Studio Sunday-Last of My 65th Year

This is the last of it. One more post about the year before I turned 65. Among other things, the writing has inspired to me to try to be more proactive about the career part of my work. I look forward to sharing some of the things I am trying in future posts and letting you know how they work.

Before I do, I'd like to give you one more opportunity to read through my musings on that year in pdf form. Blogs are wonderful but they are read in reverse chronological order. I wanted a format to read what I wrote from beginning to end, not end to beginning. There are links to two versions of the pdf. The first is to be read on a computer or other device. The second is to print out to make a book. I designed it at the end of last year so that I could have a record for myself. I used three sheets of paper printed on both sides There is no separate cover. I designed it so that the paper was folded in half the long way (like a hot dog) to echo the long column arrangement of the blog. The pages are 11" high by 4.25" wide. If you should print a copy for yourself, page 1 backs up to page 2, page 3 to page 4, and page 5 to page 6.

I share all of this because I hope you can benefit from my experience and more importantly, that you will take some time to think and write about your own work and your own journey. My writing does not start out with the words you read here. Much of what I publish on my blog has been edited and refined over multiple starts and stops. If I were only doing it for myself, I wouldn't work so hard at the language. My education is not in art but in writing and analysis (English Lit major) so this is part of my training and now part of my being. I say this to encourage you to spend some time writing about your work, in relation to both the work itself and the ways you get it out into the world and what your goals are for it. It's for you. You don't have to edit and refine it. Just get the words out. Sometimes you will find surprising things. 

65th Year pdf to read

65th Year pdf to print

My 65th Year-Part 7

My 65th year concludes on September 17 when I turn 65. This will be my last post in the series. I don’t think I’m finished writing about my work, but I am done with my thoughts and feelings leading up to this birthday. I have come up with a plan to mark the occasion and the rest of my 65th year will be devoted to that. 

I want to celebrate my change in attitude over the past year and my gratitude and appreciation for having been able to spend the last 38 years as an artist. I want to put to rest any disappointments and regrets. I’m not sure where it comes from but I have always felt that I had something to prove. To move on, I feel I need to prove to myself that I have nothing left to prove. I need to acknowledge the past so I can free myself for the future. 

I am doing so by having an Open Studio Celebration on my birthday which conveniently falls on a Saturday this year. I will be showing work from my earliest days in calligraphy up to the present in my studio and throughout the first floor of our home. This will not be a formal exhibition in any way. I won’t be framing anything that is currently unframed. I’ll be tacking things up on walls, windows, and shelves. I’ll be sharing calligraphy pieces from the late ‘70s on including samples of commercial work as well as art pieces, calligraphy and photocopier work, greeting cards over the years, Childbirth Journey, my Notan Press books, the Spirit Books and their precursor the Spirit Boxes, and more. There will be things for sale but that is not the focus. This is first and foremost a celebration. I invite you all to come and join me. I will share more details closer to the date as well as the process of getting ready and then the event itself for those who are interested but cannot attend. I hope this will be the time that I truly let myself

65th Year-Part 6

I started this 65th year wanting a change in attitude and a change in approach. About two months ago, I realized that things were actually pretty much the same. Part 5 dealt with the attitude issue. Part 6 is about what I am actually doing and how I am spending my time. 

There has always been a push and pull for me between being an artist and being an educator. I am really happiest when I do some of both. At the moment, I’m pretty content with the art part. I’ve made five new Spirit Books so far this calendar year which is more than my usual production. I’ve had good fortune in getting the Spirit Books into exhibits and actually winning a prize. I’m spending some time on calligraphy and enjoying it. 

It is the educator part that is unresolved. About ten years ago, I retired from teaching bookmaking workshops in schools after 20 years of traveling throughout Massachusetts and beyond. I began teaching workshops for adults called Book Play. I would consider them an emotional success for both me and the participants, but I have to be practical somewhere and teaching is also about income for me. I knew when I left the schools I was leaving what I would call real money (although that was less plentiful than in the early days), but I didn’t realize big a change it would be. 

Previously I had done some grant projects but this past year I only did individual workshops. When I put together my tax info, I was shocked at how truly small the amount in the workshop income category was. It didn’t hit me immediately but one day, when I was getting ready for a workshop, I had a revelation. It wasn’t worth it. While I always enjoyed the hours I spent with an assembled group and all the time in the studio coming up with new ideas, I didn’t like everything else involved—getting the materials, storing the materials, packing the materials, driving to a new location, and then coming back and doing it all in reverse especially after 20 years doing the same at a greater volume and intensity. 

When I taught in schools, I saw my job as introducing bookmaking to teachers and students. I was willing to do it in whatever way they would accept it which meant doing projects that were curriculum focused, teaching large groups, and making books that were simple enough that they could be repeated by the teachers in the future. My goal was always to encourage a lasting involvement.

