Archive for Art
Does Your Art Need a Little Support?
Posted by: | CommentsMy goal is to help you give your creative soul what it needs to flourish.
One of the best ways I can think of to do that is to provide structured support.
Structured support is more than just cheering you on–which is great mind you, it’s just not enough in our busy, over-extended lives.
Structured support helps you to create and maintain your creative momentum because it’s a “built” something–a concrete structure–that you can rely on and lean into when you don’t have that extra energy to build something from scratch yourself.
That’s my logic around the 20 Minute Club. To help you have a way to check in and feel connected to other artistic, creative people hunting and pecking for some time here and there to do what they love best–creating.
But the 20 Minute Club is just one piece of a structured support system that I plan to provide for you. I’m creating lots more.
This summer, I’m introducing another crucial piece of my structured support system that I think you’re going to love. And I’m getting excited.
Creative Breakthroughs Tele-class
Once a week this summer, (starting in July) I’m going to offer my Creative Breakthroughs Tele-class at a special reduced introductory rate. With even better deals for buying a few classes at a time.
It’s a very simple collage process, but it really allows you to let go, stop the self-censorship, and just start making.
We’ll make 2-3 collages on each call and even if they don’t get quite finished, they’ll become excellent fodder for the 20 Minute Club because they give you something to respond to during your busy week–something to work on, think about, and experiment with–structured support that allows you to be the artist you are.
These tele-classes will help your creativity, build your self-confidence, and improve all your art making skills even if collage isn’t your “main thing.” Even if you’ve never made a collage in your life.
A Fabulous Example
Anne Huskey-Lockard took my collage tele-class because she thought it would be fun to make art using a method completely different from her usual approach.
She shares her collage and talks about her experience of my tele-class on her blog here.
Since then, she’s continued to use the technique to make more work (see how it works?) and now she’s doing a fabulous give-away of two pieces that she’s created using the Creative Breakthroughs Tele-class approach.
You can enter to win or just visit and see how she’s used the technique to expand her own creative process and provide herself with more options for her creativity.
(Here’s what I made during the same tele-class that Anne took–isn’t it interesting how the same technique can produce such different results? I LOOOVVVVEEE that. It’s all about developing/nurturing your own voice, not copying someone else. Yes!)
Who? What? When?
Okay, still working out the details of the when and the how much, but it’s definitely going to be ridiculously affordable and available almost every week this summer starting in July.
Oh, and no worries, it’s all very flexible. You’ll be able to take it once, once in a while, or every week, depending on what works for you.
I’m thinking the class is going to be Monday evenings because most people don’t do things on Monday evenings. I also might try to offer it at couple of different times to accommodate different time zones.
It’ll probably run a little over an hour–maybe an hour and a half with intros and checking in afterward. (I want to make it all feel do-able and not take over your entire evening.)
Thoughts? Questions? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.
In the meantime, watch this space!
20 Minute Club Minutes–Resolution
Posted by: | CommentsEvery Friday I write the 20 Minute Club Minutes–because using a timer for what I call the 20 Minute Technique can keep your creative momentum going in your busy, time-crunched life–20 minutes at a pop.
Please join in and share your 20 Minute Experiences in the Comments–good/bad, it’s all fair game.
This week involved lots of short spurts spent trying to resolve this 36″ x 48″ collage I’ve been working on slowly over the past 2 months.
Because it just didn’t feel right.
At the end of the day yesterday, I made some changes I’d been debating all week–and suddenly I felt like I’d finally resolved it and any further additions will be small.
(Click here and here to see earlier versions of this piece and click on the image itself to see it bigger.)
I LOVE that feeling of resolving a design problem.
LOVE. IT.
Loving to solve design problems is loving the process–a much more positive, comfortable mindset than getting fixated on whether the final piece is going to be good or not.
I don’t always manage this, but it’s nice when I do.
So even though I wasn’t sure it would ever be a piece I looked at and I liked, I still wanted to hang in there with it to the end–to finish it–for all the powerful good that happens from the integrity of that action.
And I did.
Being committed to the process is so liberating.
And it feels good to solve problems–design or otherwise. And you know, I think I do like it after all.
Appreciations
Appreciating yourself is an important part of the 20 Minute Club because it helps you keep your creative momentum going.
Carving out the time to create is not enough. Getting (and eventually staying) on your own side is a critical factor for helping you take bigger risks with your work, get yourself out of a creative rut, or just enjoy the process more.
Taking the time to remember to appreciate yourself and your efforts (big or small) is a powerful way to make this happen.
