Carrying on the party through ROCK*STAR Nation

My Rock Star Days with Big Nurse, Many Moons Ago

My friend Alicia and I go through periods when one of us will feel that all is well in the world, and our creative energy levels are through the roof.  I'm sure you go through this too. Sometimes we are in that state together, and other times, we use our abundance of what we call "rock rock status" to lift the other to the same level of feeling awesome.

After my grandfather passed away a couple of weeks ago, I was bound and determined not to let myself fall apart. At his burial, my Uncle Billy told the story about how my grandfather and one of his relatives agreed that whoever outlived the other had to throw a huge party. Both men are now gone, and my Uncle Billy challenged the rest of us to continue the party.

I gave myself a couple of days to get whatever tears and feelings of self pity out and then decided to move forward and honor that part of my grandfather's spirit that I cherished the most when he was raising me. His belief that we can all be high achievers and be the best at what we do if we push ourselves is one of the best things he ever gave me. I felt closest to him when I was an athlete. I feel my best when I am competing. I re-immersed myself in my running passion as my own version of carrying on the party.

Because synchronicity is so abundant in this world, I sought out people who were on the same path. I found Magda Cardosa. I remembered her from high school, knew she was close with a few of my family members, and also that she is a kick-ass athlete and super runner. At the same time that I decided to start training, she started ROCK*STAR nation. It's a virtual group of people who decided to make July the best month of their lives. It's a 30 day commitment to get your body strong, spirituality in order, and nutrition in check. I signed up, started training, feel better than I have in years, and am registered for a 5k and a half marathon.

So what does this have to do with art? I decided to tie my artistic training in with my running. Everything I do to train for the races, I am doing with my art as well. Run for an hour, write for an hour. Weight train for an hour, sketch for an hour.

Artists are mental athletes. We need to hone our skills, feed and nurture our imaginations, rest when restless, take part in social activities to keep ourselves motivated and energized towards our goals, and test our training through performances, or exhibitions.

So my next steps towards becoming an art rock star are
: continue training/honing my skills
: get out and see others' work to feed and nurture my imagination
: take one day a week off for rest
: keep moving forward with the salon to create a group of artists for support and accountability
: to look forward and find venues to test the waters with my work.

The next salon will be on Sunday, August 7th. Bring your rock star mentality! Walnut Street Cafe, 10 am. Bring three artistic goals to share, develop and make executable. We're going to MAGDA the art world.


*We'll also be moving around to people's studios if you are interested in hosting at your studio on the North Shore, drop me a line.

Quick Poem

Woman

If ever I was a woman

I am a woman fully

torn between motherhood

and marriage

and passionate pursuits

and the livelihood

of my imagination.

Let your work define your audience, not the other way around.

The only work really worth doing- the only work you can do convincingly- is the work that focuses on the things you care about.   (Art and Fear, Bayle & Orlando, 1993, p.116)

Staring at the screen tonight. Thinking of all sorts of things I would love to write about, things I care about. Yesterday I was having a conversation with a close friend and the subject of my blog audience came up. Ah, this is what happens when you just start free flow writing. You start at point a and end up at q with a quickness....

I've been free here with my thoughts and ideas. I honestly don't track who reads my blog unless someone subscribes to it or leaves a comment. That's the nature of the beast. I guess I could get technical and start zoning in on my logistics and get geeky, but I don't want to. I know many of the artists I've worked with read the blog, some local people, my family... beyond that, I just don't think too much about it. I just write. And when people write back, I like it. That's it.

My writing is one of my art forms. This blog is a publication of short essays, and those writings and musings of mine that relate to TLGUTS and my own creative ventures and personal realizations.  I have it listed under TLGUTS, because I see TLGUTS as my artistic outlet. It's all the same ball of yarn to me. If I write about my work, it's because my work is my life, my life is my work.

Back to the discussion about audience. Audience is always a critical component to artistic works. There's audience development, audience maintenance, audience participation, audience growth, audience feedback,  and all sorts of considerations of audience when it comes to the arts. I think my friend was considering a key component of my audience in our conversation. My friend thought I should write with more consideration for a certain subset of my audience and think about how they perceived my blog.

I don't consider individuals when I write unless I am writing about them, like my recent musings about my grandfather. I write with a broad stroke.  I write toward an idea, toward a tone, toward a feeling, and want whoever is reading the work to catch that feeling as well.  Ultimately though, for most artists, sharing finished works is an ultimate goal.

When I create artistic programming or curate shows, I create with a storyteller's mind. What's the beginning, middle and end? What are the rich details and important supporting subplots that mixed together make the event or exhibition savory? I define the elements and qualities of the work that make the work worth sharing. Then I find ways to execute. There is always consideration that the work will be shared with an audience when I am programming, but audience development is not always the end goal of my writing. With my writing, I try to achieve audience maintenance through authenticity. That's it.

I do try to please myself because I can be pretty hard to please. If it passes my own test, it goes in. If not, it becomes one of the hundred or so unpublished blog pieces or exhibition ideas no one ever sees or hears about. Maybe this one will join the list. Who knows.

What I do know, is that I do not edit my art work out of fear that it may make people perceive me in a certain light. What I do not do, is edit the subject matter of my writing to appease other people at the expense of my own authenticity. I also do not ever write to intentionally be cruel or hurtful. Mostly, I try to inspire people to get out from whatever is holding them back from taking the next step towards being better than what they are today, and to get more people out here with me living out-loud. Most of the time, that is what I am doing myself.

So if you've come here looking for a word or two about someone living a creative life on their life on their own terms... welcome. You are my audience. 


If we start limiting ourselves creatively to exclusively fit into an agenda or a limited audience, at the expense of doing what we love, we are boxing ourselves in. Who can live like that? Do what you love to do; write about what makes you tick. Create with the idea in mind. Put it out into the world. You will find an audience. Live authentically. Create authentically. Do it again and again and again. Just don't stop. And don't edit yourself into that box.

Suggested reading: Toni Morrison, The Big Box.