Explorer's Notebooks

Explorer's Notebooks, no.1

I've started a new series of drawings inspired by a delightful book I recently checked out from our local public library, Explorer's Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery & Adventure.  A delicious feast filled with wonderful images, narratives and biographical information, this book makes you want to get off your duff (is that still a word or is it too old fashioned?) to explore the world....from far flung locations across the globe to your own backyard! There are sketchbooks and writings from familiar names such as James Cook and John James Audubon, but countless folks I'd not heard of....such as Ranulph Fiennes, Vivian Fuchs Henry Walter Bates. Curious and often fearless, these men and women explored the unknown and left us the record of their treks.

While this book presents the sketchbooks of explorations into all corners of the globe, it occurred to me that it might also be an inspiration to explore the frontiers of the imagination and inner worlds that lurk deep inside each one of us. Everything is ripe for discovery and the best news is that even if it has been discovered and/or claimed by someone else, it hasn't been discovered by you and seen with your eyes.

Part of what I'm drawn to in the pages of this book and the pages of other such journals of uncharted territories (I'm thinking of Lewis and Clark and Maximilian de Wied and their journeys up the Missouri River, for instance) is the actual beauty of the layout of the words on the page...often just lines of handwritten text interspersed with drawings. Attempts at capturing something novel, the unknown, a revelation...all while the perceptions and the visions are fresh. Writing and drawing serve as ways of processing. Someone from another far distant future may no longer be able to read and decipher these words, but they will appear in the abstract as marks on the page, interspersed with images. I'm not so sure why I find that fascinating, but I do....and worth exploring.

I'm not a sketchbook keeper myself, but am inspired enough that maybe this is the impetus I need as I explore my own locale. Though I have a series of grumbles about where I live (and who doesn't!?), I cannot deny the beauty and history that flows across my path each day as the waters of the Missouri River make their way down south to join the Mississippi on the journey to the Gulf of Mexico.

Missouri River, looking southeast, from our backyard one recent evening

But, back to that delicious book, now laid open on my lap as I type. I want to share just a snippet from an introductory bit by Wade Davis looking back on his early explorations and what it means to be curious and delight in the many worlds we inhabit.

"The work you do is just a lens through which to view and experience the world, and only for a short time. The goal is to make living itself, the act of being alive, one's vocation, knowing full well that nothing ultimately can be planned or anticipated, no blueprint found to predict the outcome of something as complex as a human life. If one can remain open to the potential of the new, the promise of the unimagined, then magic happens and a life takes form." -- Wade Davis

We are the lens....each one of us sees and experiences the world in a unique way....there are countless ways to explore those worlds. Cheers!


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Rediscovering Creativity

Greetings in the New Year! Hope the holiday season brought some joy into your life. My husband and I had a much needed vacation with a meandering road trip across the country and a delightful visit with family.  We are finally back at home, settling once again into the winter weather with a good bit of snow on the ground. That's fine with me, as I have work to do in the studio and a whole parcel of new books to read!

The drawings above represent the transition to the new year. The one on the left is the daily drawing for December 31, 2015 (now dipped in the beeswax) and the one on the right is the first drawing for 2016. The practice of the daily drawings continues. I find it a delightful exercise and a source of surprise and wonder as the drawing emerges each day.

I am not a big one for new year's resolutions, per se, but that doesn't mean I don't think about changes I'd like to make in the coming year. I like to think in terms of recommitments and reconnections with the things I value that I've let slip by the wayside in the turmoil of life. If I call them resolutions, I already feel doomed to drop them. 

I am reconnecting with my trust in the body. I've said numerous times here on this blog, how I think through my hands when in the studio, which means that the best work comes from the flow that happens when I am in the moment. I am out of my head (only) and experiencing the moment through the body. In saying that, it still sounds as if I make a distinction between the mind and the body, which I don't think really exists....the mind/head is just a part of the larger whole. 

If I want to do my best work and live the fullest life I can, I must honor my body. The author Barnet Bain speaks of this in the book I am currently reading, The Book of Doing and Being.

Here are a couple of quotes that resonated with me:

"One of the greatest secrets to living a creatively vibrant life is to recognize that your feelings occur in the body and not in the head."

"Not only do our feelings occur in the body and not in the head, but creativity itself is born in the body. In other words, the body is the home of our creativity."

I think that we forget that we experience the world through our senses and thus our body. So it should not be a great surprise that the expression of our experiences, which is the essence of our creativity, would most fully come into the world through our body. For me, it is most keenly felt through my hands. 

Often though, I feel disconnected from the rest of my body. I become lazy and would sometimes rather nap than take a brisk walk or do yoga. But, I want to be in touch in a more vibrant way with my creative life, so I must commit to moving my body in new ways....for my health and to invigorate the creative life I want to live. I just finished a short session of yoga....rather than that nap I wanted on a gray, wintery afternoon. So glad I made the decision. 

I was also pleased to see another truth I hold dear quoted on the back cover of The Book of Doing and Being. "Your whole life is a creative act." Amen!!! We are creative beings and each play a part in the dance of life.

Hope you have an inspiring and creative year!

Wednesday Words: Three Great Quotes

My husband has had this little book, Affirmations For Artists by Eric Maisel, for a number of years and often chooses quotes from it to put on the outside of the door to the Printmaking studio up at the university. These three thoughts I found in different sections caught my eye this evening.  I think I will go to sleep now with these little gems tucked quietly under my pillow.

"Where is your Self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment that you have experienced." -- Hugo Von Hofmannsthal


"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a passing shape, from a spider's web." -- Pablo Picasso


"Fascination is a key to productivity; it unites experiences; it is even its own reward." -- Erving Polster