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Artist Date – Indianapolis Museum of Art

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My friend Jem and I went on a bit of an Artist Date, as prescribed by The Artist’s Way. I was feeling the need for some inspiration, something to cause my brain to make different waves. I took a day off work, and in the morning we went to a coffee shop and worked on our drawings:

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Then in the afternoon we went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art:

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Unfortunately, while they did have some cool kinetic sculpture (including work by Alexander Calder, the inventor of the mobile!!!!), those were in areas where I was not allowed to take pictures. I was able to shoot this wall, which is kind of cool, if not a seminal work by the originator of the mobile:

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Fair enough, the other stuff is in my head anyway, where it will do the most good!

The whole idea behind an Artist Date is to take the art half of yourself (or maybe it’s the art 7/8 or the art 3/4, whatever – you decide the exact equation) out and treat it well, show it a good time. In return, the art portion of you will grow and flourish and start helping you do really awesome stuff. It’s also part of a practice called “refilling the well,” where you replenish some of the energy needed to run the creative engine inside of you.

There were honestly some kind of scary moments in the museum, like when I realized I was writing down tons of names of sculptors, but almost nothing about photographers. What does that mean? Does it mean I’m not going to be doing photography? Does it mean I’m supposed to be a sculptor? Does it mean…well, what DOES it mean? I mean, that lamp, the one with all the brass on it – how do you do that? And those clocks! The clocks with the copper, brass, and steel faces! Those were gorgeous! How…can someone make a living like that? How do you make something so precise and so gorgeous? Many questions, no immediate answers. I guess that’s part of the price of admission with this stuff. (Actually, the IMA is free, which means my confusion and fear cost me nothing. Huzzah!)

Overall, I really enjoyed myself. I got some new ideas for sculpture work, and found out some fun stuff about the Art Nouveau movement. Things could get more interesting. I think we’re entering dangerous inspirational territory here. At any rate, Jem and I have refilled the well, so look for some fantasticness to occur here in the near future!

NaNoWriMo Go, Go, Go!

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NaNoWriMo - the well of insanity and glee

I’ve been busy, kids, very busy, and this is just a quick post to try and keep mildly updated here. National Novel Writing Month is upon us. The challenge: write a 50K-word novel between the dates of 11/1 and 11/30. That’s 1,667 words per day. This evening I hit 23,502, that’s *so* friggin’ close to where I’d like to be. Ideally, I wanted to hit 25K by day 10, so that I’d be on track to hit 50K by day 20, which I’m trying to do, because I know Thanksgiving will be busy around here for me.

I’ve been doing my Artist Dates, still doing all the other The Artist’s Way stuff, and, yes, it is REALLY keeping me busy!

Tomorrow I have the day off work, so I’m going down to Bloomington, Indiana to soak up the college vibe and do a little general poking about and visiting as some background work for my novel-in-progress. Should be good times. Then, in the evening it’s back up to Indy for another write-in with fellow WriMos at a coffee shop, and then, kids, THEN we shall see TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND WORDS BAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Oh, sorry, got a little carried away there. (25K! Halfway!)

Ahem. Good evening.

Artist Date #7: Children’s Museum – Art Glass, Rhoads Sculpture, Comics

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I’ve had my mind on the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis for quite some time.  They have a rolling ball sculpture there that was the genesis for all my sculpture madness at present, plus they have an exhibit on vintage comic books.  One or the other alone would have gotten me out of the house, but with both it was a sure thing that somewhere in this twelve weeks that is The Artist’s Way I would have found a way to make it there for an Artist Date.

When you first step into the main part of the Children’s Museum, you come face to face with this enormous art glass sculpture.  At 43 feet, the sheer size of it is impressive.  It’s the largest permanent installation of blown glass anywhere.  My friend works at the museum, and I joked with her once about how they clean the thing.  She replied rather seriously, “Oh, they have a crew that comes in and does it regularly.”

It weighs 18,000 pounds, and took over 14 days to install 4,800 pieces of glass to build it.  You can get some idea of the intricacy of the whole thing with this closeup.  An assembly photo at the site showed the blown glass pieces being slide onto metal stakes that protruded from a central metal column.  The scope of this project is astounding – makes me want to try something!  (Um, like maybe carving sixty pumpkins for Halloween?)

I’ve mentioned this in previous blogs, but my current (and quite possibly eternal) fascination with rolling ball sculpture was sparked by a trip I made to the Children’s Museum about five or so years ago.  I went with my nieces and their mom, my older sister.  It was really just a trip to have fun.  I didn’t have anything in mind, except I always personally liked the science exhibit.  My niece Abby was extremely excited that “We’re gonna make a boat!”  The boat turned out to be a few pieces of that styrofoam like they use for meat packing trays, and we taped it together with some straws.  I admire the mind of a child for thrilling in such simple pleasures.  Honestly, she made it seemed like we were about to construct a battle cruiser with working weaponry and a functional engine room. 

When we entered the area of battleship/foam raft construction my eyes came upon one of the most fantastic things I’d ever seen in my entire life:

The George Rhoads rolling ball sculpture, Science in Motion.  Incidentally, you won’t find any of that information readily available anywhere near the exhibit itself.  There is this:

But you have to look for that to find it.  I didn’t even notice it, and the sign next to the exhibit says that it’s a “Rube Goldberg ball machine” or something like that, and that it’s in operation thanks to…individuals or some company which escapes me.  I was actually bummed that it didn’t mention George or any of his other work.  That befuddles me somewhat.  He’s a pretty well-known kinetic sculptor.  (I found out what I know about it by doing multiple internet searches, and finally exchanging emails with one of Rhoads’ staff members.)

