Susie Monday . El Cielo Studio

I am from prickly pear pads covered with cochinil and from the sticky sweet carpet of yellow mesquite beans. I am from the grape Koolade scent of purple Mountain Laurel in March and the musty flame of sumac leaves in October.

 

OK, let's take a tiny creative break from all that focus.

I spent half an hour this morning soaring around the blogosphere. The best thing by far I picked up was a wonderful writing exercise on Terry Grant's blog, And Sew It Goes (I followed the trail from one of my regular must-reads -PaMdora's Box).

The premise is to write something based on a evocative poemevocative poem  titled I am from by George Ella Lyon.

This is making its way around the internet (see 2 Lime Leaves), not quite a meme as one doesn't exactly get tagged, but  I hope you'll try it, and if you have a blog, post it there with a comment so we can find it. If  you don't have a blog, just put your version in the comments here or in my next post where I will publish my version! See you tomorrow with poem in hand. Here's the template that started it on its internet voyage, from writer  Fred First in his blog  post on February 18, 2005. He put this together from the original poems structure, I think.

I am from _______ (specific ordinary item), from _______ (product name) and _______.

I am from the _______ (home description... adjective, adjective, sensory detail).

I am from the _______ (plant, flower, natural item), the _______ (plant, flower, natural detail)

I am from _______ (family tradition) and _______ (family trait), from _______ (name of family member) and _______ (another family name) and _______ (family name).

I am from the _______ (description of family tendency) and _______ (another one).

From _______ (something you were told as a child) and _______ (another).

I am from (representation of religion, or lack of it). Further description.

I'm from _______ (place of birth and family ancestry), _______ (two food items representing your family).

From the _______ (specific family story about a specific person and detail), the _______ (another detail, and the _______ (another detail about another family member).

I am from _______ (location of family pictures, mementos, archives and several more lines indicating their worth).

Of course, you can make your own version without the template, too; many of those doing this exercise have done just that. But I think I will enjoy the structure -- open-ended forms like this appeal to me, just like figuring out the size of a potential art quilt seems to be the first step my creative process requires. I like filling in a space with colors, rhythms, lines and shapes and this kind of writing is the literary equivalent, I suppose.

 

Think of this as a creative breather, something that might take an hour out of your busy day, but that will feel as though you've had a wonderful massage, a walk in the woods, a picnic by the lake -- all without taking much time or gasoline to get there. 

Focus is fine. Necessary and Essential. But we creative beings (and that's all of us) also need to take deep drinks of water from the random universe. Playing around with a not-so-familiar framework or media or idea is often just the thing to renew your energy for that big push. 

 

 

 

What does focus feel like?

I am taking an online course -- actually more of  a group coaching program --  that asks me to focus on a specific goal for 28 days. (My goal is to plan a creativity coaching service that complements and extends my teaching and studio work.)

This focus thing is hard for me. Really hard. Even in attempting to focus, I find myself all over the map. Am I really such a flittery-gibbit? Oddly enough, I know that one of my strengths is my ability to focus on the task at hand, in hand, on the table top. Once I am in the flow with a concrete activity, it is easy for me to have my headlights on the task and the work gets my total attention. BUT, focus that is conceptual -- to narrow my thinking and planning to a specific end -- rather than a hands-on goal -- like finishing that piece of art on the table -- is more difficult. I don't know what to do with the sea that I am already swimming in. I am trying to transfer the feeling of concrete focus to conceptual focus. What does it feel like in my body, in my spirit?

Last week (the first of the 4-week program) I made a bit of progress. This week I want to do even better. One thing that seems to help is intention (and stating that intention out loud): Today I will spend 4 hours on my Breakthough Goal, and 4 hours on the other work that needs doing, chosing the most important tasks, making a "next action" list and checking them off as I get them done.

Another thing I learned last week is that the more specific and measureable my actions are, the more likely I am to accomplish them --As one of Linda's statistics professors says, "If you can count it, you can do it."  For example, last week I  set a goal to collect 50 names for my mailing list, as I am planning a quarterly newsletter and want to send it to a wide audience. At the Joan Grona sale, I made it a point to ask every single person who walked into the gallery to give me contact information if they would like to receive arts event and workshop information. And it worked. I now have 50 new names to add to my list.

So, off to the studio -- today, to the desk -- focus, focus, focus. I'd love to hear any strategies that help you accomplish your goals, especially those that help to make the fuzzier conceptual ones more like real on-the-table tasks.

 

Here's another helpful organizational hint from Merlin Mann's 43folders, one of my very favorite website/organizational resources. I am posting this today, because of a topic on a private blog that is being used by participants in Alyson Stanfield's Artist Breakthrough Program -- more about that in my next post.

Email can do us in, but also add immense productivity. It's all in the way we use it. Taming my Inbox has made me more efficient, less likely to succumb to cute-but-tame-wasting forwards, and has helped me keep the main thing the main thing.

 

 Overheard in the gallery: talk about Obama and Hillary pro and con, con and pro; spaceships in Stephenville; clothes trades and recycling; stories about Hipp's Bubble Room  (home of the Shypoke Egg, everlasting Christmas and the tiny train around the room that closed in 1980), and all the other things that artists and art-lovers like to talk about in such energetic settings.

 

Here we are (well, as soon as I get my photos downloaded from the phone and uploaded to the blog, here we are) at Joan Grona Gallery at Blue Star, showing our stuff, selling our wares. This little two-day artist fair was organized by my friend Gene Elder. While the attendance was sporadic, the company was delightful and we had fun, as artists do, oohing and ahhing over each other's latest products. Joan was a gracious host to all the frivolity, allowing her upscale serious gallery to take on the temporary air of a gypsy fair with everything from beads to found treasures, paper collage, plastic burgers, pitchers of beer (the aforementioned Hipp's Bubble Room installation), et al.

 

The show concludes tomorrow (Friday) after another 11 am - 6 pm session, so hurry on down if you are in the San Antonio area. And while you are at Blue Star, stop in to see the art cloth exhibit at StoneMetal Press gallery, too.