Letting go, moving on

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Tom Harold

So I went to my steel fabrication sculpture class this past weekend, and it was A-FRIGGIN’-MAZING!!!! OMGZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! (There will be more pictures and explanation later, promise!)

We built stuff! We cut stuff using FIRE!!! There was an oxyacetelyne setup and a plasma cutter and a MIG welder! It was awesome! I will post pics soon as I’m able. I built about half of a rolling ball sculpture in three hours. Yes, shock and surprise there, right? A bunch of people looked at it and were like, “What…is that?” One guy in particular kept looking at it. I’m wondering if he’s not going to start thinking about building one. He had this funny look on his face, like he was really considering something.

This whole welding thing – it was just so great! My one or two meager efforts at stick welding in the garage gave me some familiarity, and the practice of soldering actually prepared me for some of processes used in welding, so I was kind of online already. But the whole thing, just – it was incredible! I have been told, and I believe it’s also in the Artist’s Way, that when you’re really tuned in, when you’re really doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you forget all about everything else around you. Time flies by and you don’t even know it. You become terrifically focused on what you’re doing.

That’s exactly what happened. I was wholly drawn in to it. On Saturday we basically learned how the shop works. On Sunday it was, “Have at it!” day, so Saturday night I went home and took the steel rods I’d bought earlier that morning and I bent them up into spirals so I could spend my time welding on Sunday and not bending stuff. I was working on it without even being there! Then when I got there I got so into my work I didn’t even realize I hadn’t taken a picture until the instructor told is it was time to start cleaning up. I was all the way into it. It was the greatest thing ever!

But what does this have to do with letting go, you ask? Moving on? Well, the experience with welding was so awesome, even the parts where I screwed up, that I’m now clearing out anything around my house that I can find that I don’t need so I can buy a welder! From the outset of this whole rolling ball sculpture exploration I’ve wanted to weld, work with steel. Actually, I still have pieces of scrap metal, old car parts, that I cut up expressly to build a sculpture with. However, I realized not long into the project that I was taking a huge bite, and not sure I could chew it. I scaled back to copper just to get my feet wet. My feet are fairly soaked now, and this welding workshop solidified my suspicions from years past: I WANT TO WELD STEEL! I NEED TO DO THIS!

I know what material I want to use: stainless steel. I know what I want to do with it: build rolling ball sculptures. I need precision and detail. For this I need a TIG welder. Well, I could get by with less, but I’m not going to hamstring my efforts by getting what *kind of* works, not when I could pool resources and get what I *know* is going to do exactly what I need it to do.

At first I was just kind of desperate, like, “Ahh! I must get one! I don’t know how!” Then I went, “Dude, you know how much they cost, and you don’t have that kind of money….damn.” Then I went, “Hey, there have got to be one or two things lying around the house that you don’t want or need anymore. Maybe you can put enough of them together to make ends meet.”

So I started looking, and I was surprised at what I found. I dug through my back hall and found a bunch of music gear that I either never use, or use so seldom that it’s probably best that I just let go of it. It’s all going on Ebay here shortly. I already put a little bass amp on there, a practice amp, and there are a couple more old tube guitar amps that are probably going to go up as well. I may have already sold one of them to a friend, sans Ebay. Cheaper for both of us!

I’m on my way. I’m letting go of all kinds of stuff that I’ve been holding onto. It’s time to turn that over into something that I can use and enjoy today. They say that the things we own can end up owning us, that we can become trapped by things, stuff. I know that in the past I haven’t sold these things because, “Well, I might want to use it someday,” or, “But what if I regret selling it a year or two or ten from now?” Well, what if a year or two or ten from now I go, “Man, I really wish I’d bought that welder ten years ago. Just think where I’d be now if I’d started back then! Why did I wait?”

If I’m not using these things, someone else should be. They were created to be used, not to sit in a dark corner. I’m putting them back out into the world where they can be enjoyed…and then I’m going to purchase something that *I* can fully enjoy today, right now!

Artist Date – Indianapolis Museum of Art

Posted on January 29, 2010 by Tom Harold

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:

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

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:

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!

Affects and Side Affects

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Tom Harold

RAM chip, chord book. Totally related, right? Well they are, sort of. Here on the blog where we are all about creativity, it’s no surprise that both of these are linked to my creative growth. Well, that, and I ordered them both off the interwebz, if you need one more obscure way they’re related. I know the mail media link is a thrilling one, but let’s put that aside and look at the whole creative thing, since that’s pretty much why I write on here all the time.

