It started with a financial adviser urging me to make a will. The question arose, therefore, of exactly what would happen to my supplies in the event of my demise. I counted this morning. Not including the hundreds of Pez-shaped containers of beads that cover my studio wall, there are 178 bead & craft supply drawers in my studio. In my storage closet, there are several huge Rubbermaid bins containing more of the same. This should be heaven, right?
But what happens when you run terminally dry of ideas? When the thought of lovingly, laboriously crafting one more piece of jewelry is accompanied by a dull, sick thud in the pit of your stomach? Write it off to major life changes - retirement, relationships changing or ending, a spell of poor health, a lousy recession market. No matter what the cause, there you are - there I am - with a room full of supplies while Brenda, my mood-disordered Muse, is humming elevator music.
Now, I can manage a short while of nothing. I can consume trans fats and watch daytime TV with the worst of them but it's a crumby substitute for the rush of endorphins that occurs when you start to visualize something fabulous that you want to make. There is so much pure joy in working with your hands, watching something intricate emerge from what begins as a notion in your head and a pile of beads. Or yarn. Or canvas. Or...you get the idea.
It occurred to me that I was not burned out of ideas, but rather I was burned out with making to sell. Stephan King refers to this process in his book, "On Writing"...The first draft, he says, is "closed door," you are writing only for you. I needed close the door. And I had that wall of beads.
My first exploration was with masks and Huichol style beadwork - a process of embedding beads in a wax/resin paste. Suddenly, my block went away. I found myself sitting down to work with my first cup of coffee in the morning - before showering or getting dressed. And there I would still be at 2:00 in the afternoon, until the unsettling notion that someone might knock on my door and find me in such a state occurred to me.
Around that time, Brenda stopped humming elevator music. I was accepted into a great alternative show, "Have Yourself a Gothic Little Christmas," and I began to think about Victorian costume and jet jewelry, about midnight purples and lace - lots of lace. While I plan to have more expensive and time-consuming pieces at my table, I wanted to make something most people could afford too - a recession line.That's when I got my hands on fabric paint and started buying lace.
Sometimes, we need a change - of attitude, of mediums and materials. My own history tells me I will always go back to beadwork. There's something magical about it having to do with light and color and the long, long process of building a piece out of microscopic bits of glass. But meanwhile, I'm having a blast with painting lace and there's this fuzzy notion forming about combining lace with beadwork that's taking shape in my head.
Here's to that wonderful drug, creativity. And here's to fallow time, too - the periods of rest when you think you'll never have another idea. That's part of the process. May we all have "closed door" days when we make just for the joy of making.
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