Finding Time for Creativity

I have started to make it a priority to be creative. It's funny, because in my job, 5 days a week, I am a music therapist, creating music each and every moment - improvising much of the time. You could definitely say it was a creative job. However, I often feel as though there is a creative spark left untended. My assumption is this is due to the fact that at work, I am making music for others, my clients - basically becoming their vehicle for expression through music. It really isn't my music being created, it is theirs.

So the itch to make something out of my own thought process, my own light and color has been gnawing at me for a long time. I have only just begun to give this gnaw a voice, and I thought it would be fun to share some of it with you.

I started making notecards, mainly because when I receive a hand-made card, I think, "I could do that." So I thought - get to it, girl! Below are two examples of watercolor based cards that I began playing with. As a child, I had the pleasure (though didn't think it so at the time) of taking watercolor painting lessons from both the late Maulsby Kimball and Allston Hegg, both fantastic and impressive individuals in the Waldorf art community, not to mention amazing artists. My parents thought it best if my sister and I learned how to paint from the masters, and though I was not too thrilled to give up my Saturday afternoons at the time, feel quite grateful for it now.

Being a musician and not a visual artist for many years, I certainly need a refresher, but it was just lovely to get my fingers around the brushes again. I must say that it was after finding The Waldorf Way, that I finally found my watercolors and sat down to give it a shot. My humble beginnings are just that... humble.

I have truly enjoyed several blogs about needle felting (The Magic Onions, Felt Musings from Sycamore Moon), feel inspired by the beauty that comes from their hands. And though I am just dabbling in the medium, I can begin to understand why wool is so fascinating to work with. It's a bit like music, actually - maleable, with so many possibilities. Below is my first tiny fairy and a bell ball for the cats:

I have branched out from beading, though I have continued with that, and have started making funky earrings. And I know that knitting something special is in my near future. I have loved looking over what Linda at Natural Suburbia has been making with her children. Perhaps I should stick to music for a living... yes. Yet I get so much joy from making things these days, that I'm fine with ending up with shelves and boxes of little trinkets that came from some momentary bit of inspiration, not serving any other purpose than that.

With music, once you hear it, it only consciously lives on in your head. (It does move into your body, your soul, but that's for another lengthy conversation altogether, and definitely over some sort of hot drink). With art, you actually touch what you made. You get to hold it, revisit it, reshape it, and be fascinated with it again tomorrow. I feel like a whole new world opened up to me, and being that I am teaching myself, I feel slightly infantile in the process. No longer can I depend on years of having honed the artistic process, as I have with music. I cannot depend on anything at all, except that spirit which guides my eyes and hands. I hear you all saying, "practice, practice, practice" much as my mother did between my piano lessons, and I reply - "I will". I thank you all for your tremendous inspiration and amazing talent. It spreads farther than you know!

One Person's Trash...

This weekend was the town wide tag sale (garage/yard sale to you westerners).  I had soccer-mom responsibilities, so I was unable to go (boo hoo).  However, I was able to participate in one of my favorite activities - finding the REAL bargains around town by driving by later on at night and scoping out the 'free' piles outside where the sales took place.  

Talk about fun - we had the list from the paper of all the houses having sales earlier that day, not to mention that many of the flyers were still hanging on the telephone poles through town.  We got lucky pretty early on.  I had spotted a sign that stated 'antiques' and went there first.  We found a beautiful old rocker - we passed on that as the wood frame was broken.  Then we found an old, tall dining chair with no seat - I have plans for that (will post that soon).  My husband really liked a nice old desk chair with a split seat - he's convinced we can fix that.  And then we saw a beautiful, hand carved occasional table with no top and one leg off.  I have the beginning of an idea of what to do with it that might make 2 tables out of the one (will post that soon).  I have my summer ready for projects.  I can't wait to share them all with you!

No! Don't Throw That Out - It's A Treasure To Me!

There is a 7-family house next door to me. Recently, it completely emptied of all it's residents as the owner prepares for renovation this summer. He will be constructing 4 condos where the 7 apartments stood, either to rent or sell sometime next year. While I am not looking forward to the crazy noise we are going to endure this summer, I have already become giddy with trash-pickin' delight as my moving-out neighbors began depositing their unwanted goods on the sidewalk for trash pick up. Oh my. I have already benefited from this experience - my son grabbed a punching bag, I found a beautiful, antique oak dresser which I will refurbish, we grabbed 3 sturdy drawers from a broken dresser that will be our first outdoor vegetable planters for the deck (a project blog for another time), and we are now proud owners of a motorized scooter without a key (hmmmm - not sure if that will turn out positive in the long run). And all this without one wall coming down! I spoke with the contractor and owner yesterday and admitted to my trash-picking habit. Really, I was just warning them that I will be looking through their cast-offs the minute they let go of them... They just smiled and said - You'll make our job easier. Wow. Do you know what comes out of an old New England house? Old panel doors. Real wood molding. I can just visualize my 'new' greenhouse coming from 3 floors of old 4-lite windows. I'm thinking about old doorknobs. Beadboard paneling. Old light fixtures. Oh yes. This girl's gonna be dumpster diving pretty regularly this summer. Mmm Hmmm. Can't wait. As I look outside tonight, I see a headboard that might become something else. Oh...there's a small coffee table just screaming to stay out of the trash truck.

Last Monday, I was home with a sick child. As I often do when home in the morning (rare), I watched out the window as life woke up and began moving around in my neighborhood. The trash truck comes on Monday, and my sons had diligently put out the trash cans the night before. As I dazed out the window, I looked at the enormous pile of 'trash' next door - a definite sign of someone moving: an old rotten couch, tables, lamps, trash bags galore, old phone books, old clothes strewn about. I heard the trash truck coming, and decided to sit and watch. I had already gone over the pile with a fine-toothed comb the day before, so I knew that what was left was pretty much trash (so glad I grabbed that antique dresser!). The truck pulled up and CRUNCH went the couch. CRUNCH went the desk and broken dresser. The bags of clothes and trash disappeared. The phone books (which could have been recycled) were tossed in the truck. In a poof, everything that to me represented 10 years of people living next door was gone. Gone. There was no longer any residue of anyone moving out, or living there at all. I looked over at the house, now empty, and felt so sad. Sad that the bulldozers will come soon to rip it's siding off. It's not a pretty house to look at, and a renovation is long overdue. But I felt sad knowing that the work will be done without much thought to keeping and reusing anything. So my mission is to find homes for the useable materials, to the best of my ability (it's not MY house, after all...)
I look forward to posting upcoming projects from the materials I have already gathered. Stay tuned for fun!