When I began to teach adults, I wanted to present bookmaking my way. That meant recycled materials, the simplest of forms, and an emphasis on play and experimentation. My ideal participant was someone who had not made books before, and had not had much experience with art or craft. I believe that everyone is creative and that simple bookmaking is the perfect entry into creative expression. It was not as easy a sell as I would have liked. In general, the workshops were too simple for art organizations. Once I was almost turned down after being invited. I was told that they didn’t think the finished projects would meet the standards of the attendees. They relented and it was a success. I felt the best fit was libraries but had limited success in getting bookings. I could have done more with promotion but it’s not like I sat back and waited for people to contact me. I think there are a number of factors at play. Many public and non-profit institutions have less money, people have less time for extra-curricular activities and if they do, they are more likely to spend the time and money on things they are already have an interest in, and there is more competition than ever. Everyone is getting into the workshop presentation game. 

As my teaching changed, I began to feel that my actual presence was not that essential. In the workshops, I would lead participants through some step-by-step bookmaking and then let them play. Since I wanted them to work as freely as possible, I didn’t go around and offer guidance. I made it clear that I was there for them and was ready to answer any questions and help in any way, but much of the time I just sat with them and made a book myself. While it didn’t feel like I did much there, I put a lot of effort into bringing an array of materials for up to 25 participants to work with—collage papers, ribbons, beads, glue sticks, scissors, pages of quotes, and more. I only asked the sponsoring institution to provide recycled paper with writing on one side only.

After I decided to no longer give workshops, I realized I was ready to stop but I was not done. I had all this knowledge, all these ideas, and all this passion to share. I had to find a way to continue to share it. I’ve wanted to do a book for quite a few years and went to class at Grub Street in Boston on how to write a query letter which is the first step in contacting a publisher or an agent. It was full of good information but I couldn’t see how I could get across what I was trying to do in three paragraphs. 

And then I had a vision—youtube. I had done a series of how-to videos when I was working with children that were well received. In those, I filmed myself showing the construction just as I would if I were talking to a class. I wanted teachers to be able to model their lessons after mine. This time I knew I would show just my hands in the tutorial part. I took a excellent class on Video Storytelling with a Smartphone with Bob Glover at Cambridge Center for Adult Education which helped me get started. I would love it if the videos could lead to a book or something else and am going to do my best to spread the word and get subscribers and views. But that would be a bonus. My main goal is to share what I know and what I love. And I love making the videos. Once I ironed out the kinks and figured out how to be myself (Video Update), it has been great experience. I hope you’ll take a look at The Joy of Making Books. And make some books.

My 65th Year-Part 5

I wrote my last post in this series on October 11, 2015 and have been thinking about the topic again as the end of my 65th year approaches. I turn 65 on September 17th. The first thing I’ll say is that true change comes slowly. On October 4 for my third post, I ended with this:

I have exactly the career one should have if one does everything her own way. I pretty much make the art I want at the pace I want and put it out into the world in the same way. I have a husband who believes in me and wants me to be able to do exactly that. I have grown children who have said the nicest things about how my art has enriched their lives. In the past two years, I have been contacted out of the blue by two institutions who wanted to purchase a Spirit Book for their collection, a design magazine from Taiwan that wanted to feature my work, and two institutions who wanted to show my work. How can I feel anything but gratitude? Well of course I can, and have, but it is foolish. With that recognition, that hard little knot has dissolved. I go forward into this 65th year with a new resolve to make the most out of these gifts and be thankful for them. 

Turns out I was wrong. That hard little knot had not dissolved. It was still there. I realized it when friends retired and I felt happy for them and bad for me. They were leaving positions with a sense of accomplishment and an optimistic view toward what came next with time to explore their own interests. I felt like I was still a child jumping up and down waving my arms and shouting, “Look at me! Pay attention to me! ” I was back to being an ungrateful bitch (65th year-Part 3) and a petulant child—not in public and not all the time but often enough. I knew it was counterproductive but I couldn’t seem to stop complaining about how my work didn’t sell (65th Year-Part 4) and on and on. 

It seems I may have reached the turning point I was looking for. It came after one of my feeling-sorry-for-myself sessions with my husband. It wasn’t anything he said. It was the look of hurt on his face. 40 years of trying to help me do the work I want and I'm not happy. That look may have been there before but this time I saw it. The next morning I woke up and that little knot was gone. This time it feels final. I think I finally understand that isn’t all about me. 

My life is mine but it is not a solo effort. I am what I am and have been able to do what I do because of the support first of my parents, then my husband, and now my children, not to mention friends both far and near. If I don’t have the openness and strength to be generous with myself, I am hurting them as well. 

I feel like I am really done—done with chasing after acceptance in places that don’t welcome me, done with not taking the time to savor the good things that come my way, done with not appreciating all the goodness and good fortune that is in my life. I may actually be growing up. We shall see.