Here’s my five self-appreciations for this week:
- I appreciate that I’ve been much more forgiving of myself lately–a bit unusual and frankly, a nice change of pace.
- I appreciate that I sorted out new stuff about my tele-class and felt some confusion lifting. Phew.
- I appreciate the cool-headed time-juggling I managed on Tuesday which involved running around, carrying heavy things in fancy shoes, and prepping for a network event.
- I appreciate that I took the biggest risk with my presentation at my networking event and it went really well.
- I appreciate how much I love to create products and how much I enjoy designing my new notecards of my digital collages.
Your Turn!
How did your creative week go? What did you work on? Are you rolling along or feeling stuck? Please share–good, bad or ugly–it’s all a part of the on-going process.
Will You Give Me Your Opinion?
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Several people have asked me if I sell notecards with images of my digital collages on them, so I’ve decided it’s time to do just that.
I’m going to start off with 5 different cards, and I’d love it if you’d help me decide which 5 to pick!
3 Simple Steps
1. Visit http://sarahbushartworks.com
2. Peruse the images & jot down your 5 faves
3. Click on the green survey link at the top of that page. This will take you to my one question survey where you can check off your five favorites.
Thanks in advance….and I can’t wait to see the results!
Find Your Timer
In the meantime, tomorrow’s blog post will be (of course) the 20 Minute Club Minutes, so there’s still time to grab your timer and carve out 20 minutes tonight to nurture your creative soul.
I look forward to reading your comments about how it went–and remember, sharing your experiences helps everyone!
Butterflies
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Last night I completed the second beta test of my collage tele-workshop (I really DO need to decide on the name for it!) with members of the R & D Squad.
It went quite well and I got some really helpful feedback.
At the end several participants were kindly saying how much they enjoyed it–even though they had butterflies about it all day in anticipation–a little excited, a little nervous.
Maybe even a lot nervous.
Me too!
And I realized I forgot that they’d be nervous.
So absorbed in my own nervousness about “being on stage” and teaching over the phone–publicly trying out an idea and a process I’m enamored with–that I forgot that they were taking a risk too.
No one on that call waited to feel safe before they signed up.
They felt uncomfortable and they did it anyway.
WOW! Thank you for that my early beta testers! I’m so grateful for that trust and so respectful of your willingness to take that risk.
And I’m proud of myself too. For birthing an idea from the dark recesses of the creative part of my brain all the way out into the world. Transforming an idea into an actual thing.
And we all survived! And had some fun to boot. Because butterflies are a good thing.
Different but Better
But still, I was pretty wound up the rest of the evening.
I watched the last episode of “24″ standing up. I brought out the garbage and walked around the block in the dark.
Why? Because I had to recover, I had to get over feeling emotionally naked–of doing my best in front of relative strangers.
This morning I feel like myself again, but better.
Because I’ve expanded my experience and now my outer edges have changed. I have a bigger comfort zone today than I did yesterday, so more is available to me. And that’s neat.
This is always true when you push at the edges of your comfort zone.
When you create.
When you take the risk of doing something that might not work out.
Traveling that road from nascent idea to finished product is a good feeling and it grows you.
I call it The Fine Art of Finishing. Seth Godin calls it “shipping”. The more you ship, the more you know it’s worth doing it.
And now I’ve got a bunch of new friends who took that risk with me. Who also have a bigger comfort zone today than they did yesterday. Who tried my new thing and helped me make it better.
And that’s neat.
Let’s hear it for butterflies.
The Armory Show
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As promised, today’s post is a mini review of The Armory Show, a big art to-do that happens every year in NYC.
As I mentioned in my Pulse post, I had a better time at the Pulse-NYC show than this one, but that’s because The Armory Show is a bit pretentious and I feel like the vagaries of the art market dominate the scene which can lead to cynical or trend driven art-world-insider type work at the expense of work created from listening to one’s individual voice or desire to create something deeply aesthetically pleasing or powerful.
But that said, I did see a lot of wonderful things and I thought I’d share a few of them here: (I’ll start with my favorites first).
I was actually blown away by this piece by H C Berg called Visual Vortex, and of course, I couldn’t take a decent picture of it.
I really loved how it glowed and was luminous–it’s hard to explain how it looked, but it’s a large curved piece of iridescent mylar lit up somehow with laser cut acrylic shapes hanging in front of it that shimmered.