The RAM I hope is going to be a huge help with my photo stuff. You’ve no doubt noticed that the photo posting has slowed until it seems as if it has stopped altogether. It has not, I assure you. I’ve still been taking photos (almost!) every day. I have all of them either on my hard drive or on my camera. However, processing all those photos gets ridiculously time consuming, particularly when I have over a hundred to go through and I want to switch back and forth among five or six of them and pick the best one. Right about the time I start doing that, the virtual memory in my lappy kicks on, and then everything…slows……..to……….a………….crawl. It can take me two hours just to pick through ten photos. Granted, I’m a perfectionist, but the slowosity of my hardware isn’t helping things any.

Enter my brother, who informs me that the whole slowness thing is caused by this virtual memory issue, and that if I got more RAM I could whip through dozens upon dozens of pictures as well as run iTunes, Word, and my web browser all at once and never have a hiccup. This sounds like more than a good deal to me, so I only kind of reluctantly shell out money I don’t really have to get this stuff which should perform what is really an invaluable function: that of making my creative efforts more easily accessible and enjoyable. This is pretty key stuff, as in the past I’ve hamstrung creative efforts by trying to get by with the minimum. Then I’ve been unhappy with the results, and then I’ve called the whole thing a failure. I’m pretty much done with working against myself these days, and I realize that my creative efforst are important enough and valuable enough that I actually DO deserve to spend money on them.

This sort of thing – purchasing the RAM – is the sort of side-effect that working toward a goal has. I didn’t set out to update my computer when I decided to take more pictures, it’s just something that has come with the territory. I didn’t set out to learn more about how my computer operates, but it happened. The same thing was the case with my outboard hard drive – just happened as a matter of course. It’s really interesting to see how all this stuff comes about when I pick up on something and go after it.

The same sort of thing has happened with my drawing stuff. I started with a handfull of pencils that a friend had given me. Now I have a whole box full that I’ve bought for myself. I also have a sketch book and some regular lead pencils for other types of drawing. I’ve been hanging out a lot more with a friend of mine, because she likes drawing. I’ve been noticing visual art more and taking a greater interest since I started drawing. There are some other projects in the works related to this subject, and I hope I’ll have some other developments to report on in the coming months. It looks like I’m going to learn matting and framing in the near future as well – not that I planned on that, it…just happened. I think there’s a trip to the art museum coming up as well related to “refilling the well” as the Artist’s Way puts it, and that will be an outgrowth of all this drawing stuff too.

The guitar chord book – well, that’s kind of obvious, now isn’t it? I…didn’t really plan on buying that, but they guy who is teaching me things, he said that’s the book he first used over forty years ago. I wanted to learn a few things, so I’m going to give this a shot. Working on guitar stuff has led me to listen to music differently and led to new conversations with new people. This interest was also responsible for my nephew getting a ukelele from me for his birthday this year, in a weird sort of related twist. The people who are being affected by my interests are not just me, which is a cool thing to note. (If my nephew ever ends up on Youtube singing Jason Mraz tunes, I’ll be sure to let you know.)

Now, off to work on some photos or guitar or whatever the heck else…

Touchstones

Posted on November 9, 2009 by Tom Harold

The Artist’s Way talks about “touchstones.” These are images or objects that kind of draw out our good feelings about creativity, kind of create a comfortable surrounding for it to let itself go, help encourage creative thought and play. I love collections of images as displayed in this magazine article on the drag racing history of ’55-’57 Chevrolets, then there’s some art that my friend and I have done, and a couple of books that I really enjoy. It’s nice to notice these sorts of things when I’m in the middle of this hectic month of novel writing. These things spark the mind, give it energy, and just kind of make a person (well, this person) go, “Man, that’s so cool. I want to make something!” and then you go off and do just that.

NaNoWriMo Go, Go, Go!

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Tom Harold

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

Posted on October 30, 2008 by Tom Harold

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

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Tom Harold

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 #3: The Walk

Posted on September 24, 2008 by Tom Harold

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

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Tom Harold

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!