Next 65th Year post—the end of workshops, the beginning of videos.

My 65th Year-Part 4

I felt like I ended the last post with such determination and finality that I hesitate to go back into the whole conversation but there’s a lot of thoughts I had along the way that I’d like to share starting with selling work which has never been easy for me. When I first started in art, I did what everyone else did—put price tags on everything I exhibited and hope that the work sold. The first goal was to sell enough to offset the expenses of framing and putting on the exhibition. The second was to make money. I wouldn’t know about that. I never succeeded in accomplishing the first. 

I can’t remember exactly when but there was an exhibition after which I came to the conclusion that this approach was not good for my mental health. It seemed like a kind of self-induced manic depression—the intense working to prepare for an exhibition followed by the letdown which was compounded by the dashing of expectation due to the lack of sales. At this time I had begun to develop my bookmaking with children workshops and I decided that I would not concern myself with sales at all. The teaching would provide the income and the art and exhibitions would be about sharing the work and getting it out into the world unencumbered. It worked well for me, both internally and externally. Internally I was more at peace with the work. Externally I always qualified my life as an artist by adding “and I teach bookmaking in schools for my income.”

When I stopped teaching in schools, I had no idea that I would feel like I had lost a structural necessity to my identity. I had forgotten my earlier difficulties with seeing and presenting myself as just an artist. Even though I had gained twenty more years of experience in the intervening years, I felt new and raw again. 

I think at my core I have a deep ambivalence about selling my art. On a functional level, selling is a lot of work and takes time away from the work of choice—the art itself. On a deeper level, it goes to the core of the question which Lewis Hyde addressed in his book, The Gift. 

“It is the assumption of this book that a work of art is a gift, not a commodity. Or, to state the modern case with more precision, that works of art exist simultaneously in two ‘economies,’ a market economy and a gift economy. Only one of these is essential, however: a work of art can survive without a market, but where there is no gift there is no art.”

While it is gratifying to have someone spend her hard-earned money on my work, I get just as much satisfaction of standing in a room full of Spirit Books with people who are inspired by their presence. I also think I am speaking truthfully when I say that I would rather teach someone to make a book of their own than have them purchase one of mine. 

All this being said, I now do have an interest in selling my work. It is not about the money because there is no correlation of value between the time it takes me to make a Spirit Book and the amount that I can sell it for. It is about making room, both physically and mentally. I am so glad that I kept the Spirit Books together for as long as I did. They stayed together because, for much of the time, no one wanted to buy them and for the rest of time, I chose not to sell them. This enabled them to develop an identity of their own. There has been a dialogue over 23 years in which they have told me what they wanted to be as much as I have thought about what they should be. Keeping them together also enabled me to produce the Spirit Books catalog last year which I treasure as a document of the ongoing series. 

Now it is time for the Spirit Books to move out into the world. They are now secure in their identity and existence. They no longer need me and I no longer need them. They have in fact become a burden. They no longer feel like art but just stuff. Their mostly unseen presence (they are stored in boxes) discourages me. Why make more so that there is more stuff in more boxes? Inwardly I need to free myself of the past so that I can continue to make art with a joyful and open spirit. Outwardly I need to stop feeling defensive or apologetic about my still ambivalent feelings about art and commerce. I am making progress on the path to being able to say with conviction: I believe in the rightness of the way I work regardless of the norms and expectations, real or imagined, of others. I am an artist in my own way and on my own terms. 

65th Year Part 3

I’ve been thinking and taking notes all week and there is much in that material that I could share, and may share later, but it seems best to skip right to the conclusion I came to: I’m kind of an ungrateful bitch. While it often seems to me that I put so much out and don’t get a proportionate amount back in return, it really isn’t true. I do think I put a lot out into the world—a blog with two regular postings a week, active participation in facebook, teaching, giving talks—but they are all done in my way and on my own terms. I do not approach them as marketing but as sharing my loves and my interests. My mother told me more than once when I was young that if I insisted on doing everything my own way, exactly as I wanted, I had to understand that things might be harder than if I followed the norm, as in “Don’t complain to me that no one asked you to dance if you insisted on wearing army boots.” She said these things not to be mean but to guide me and out of a frustration which I understand. This 65th Year writing project has grown out of my frustration with myself.

I no longer have difficulty saying the words, “I am an artist” and I know that I am good at what I do but I still often feel the need to apologize for my career and my lack of income. A lot of it comes from me but it is not all me. I do meet people who look at me as a talented person who could use some advice about how to be more successful in the world. Instead of saying to myself, thanks but I am doing just fine in my own way, I question myself and feel bad about myself. I need to follow Gertrude Stein’s advice: “Let me listen to me and not to them.” 

