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Dec 17

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12/17 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Wow! After posting yesterday’s contest reminder, I didn’t have to spend much time waiting for entries — six of them! Very tough to select a winner this week, but someone has to receive the $10 amazon.com gift certificate — and it’s Debra Bellon, for her beautiful poem. Congratulations, Debra!

Waiting
She hears something moving in the leaves:
a rustle, like a velvet skirt twisting against itself
in a cold wind. She does not move, not even
to brush away the snow that has gathered
in the tender indentations of her neck.
Another half-season: rain to ice and ice to sleet,
the days grow shorter, the night stretches out
like the path of a thousand hours.
There is nothing there at all; she walks inside,
stunned by the quiet there, longing for the time
(not long ago) when she watched them sleep,
their lips rounding and flattening
in airy soliloquies.
Of all her dreams there were only ever two that mattered:
the one in which she hurries,
and the one in which she waits.

 

From Jen Johnson: “Had fun thinking about this week’s prompt; kept bringing back memories of my pregnancies and the waiting therein. Didn’t have the time and focus for a new written submission, so instead I tinkered around with one of my favorite pregnancy photos.”

waiting

 

From Karen Winters, a painting entitled “I think it was the Fourth of July.” Karen writes: “I painted this last summer inspired by our visit to Chicago. The question it prompts is…how many minutes of our lives do we spend waiting around?  Waiting for the light to change…waiting for the barista to fix the coffee…waiting for the car to get lubed…waiting for inspiration to hit…waiting for the big opportunity or the special person that will magically transform our lives. Only the clock at Marshall Fields knows…and it’s not telling. In the past few years, I have minimized the annoyance of waiting time by always carrying a sketchbook with me. Even five minutes can be turned into a drawing exercise that helps keep my eye sharp.  Time is the only thing we can’t buy more of. So it’s a good policy to look for ways to use those waiting moments, even if it’s in restorative, restful reverie.”

2640818772_efc5043c92_o

 

From Kelly Warren, a double set of poem and image pairings(!):

 
out_there___
 
Waiting for the day we can go “Out There,”
to see what’s awaiting us past this glare,
to see what adventures are beyond this glass,
to see what the world will bring to pass,
When we’re old enough to remember our dreams.
 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
two_chairs
 
Waiting for the day you’ll sit with me,
Talk with me,
Have a beer with me.
Waiting for the day you’ll sit with me
and melt my cares away.
 

From Cathy Jennings, an image created in Adobe Illustrator:

 

polarbearcard082

 

From Cathy Coley, a poem and image pairing:

1210081257

Waiting
December and the geese and leaves
are finally gone from my lake.
One seagull one cormorant
found warm calm waters
a mile inland from the sea.
I am mistaken about the geese.
It’s seventy three degrees.
A honking call echoes
from shoreline to shoreline.
Grey the sky, grey the water,
the bench and branches, all of it grey
waiting for rain whose forecast
lingers from day on to day
but never seems to wet this dry peninsula.
The black dog barks at another walking, both leashed.
I still wait for rain, watch the clouds
cover sky in gunmetal thunderheads,
wish them to snow
I know will never come.

 

From me (Miranda): I anticipated writing something about waiting for Christmas, but I ended up waiting for life to return to “normal” after an ice storm hit New England and we lost power and heat for 36 hours. The first day we sat at home by the fireplace, waiting. It might have been fun and relaxing, but the baby was fussy and I found myself trying to entertain two small children in the dim chill of my living room without much inspiration. No coffee maker, no computer. No electronic babysitter. As the day wore on, I realized that we were waiting for something that might not show up anytime soon. And it didn’t. There was a lot more waiting in store, and I found it an interesting challenge to try to enjoy the present moment and not just focus on the wait. I did capitalize on the chance to take some photographs of the frozen landscape. Here’s one of my favorites.

dsc_0123

 

This week’s prompt: “Gift”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, December 23. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Dec 16

6 Comments

Waiting for a few contest entries!