A Date with the Artist

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Tom Harold

Very recently I started working with a program in this book called The Artist’s Way. Without going into too much detail, the book is kind of a process of discovery/recovery for the creative side of yourself. It’s been recommended to me many times, and I bought it probably two years ago, maybe even three, and then let it sit when I got to the part that said something about “This is the part where you stop just reading and start doing the work.” Apparently, I’ve reached the point where I’m ready to do the work.

One of the exercises in the 12-week program of the book is something called an Artist Date where you basically take your artist self out on a date for some “quality time.” You can’t bring anyone else along. It’s just you and your artist for a little creative togetherness.

I’d been trying to think of what I’d do all week. I was going to do something relatively simple like a little drawing or whatever, and then yesterday, when I was adding some quotes and photos to my kitchen door it came to me. It was time to really do the door right.

This door is the one that leads out of my kitchen onto the back hall. It’s just white. It’s been badly painted. See?

This makes it the perfect place to stick things, which I started doing a couple three years ago when I did a goal-setting exercise with some friends. The resulting poster from that exercise went on the door. After that I started putting quotes on the door on little scraps of paper. Vis:

Another goal poster arrived and sat around forever, until I finally put that up the other day and went, “Nah. No. This isn’t right. This door could be awesome. It could be a fantastic representation of what I want out of my life, and the last thing I see going out to work every day. If it’s going to send me a message every day, let’s really make it bangup awesome.”

So how does that happen? Paint. It was time to paint the door, make it visibly back up all the great messages and thoughts that were going to be tacked and taped to it.

I took my artist to the hardware store this afternoon, wandered around looking at expensive paints for a while, mostly seeing stuff that was more than I needed and pricey. I went to the desk to ask for help, and there I spied the magic. One rack of little cans with a sign: “All sample colors $3.98.” It was just a few ounces, but I could get several colors, and I didn’t need much of any given one. Bingo.

Paint chips. This was so way better than trying to pick out paint for a room. I didn’t give a rip if they matched anything – the room, the floor, the fridge, the cabinets, that cute little set of drapes I’d (not even considered) gotten recently. I just wanted color! It was a free-for-all!

I went for bright stuff. Colors that felt positive and energetic. Pool Party (blue). Greeenway (self-explanatory). Cosmic Berry (purple). Buttercup Squash (yellow). Red Gumball (guess).

Five brushes, five colors, forty bucks. A little pricey for me, but I’d gotten a bonus playing the gig last night, so I spent it on…me!

Now comes the good part! All pictures are clickable to enlarge.

Early stage. Just a little green and blue.

Gettin’ crazy with the whole palette. A bunch of shapes are showing up, plus some full panels of color.

Things are really gettin’ interesting now. It was right about this time that my brother stopped over to help work on getting the oil pan off the Chevelle engine. He took one look at it and said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Painting!”

“Being creative?”

“Yup.”

The following hour was spent getting really dirty and pouring a lot of coolant and some oil on the floor getting the oil pan off, but we got it done, and he split. Back to the kitchen, and I knew I had to wrap things up. This was fun, but one of the things I have to put in to practice is trying not to become obsessed with perfection. I needed to have fun with this, and then just call it good enough and be done with it. I was meeting some friends later in the evening, so I gave myself one hour to finish it. By about 7:30 I had to be done, done, done, no excuses. An activity is no longer fun or positive if it begins eating up the rest of your life. At 7:30 I finished washing purple paint off my hand (see print in blue panel), and stepped back to check things out:

Fun stuff, huh? I was pretty pleased. It’s art. It may not be Monet, but it’s art. It was fun. I had an incredibly good time just making stuff up and doing whatever I wanted, letting the drips run, and being okay with all the little goofs and happenstances that came up along the way. I think my favorite parts are the green bubbly-lookin’ circles (I don’t know why, they just are.), and the dotty little spots on the left frame – those are actually tons of my fingerprints after I dipped my fingers in the paint. That was one of the last bits I did, and kind of felt like a “light bulb” moment. I’ve been doing nothing like this for so long it’s hard for me to think about visual improvisation, so it was nice to feel things waking up a bit.

All in all, I had a pretty excellent day playing around with paint, and now I’ve got something really positive to see me out of the house ever morning. If my experience with the goal-setting posters has been a good indicator, this ought to bring about some positive effects sooner or later. I’m looking forward to it.

Tom Harold

Writing on creativity and rolling ball sculpture

Tag Archives: The Artist’s Way