Be that as it may, at the time I wasn’t concerned quite so much with its origin.  I was more amazed that such a thing actually existed.  I hadn’t seen anything like it in recent memory, and it just reached out and grabbed 100% of my attention.  There was so much to it that appealed to me: 


1. Its inherent sense of fun and playfulness.  It said, “Behold!  I am a machine upon which much time was spent in construction so that I may perform the extremely important task of…being entertaining!  Woohoo, I am a machine for fun!  Watch me!  Play with me!”  Children need no encouragement whatsoever to grab and twist the knob that imparts action onto the long, pale blue screw lift for this portion of the sculpture.

2. The fact that such great care and attention to detail went into it.  Bending the wire alone had to have taken much patience and forethought.  Add to that the fact that certain moving elements of the sculpture required their own specific exacting calculations.  In the picture above, for instance, you can see a green wire basket to the left.  Notice the ball falling into it?  Notice also that there is a metal pad at the lower middle of the frame.  The ball has just finished leaving the track, bounced (with a fabulous *gong!* I might add) off of that square purple pad, and landed perfectly inside the wire basket.  Who spent time figuring all that out?!?!  To catch a moving ball?!  Brilliant!

3. The creativity.  Look below at the number of different elements the sculpture employs.  This sculpture is not just about balls rolling here and there on some fancifully bent rails.  Numerous different devices were created to manipulate the billiards in interesting ways.

A. Bell-ringing tipper arm: At the back of the sculpture you see the yellow bell.  Swinging away from it is a mallet on an arm, and at the top of the mallet arm we see that there is a billiard being carried from an upper track to a lower track by the arm.  Once it reaches the lower track it will fall free, the arm will swing back, and the bell will be rung.  A serious bell-ringing apparatus!

B. Ball-collecting tipping arm: As the billiards come in on the track at the upper left they fill a catchrail that is balanced so that it points upward on its fulcrum.  Once enough balls collect on the catchrail, however, the arm tips downward, emptying all five balls at once onto a lower track.  The result is a delightful train effect of balls chasing each other down the track.

C. Corkscrew: The balls chase each other from the catchrail and race down this corkscrew in a visual and auditory flurry.  Colors and noise!  Bring it!

D1. Music and Motion, Chimes: Here a set of flat, tuned metal chimes are suspended so that they form the base of the track for the balls.  If you look toward the right you can make out the blurred ball racing over them, and you’ll notice the chimes are hanging at angles as they are rung during its passage over them.

D2. Music and Motion, Wood Blocks: Here you can just make out a white billiard tripping the first of three forks that protrude up between the track rails into the path of the ball.  As a fork is pushed down, the sounding arm rocks back, after which it most naturally swings back and gives the wood block a satisfying little *thock*!  The mallet heads on the end of the sound arm?  Golf balls.  I love the use of so many different objects!

E. Interacivity: In both photos above you can see how portions of the sculpture can be manipulated by viewers.  In the first one a girl raises a ball that is caged in a chute of stout metal bars.  The billiards collect at the bottom, and they will not continue along that portion of the sculpture unless they are moved by hand.  Children have a great time lifting them to the next level and sending them on their way.

In the second photo there is a tilting green lift that is operated by a knob turned by hand.  As shown here the knob is being turned by a young boy and the lift has reached its full height and is realeasing a ball onto the track above it.

F. Displayed laws of physics: Newton’s law of motion is shown here.  Three balls remain at rest on this particular dip in the track.  When a new ball comes along at the left it smacks the other three, and the one to the right takes off, sending another ball along, but always leaving three behind.

F2. Motion and rest: This one is a harder to see, but in the rectangle there are no downward angles.  All rolling surfaces are tracks, though the corners have angled pieces to encourage a rolling ball to continue its journey.  The balls enter at the top and are forced to go either right or left by a wedge placed below the point of entry, and they zig-zag their way from the end to the middle where they drop down to the next level.  They don’t have a lot of momentum, so sometimes they end up coming to rest as you see two of them doing in the lower right corner.  Eventually one ball will come along that will have enough juice that it will smack a few around and send them down.  It’s a little unnerving to watch, because you want them all to go RIGHT NOW!  Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.  It’s a bit of lazy motion on this one, and patience is required.

G. Active track splitters: There are a number of active splitters on the track, and this pendulum is a very simple one.  One moving part.  Balls come along often enough that they keep the pendulum swinging.  It has a post at its top center point, seen just to the left of the arriving ball in this photo.  This ball will be prevented from rolling to the left by the post, and when the pendulum swings back it will tilt over and roll the ball to the left.

H. Track splitters without moving parts: How can you possibly make a ball choose a right or left course without using some machinery to guide it?  When the balls fall from the upper track, they aren’t forced to go one way or another.  The landing area is basically flat.  When the balls fall down they run into each other and are forced to go one direction or the other without employing any outside forces to direct them along a certain path.  Here you can see the striped ball is being forced off to the right by the presence of the green one already sitting below it.  I like this trick in particular, as it induces an action without adding any more machinery to the sculpture itself, simplicity of design in action.

I. Automation: I’m a gearhead for certain.  Nothing like having a little electrical motor powering up a chain lift!  The sculpture contains two separate runs, each with multiple tracks.  This run is completely motor-driven, so it will continue with its operation even if no one is around.  Its motion attracts people who can then activate the hand-powered run.

J. Track Variety: Not all of the track is made up of steel rail.  This portion incorporates pieces of metal U-channel down which the ball drops.  Not only is it fun to watch it change direction at sharp angles, there’s also plenty of thunking going on as it drops from one section to the next.

