Snapguide How-To

From a message on Quilting Arts list from Jane Davila:

"Has anyone heard of Snapguide? I'm a recent devotee and have just posted my second guide there. It's a website and app that hosts tutorials, or guides as they call them, on a wide variety of topics. The audience is growing exponentially (over a million in less than a year), and unlike Pinterest, the guides can only be posted by the creators not brought from other sources (eliminating pesky copyright quandaries). But like many social networks you can favorite, share, follow, and comment. The interface to create a guide is elegant and very simple. You can add videos and photos along with text for your guides.

So my thinking is the stronger and more interesting the guides are there, the bigger the audience will become, attracting more high quality guides, attracting more readers, and so on. It was started by some big names in tech and has financial backing from some very savvy tech investors. It is viewable on the web and as an app on the iPhone or the iPad....I wrote a blog post about it and included the links to the 2 guides I wrote. One guide is to make matchbook art notepads and the other is how to transfer images using Citrasolv natural solvent.

I too have made a little snapguide on using some iPad apps to make snowflake designs (great for thermofax designs, too).

I really like the site and understand their financial need to make it work as a social platform (Hey, I don't listen to Seth Godin for nothing -- his STARTUP SCHOOL podcast is amazing if you think about your art business as a start-up). I admit, I would find it great to be able to use Snapguide for private guides as an option, so I coul duse it as an online course!

The interface is really fun, fast, painless and idiot-proof (I am said idiot), and the format makes it easy to use just the right amount of text with your images. Take a look! Add your own ideas, too. I do think they will make it to scale with this idea because the interface is so easy, so nice to look at and, by now, there are a crazy wild assortment of guides being posted!

Here's the link to my Snapguide -- http://snapguide.com/guides/design-an-ipad-snowflake/

Scouting the Art of Service

Our team from Alamo Colleges International Program has spent the week with 32 students and mentors from six Central American countries and another 10 from two San Antonio high schools. We started with workshops and tours at Bamberger Ranch and the LBJ National Historic Park, moved on to a day of investigations and invention at The Pearl (at The Center for Architecture), then the CAYA youth spent time with host families and at the schools. Today we are touring the state's Historical Museum, the Capitol and Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

The theme for our week of exchange is service in action in public and private sectors, what it takes to be a changemaker, and sharing stories that have made a difference-- the stories of both public figures and private entrepreneurs, civic activists and citizens, old and young. We've explored the danger of a single story, and what kids can imagine doing today to start solving problems they see in their communities. This youth ambassador program is funded through the State Department and gives young leaders three weeks of powerful experiences in the U.S. These kids started in Washington,then spent record-low temp days in Michigan, followed by our days here in the 70s and 80s! If nothing else, they've seen diversity in weather.

Some of the art projects we did: designing logos, dream posters and towers, designing t- shirts and screen- printing them, writing poems and sharing stories, discussing issues, problems and writing remedies, cures and recipes for solutions.

Growing a Garment and Self-Assembly

How about this approach to art-to-wear? Suzanne Lee is using bacteria to grow cellulose fabric.

“What I’m looking for is a way to give material the qualities that I need. So what I want to do is say to a future [insect], ‘Spin me a thread. Align it in this direction. Make it hydrophobic. And while you’re at it, just form it around this 3D shape.’”

Here's a blog with a complex discussion about bioengineering and replicating nature's self-assembly between Lee and Skylar Tibbits, both TED Fellows.

And Tibbits' YouTube videos.

How to Get Unstuck. Part 2

A video suggested by Rachel!

I polled other artists about their unsticking strategies and what a flurry of responses! I love all these ideas and comments. Thanks to you all and anyone else whom I missed on this roundup -- I'll keep adding. This is starting to look like a great article.

Michele Lasker says: 

I have been watching the multitude of DVDs I bought from Interweave and Double Trouble for inspiration and it seems to be working. It's hard to get going after the holidays.

I find that when I get stuck it's typically because there's been an interruption in my normal flow of work. usually it's because I just finished a major project (a typical project for me takes eight months to a year, so finishing one is a Very Big Deal) and need some time to get my head unwrapped from the project - there's a bit of a grieving process as I come to terms with the end of my (working) relationship with the piece, and I usually feel pretty emotionally drained by the time I finish.

Tien Chiu says:
(Website: http://www.tienchiu.com
Personal blog: http://www.tienchiu.com/category/blog-posts)

I typically do two things:

(1) Embrace boredom. That sounds really bizarre, but I've found that when my Muse has fled, it's because she needs a vacation. So I accept that I'm going to be bored and relatively unmotivated for a couple ofdays - it's part of the natural creative cycle for me. So instead of kicking myself about it, I let myself wander aimlessly about for a few days. Read books, clean up the kitchen, etc. I loathe being bored, but sometimes I need "time off" to recharge. In my experience trying to jumpstart faster doesn't work and just gets me more frustrated.