The crazy weather in various parts of the US, combined with the impending holidays, means that many of us are running around like lunatics just a tad busier than usual. Still, I hope that a few of you will be able to pull off a quick entry for this week’s creativity contest prompt: waiting. C’mon — I know that the token $10 amazon.com gift certificate is starting to seem worthwhile, given our new ecomonic realities! 🙂

Dec 16

3 Comments

Neo-Maternalism: Contemporary Artists’ Approach to Motherhood

From the Brooklyn Rail, an extensive and personal exploration into motherhood and art, written by Sharon Butler. Three excerpts:

Ever since the Abstract Expressionists held forth at the Cedar Tavern in the 1950s, the unwritten rule has been that making art is a consuming obsession that leaves no time or space for worldly responsibilities like childrearing. Before the AbExers, an artist like Gaugin left his wife and kids in Denmark to pursue painting in Paris, and later Tahiti. With artists—unlike, say, poets, novelists, or filmmakers—there’s an expectation of an ascetic, blinkered life focused exclusively on making art. Artists with kids have often ignored them while spending all their time in the studio. In Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston, Guston’s daughter Musa Meyer tells the heartbreaking story of a disengaged father who had little room in his life for her. So, why then, closing in on the final years of fertility, with scant investigation or evidence that the outcome would be salutary, did I stop using birth control in 1998 and let fate take its course? My decision was more intellectual than emotional. I reasoned that I was an artist. If I did get pregnant, wouldn’t this primal experience strengthen and inform my work? If I didn’t, then I wouldn’t have any regrets. I rolled the dice, and three months later the pregnancy test was positive…

The accepted wisdom among the first generation of feminist artists who disdained baby-making was that women who reproduce spend at least a year or two making idiosyncratic, excessively inward-looking “baby art” and then, if they are lucky, eventually get their wits about them and return to their previous, more serious work. It’s a condescending view, perhaps, but to my mind more or less valid. Growing a baby from a seed is an inexorably life-altering, eye-opening, intense experience, and always will be. In the first stages, child-rearing is so existentially consuming and preoccupying that it cannot help but suffuse any artwork….

Of course, it would be naïve to contend that nowadays reconciling motherhood and art making is always a smooth and effortless endeavor. But contemporary female artists are more determined than their predecessors to overcome barriers to harmonizing the two aspects of life rather than acquiesce to them. Emerging artist Jennifer Wroblewski, mother of a six-month-old, was originally discouraged when older female artists she knew intimated that her pregnancy would adversely affect her career. Rather than accept the projected consequences of professional indifference and potential dismissal, Wroblewski decided to curate an exhibition tentatively titled “Mother/Mother” that would explore ideas garnered from the process of parenting….

Read the full article here.

Dec 15

8 Comments

Cathy: CH-CH-CH-Changes…

cathyofficeFor this blog post, I didn’t want to moan about how we’ve been passing a handful of colds, sinus infections, ear infections, etc. since K had strep a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. So I won’t, but I couldn’t let go of mentioning it, of course. Tis the season; the temperature has dropped, schools are breeding grounds and buses are transportation devices for snuffy noses and coughs not covered. We’ll get over this round eventually, this is the one where we cough at night, but heads are so stuffed by day, the world sounds like I’m underwater in an old-fashioned diving suit, with the fishbowl headpiece.

12122008panaramaoffice-004What I want to do is give the update on something — I can’t even remember where I first mentioned it — my own blog post or a comment thread. But we did it. The room of my own that never was is now more populated. My husband, who has been roaming the house for a free space for his laptop for over two years, now has a space to do the design side jobs that make up the difference my lack of income brings for our family of six, plus cat and dog. S has already spilled hot cocoa on my husband’s keyboard, while sitting in Honey’s seat with an ice pack on his shin. The dramatic crawl from the bottom of the stairs where he stumbled a bit should win an Academy Award. Too bad I didn’t get it on film.

