It’s just flown by.
I have been a little bored with the jewelry and just can’t seem to be bothered to start anything new.
I finished this for Serina.
And then decided to use up some more of my larimar beads.
That bead cap needs a little adjusting.
And then I started a new chain.
But apart from that not a lot going on really.
I’ve been watching some BBC videos on artists that I found on Youtube. The series is called, What do Artists do all day? And I’m really enjoying that.
My favourite one so far is the one on John Byrne.
It all started when I stumbled across a series on Youtube called JTV Rock Star Designer because I was too bored to bother going into the studio and needed some inspiration.
I’ve suffered through all six episodes so far, and now have to wait until next week to find out who the two finalists will be. I think the winner gets to design a jewelry line for JTV.
I’m actually very surprised at how horrible the jewelry is and that, in the six hours they’re given to complete a piece, they can’t seem to make something that looks a little more professionally finished, but I suppose they’re under a lot of pressure. Also they’re only given half an hour to come up with an idea. That would be the hardest part for me as I generally make it up as I go along.
They’re also given some pretty gruesome materials to work with.
I’m not particularly impressed with the show, but of course now I have to finish watching it.
Then I discovered the artist videos and I love them.
It makes me want to go back to art school.
I went to Winchester School of Art in the U.K. What I wanted to be was a painter, but somehow I ended up in the sculpture department. I still would like to be a painter, but I’ve never given myself enough time to really get into it and now I just end up making piddly paintings which I enjoy, but which aren’t real paintings in my opinion.
Now these artists are making me a little sad that I never really gave myself to it.
I did love making the sculptures. I especially liked working out how the darn things would actually stand up and not kill someone.
I still think about making a sculpture of a woman sitting with her beautiful legs crossed in her beautiful designer clothes using nothing but used fake finger nails. I mean, what do they do with all of them once they’re done. I imagine that there are bazillions of them, in all shades of lovely, somewhere out there filling land fills and waiting to destroy our world.
Perhaps she could be having drinks with a refugee.
Who knows.
So I got my degree and then, nothing.
Well, there was the marriage part, and then the kids part, so it wasn’t exactly nothing.
Now it’s my part, and I’m really enjoying it.
Problem is that I’d have to get up before yesterday and go to bed after tomorrow, to be able to do all the things I’d like to.
Just pick one laddie!
Anyhow, so while I’ve been away I’ve been dreaming of all the things I started out to be and how I need to start being them.
The time is now people!
We just need to get down and be the people we know we are inside and stop fussing around with all the other stuff.
O.K. Well I do anyway.
😉
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Heh. So true. I’d need five lifetimes to do all I want to do. I didn’t even get started until age 48, five years ago! I thought I wasn’t an artist. Now that my kids are older, I’m loving this newly discovered part of myself, but I also feel frantic, because with luck, I have maybe 40 good years left (haha) and that’s nowhere long enough to learn all I want to learn. I don’t know how people are ever bored. I’m frantic with the lack of time, and now my school year starts again, so I really have no time.
Last night, I was looking at my three bookcases of fabric and said, “Hmmm. I feel a quilt coming on.” Then I looked at my wool and though, “Hats!” My pastels are calling, and I have two custom pieces of pottery I have to make for people. And did I say school starts? Never enough time, and that does interfere with my creativity.
My jewelry teacher told me that when I get like this, frantic, to make bezels. I said, “I’m running out of silver and since I really don’t sell any jewelry, I can’t justify the continued expense.” She asks me how I’m going to continue to improve if I don’t make jewelry? It’s a conundrum. It makes me tired to think about it.
The Creative’s brain can be a scary place to be. I can relate.
🙂
Nancy
I understand all of that. I used to be put off making jewelry and pottery because I didn’t know what to do with all the stuff I make. Then I decided to just ignore it and get on with it.
I feel the same about JTV Rockstar Designer. I know so many people who would have done wondrous things in the time given. Not me, I’m a very beginner and a slow poke. But I could just look at my FB friends list and have an overflow of cast!
I know, right!
In my case, it’s always been easier for me to figure out what I DON’T want to do–like watch JTV or wear fake fingernails…. I’d be very content to do “not much” like you, though! Serina is really very lucky to get that first larimar bracelet–love larimar!–which looks great with your chain to one side and the tube beads on the other. I also like how you ensconced the chain inside the tube beads in the 2nd bracelet. As for your going back to art school….it IS your part now. And I really do like your paintings….
As for me, I do get to go back to school tomorrow– with some refugees. (Unfortunately, they don’t serve drinks at a community college; we could all use one now and again.)
What! No drinks at community college! Probably a good thing as they’d like us to carry guns in there.
Oh, but the other stuff can be interesting too. The one I do for a day job, even, at times. Which keeps me from being creative. But if I had all day to be creative, I’d probably just sit around wondering what to do — not bursting with ideas like now! And as long as they pay me for that day job, it is my duty to serve the healthcare of my country, and try to do some useful stuff, I guess. (That was solemn!) Maybe they’ll make budget cuts again, and then I’ll have lots of time… Otherwise I’ll just have to stick around until I retire (not in a long time, by the look of things), and go into a creative frenzy for the next ten or fifteen years, like my mum did. But yes, I can relate to Sarah/Nancy (that first comment) — so little time, so much to do, and how do you justify the expenses?!? And why do we do it in the first place??
And thanks for that new chain inspiration — I need it 🙂
OK, I’ll answer that last question myself, because I know it, and I don’t want to depress you… We do art because we’re human, and we wouldn’t be if we didn’t do it!
And I’ll go and dig out some of our surplus winter clothes for refugees this evening.
I found a quote from Winston Churchill.
When he was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort he replied, ‘then what are we fighting for’.
I think it’s as simple as that really. As you said, we are human. Art is what keeps us that way.
🙂