Day 13 : The Questions
We’re in week seven of The Artist’s Way, which offers weekly tasks/prompts to engage with. I spent the evening writing to several of the prompts and then decided to go all in with this one:
Collect a stack of at least ten magazines, which you will allow yourself to freely dismember. Setting a twenty-minute time limit for yourself, tear (literally) through the magazines, collecting any images that reflect your life or interests. It is okay to include images you simply like. Keep pulling until you have a good stack of images (at least twenty). Now take a sheet of newspaper, a stapler, or some tape or glue, and arrange your images in a way that pleases you.
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I spent over an hour on the floor of my studio flipping through pages, ripping and clipping paper, and ended up completely lost in the process and thoroughly inspired. I didn’t have a big enough piece of paper to paste my collection of clippings to, so I laid them out on the floor, took a photo, and digested what had formed.
Said photo of my collection of clippings.
What I’m noticing:
It’s fun to have a collection of magazines with beautiful typography on hand.
The particular phrases that I was drawn to:
Underground — Thinking about all the things that happen underground, literally and metaphorically. How some of the most important work, the most revolutionary work, the most impactful work, happens under the radar, out of the spotlight, or even out of sight entirely. How important it is to show up for and do the important work even (or especially) when we don’t receive any public recognition. And to do that, how important it is to have a clear anchor to the deeper reason that we do the thing we do. To do the work underground requires a continued remembrance of the light that may be far above the dark soil from which we are spreading our roots, and to hold that light within us through the dark.
The Questions — All the questions. Letting everything be an experiment and in the experimentation, questioning everything.
But is it sustainable? — Asking this before beginning anything.
Can we stop striving? — Does everything worth doing really require so much effort? Or does the effort put towards the things we want to create feel easeful when the energy is flowing freely?
A landscape’s healing power — Always.
Ode to: Voicenotes — My favorite way to communicate!
The Rubbish FamZine! OMG! I’ve seen images of these zines/magazines floating around the internet, but I had no idea it was a family project documenting their yearly adventures. It was so fun to pause in the middle of this exercise and read the interview with the creators. I just loved hearing about how these two designers and their two kids started a family art collective and proceeded to create these elaborate and beautiful printed pieces of ephemera. So inspiring!
The travel van. Oh, how I want to be able to pack up our family for a weekend adventure into the wilderness. I’d like to drive it to the ocean and open the doors to watch the waves.
The little writing desk. I’ve been wishing for a small and simple wooden writing desk to put in our bedroom under the window that looks out at the tree tops. I imagine waking up early, lighting a candle, making a cup of tea, and beginning the day writing at the little desk with the window ajar.
Art and outdoor spaces and windows and moments of stillness, and none of it is really all that complicated. Simple desires that require focused reorienting toward.
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Afterward, I promptly ordered the latest issue of Open Spaces and a year’s subscription to Mother Tongue. Gifts for my artist.