Here is a final end view of the sculpture.  It’s fully encased by plexiglass, which is a good thing, because kids pretty much just want to bang on it when they see it, which you gotta take as a good sign.  If they gave it the once over and walked away?  Not so good.  It’s nice to see people want to be a part of what they are seeing, even if it’s along the lines of “Hey!  Move!  Go!”  There was plenty of laughing, giggling, ogling and grabbing going on at the Rhoads sculpture. 

I just basically stared at it for over an hour.  I’m very grateful that such a source of inspiration is so readily available to me.  Even though some of the mystery was gone compared to the first time I saw it (now I know how some of the designs are accomplished), that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it any less.  I took away another completely new set of experiences that will surely provide inspiration and motivation for my future sculpting efforts.  I so can’t wait to get another one completed!

There was still some time left before the museum closed, so I headed over to the comics exhibit.  Along the way I swung by the merry-go-round and snapped some pics using a slow shutter speed.

I used to love to ride on this thing when I was a kid.  It used to be outside at a park that is not far from my house.  For many years there was a ring of concrete still in place at the park marking where it had been years ago.  I’m amazed that it survived and could be restored years later.  It makes me a little wistful for times past.  My dad has told me on a number of occasions about various amusment parks that used to be around the city.  We had roller coasters, boat rides, carousels.  He even has a few old photographs of some of the rides before they were torn down.  Kind of sad that we don’t have them anymore.  My city has obviously gone through many changes in its lifetime.

I had to stop off at the comics exhibit, seeing as how I spent a short period of time collecting them in grade school.  I was an X-Men fan, but you cannot deny the allure of a superhero of any stripe.  Since I’ve started fooling around with drawing again, I’m also interested in the art aspect of things.

Batman’s Batmobile has changed markedly over the years.  Personally, I’ve always been fond of the original, seeing as how it was a Barris custom creating, and I believe morphed from what was originally a Ford Thunderbird.  If memory serves, it was put on the dragstrip once, and it had so much metal in it from the customizing procedures, it managed a rather miserable elapsed time.  Guess that’s why the rocket was added in back.  My favorite feature on this latest edition is the set of Hoosier front tires.  That’s right, the Caped Crusader rides on tires straight outta the Heartland.

It’s the real cape!  The real one from the TV show!!!  Sweet!  If I put this thing on, I’d have to try and scale a wall or right some sort of wrongdoing.  Maybe I’d just hang out in the Batcave and let the Boy Wonder handle the tough stuff.

Unforunately, I arrived late, and they were shutting off the light tables for the Draw a Superhero activity.  No way!  I wanted to draw!  Oh well, maybe next time. 

The Artist’s Way talks about the need to “refill the well” of creativity by experiencing new things to spark your imagination.  Thanks to this trip, I certainly have a store of things to draw from the next time I sit down to create.

Artist Date #6: Melting at the Gathering

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On Wednesday night I was seated with all my critique group friends getting ready to start for the evening.  We were going over some pre-meeting pleasantries, and the group leader speaks up and says, “And don’t forget!  This Saturday is the annual Gathering of Writers here at the Arts Center.  We have 76 people signed up for so far, which is more than we’d hoped for.  Robert Owen Butler will be the keynote speaker, and we’ve got some great workshops as well.  It’s fifty dollars, and it should be a lot of fun.”

Oh, crap.  This was it.  I knew it.  The next New Thing I Should Try.

“Um, what time does that start?” I asked.
“It starts at 8:30am and goes until, I think, five.”

Just great – it doesn’t even interfere with anything I already have planned!  How am I supposed to try and avoid it if it doesn’t conflict with anything!

“Hmmm…maybe I should try and do that,” I said. 

The following morning I sat and stared at the sing-up screen on my computer.  Fifty bucks.  That expenditure was easy to justify, and it was only a single day.  Would I learn enough?  Would a day even help?  In order for me to improve as a writer, wouldn’t I need, like, a week?  Wouldn’t I need to sequester myself into some commune in the woods with no internet or phone access and discover my true self with a bunch of other neurotic author wannabes?  Sure I’d put a note on my fridge early this summer about wanting to go to the Iowa Writer’s Conference, and sure I couldn’t afford the time or money, but was this what I should be doing instead.

A little voice somewhere inside me, which is probably me, but seems far smarter than Usual Me, spoke up at that point.  “Fifty bucks, one day, and it’s a three minute drive from your house.  You’ve been wanting to go to a writer’s conference for a year.  The only way this could get ANY easier is if they offered to hold it in your house for free.”  

I signed up.

Saturday morning brough with it one of those blessedly gorgeous fall days that define the beauty that is the Midwest.  As I was parking my car, a woman, looking for the correct place to park, asked if I was attending the writing conference.  “Yes.  Yes, I am,” I replied, and then I thought, ‘Holy crap!  I am!  I’m doing this!’

Inside I got signed up, picked up all my materials, and noted the placement of the all-important coffee service.  I didn’t get to it for several minutes, however, because I became involved in a conversation with several other attendees, only one of which I’d ever met previously.  In the middle of it all I went, “Weird.  I’m having a very enjoyable conversation with other writers!  Writers I don’t even know!  And we’re all hung up about how we’re doing as writers and what we hope to learn!  And I’m enjoying this!”  There were lots of exclamation points in my head.  These were important thoughts.

The keynote speaker, Robert Owen Butler, gave us an hour about how we should forget everything we know, and write from the heart.  We needed to write two hours a day if we wanted to really get with it, really be serious about making good writing happen.  I was curious, a bit fearful, skeptical, and doubtful.  I don’t write two hours a day.  I don’t know where I’d find the time.  If I did (and I’m sure I could if I really, really put my mind to it), this would pretty much mean I didn’t do anything else, at least not during a work week.  Was I not serious?  Did I not really want it?  Was I not a real writer? 