12122008panaramaoffice-001We’re still in the design phase: pictures need re-hanging, the box of papers to be filed has grown and yes, Honey’s desk is my old kitchen table, which was previously being used as a place to pile tools in the garage. I also need to re-organize my bulletin board, but I can live with it like this until the moment I get so frustrated with the chaos of it, I rip everything off of it to start over. I tried for a panorama view from my desk, which was facing out into the room and now faces the wall, but at least I still have a view out the window. [Click on any image for a larger view.] There are still mini-messes by everyone hovering, but for the moment, they are to a minimum. In other words, the sacrifice wasn’t so great. In fact, I now get to see my husband more now that he’s not wandering for a workspace to call his own. So this is my executive seat, in my humble corner, with my big bookcases, giant file cabinet, and that’s my mother-in-law in residence with Baby C. And to circle back for a revisit to paragraph one, we all feel crappy. But that’s just because of the colds. We’re pretty happy with the current arrangement.

Dec 12

4 Comments

Open House

Our latest collection of interesting tidbits from the Creative Construction community:

  1. Liz Hum shares some important thoughts on happiness.
  2. Kristine Coblitz finished her outline draft. (Applause!)
  3. Carmen Torbus turned 32 and stated her intentions for the year.
  4. Kate Hopper appreciates her precious baby girl, just because.
  5. Brittany Vandeputte may have finished her revisions, despite the onslaught of bad health. (More applause!)
  6. Jen Johnson wrote an open letter to President-Elect Obama and other officials regarding the disastrous Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.
  7. Mary Duquette found a moment to be writer and mother, without being at odds.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends.

Dec 11

7 Comments

Kelly: Emotional Writing? Superwoman Unraveling…

So let me just tell you about my last week or so. I think it’ll be emotional writing at its finest. I had my last arts festival of the fall this past weekend: Market Days in Tallahassee. It’s a very large show, and this year was the first time I’ve participated in it. It’s also an indoor show, and I was on a center aisle, which meant I had to develop some sort of side and back walls with no tent. Over a month ago, I talked to DH about this. I did have a plan for my pipe and drape, and I drew it out for him. Five weeks before the show, mind you. Well, the Monday before the show, my plan was still a pile of PVC sitting on the side of the house. I had to work late two nights last week, Tuesday and Thursday. I had my first intense vestibular rehab appointment on Wednesday (you can read about that here). Each night when I got home, there was some crisis or other to deal with, and, of course, DH couldn’t help the girls with their homework that week because he was too busy making my pipe set up, which he’s had FIVE WEEKS to do. To add to that he said, “You’re going to have to start helping the girls with their homework. I don’t have the patience.” So okay, I guess it doesn’t matter that I get minimal help with the girls in the morning because he leaves for work at 6:15am, and I guess it doesn’t matter than he and the girls get home at 4pm as opposed to my 5:30-6:00pm, just in time for dinner and baths…unless, of course, he’s gone to work out before he picks up the girls…I can’t remember the last time I had time to work out. He doesn’t have the patience to help the girls with their homework, so that now falls to me as well? When am I supposed to do this?

Typically DH thankfully does load up my van for me for my shows and I’m very grateful for that, but since he hadn’t quite finished with the PVC and I had to teach a class Thursday night, that left the load up to me on Friday morning before I hit the road. Did I mention the part about the miserable cold I’ve been battling for the past two weeks? Blowing snot everywhere, I was, and still am. I usually travel to shows with a fellow artist friend. We had planned to leave Jacksonville at 10am, but she called me about 9:45am and told me she had decided to leave at 9am and would just see me over there during set up. Did I tell you that DH made the pipe set up for her as well? The same pipe set up I was trying to corral and load in to my van when she called to tell me she had already left? Are you feeling my frustration and lack of appreciation? By the time I got over to Tallahassee, I had exhausted a whole box of tissues and frankly was in a foul mood. She was already nearly set up, just waiting on me to deliver her the pipe set up that my DH built. When I apparently wasn’t moving fast enough, she reminded me that she needed to leave by 3pm to get back to Jacksonville for her son’s game. Fine. I’ve got a miserable cold, I feel like crap, but I’m moving as fast as I can. Gimme a freakin’ break.

