Day 83: Three.TwentyNine.13

My phenomenal friend shared her art supplies with me. In the time it took me to create these doodlings – my first attempt with these materials and techniques – she had created a beautiful piece of artwork. There was no way I could help my comparing, and judging (myself), but the fact that I didn’t rip mine up is progress. It was also a strangely soothing way to spend a Friday night; after a good meal, great company, and lovely scenery, coloring your heart out may indeed be the way to go.

Here’s to another day of creativity…

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Day 7: One.Twelve.13

Yesterday I read about the record number of background checks (the kind you get when you want to buy a gun) and gun sales that took place in December. Today I watched James Yaeger’s response to gun control reform. I then proceeded to watch a Huffington Post clip about a school board in Ohio that has approved an asinine policy to arm janitors in schools, as if that is the answer to making our kids safer.

I am horrified. Saddened. Wanting so much to SPEAK. Say something artistically that can, in some small way, add weight to the other side, to balance the scales even just a miniscule amount. To counterattack all of the hate, negativity, violence with hope, positivity, kindness. Instead, this is all I could manage to get out. Maybe tomorrow I will have more to SAY.

Here’s to another day of creativity…

Day 2: One.Seven.13

What Would I Say, If I Wasn’t Afraid of My Own VOICE?

SPEAK

Over the past year or so, I have been confronted by this idea that I am stifling my own creativity. Most recently, the feeling that I am not creating truthful, thought-provoking art has been causing me great distress. The root, it seems, is that I am afraid to SPEAK. my ideas. my truth. my fears, hopes, and needs. And for what? For fear of being wrong. judged. misinformed. called out as a fraud. By others? Or by myself?

In a place and time where I have the ability, the freedom, to speak my mind, how am I not shouting from the rooftops? What is it that has instead made me self-sensor my creative forms of expression?

Perhaps this whole project is an attempt to reclaim my voice. Or rather to find it, for the very first time.

I don’t know yet how this idea, SPEAK, will fully manifest itself – whether it will become dance, writing, visual displays, or a combination thereof – but I suspect it will weave itself in and out of this year full of discovering.

Here’s to another day of creativity…