I decided to leave all that unanswered for the time being.  I was not going to stop writing, but I wasn’t going to start killing myself trying to do exactly everything he said.  It worries me though, this two-hour daily dedication.  I know that applying yourself to a creative pursuit takes a self-induced repetitive regimen, and Butler was not the first one to drive that point home.  Stephen King’s book On Writing also notes that he spends a ton of time at the keyboard.  “If you want to write, you have to write.  A lot.”  That’s not a direct quote, but it’s pretty much the gist of what both gentlemen were saying.  I sat there still feeling the joy of my recently completed rolling ball sculpture, and wondered what the hell I was doing correctly, if anything.  I’ll just keep up with all of this stuff and see where it leads.  After all, writing a little bit is a lot more writing than none at all.

Following the keynote speech I attended a class on grant writing and then one on plotting for murder mysteries and thrillers.  I can now write a grant proposal that will keep you hanging onto the edge of your seat wondering who killed the starving artist.

After lunch my first afternoon class covered Finding Your Voice.  While it did outline some helpful strategies for getting started if you were totally blocked as a writer, overall I didn’t feel it helped me out too much.  I was also slightly disturbed by the leader’s admission that she had “a lot of unfinished stuff.  I start a lot of things, but don’t finish much, so that’s my new effort now.”  I was hoping to find my voice, not my unfinished manuscripts. 

So far the day had been largely positive.  It was fun to hustle from room to room between workshops, nodding hello to other writers, and gathering with a group of strangers who all shared the same purpose.  The classes were even in different buildings, so hurrying from one to the other felt like being in college again.  My mind felt younger, and I recalled that rush I had when I first went off to school and it seemed like everything was possible, which is important for me to remember.  Having the feeling of possibility is what makes stuff happen.  If it cost me fifty bucks and all I got was that, I’d still be money ahead.

I was looking forward to the final workshop, Fictionalize Your Own Experience.  I was thinking of my experiences in the world of hot rodding, of being in a band, of racing my motorcycle at Bonneville.  These experiences are a little unique, and I’ve always hoped I could bring something different to my writing by somehow incorporating some of those elements, or at least the feelings I’d experienced through them.  I’d hoped I could learn how to do some of that in this class.

We met in the printmaking room of the arts building, pulling our mismatched chairs around a table scarred from the multitudes of cutting blades that had been pulled across it.  This class was going to contain some writing exercises, we were informed.  After a short rustling, we sat, pens and paper poised, awaiting our cue.  The leader paused, smiled, and spoke.  “Write about a woman stealing at Walmart.  The woman is your grandmother.”

Um…oh crap.  This is not what I was expecting.  This is not my experience!  I don’t have any shoplifting history (okay, that one time at Kroger when I got nabbed after suddenly deciding that lifting a candy bar would be “fun,” but that’s it!).  And while my grandmother was tight as hell and wouldn’t pay 89 cents for a bag of jellybeans, because “That’s too much!” she sure as hell wouldn’t steal it.  What do I do with this?!?

“Try to fictionalize your grandmother as this woman who is stealing,” the leader explained, suddenly seeming like much more of a writer than my humble self.

Ah, I see.  Well, that’s tough, but I came to be challeged, didn’t I?  I can do this!  I scribbled and scratched.  I came up with a fictitious person who had some characteristics of my grandmother, but was quite different in a few ways.  It took me a few minutes, to mentally get there, and we only had ten total.

“Okay, let’s see what we have,” I heard.  Damn.  Only four sentences.

Readings were called for.  A couple of women offered theirs and read.  On the third query, I raised my own.  I was not going to let this thing beat me.  The only way to get this was to confront it head on.  I read my four lines aloud.  They sounded very short.

“What did the woman look like, Tom?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know.  Just…glasses…gray hair.  I, ah, I guess I’m not too good with description,” I finished, managing a bit of a smile.
“Okay.  That’s fine.  Does anyone have some description in their events?” 

Hands went up.  People read.  Descriptions followed.  Oh well, maybe not my strong suit.

“Now do a description of this same woman getting caught, and add a character trait to her that your grandmother didn’t have.”

Aww…Argh!   More of this?!  How-what-argh!

I sat there for ten minutes, trying to come up with something.  How do I describe this woman?  What are words for kinds of coats beyond color?  What does her face look like?  What are her hands like?  Do I have any vocabulary AT ALL?!?!?!?!?!?!

I managed four sentences again.  One of them was just standard dialog.  Collectively, they kind of sucked.

“Tom, would you like to read yours?” 
I declined.  “My description isn’t very good.”
Other people read.  Description seemed to be bountiful.  It filled the room except for the apparent descriptical vaccum chamber that surrounded my head.

“This time, write a scene in which a person is steppping onto an elevator.  As the person steps on, he or she notices another couple engaged in some sort of playful physical affection, and notices that one of them is a person he or she had an affair with some time in the past.  Make the person stepping onto the elevator out of a friend of yours.”

I sat and stared at my paper.  I could hear scribbling all around me.  No scribbling noises emanated from the vicinity of my fingertips.  I didn’t have friends who would get involved in something like that, did I?  How do you write that?  What are they wearing?  How would someone feel?  What would they feel?  Why would they even care – it’s ancient history?  How do I write this!

I wouldn’t be beaten.  I could do this somehow.  I could.  I stared.  My mind whirled around and around.  I was very conscious of the prosaic excellence that was most assuredly going on around me.  One of the women in the room was in my critique group.  She was writing up a storm.  Surely it was something good.  I put pen to paper and, “The doors to the elevator opened, and Janet was met with the sight of a couple nuzzling and giggling inside.  She let her long, dark hair fall across her face before the two could look at her, and quickly stepped inside and turned to face the front.”