I made it through the show, fairly decent sales given the economy, but not really decent enough to warrant the higher booth fee and added cost of having to create pipe and drape. Trying to find the positive, at least I was inside, not outside battling the weather. When I got home Sunday night at nearly 10pm, as par for the course on most of my trips, the house was a disaster and DH was grumpy from having the girls all weekend by himself. He doesn’t seem to realize that these shows are no walk in the park. They are a pain in the a** and I’m working that very same a** off the entire weekend, but no rest for the weary. I was back to work on Monday morning, only to come home to a very grumpy husband and the girls’ homework staring at me at the end of the day.

Then it was back to therapy Tuesday afternoon for more dizzy torture. Tuesday night was “Polar Express” night at the girls’ school, and I had already promised them we would go, dizzy nausea be damned. To make things easier, I figured we’d just go to Chick-fil-A for dinner (their favorite) and then head over to the school. I thought since DH had had them all weekend by himself and was so grumpy Monday afternoon that getting them out of the house for a while would give him a break as well. I got home a little early since my therapy ended at 4pm, so I beat them home, but the minute they got home, things went downhill. Sarah was distraught because she lost her gold locket on the playground, the same gold locket that I only let her wear because she promised and promised and promised again that she wouldn’t try to take it off. Well, apparently she tried to take it off and lost it. I have to admit I wasn’t too happy about it either since, in my stupidity, I had put the locket on a 14K gold chain when the cheap chain it came with turned her neck green. Learned that lesson!

We made it through that drama and I got them loaded up in the van to head to Chick-fil-A. On the exit ramp from I-95, as we made the turn onto Duval Road, Sarah’s car seat dumped to the center of the van. Apparently in his grumpiness Monday afternoon, DH had not checked to make sure it was locked in correctly when he reinstalled it after unloading my van. Of course, I was on a road with absolutely no where to pull over, while Sarah was laying sideways in her car seat as I tried to keep her steady with one hand reaching behind me and one hand on the wheel. Livvie, bless her heart, was trying to push her back up with all her might. We found a spot to pull over near the light to Chick-fil-A, and while I was getting her resettled and the seat tightened in correctly, the dozens of extra cars spilling out of the Chick-fil-A parking lot caught my eye. Great! It’s Cow Night at Chick-fil-A! Whoo hoo! No way we’re getting in there, so we went through the drive through. The server forgot half my order, which, of course, I didn’t notice until we were already moving on down the road to the school.

Now back up a minute and let me put all this in context. While dealing with all this family and art show drama for the past week, I’ve had a hellacious month at work. Long story short (though this is already a long story, isn’t it?), I have college-wide responsibility for the Student Life department (we have five campuses), yet I don’t have college-wide authority over the people who carry out our program. Yeah, doesn’t make sense to me either. That means while I’m working on deadline putting our college-wide calendar together (click here to see this term’s calendar as an example), the rest of our staff does not possess, shall we say, the same urgency I have. Well, hell no! They aren’t the ones responsible for getting the damned thing written, designed, printed and delivered on time! They’re just responsible for getting me their information to include in it! Remember my whole, “I think I just might go teach elementary school discussion”? This is part of the reason why.

