In my last post, I mentioned that I was feeling the “urge to purge.” For any art teachers out there, you know that is a rare sensation as we usually were on the hunt for new still life items or interesting and unique things to use in decorating our classrooms, homes or garden rooms.
However I have found that clearing out stuff and making room for new things can do a lot to lift your spirits. When we make art, we sort and choose. Now I will be the first to say that during the process as you turn your house upside down, that can be more than a little bit distressing. When it is all said and done, now that’s a very good feeling. I will confess that I have always been a “ pack rat,” and finally I am ready to unpack many unused items. After the clearing out, I will attend more estate sales and auctions and seek out some new unusual and unique kinds of items. What I have discovered is as I move through the layers, there is a system of organization underneath the top layer of stuff. It is getting some things out the door to make room for an organizational system that works for you now with what you are doing in your life.
Yesterday for example, I took the leap and purchased a new IMac computer with a huge 27″ screen. I am more than anxious to get it set up and running and have spent two days backing up the information on the two 300 GB hard drives. It gave me an opportunity to organize and discard duplicates and unused, outdated items. It will be fun to continue organizing all the information and even get creative with the new applications to see how I can create some new things as I gain the skills.
It is a new year and a perfect time to streamline each of our lives. I read somewhere that the state of your environment is a reflection of your state of mind. I wouldn’t want you to pop in on me in my office with boxes and disks and cables laying everywhere. Oddly enough, I feel invigorated and excited about the new possibilities that can result from my ongoing intentions to “lighten up.”
Happy New Year and may you also be inspired to “create the space in your life for miracles,” as Michelle Passoff says.” by freeing yourself from too much stuff.” I have a ways to go and it’s a start.
“Once there is nothing to improve upon in the physical environment one can set about improving on oneself.” Henry Miller
Recommended Readings:
1. Lighten Up: Free Yourself from Clutter, Michell Passoff. Offered in this book is a look at how stuff robs you of energy and when the stuff is eliminated, your free to create miracles.
2. Clutters Last Stand, Don Aslet. This book provides a whimsical approach to junk with a junkee’s exam to see if you classify as a “ junkee.”
Art is considered the first language. During my teaching life in both art and eventually art with technology, I had a poster with a child scribbling saying that art is/was our first form of communication. Those fortunate enough among us that both read and write use this form of communication daily. We use everyday aesthetics in our lives—in marriage, friendships, chores, and in most everything we do. We use our thoughts, our creative ideas in preparing our meals, rearranging our homes, dressing each day for work or play. We do the same kind of problem solving as Beethoven, the difference is that our symphony is our life. Whenever we set things apart and tend to them in a special way, we are creating something new.
Although teaching art and technology was my life work in the public eyes. My greatest work of art has been my life. Now in my fifth year of being out of the public school system as a classroom teacher, I realize that more than ever. We can create each moment to make things more beautiful, more tasty, more appealing to our senses.
More than ever, I am enjoying savoring each opportunity for creative change. My friends and family have always kidded me because when I clean house inevitably, I will rearrange a room or two—if not the entire house. It makes cleaning a lot less repetitive. It also adds so much fun to the living in your home when your environment reflects personal changes, creative additions and can be found in good order.
” Every action, every moment,every step is filled with the work of art.”
Lately, my resolve has been to eliminate extra things from my environment, pass them on to someone else who can appreciate them. It seems like the perfect time of year to be thinking about new spaces and places and ways to live in your own life. What do you do in your life that reflects your creativity?
“We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves to have slipped creative work in their between the domestic chores and obligations. I am not sure we deserve such A-pluses for that.” Toni Morrison
Let me hear how you have added some zest to your day to day living with a punch of creative work in between the things you must do.
Wishing you a fulfilling and creative New Year! 2010—the year to begin…
Robert Fritz begins in his book, Creating,saying, “Many of us have the suspicion that there is much more to life than what we have been led to expect. Perhaps our lives are filled with secret possibilities—possibilities that there are dimensions to ourselves, depths of our being, and heights to our aspirations that are lurking just below the surface.”
We each have the urge to do something that matters to us. Perhaps we exist only as shadows of our future selves, and this subtle yet persistent force nagging at our consciousness—to be a creator, to be one who brings into existence creations that previously lived only in our inner thoughts.
This deep longing to create resides within the soul of humanity. Beyond our basic instincts for survival which includes fulfilling such needs as food, warmth,water, and air— we also have a natural instinct for building, organizing, forming, and creating.
Webster defines creativity as ” creative ability; artistic or intellectual inventiveness.” Webster tells us that the word create means ” to originate; to bring into being from nothing: to cause to exist. In other words, when we talk about creating we are talking about causality—that is causing something to exist that did not previously exist.
The creative process has had more impact, power and influence than any other process in history. Consider all of the inventions, the arts, architecture, and the amazing technological age we now live in as a result of the creative process.We have experienced so much innovation and growth in our lifetime. Read the rest of this entry »
” I have always known that I would take this road,but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.“Narihara
Life is a journey. Alongwith any journey comes the desire to want to write it down. As author Christina Baldwin states,” writing makes a map, and there is something about a journey that begs to have its passage marked.” For some their entire lives are recorded on the pages of a diary, for others images and colors reveal to the rest of the world what transpired through their artistic images. However we choose to express our ideas, we bear witness to our experiences, we share our questions and the insights that come from questioning.
My teaching life was spent in this quest to assist others in expressing ideas as they came to pass. Ideas expressed in both art and in written words. It made for an extraordinary life spent over three decades with young people in several high schools with others who shared both the love of learning, teaching and a concern for the students under our supervision.
In my last post, I mentioned that I was feeling the “urge to purge.” For any art teachers out there, you know that is a rare sensation as we usually were on the hunt for new still life items or interesting and unique things to use in decorating our classrooms, homes or garden rooms.
Art is considered the first language. During my teaching life in both art and eventually art with technology, I had a poster with a child scribbling saying that art is/was our first form of communication. Those fortunate enough among us that both read and write use this form of communication daily. We use everyday aesthetics in our lives—in marriage, friendships, chores, and in most everything we do. We use our thoughts, our creative ideas in preparing our meals, rearranging our homes, dressing each day for work or play. We do the same kind of problem solving as Beethoven, the difference is that our symphony is our life. Whenever we set things apart and tend to them in a special way, we are creating something new.