“Let’s see what we have.”

Two.  Two sentences.  Great. 

A number of people read.  They were masterworks of literary triumph!  I stared at my two sentences.  As each reader finished, the leader looked around the group for another.  I avoided her eyesight.  No way.  No way was I going to be called on.

“Tom?  Would you like to read yours?”  Something inside me got very tight.
“I – I only got two sentences,” I smiled weakly.
“Can you read them?”
“There’s nothing there.  Like, the elevator doors open and she gets on.  That’s all I got.”  I was allowed to pass, but discouragement stayed.

“For the final exercise, take a person you know and give them a different trait from another person you know.  Try to make this trait as different as possible from the main person.  Create a situation where they are confronting someone of authority.”

Machinery ground together, but nothing moved.  I was totally locked up.  As writing went on around me, I steamed, fretted, and didn’t write.  How do you put two people together like that?  How can you make someone act a way they would never act?  What – ?

I scribbled desperately.  “‘So what do we have to do to fix this?’ Bob asked.”

“Okay, who wants to read?”

One.  One sentence.

Mercifully, I wasn’t called on.  We listened to others read their examples, and each one seemed to hammer home the fact that I had no clue whatsoever what I was doing.  Why was I at this conference?  Did I think I was a writer?  Why did I think that?  It was plainly obvious I was lacking in basic skills.  Why did I even show up?

After receiving some overall instruction, the lead acknowledged that it was a tough set of exercises, and that she usually performed the same set during a four hour long class as opposed to our fifty minutes.  I ignored that largely.  I gathered my things and headed off to the panel discussion on publishing.  Why, I didn’t know, because I certainly was in no shape to have anything of mine published.  I couldn’t even describe what an old woman who’s shoplifting looks like.  However, as with Masterpiece in a Day, I was determined to stick it out.  I was not going to leave until I’d attended all the events.  That was my goal, and I was sticking to it, sucky writing or not.

I sat down in the conference hall, and another writer took his seat next to me.  He’d either recently gotten some good news, or was just in a pleasant mood that day, as he was a bit talkative.  I, having just been pulverized in a fifty-minute workshop, was not.

“So, do you want to exchange manuscripts?” he asked.
“Not today,” I answered, eyes staying trained on the largely empty stage in front of us where nothing was happening.
“I’ve only got twenty-five copies in my car!” he smiled.  I said nothing.  A minute or two later he moved one seat away from me.

As the panel went on, I cooled somewhat, or maybe I warmed up a little again.  I listened to Tom Chiarella talk about getting published with Esquire.  I listened to an agent discuss how to present story ideas, and in the process hand off a compliment on an idea from that same girl who’d been scribbling up a storm in my previous, humiliating workshop.  I couldn’t be too mad.  It was an excellent idea.

As the panel ended, I split.  I still wasn’t feeling chatty.  Besides, I had my NaNoWriMo group was meeting in half an hour.  I didn’t want to be late for talking about November’s novel challenge, especially since coffee would be involved.  I might have smiled a bit at the realization that, while I’d felt humiliated a mere hour beforehand, I was now eagerly darting off to a meeting of writers. 

At the meeting, conversation turned to my conference attendance.
“How’d that go?” one of my NaNo compatriots asked.
I smiled, “It went pretty well, really.  I had a great time.  Totally melted on this one exercise though!  It was this descriptive exercise, and my brain locked up completely.  Apparently, I’m terrible with description in a story setting, which means I should never be a writer,” I paused and smiled, “which I am now describing…while sitting in a meeting with a group of writers.  Yeah, it’s obviously turned me off of writing for life!”

Artist Date #5: Savage Grace

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Saturday morning, and my heels have hardly cooled from my most recent Artist Date for week four from the previous night.  I’m talking with a group of friends, and someone speaks up.  He says, “A lot of you know that I lost a son in an automobile accident two years ago.  I won’t be able to make this event, but some friends of mine are involved in an art exhibit Monday night in Broad Ripple featuring paintings from women who are using art as a way to work through their grief after having lost their children.  The women will be there to speak about their paintings.  I just wanted to let anyone know who might want to attend.  It will be a pretty powerful showing.”

I believe that one of the key values in art is its ability to allow us to feel our feelings, to understand them and work through them, be they positive or negative.  I’ve come to realize that sort of expression as a healthy necessity in my life.  My problems are insignificant when compared to the loss of a child, but I deal with feelings constantly, as we all do, and sometimes I’m pretty terrible at it.  If I wanted to see some people really putting their feelings out there, if I wanted to know just how brave people could be in sharing of themselves, if I wanted to see the proof first hand that art is not just a plaything of children or something on the mantle to be dusted and quietly admired, if I wanted to see how art can heal and how it can help me and others, this would be the place for it.  Ground zero for healing through creativity.  There was no deliberation.  I was going.

I didn’t know anything about the event other than the location and the few details my friend had provided.  I was going into this a bit blind, but sure that I wanted to experience it.  I arrived and began to look at the exhibits.  Before I’d hardly taken in the work itself I was stopped by a quote by Valarie Millard-Combs posted near the closest drawing stating that hardly two years ago her son passed away at a very young age of a heart attack, and his son had passed away just one week following of a heart attack as well.  Another of his sons then passed away in an accident in his garage not one year after that.  Three young men in the space of a year.  I was amazed she was still standing upright, let alone doing art work.