Let me add just one more thing. I am the president of the Greater Jacksonville Chi Omega Alumnae Chapter. Now understand that I didn’t KNOW I was the president of the Greater Jacksonville Chi Omega Alumnae Chapter until I started getting phone calls and emails from people asking for information. I finally learned the previous president had told everyone (at a meeting I missed) that I was the new president, and neglected to inform me or give me any of the materials and giant box of stuff to carry out the job. She and I had had one discussion in which she asked me if I’d consider it, and I told her I’d think about it. Apparently she took that as a yes. When I learned this, I sent out an email to our chapter trying to find another volunteer but have had no luck. In the meantime, our annual Holiday Tea is December 21. Guess who’s responsible? Guess who was stuffing and labeling the 157 invites when the girls and DH got home Tuesday, Sarah distraught from having lost her necklace?

So what happens when you’re trying to live by the “Someday is Today” mantra and your Superwoman powers start to unravel? What happens when you have so much in your brain that you constantly walk into a room only to completely forget why the heck you walked in there? What happens when you need to tell your daughters to put something on, only the name of those rubber and canvas things that go on your feet totally escapes you? I guess I have to take some responsibility for my own downfall. There are things that I don’t have to do. I don’t have to sell my wares on the art show circuit, yet we’ve invested so much in my business that I feel obligated to bring some cash back into our family coffers. I don’t have to be the Greater Jacksonville Chi Omega Alumnae Chapter president (until I can beg someone else to take over), yet my name is out there, and I’m not the type of person who will let the ball drop. And yes, I do have to carry out my college-wide responsibilities at work, but it sure would be nice to actually get paid for that college-wide role, not just have it given to me because the powers that be know that I’ll get the job done (don’t even get me started on how I’m supposed to coordinate rugby clinics at the college for the UK rugby team coming to Jacksonville when my particular campus doesn’t even have facilities for such a thing). So what happens when all this happens? You find a way to carry on, that’s what happens. You thank the good Lord you have the skills to actually create wares to sell on the art show circuit. You thank God that people think highly enough of you to give you responsibility, knowing that you are the best person for the job. You thank Him for blessing you with a fairly understanding husband, two incredible little girls, and a roof over your head. And you write it all down. You get it all out by venting to those you know “get it”. You take a deep breath. You have a glass of wine. Maybe a little chocolate. And then you say, “Hmmmm…okay, I feel just a little bit better now.”

Dec 10

7 Comments

12/10 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

A warm glow — and ominous smoke — from this week’s contest entries for the prompt “fire.” Our winner is Juliet Bell, who sent in a beautiful pen-and-ink drawing from her archives. Juliet writes: “I was never happy with the tree reflection, and I can see now there are other things that need fixing, but I did like the way the fire came out.” Totally dreamy, I say. Juliet, your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

fireside-xmas

 

From Cathy Coley, a poem (glad this particular scenario didn’t turn out differently!):

Fire

Prometheus’s booty set loose amongst us.
Evidence: a match tip burn on my bed.
Who was in my room,
found matches,
and curious,
struck one for the hell of it
and walked away?

Apparently those invisible devils
Huh, Not Me, and I Dunno.

 

From Karen Winters, a scary take on fire that I hadn’t even considered:

When I was younger, growing up in Southern California, I don’t remember the wildfires becoming such an annual event, like the tornadoes of the midwest or the hurricanes of the gulf coast. Yes, there were the occasional big fires, like the one that swept through Bel-Air, or the Malibu conflagrations. But they weren’t a ‘given’ with the advent of every Santa Ana wind.

Times have changed. With so many more million people living here it only takes one or two small accidents to spark a firestorm. A welder’s spark. A bird landing awkwardly on a power wire and blowing out a transformer. A carelessly put-out cigarette. A car parked on dry grass where the catalytic converter can cause a sudden flame. And those are accidental starts, we’re not even considering the cases of arson.

When the Santa Ana winds blow in October and November, nowadays the smallest error can cause hundreds to lose their homes and even some loss of life.

I don’t see a solution to this problem. We are out of dwelling space as homes are built among chapparal hillsides. Even with a defensible space, embers fly for miles, igniting rooftops far away.

