant getting ready. In preparation, I read the german version of “The Little Prince” aloud to my husband at breakfast in an attempt to loosen the tongue a little, should conversation be up to me, you know? I also removed gold from the palette for the session, as, in our first session, she made EVERYTHING in her best-loved color: gold:).

We decided to make fantasy animals, by drawing our favorite animals, cutting them up and using their parts to create our own animals.

Now, with gold removed from the palette I wondered what was coming. Surprise number one: she talked!! Yay! Then she made the most beautiful peacock, an oh-so-cute owl, a butterfly, a horse within a camp (so that he couldn’t runaway) and a flamingo with an egg hanging mid-air (so cute!!!!!!!).

As you can see the animals are super-cute. I felt nervous…

Would she really want to cut them up?

SO, I cut my animals up and glued my new animal friends into shape. When she was ready I assured her that she didn’t have to cut them up if she didn’t want to. And, to be honest, not sure I would’ve had the courage if they were mine… Then, without any hesitation, she cut off the legs of the peacock!!! [shocked!]

Here are her fantasy animals:

Strutting Rorse and Flutterfly

Flying Chorse

Flamingowl with magic wand (the pink oval shape was the flamingo’s egg)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen: that was natural creativity for you in action.

We can only learn from them.

play for all & all for play

-liesel-

from impossible blossom to impossible sweet blossom

At the moment I dream of visiting Japan and as the cherry blossom season starts in Japan, I thought this beautiful poetry could lighten up Monday for all of us:

From Blossoms

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

PS. I recently watched a really great movie, Cherry Blossoms (original German title Kirschblüten – Hanami), that really moved me – it made me look at my life differently.

ONE

As an artist I seek inspiration all the time. I dream of being in the presence of my muse…. Sometimes it is high tide and other times I maybe have one idea. The problem with having one idea is that there is just ONE. And according to this wise person:

“Nothing is more dangerous than an IDEA when it is the only one you have” – Emile Chartier

Whilst respectfully waiting for Madame Muse to invite me over, I am looking into my ONE idea:

ONE as ITSELF

Neatly nestled in between “oncoming” and “one another” in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

one adj. 1. Being a single entity, unit, object, or living being.                                                     -The Free Dictionary

ONE as a DAY

Today. There’s just one.

“A life lived for tomorrow is crappy today” – Chris Baréz-Brown (author of How to have kick-ass ideas)

ONE as a GIFT

“You’re gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle”

– David Nicholls, One Day

ONE as a SONG

One from the album It all starts with one by Ane Brun

REVOLUTION FROM DREAMS! (from the song)

ONE as the ROOT OF UNITY

Now, technically this is a mathematical term, but don’t you like the ring that it has to it? Among us are those that already realized that making change happen is rooted in unity. When we stand as one, we can make a difference.

ONE to look out for

A lot of you have met the Bhoomies. Now, just to warn you, there is ONE. She has fallen. Don’t let her trick you. The mark of the Bhoomie that she is carrying, is interchangeable. What happened to her is almost unspeakable – she became ugly on the inside!

Should you come across her, it might help her when you switch your inner light to its brightest emergency setting.

So, as the saying goes: “One for all, all for one!”

ONE STEP AT A TIME…and before you know it, you are running!

How true these words have been for me this year!

In 2009 I married a wonderful German guy and in 2010 I joined him in Germany. In my eyes moving to another country isn’t exactly easy. As a part of the residency requirements I was lucky enough to attend German school, where I met some wonderful new people.  We continued German classes at my house afterwards. Living in a new country where you only partially speak the language is quite intimidating; everything in your life feels insecure.  At the time I was studying accountancy, but somehow I lost my way and my whole body seemed to rebel against it.  You know how it is when you’re supposed to be studying, but you can’t pick yourself up from the couch, you just lie there miserably with ZERO motivation. This was quite a challenge for someone like me, who prides myself on never giving up… a very important lesson! Sometimes it’s okay to put something aside and sometimes it’s even acceptable to quit!  Before I studied accountancy I studied art. I then started my own business in South Africa before the move to England. During the six years I lived in England I experienced the most devastating creative block ever which in my suspicion is how I ended up working as an accountant and studying accountancy.

Strangely enough my creative block seemed to slowly fade, with the time that I had on my hands, here in Germany.

New Year’s Eve 2010. Normally my sister and I would have a little ritual, where we would write down all our resolutions for the New Year and evaluate the one’s from the year before to celebrate or mourn its fruition. This year however, with my sister being in South Africa and my new German friends not being that interested, something else came along. In Germany, on New Year’s they play a game called Bleigießen (Molybdomancy in English). It is a game, where you melt a little tin/lead figure (e.g. a horse shoe) in a spoon over a candle and then you drop it into cold water to see what shapes it make. Mine formed a dung beetle with five balls of dung! I couldn’t wait to get home to Google the significance of dung beetles.  I found that they do have quite an amount of followers. With its importance in nature and its sacred status among the ancient Egyptians, I decided that this wasn’t a bad sign at all, and there and then decided that each of the 5 “dung” balls would represent a project for the year. I keep this on my desk to constantly remind me of my goals.

Dung beetle and five balls of dung

I asked my husband, if he would like to join me in working through Julia Cameron’s “The Artist Way”, and to my surprise he agreed. This was so lucky for me, because though I am persistent, I am not always that consistent, which is what you need to be to write your morning pages for twelve weeks in a row. My husband has this super quality of just getting on with it and getting things done. (“Morning pages” consists of writing three full pages of ‘stream of consciousness writing’ first thing in the morning, every morning, for the whole 12 weeks of the program.)

I decided to ease back into my creativity slowly and made “One step at a time” my motto for the year. When I didn’t know what to write in my morning pages, I just kept writing “One step at a time, one step at a time”, until I had something to say again.  By June I have completed twelve paintings and I held my first solo exhibition, my husband and I have partly completed a children’s book and I am in the process of designing a new illustration range. The books that absolutely supported me through the process so far are The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and Living the Creative Life by Rice Freeman-Zachery. The first one helped me deal with my creative block and the latter kept me going. Super inspiring!

I am so excited that I am able to practice my first love as a full-time career…one step at a time…savouring the journey.