I felt like I didn’t even deserve to be there.  I hadn’t been through an experience like of that sort.  I’d had losses in my life, yes, but none in such close proximity.  What would I do?  How the hell would I handle something like that?  Perhaps I would do what Valarie did, make drawings with walls in them, separating me from those I’d lost, or with my chest opened up for surgery to remove the pain that wouldn’t go away.  There was also one with four sections, one colored nearly completely black.  “That was all black at first, but then I didn’t want it to be that way.  I wanted to show that there was some color in there, somewhere,” she said, “that it wasn’t all blackness.  There might be a lot of black, but something could come through.  I took a scraper and physically scraped the black pastels away in spots so that I could add color.”

Did you ever draw or build something and then attack it physically so that it would show that you were feeling better?  Worse? 

Jaymie Gatewood had a similar story about one of her pieces that was composed of three red figures against a black background.  One of the attendees asked her about it.  What did it mean?  Why was it so red?

“I don’t know exactly who those figures are…partly me, partly Sara and Nathan?  I don’t know, but I remember being very angry when I did that one.  I kept adding red, more red.  I was physically mashing the color into the canvas.  It was a very physical experience on that one.” 

I went over and looked closely at the piece later on.  There were large chunks of oil pastel stuck against the canvas, ground right against it so that they were at least an eighth of an inch thick in places.  If you ran your hand over it you would feel the bumps.  Jaymie lost her son before he even reached school age.  Her daughter Sara died of cancer when she was just 23 years old.  “Very physical experience.”

I spoke with David Labrum, art therapist at St. Vincent’s Hospice about his work.  He said that those involved in the free program come in for two hours per week and create.  They are given materials, space, and time.  He said he does little if nothing to instruct them, and no previous art experience of any kind is necessary.  Each work is an individual piece created during that two hours.  “I never tell them when to to stop, and they seem to be finished at about the end of the two hours.  I just give them the tools and leave the room.  They are allowed to create what they want.”

There were others viewing the work who were in similar circumstances.  One mother attended who had lost a child to SIDS in the last couple of years.  Another family was in attendance that had lost a young child.  I was thinking about my parents, the rest of my family.

I left the gallery feeling rather drained, and fortunate to have my family and friends.  I’d originally planned to go to my parent’s place for dinner that night, but instead I’d been looking at art from mothers who didn’t have children to invite to dinner.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed. 
“Hi, dad?  Hey, I was just calling you guys back to say hi.”

Artist Date #4: Harrison Gallery

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Friday night in Indianapolis.  First Friday, to be exact.  This is the one night of every month when all the art galleries open up to visitors for the evening.  I’ve taken advantage of it on a number of occasions, but always with a group, or at least with one other friend.  I was planning to do the same this particular evening, but as the day arrived it was clear that I needed to make this my Artist Date or else I wasn’t going to have one this week.  Artist Dates are mandatory as prescribed by the Artist’s Way, as is the fact that you are supposed to undertake these dates on your own (or just you and your creative self, as the idea goes).  Since these dates have so far proven to be pretty awesome, I wasn’t about to mess with this one or give it up, so I called my friend and left what probably sounded like a very odd message (“I’ll see you there, but I can’t be there with you!”) and headed out.

I ended up spending my entire two hours at the Harrison Gallery down on 16th and Deleware.  No shortage of things to see and people to talk to!  (all pics clickable)

One of the first things I came across was this collection of brass light fixture pieces.  Honestly, I have no idea if it was supposed to “say something” the way it was arranged, but it gave me ideas.  I work with copper on my rolling ball sculptures, and will soon be incorporating brass into them (hopefully!).  I just kept staring at this things going, “Yeah, that would work.  I could…yeah, I could do that with it, couldn’t I?  Similar elements may turn up in my work at some point.

I was particularly excited about the Harrison this evening, as Todd Bracik, the sculptor I’d met at Masterpiece in a Day, was exhibiting some of his work there.  My conversation with him that day was a chief reason I’d even thought to hit First Friday this month.  It’s not uncommon that it slips by while I’m out playing a gig, so when he mentioned that he would be showing there I made a specific not to try and check it out.  These works all appeared to be of reclaimed steel.  They appeared to be clearcoated so that they wouldn’t rust.  I *think* this one was called “Blind Bend,” but my memory is bad, and I left my stupid notepad in the camera bag, which was left in the car.  (Somehow I achieved a Journalism major???)

The last of these two is titled “Burst.”  I really wish I’d had something on hand to write them down.  I’m not diggin the lighting in these photos much, either.  You’d think I’d have this camera stuff all figured out by now.  Aside from all that, though, I was really excited to see Todd’s work.  He uses found objects, generally of metal, but not always.  I like metal and the whole idea of recycling or making something pleasing out of what may have once been considered junk.  The whole idea of how much crap we throw away every day kind of freaks me out, so it’s nice to see someone making art out of what might just end up in a landfill otherwise.  There’s also welding and grinding involved with this type of art, which means flames and sparks, and, well, you gotta like that.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Todd this time, though I did meet someone who was an old friend of his.  I had hoped to talk with him some more about his work, but maybe there will be opportunities for that at a later date.

My true medium!  Thinking of the name signs I’ve been doing, I had to snap this.  It was part of a fun exhibit of children’s works.  These were all done by Cora Hughey, and featured crayon, watercolor, and magic marker.  I imagine she’s a Crayola freak just as much as I am.

Fun little dress…

…with a pencil belt!  If  you’re a teacher during SATs, this thing would be perfect.  “Need a pencil, kid?  I got seventy.”

These little guys are so much fun!  They’re the creations of Jude Odell, a ceramics sculptor. 

Her detail and use of color always impress me.

I really, REALLY wanted to take this one home, but there was no affording it that evening.  The sharp lines and the absolute black of the figures against the white and bright green really catches your eye.

