Creative Outlets

I am a firm believer in having a creative outlet. Whenever any of my friends talks about pursuing an artistic hobby or taking a crafting class, I am their biggest cheerleader. I refuse to believe it when people say they can't draw; I think they just have to be taught how to "see" things better.

I am very lucky in that I have three creative outlets: painting; sculpting; and jewelry design. For me, painting came first. It comes first in my soul, I think. I walk into someone's studio and smell the oils and turps and feel like I am imbibing ambrosia. But I haven't really painted in nearly two years, since I moved back to the States from Costa Rica. The reasons for that, I suppose, would fill a whole other blog.

Jewelry design came next. Other than a jewelry course in high school, and gathering beads from country to country, I didn't really begin seriously until I lived in Peru and took another course. That set me off on the journey I am still on, a journey which provides a necessary creative outlet and some income.

And then there is sculpting. I played around with clay in a ceramics workshop many years ago while living in Sicily, then thought no more about it for probably 15 years or so, when I moved to Costa Rica. There, I convinced a group of friends to join me in a series of workshops at a local studio, where the plan was to cycle through a number of media and techniques taught by local artists. Sculpture came first. I never went on to anything else. I fell totally in love with the medium.

Sculpting suits my personality. I love to start with a vision in my head, turn on some appropriate music, then take a hunk of clay, and let my imagination and the music bring something to life. I almost did a workshop with a very wonderful, well-known Costa Rican sculptor, until I discovered he required that all projects begin with numerous drawings. Now, I have nothing against drawing, but that is antithetical to how I created in clay. I didn't want to be limited by something concrete on paper, but rather to let my ideas flow with the music into my hands and into the clay.

The woman above began as a sleeping mother enfolding her baby. Since I was such a rank beginner at sculpting, I didn't realize that the way I made the figure would create complex casting difficulties. No problem, I thought. I'll just wake the woman up and have her holding her child that way. But, as the music and my ideas flowed, the child I guess grew up and left home, and she morphed into a woman with an empty hand. I don't know why that happened, but I make sure that every week I place in her hand a different shell from the Caribbean or an interesting bead from my vast collection for her to ponder.

I miss sculpting.