(2) Once I start feeling intensely bored (as opposed to bored and depressed), I start flipping through my idea notebook (mine is online, but they can be physical too), books on technique, books of swatches from sample exchanges, etc. I think of it as "teasing the Muse" - if you roll enough balls of tinfoil past a young cat, sooner or later its tail is going to start twitching and it will pounce. I figure the idea notebook and other idea sources make great balls of tinfoil for my Muse, so I simply parade ideas past her until something catches her/my fancy.

And after that, it's off again!

Barb Hilts says:

Me, I clean, which I do after every big project, Christmas included. Cleaning, puts things in order for another project. Out of the cleaning, ideas resurface.

Creative blocks are a period of growth. A dear friend of mine would suggest to work through the blocks in any creative medium, and your new path will emerge. 

From Barbara Schneider: (www.barbaraschneider-artist.com, www.barbaraschneider-artist.blogspot.com)

I watch DVDs of other artists and try to use that time to go to Art Institute or somewhere like that. The Art 21 series on PBS is wonderful. I think there are 7 seasons worth of those with interviews and videos of artists in all kinds of mediums. It's a great way to see a variety of things and get out of your head for awhile. 

And then I clean the studio which always leads to something.

And Lisa Kerpoe chimes in from nearby:

Ha! We're thinking along the same lines. I just did a blog on creativity blocks and was planning to follow up next week with ways to overcome them! My favorite? I keep a drawer of unfinished items. Things that are fairly far along, but for some reason I just never finished them. I pull those out and start playing. That usually generates ideas that then work their way into other projects.
Lisa Kerpoe
lisa@lisakerpoe.com
http://www.lisakerpoe.com
http://lisakerpoe.blogspot.com

And from Rachel in Arizona

This helped me when I was in the grip of the "Oh but I can't do art because..." monster and it gets me out of places where I'm not making any art, and I don't know why. It has also helped with the times I've gotten stuck because everything I make looks godawful and fit only to line the cat box. 

I read a book called Art and Fear, and it made me all indignant because in it somewhere it seemed to hint that I make a lot of excuses to avoid doing art. But but but my excuses are -- er my reasons, yeah that's it -- are all good exc-- reasons. I'm not feeling well! I'm feeling happy, so I should celebrate! I'm tired. I'm bored. I need to go to the store or I ought to clean the refrigerator. And on and on. And I began to have the sneaking suspicion that maybe I could somehow put all these important excuses aside for a little while and just make something. 

That alone didn't quite get me going, but I think it opened me up so that when someone sent me a link to a Youtube of writer Neil Gaiman's commencement speech to the graduating class at an art college, and I heard the following, a light came on and I started looking at art as something I maybe could do anyway: 

"Remember, whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer, whatever you do, you have one thing that's unique: you have the ability to make art. And for me, and for so many of the people I've known, that's been a lifesaver, the ultimate lifesaver; it gets you through good times and it gets you through the other ones.

"Sometimes life is hard; things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you're doing is stupid or evil or it's all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow; eventually time will take the sting away and it doesn't even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art. 

"Make it on the bad days. Make it on the good days too. And . . . while you're at it, make your art. Do the stuff that only you can do." 

Or maybe it's just going back to that speech and listening to Neil reading that aloud. :) But sometimes a reminder of why I want to dye cloth is exactly what I need to sweep all the rubbish aside. 

JC at Wellstrong Gallery suggests:

The best advice I've received for coping with writer's block is to write anything. Write a shopping list, a thank-you note, etc. Writing a journal is different, because that's a continuation. Journals do it for some people, but not me. It needs to be something new, and original (the shopping list has to be considered (in its nature) to work, e.g., if for food, for a new recipe, rather than milk, eggs, bread).

I do the same thing to get unstuck in the studio. I have what I call "mindless sewing projects". It could be an old project that has all of the conceptualizing done but needs finishing work (new and original isn't as important, because just handling the art gets me in an art frame of mind), or it could be a "crafts" project like a baby quilt. Or maybe it's prep work like dyeing etc. fabrics. Basically, working is working, and if I just keep working, things start to flow and the ideas and inspiration just come.

My biggest block is a cleaned up workspace. I try to leave something that's ready to just pick and get going on, either on my table, or in a milk crate ready to dump out. That way there isn't any of that breaking into a tidy space reluctance.

And from June Steegstra

I find reading through my books (I have an extensive library) and magazines gives me lots of ideas to addapt for my own.  I usually have two or three projects that are waiting for me to begin.

Su Butler chimed in:

 I remedied it by going to a meeting with people who do entirely different work that I do...I am primarily a weaver and dyer, but the people at the meeting were quilters, paper makers, felters, thread painters etc.  It was terribly inspiring and really invigorated my creative senses.  I am working on a piece entirely out of my usual medium and adjusting to the learning curve, but facing it with tremendous freedom because I honestly don't know what I am doing wrong....and that reminds me of how I need to feel when creating without my own "world"........ and I am feeling more and more creative as a result.   I call this "shock therapy"....introduce something so new and unknown that only creativity can make it happen....even in my ideas are old hat to someone else, they are new to me and it is very helpful and satisfying.

Hope everyone can find a renewal of their creative freedom this year!
 www.subudesigns.com