See what I mean about her use of color?  Isn’t that just the greatest?!  Shortly after I took this picture Jude returned to her studio from a visit elsewhere in the building.  I could not keep from telling her how much I enjoyed her work.  She has also done some projects with inner city school children painting bridges and retaining walls to beautify the neighborhoods.  We also kind of bonded over the turmoil and travails of trying to install shower inserts (“All those angles you have to line up, and there’s no room to move!”).  If she had a web site, I’d link to it for you here.  Her stuff is really gorgeous.  She’s had a room at the Harrison for a long time now.  Go give her some of your money.

As I was leaving I snapped one more picture of Jude’s work that was displayed outside her studio on the wall.  These are little tiles that she does.  I was only about five bucks short of being able to purchase one with the cash I had on hand.  Next time I’m definitely making a purchase.  I get a great sense of fun and positivity out of her work, and it never hurts to have that surrounding you in your home.  Which reminds me, she did say at one point in our conversation that she had done some darker, more moody work.  She said, “I got great compliments on it – but trying to sell it?”  People aren’t so apt to surround themselves with dark images, and at this point I’m happy to say I’m not either.

In addition to all that, Jude’s tiles gave me an idea on how I might want to approach some of my sculpture.  I certainly didn’t have several hundred dollars to spend on one of her larger pieces, but I had or could easily find 30 or 40 to spend on something smaller.  So I’m thinking.  I’m thinking about scale and size of work.  We’ll see what happens with that.  I’m not near selling anything yet, but it can’t hurt to have plans.

Hope you enjoyed my date with my creativity.  Eight more of these to go!

 

 

Artist Date #3: The Walk

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I wasn’t sure when Artist Date was going to happen this week.  It was kind of a stumble/crash/fail situation early this week with lack of sleep and stupid dental visits and whatnot.  I let everything go for a couple of days and just concentrated on getting some sleep.  Not sure if that made my universe full of awesomeness, but at least it got me into today where I went, “Yeah, I wanna go do something.”

Tonight I had zero commitments on deck.  It seemed like a good evening for…a walk?  Yeah, me not the walking guy, and yet this is what came into my head.  “Go for a walk, and…um…take pictures?  Yeah, that sounds cool.”  After feeling like I had way too much crap going on this week, a completely non-hurried walk down the Monon Trail as the sun set sounded pretty friggin’ right-on.

About 7:30 I finally made it out of the house, Nikon over my shoulder.  I also had a harmonica on me (those who know me well are not shocked to hear this), so I played a bit until I got down to the actual trail itself.  It’s a walking path that was once a rail bed for the Monon railroad many years ago.  When I was a kid, trains still used it.  It has been turned into a greenway in recent years, which has turned out to be a pretty fantastic idea.

Along the path in the immediate Broadripple area are various works of art, like this wall.  Know what’s sad?  I didn’t even realize this.  It’s been there for how many years, I’ve walked on it maybe three times, and I didn’t know the artwork was right there.  This is what this Artist’s Way stuff is all about, discovery of influences and resources that I’ve kept from myself for far to long.

This is painted on the side of a building not far from the art wall.  I think this is pretty appropriate, given that the White River is only a few hundred yards from it, and Indians certainly made use of it decades ago.

Lookit all the heads!!!!

The artist must have been a Notre Dame fan.  I’ll let that slide.

This poor little mosaic (well, it was pretty large, really) was leaning up against a building near where it had originally been affixed to some posts.  Pieces are obviously missing from it.  It’s too bad it has fallen into disrepair.  The style of work itself, however, reminded me of my friend Justine, who makes gorgeous mosaics, and who is a constant inspiration to me whenever I feel doubt or frustration with my work.

The Monon goes right past the Indy Arts Center, which is also the grounds for the Writer’s Center of Indiana where I recently skipped attend my fiction workshop group.  I took some time to tour the grounds and check out the sculptures on display.  This one was a huge stainless steel cube with a pleasingly curved concave center section.  I like metal, of course, and it’s stainless (even better!), so I snapped it.

Probably the greatest chair ever welded.  It’s actually a lounger, complete with cup and foot rest!  I had to check it out, and…

Here’s the upward view when seated in the world’s greatest stainless steel lounge chair.  I love this thing.  I, of course, wondered at how cool it would be if you could roll marbles around all those fabulous curves.

I read about the sculptor who does this vegetation sculpture, but it was several years ago.  I wish I could recall more details now.  I do remember that these are made to deteriorate.  No attempt is made to preserve them, so each work of art exists only for a finite period of time.  There’s something wonderful about that, letting nature do what it does, even if it’s to a piece of artwork.  For me this sculpture speaks both of how beautiful and temporary life is.

After leaving the Arts Center I went a little further north up the trail to where it uses a trestle to cross the White River.  The light was nice that time of night, though a challenge to shoot without being able to use a tripod.

On the way home I spotted this sign.  I liked the lighting.  The peeling paint adds some nice texture to the whole thing.

Once back in Broadripple proper there was plenty of evening traffic.  I always kind of enjoy the streak effect of moving lights with a slow shutter speed.  This one was just for fun.

Passing the Vogue, I naturally had to stop and shoot the neon.  Hard to resist all the colors.  I’ll not be attending Retro Rewind – I’ve had my life’s fill of 7oz Bud Light, thanks.  However, I’ll let you all know that Kool Keith will be appearing there in the near future.  Get your tickets while they last.  This place used to be a movie theater decades ago, and back when I was very small I saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs there.  They were not serving Bud Light in concessions at that time, I believe.

