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The beginning is a delicate time |
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Dag: You and a couple of other animal print swappers were sweating the due date. So you may have triggered a ramble, but it was for the list at large. Both swappers and hosts need to relax a bit. Remember the start of the movie Dune, the David Lynch one? "The beginning is a delicate time..." I think of that all the time with new clayers. Folks who are fixing to be clayers and haven't opened up a pack of clay yet, keep circling around it like a hawk unsure if it's hungry. For those folks who opened the clay package and got all the tools and got as far as conditioning and is ready to "do something" with it. All these folks are at that delicate time. Anything can squirrl it. Any negative comment. Being ignored. Not being encouraged. Not getting suggestions or tips and hints that they need to make the process more enjoyable. All this can sour the art soup. What do we bring to these folks? How shall we encourage them but not make it a stressful experience? It's labor intensive after all. It's time taken from our lives, isn't it? It's resources allocated to something that is just there to please us. Art is to please us, first and foremost. If it doesn't, it's not art, it's a chore, it's part of running after a different goal than just mucking about with something warm, yeilding, colorful and obedient. Some of the different goals that blur our sights are: pleasing someone else before the self wanting to make money, so worrying about its "value" on the "open market" Some of the perceptions that get in our way: Self diminishment... doubt is fear and fear is the opposite of Faith so I must encourage self confidence. Feeling competitive with fellow artists... are you doing art or is this a race or contest? That's why I harp on the art as a "personal creative expression" aspect of polymer clay in general, along with realism and attention to detail and scale for the miniaturists. That's why I say you're the Big Boss at your work table. It's your color choices, your choice of design and subject and theme. That's why I say if your tummy gets tight it's time to stop and ask yourself... what's the boggle? Tight tummies means there negative stress thing going on. Oh there's stress and then there's stress. I stress myself, but I feel rising to one's personal creative challenge is a good stressor. It drives the engine, chuga chuga chuga. What is difficult and new one day is second nature the next because of repeated practice and Faith that following my artistic bliss is what God had created me for. Just a happy flower in God's garden of souls, like St. Teressa used to say so sweetly. My art is as much a part of the gifts given to me as the gold color on the California Poppy. It's my little happy dance of being alive and sentient enough to go... "oh wow, oil on water make the most glorious colors..." que applause sign for God. Since art and being touched by the divine is key to my philosophy here as a communicator I will stray from the conventional methods of doing just about anything. How I deal with swaps, how I deal with list politeness and loving actions, how Off Topic posts are part of our life here and encouraged. How the first items made by the new clayer is worth a thousand fancy pants stuff from a known clay artist, for that first step can only be taken once. To witness that flowering of the artist in someone is so special, like watching some celestial event, it's special and rare and it's a moment to savor. Long assed rambling philosophical posts are another tradition breaker. How things are done here is for the purpose of not screwing up that beginning for the new clayer. Times is weird, folks are stressed enough, we have to comply to other's expectations on us at work, in public, with the law and government. Our time with our art is that bit of time where we can take a break from all that out there, dream a mini dream, build a fantasy scene, delight in color and form for no other purpose than to ease our hearts, connecting us with our essential selves. If thy swap stresses thee, back out. If thy host duties have to be sidelined because life got in the way, then so be it. Shall we rail and rant against the raindrops as they fall on our face, just because we planned on sunshine? Waste of brain shares. Things are as they are. What I'd like to do to ease the swap anxiety is to schedule demos that deal with the next couple of swap topics so folks can get some ideas, gather urls, see some examples of how-to and ease them in their production by having clay alongs. I see the demos and the swaps as needing to be married to have the effect we need in supporting swappers BEFORE the due date. Down with swap secrets, just ain't friendly swap secrets. So my aim, going forward, is to coordinate the swaps and the non-swaps like the FaceOff, with the demo topics. Focus it, it'll help kick start some swappers are who stuck by THE FEAR of all the negative things that aren't going to happen here. No whip cracking from me, an arm around the shoulder and a nownowtherethere is more like. So ... did you cause the ramble? Naw, I'm just a rambling gal when I'm not doing demo and site updates. off to water my plants, we got sunshine today and they are probably in shock. xoxo |
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