I have exactly the career one should have if one does everything her own way. I pretty much make the art I want at the pace I want and put it out into the world in the same way. I have a husband who believes in me and wants me to be able to do exactly that. I have grown children who have said the nicest things about how my art has enriched their lives. In the past two years, I have been contacted out of the blue by two institutions who wanted to purchase a Spirit Book for their collection, a design magazine from Taiwan that wanted to feature my work, and two institutions who wanted to show my work. How can I feel anything but gratitude? Well of course I can, and have, but it is foolish. With that recognition, that hard little knot has dissolved. I go forward into this 65th year with a new resolve to make the most out of these gifts and be thankful for them. 

65th Year Part 2

If I am going to figure out the next step, I need to start with the basic question: do I need to? If my goal is to “Take joy!” and I experience it while I am at work in the studio, is that enough? Not, do I need to do it because that’s what artists do. Not, do I need to do it because that is what I have been doing for the last 35 years. Not, do I need to do it because it makes spending all that time working alone in the studio socially acceptable and comprehensible to others. But, do I, at the core of my being, need to take my work beyond its creation? Do I need for it to be out in the world?

From the beginning, there was definitely some part of me that was drawn to put the work out there. My calligraphic pieces started with my love of the words that I was writing—passages and quotes and poems that spoke to me. While I often had misgivings about the quality of my presentation, I always had faith in the words. I wanted others to experience them and I interpreted them in the best way I could. 

In my early years of calligraphy, I got involved in an artists’ coop, Art Alive!, in Lowell, MA. In retrospect, I see how important it was in my development as an artist. I started on what can be a solitary journey with a group of like-minded and supportive friends and colleagues. I had a comfortable venue for showing my work and it was easy for me to get into a rhythm of making work and then showing it. So easy that I never questioned it. It was just what one did.  

In 1986, I created Childbirth Journey—15 abstract pastel drawings with calligraphy of journal entries written during my pregnancy, after the birth of my first child by Cesarian section, and his early months. Looking back, I am surprised at how fiercely I felt the need to share the work. I had an exhibition at the Newburyport Art Association (again the value of local art organizations to provide a platform for artists). It was my first experience with presenting such personal work. It was both exhilarating and difficult. “Too much information” had not become part of the language yet, but many viewers would have said it if they could have. 

Since Childbirth Journey, my art has become less about my personal story. I am more inclined to share my thoughts and feelings in writing instead. In my art, I have sought to deepen my connection with the natural world by working with natural materials. The consistent thread since 1992 has been The Spirit Books, wordless handmade books that rest in cradles of wood, roots, and vines. While I don’t have that mysterious burning desire to show it to people, I do take great pleasure in sharing it. The joy is there. The answer is yes. 

My 65th Year-Part 1

This is the first of several upcoming posts of my reflections on my art and its place in my life as I enter my 65th year. As I’ve mentioned before, I take stock of my life and make resolutions for my birthday rather than the new year. This year’s birthday, when I turned 64, took on extra significance. I can thank the Beatles for part of it. As a teenager, the age of 64 stuck in my mind from their lilting tune of “Will you still love me, will you still need me when I’m 64?” 64 represented a transition into another chapter of life more than any other number. 

There are other things that have affected me this past year. Helping my mother-in-law as she transitioned from her own home to a senior living facility has been very difficult in many ways. Experiencing the consequences of her diminishing capacities has made me think about aging in a more immediate way. I want to make the most out of the time I have with good health and mind and also prepare myself for growing old with grace and acceptance. 

In the media, I find the frequent stories of people retiring and reinventing themselves frustrating. They are being celebrated for embarking on second, often more creative than their first, chapters. I feel like I am still trying to get my first one going. While I am so lucky to have been able to spend so much of my life as an artist, I haven’t felt that I have been rewarded in a worldly sense in proportion to my efforts. For all my writing and thinking about the topic, I am still working on how to define success as an artist.

Two years ago I wrote Art Lessons: Reflections From An Artist’s Life. I intentionally focused on my personal relationship with my work and what it had to teach me. I felt that there was a little knot of hardness somewhere in my heart and I hoped the writing would help to loosen it. By the end of the book, after thinking and writing about self-criticism, perfection, letting go of other people’s expectations and my own interpretation of them, and feeling like my work had to be hard to be of value, I embraced the words of Fra Giovanni Giacondo in 1513: “Take joy!”

In these past two years, many elements of my work have become more free. I have come back to calligraphy with a new sense of openness and confidence. In the studio I have had many moments of pure joy. But that little knot of hardness is still alive although diminished. I now realize that it is the next phase, the one I just as intentionally left out of that little book—the putting of my work out into the world—that is holding me back. I need to tackle that if my 65th year and beyond can be what I want it to be. 

I am an optimist and I like to interact with the world as an optimist. I’ve been feeling all this for a while but didn’t want to share my discontent without a sense that there was a way out of it. I now feel like there is. More next week.