Several years ago there was a big fire in Ojai. I don’t live there, but we were driving up the coast to Santa Barbara and saw the plume soon after it had begun. I painted this in my sketchbook to remember the occasion.

 
fire-in-ojai
 

From me (Miranda): My firstborn son, Russell, turned 18 last night. It was hard not to focus on the fact that I probably won’t be seeing him on his birthday again for quite a while — at least for the next four years. A happy birthday evening, but bittersweet.

rbday

 

This week’s prompt: “Waiting”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, December 16. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Dec 9

1 Comment

Cathy: Writer’s Handbook

Most people peruse right past all the weird little articles and ads in the backs of magazines, but not me. I find all manner of wonderful surprises in the nether region of the print world. Some of us avid readers have to literally read every little thing. Recently, I was trying to finish off a month old mag I had lying around, in the same way I read all sides of the cereal box during breakfast as a kid. That endeavor wrought this gem from the back of the Winter 2008 issue of UU WORLD:

The New Writer’s Handbook: 2007 and The New Writer’s Handbook: Volume 2. Ed. By Philip Martin. Scarletta Press, 2007 and 2008: $16.95. This annual anthology of articles by notable authors, journalists, writing instructors, editors, agents, and literary bloggers offers writers advice on their craft and careers, including how-to pieces and topics on professional issues and the creative process.

I immediately regretted using my recent winnings from the weekly creativity contest for a Santa purchase. I may have to wait until father time welcomes his new baby — and the approach of my birthday — to splurge on this for myself, but maybe the rest of our writers might be able to benefit from my neat find. Maybe you can drop a stocking hint to your husband, by leaving your laptop open on the kitchen table where he can see this blog 😉  Enjoy!

Dec 8

11 Comments

Writing about your emotions helps healing

From yesterday’s Boston Globe:

WHILE POLICY WONKS debate how to deliver high-quality healthcare without skyrocketing costs, here’s one opportunity for some cheap, evidence-based medicine. In a recent study, 36 men were asked to write for 20 minutes on three consecutive days. Half the men had to write about their deepest emotions related to a traumatic experience, and the other half had to write about time management. Several weeks later, all the men were given a standard skin biopsy wound. After another couple weeks, the men who had written about the traumatic experience were healing significantly better. It’s believed that writing about a traumatic experience has a latent emotional impact that benefits the immune system.

Weinman, J. et al., “Enhanced Wound Healing after Emotional Disclosure Intervention,” British Journal of Health Psychology (February 2008).

Hmmm….maybe that’s one reason why morning pages are so good for you…?

Dec 5

8 Comments

Breakfast with Lori

We’re off to Portland, Oregon, this week for “Breakfast” with Lori Wahl: apparel designer, blogger, and mother of two. Lori is also a friend of Bec Thomas‘s. (There sure is a lot of creative mo-jo in the northwest corner of the US! What do you guys have going on up there??)

loriCC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
LW: I am a married, 38-year-old mother of two — Elsie, 6 years old, and Ewan, 2 years old. I am a freelance apparel designer working for various clients who need design and product development work. My sister and I own a children’s apparel company called Mister Judy. We are still trying to get it off the ground, but will not be able to devote a lot of time to it until all children (hers and mine) are in school. I also teach a couple of web-based classes at the University of Idaho for the Clothing, Textile, and Design degree program.

CC: Tell us about your design work and your other creative endeavors.
LW: The Mister Judy line is a lot of fun since both my sister and img_2927I like kids’ clothing with a retro vibe. We do a more subtle retro feel…and really look for good prints to use. I love to knit…and now with winter coming I have more projects planned. I sew as well….and then every once in a while I get the urge to redecorate a room…and out comes all the magazines and design books that I hoard.

[At left: Here is one of my Christmas projects…leg warmers for all the little dancers in my life.]

CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
LW: I started my blog as a way to foster my creativity. I saw so many bloggers regularly doing crafty things and posting them that I thought a blog would help me to more creative things on a regular basis. img_1196Unfortunately I don’t always have a creative post, but when I do post something that I’ve made or seen, I receive great comments from my friends and readers. It’s my regular readers that keep me posting regularly. Early on I participated in some online craft exchanges. You had to have a blog to participate as a way to learn about one another. I have made some really great on line friends through blogging.

[Above right: I knitted these mitts last year.]

CC: Do you find that your blog keeps you “honest” creatively? Meaning that you have a place to state your intentions — and that you need to keep producing work in order to have something creative to blog about?
LW: Yes, the blog does keep me on track. If I announce that I’m going to do something, I will follow through. Sometimes not on the original timelines, but eventually I will finish the announced work and post it.

studio-spaceCC: Where do you do your creative work?
LW: I have a studio in the basement. I needed my own space for my freelance work, but also a place to leave a project-in-process out while it was in-process. For some reason, if I put a project away, it never sees the light of day again and therefore does not become complete.

CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work?
LW: I wish I did have a regularly scheduled block of time for creativity. I fault myself for that. It is my own time-management issue. It is an excellent idea to have a regularly scheduled time and gives you something to look forward to. But I do get inspired at odd times and want to jump into a project.

CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively?
LW: Motherhood has definitely reduced my creative time. There are no more days of staying in my pajamas drinking mimosas for breakfast and sewing all day long. I sort of have to cram it in where it fits. My 6-year-old is old enough to participate or to occupy herself while I’m working. My 2-year-old is not quite there yet, so I have to have an elaborate distraction strategy planned. OR I work while the 6-year-old is at school and the 2-year-old is napping OR at night…but by the time night rolls around, I usually tuck myself in on the couch for some knitting rather than heading to the basement for sewing. This goes back to the time-management point above. I feel like I am still creative, but my output has been greatly reduced after having children.

CC: What do you struggle with most?
LW: I struggle most with work/life/creativity balance. My spouse is unemployed and has been for the past year, so I need to work to pay the bills. He has been taking care of the kids when I am busy with freelance work and teaching, but he also needs time for job hunting/networking. The creativity gets shoved to the bottom of the list sometimes.

vintage-inspirationCC: Where do you find inspiration?
LW: Inspiration comes from many different places…from other people’s blogs, from my stash of vintage clothing, magazines, a trip to Anthropologie, or just general web surfing. When I was working full time, I bought a LOT of books, so I have an amazing design library to reference when I need an injection of creativity.

[Above right: A vintage scrapbook put together for my grandmother when she was a young girl. Her aunties that lived in Victoria, BC made it for her.]

CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?

… and there are more that I check regularly.

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
LW: My greatest indulgence is jewelry from Michal Negrin jewelry, home decor, fashion items…although I’m going to have to cut back for a bit.

"My vintage enamel pins sort of look like embroidery."CC: What are you reading right now?
LW: I’m partway through Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things.

CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
LW: Find creativity in places that you wouldn’t expect it. I may not get to sit down and make a new stuffed animal or new garment or even get those prints framed, but I can sit and build fairies with my daughter, Elsie. It is creative and imaginative and I get to spend time with Elsie….and then, of course, we come up with a long list of other items we need to create as accessories for our fairies.

[Above left: My vintage enamel pins…it kind of looks like an embroidery…]

CC: Thank you, Lori!

Dec 4

21 Comments

Cathy: Reconciling differences

supermomThanksgiving weekend was spent with my husband’s extended family, eating, eating and, well, eating. There was one family drama — a big one — but otherwise it was really nice having everyone over here and talking, and hanging around and eating. I took one walk. I battled the cold everyone’s been passing around. Honey and I had a date with the baby in tow at the art museum across the water. At my church on Sunday, we had an after-service Thanksgiving leftovers luncheon, to which I brought my sautéed kale with garlic, raisins and walnuts that my in-laws didn’t eat. They preferred the four kinds of pies and two kinds of sweet potatoes and two kinds of mashed potatoes and two stuffings, etc. The kale was a hit at church, which felt good.