One more last bit of neonic brightitude.  I wish this place was still a theater sometimes.  It just looks so cool.  I am very glad they never did tear down the signs.  I’m also pretty pleased that very recently they pulled down the expressionless white tile that had been in place since before I was born to reveal the old yellow and red tiles that were beneath.  Pretty cool stuff.

That was Artist Date tonight, kids.  I had a nice time just slowing down and taking a look at things.  My photographer’s eye has a long way to go, but I got in some practice tonight and had fun.  Now I have a whole new batch of experiences to keep my creativity charged up.

Artist Date #2: Birthday Signs and caffeine

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As I blogged about previously, I am going out on an Artist Date every week for a total of twelve weeks.  The idea is to spend at least two hours with your creative self and nobody else.  This week I have a very busy schedule, as I’m going to be spending the weekend in Kentucky with a friend at a festival.

I had to make the Date happen, and time was short.  Much as I loved the Kitchen Door Project, I was not going to be able to indulge an entire weekend day on this one.  Minor sadness there at feeling rushed, but I got through it, thanks.

I was thinking about what I’d conceived of the first time: doing some sort of drawing out at a coffee shop.  It would be the perfect excuse to get out of the house, and just sit at a table and scribble and scrawl just for the fun of it.  (I’ve noticed “fun” keeps coming up in regards to this stuff…hmmm…)

I thought I had some markers that I’d bought a while ago.  A long while ago.  Like so long ago that they probably wouldn’t work anymore.  Probably not, but I looked in my desk, and lo and behold I found this:

Jackpot!  Apparently, I have such a latent desire for things Crayola, that I’d bought markers on two separate occasions and not even remembered doing so.  In addition, there was a whole box of nearly new crayons in there as well!  It was kind of a creepy sign about how I’ve hidden all these little desires of mine away and forgotten about them.  They’re out now, though, and as you can tell from the piece of paper beneath them, I’d have no trouble ruining a perfectly good piece of writing paper with them.  Sweet.

Strolling down to the local ‘bucks, I ordered up a chai latte (how non-edgy of me, it was even iced…and it was good!), and grabbed the one free low table sitting in the corner.  It had two sitting chairs near it, but I figured no one was likely to sit there once my work was spread out, which it likely would be soon enough.

Realizing I only had two or three hours to pull this off, I set right to work:

I two nephews that live far, far away, in a land called Kal-E-Forn-Ya.  I don’t get to see them often, and their birthdays are both next week (not twins, just uncanny timing by mom and dad).  I decided I’d make them both little name signs for their bedroom doors, even if one of them is far too young to even read the thing.  They’re colorful enough that I’m hoping they just stand as a little visual diversion.

Jack’s had progressed pretty far by this point, and I was considering it pretty close to being done, seeing as how I’d already spent a lot of time on it, (over an hour) and I had to move on.  You’ll note that, in my color-iffic enthusiasm I was losing some definition in the characters themselves.  The “k” in particular seems to be getting lost in the background.  Okay for today!

Here’s the start of Ryan’s sign.  I had fun just drawing those great big letters all over the page.  Don’t you remember how fun it was when you were a kid and you didn’t have to color or draw within the lines?  All I do at work all day is write things within lines.  This was the antithesis of that, and I loved it.

“The Ryan,” as I like to think of it, is looking pretty spanky by now.  It occurs to me at this point that my rabid enthusiasm for pigmentary variety is sort of diffusing everything, but what a good time it was!  It’s kind of challenging to try and come up with variation after variation of design and color.  I kept doing that thing where I’d put everything down and kind of hover my hand over the table like I was about to pick something up, just thinking, “Um…what does this need?  What goes here next?  Help!”

I admit I had this idea that some sweet little thing might wander over and go, “What are you doing?  Oh, that’ is so CUTE!  Aren’t you the sweetest thing in the whole world!  I think you’re stunningly amazing and we should start dating yesterday.”

Hey, it’s a coffee shop.  All that caffeine makes you think weird stuff.

What I got instead was some 20-ish guy who came and sat at the other chair I thought no one was going to use.  He was quiet and didn’t bother me, but then his friend showed up.  Then the talking started.  And while it wasn’t an obnoxious volume or anything it was, how shall we say, kind of dumb-sounding.  Intellectually these guys were on the ball, but emotionally they were on the make.  It was all talk about how “That blond chick likes me, but I’m trying to start something with her roommate, right?  And, like, this girl I work with wanted to set me up with her friend, and it turns out the friend is the same roommate!  Yeah!  But, like, this blond chick is all acting like there’s something or whatever and I think I’m gonna have to be, like, ‘Yeah, no.'”

There was also talk of partying at some primo hotel in Chicago that was a suite and who was going to get who to get what girls to bring who and…it kind of sucked.  I used my amazing powers for concentration to largely tune them out and do everything within the Powers of Crayola to create some colorful signage.  Finally, they third Stooge showed up and they left.

It was getting close to closing time and I had to finish.  I had Ryan’s largely done, and now Jack’s was looking a little absent in the background colors, so I went back to it and added in a bit.

Right as I’m spreading this out I get the word, “We’ll be closing in a few minutes, sir.”  Done!

It was about three hours worth of work, but I thought they turned out pretty nicely.  I hope they like them.  Jack’s is based more on design elements, while Ryan’s has a lot more solid colors, but I like those differences.  I’m wondering how this sort of expression will change for me in the coming weeks.  I’m already starting to see things that I like more than others, or ways I’d like to approach a particular design.  Interesting fun stuff!

I packed these off with a couple of Hot Wheels for the boys and mailed them out yesterday.  Happy birthday, little dudes!

I may do some more of these, some small ones.  Want one?  Leave a comment, get a sign!