Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Where I fell in love with Japanese paper - Aiko's in Chicago In my story, A Love letter to Paper, I mentioned that Marge showed me a store in Chicago that had Japanese paper. I just remembered the name of the store: Aiko's. Now in Atlanta we have the Ichiban Gallery that stocks Japanese papers. Now too, most art supply stores sell a wide range of oriental papers. But I still treasure my paper sampler from Aiko's. 7:18:52 PM    comment []

Creativity Coaching & Eric Maisel Yesterday I mentioned my creativity coach. She's wonderful, but I don't want to say too much more about her without asking her first. I can tell you now, though, that  we're doing this as part of Eric Maisel's creativity coaching course. You may know of Eric Maisel from one of his books. I've bought several, but have worked most with Fearless Creating. (By the way, I'm not an amazon.com affiliate so any amazon links I mention are simply for your convenience.) A few months ago, I applied to become a free "practice client" for one of his creativity coaching students. Last month, I was delighted to get an email from my new coach. Did I luck out! If you're interested in getting on the list to receive free coaching during the next class, you can learn more about it at Eric Maisel's course site. He also offers a creativity newsletter and an interesting site. 6:13:52 PM    comment []

Transparency I never thought I'd be putting my artist journal online. Yet last weekend I felt such an urge to do so. Here I am. It has crossed my mind that one of the bowls I'm making right now, has contributed to this change. It's the third in a series of bowls that started with spontaneously forming copper mesh into a vessel form. The first bowl (which I actually have finished, by golly) has lots of paper formed on both sides of the mesh, and through it - making the mesh firm and stable. There are still significant openings where you see the mesh alone, but there's lots of paper. The second bowl has much less paper, and the paper itself has transluscent edges. The third bowl has almost no paper, so that the bowl itself is both definite - yet at the same time, transparent. This is the bowl that I associate with making this artist journal. 5:22:33 PM    comment []

A love letter to Paper Today I wrote a love letter to Paper. Now I realize that each of my main materials, paper and iron, needs some attention just for itself. I've been so intent on making bowls that unite paper and iron that I haven't wanted to make any bowls just of iron any more, nor any just of paper. When my children were little, I made sure I gave each one of them some undivided attention alone, just the two of us. Can't I do this with iron and paper too? Would it be so terrible to make a paper bowl? An iron bowl? Maybe this would ease the process of making iron and paper bowls, instead of being a detour? It isn't that I haven't had any urges to make paper bowls or iron bowls. It's just that I've been censoring them. I'm afraid of getting distracted. Today, making paper bowls and iron bowls no longer feels like a distraction. What a relief! 10:32:56 AM    comment []