Well, there I was, holding Baby C who kept dropping her juice bottle in experiments in gravity. My nursing top was gaping in an unflattering way, as I kept bending over to pick up her bottle. A very nice man came over to get some pecan pie which was in front of me, and cooed at her, talked baby for a while, and here comes the bomb — wait for it — he added, “and I see you’re having another!”

Now, my Honey said before I left for church that morning that I was getting cuter everyday. This was in response to my looking in the mirror at my lopsided nursing boobs, my still doughy, chunky middle eight months later, and feeling exhausted from another sleepless night of coughing and nursing, and moaning about my appearance. So when the very nice man at church asked if I was having a, no — told me I was having another, it just about crushed me. At the time, I was able to laugh it off, but later, I feel pretty blah.

Isn’t it enough that I’m up and around, beginning to lose the pregnancy weight, while sporting a nursing E-cup on a five-foot-two frame? I’m beginning to get back to yoga, trying to walk the dog when it’s not too cold and wet and when the baby and I aren’t sporting colds. I haven’t slept a solid night’s sleep since July 2007, and I feel pretty yucky. Hey, people, I’m showing up and with an eight-month-old trying to circus dive off my shoulder! I think that’s pretty good in and of itself!

So, keep the commentary to your very nice self, please. It would do a world of good for the esteem of any woman lugging around a baby. We’re not Hollywood moms with a drawer full of Spanx, personal trainers at beck and call, and starvation diets. We’re real moms, with real bellies and real appetites because we’re breastfeeding. And no matter how much formula may be pushed on us, even in this more enlightened age than our parents’, we’re doing what’s best for our babies, and eating for two.

I’m taking the superwoman route after that comment — I am a super woman because I am doing it all, and doing it well, most of the time, anyway.

Dec 3

4 Comments

12/03 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Thanksgiving was the prompt for last week’s creativity contest. Our winner is Debra Bellon. Debra writes: “I finally got my internet connection back after moving (took forever!) and I thought I would celebrate by taking part in my first weekly creativity contest.” Lovely poem, Debra. Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

Grace
Suddenly you wanted to say grace
as though it were something you were used to—
ingrained, like the timbre of your mother’s voice, or
the lines imprinted on your long fingers—and not,
as everyone suspected—a kind of mockery,
aimed at unsettling the believers.
When you laid down your head on clasped hands
it was both calm and urgent, your voice
like milk warmed on a low fire
your eyes pressed closed, as though heavy
with visions of something outside—
the tender blackened branches or
the deep soil, turned hard where the frost settled or
the yellow light from distant rooms, where,
bundled in shadows, other people were gathered
to bow their heads and pray, as you did,
for everything and nothing.

 

From Kelly Warren, a gorgeous image and prose poem:

thanksgiving-shrimper

Thanksgiving night while my family finishes dinner
I look out the door and see one solitary shrimper.
I wonder if he has a family to share a feast with
or if he’s just taking shelter for the holiday,
looking longingly at the homes along the river,
wondering what it’s like to feel the warmth of kin.

 

From Cathy Coley, a haiku and image pairing. Cathy writes: “Miranda, there is always more sweet potato pie filling left for ‘souffle’ and the marshmallows are always more burnt b/c it can’t fit on the bottom shelf of the oven w/ the pie. Gotta keep traditions intact!”

sweet-potato-pie-002

Mama Stanley’s Sweet Potato Pie
To her granddaughter
Sweet Southern toasty goodness
Taste is passed — not name.

 

From me (Miranda):

 

My Thanksgiving was a little too full of simmer and tang — qualities that were nicely exemplified by my roiling cranberry sauce:

 

dsc_0002

 

This week’s prompt: “Fire”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, December 9. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

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