The image actually extended out a few feet in front of the piece itself–reflecting or projecting, I’m not sure. So it had this very modern, plastic film kind of feel to it, but it was all airy and ethereal at the same time:
And I loved this piece below made out of liquor bottle top foils (the metal bit at the top that you can peel off) by El Anatsui. His site is under construction, but if you want to see more of his work, click here and here. Here’s my photo from the show:
I’m a huge Magdelena Abakanowitz fan, so it was fun to see several of her large repeated sculptures as I haven’t seen too much of her work in person:
I quite liked these carved book sculptures below, but unfortunately, cannot read my handwriting to tell you the artist’s name. I just sent a note out to the group that I went to the show with–if I find out, I’ll amend this post later. In the meantime, here’s some pix:
I was struck by these small totemic wire sculptures made in the seventies by an artist called Philadelphia Wireman. I looked him up online and Wikipedia had an interesting story about him–a bunch of these sculptures were found in the street by an art student in 1982, and folks surmise that they were just thrown out after this unknown artist died. I really like them:
I thought this painting was beautiful and haunting (and it reminded me of Hendrik Kerstens‘ work. I also managed to not write this artist’s name down somehow either–when I find out, I’ll amend the post:
Glitter and sequins also had a presence at both Pulse and The Armory Show so I must admit I enjoyed that: Here’s a photo of a cluster of small sequin “paintings’ by Daniel Gonzalez (I liked these best) and next to it are a couple of cut paper and glitter collages by Devin Troy Strother:
And finally, when I opened my bag, I realized one of my pencils was stuck inside a folded piece of paper and had made its own drawing while I was walking around.
I quite liked the delicate line quality–who knew my pencil was such a sensitive arteest! (I call it Mixed Feelings at The Armory. Graphite on 28lb printer paper. 
)
Do you have any thoughts/opinions about any of the art shown here? Leave a comment, (thumbs up or thumbs down) I’d love to hear what you think!
If you liked that post, then try these...
Pulse NYC
Posted by: | CommentsPulse New York
This past week was all about the The Armory Show at the Piers in NYC. It’s a pretty famous show with lots of different offshoot exhibits all over town now, so I thought I’d find everyone some inspiration.
The only “offshoot” show I went to was downtown at Pulse NYC. I actually enjoyed it much more than main event, which I found kind of pretentious, but I always have lots of ambivalence about the art scene. The gallery owners at Pulse were more open and welcoming and seemed truly excited by the artist’s works they were displaying.
The pulse show has more emerging artists in general. Overall, it was probably more uneven in quality than the Armory Show, but I liked the energy and genuine enthusiasm that I felt in the artwork I saw.
Here’s a few photos and thoughts below:
I thought this fur life preserver by Andy Yoder was an interesting political sendup about the economic downturn–especially in New York City, where the uber wealthy are more uber than other places:
I loved these woven rattan Buddha sculptures by Cambodia artist Sopheap Pich. Airy and open with a certain monumentality:
Megan Greene did some really lovely drawing/collages on top of pages of Audubon paintings from a book. Some people might think, “Oh, been there, done that” but I thought she really integrated her own skillful drawings wonderfully with the initial images, creating something fresh and well executed. She wasn’t really relying on the Audubon prints as much as carrying them somewhere else. My group picture doesn’t really do it justice. Check out her site for better photos.
I thought these mythic taxidermy creatures by Enrique Gomez de Molina were very cool, but some people around me were kind of grossed out. I guess I convinced myself he found the taxidermied pieces and then altered them with his own created bits, but really, I have no idea. They’re so imaginative and phantasmagorical to me and they have a lot of presence . Check out his site to see more and better images. (The walrus is covered in beetle wings!)
Laurent Craste had a wonderful piece that was a mix of video art and porcelain, but I couldn’t take a picture of it. He’s a porcelain artist, and most of his work (at this show anyway) is a commentary on decorative arts.
His piece that I really liked had a porcelain plate in a cabinet with a classic image of roses on it, but the image was digital, and he had the petals and leaves gradually fall off the decorative pattern to form a kind of heap at the bottom of the plate and then start over. Very witty, I thought–and well done video art, which I find kind of rare.
Here’s a few more of his porcelain commentaries:
Emil Lukas had a wrapped thread, piece that was positively luminous. Of course, my photo makes it look opaque and kind of awful, but it was really great and I wanted to include it here. I notice the other images of his work online don’t do much better either, so I think it’s kind of hard to photograph his work:
I liked these witty little paintings by Michael Dumontier and Neil Farber–from The Royal Art Lodge:
I really enjoyed Megan Whitmarsh‘s soft sculpture installation of her dream studio–it was very positive and actually kind of joyful. It really brought back memories of the soft sculpture rage in the 70′s:
So there was lots more that I liked, but I’m having a hard time deciphering my notes and my to-do list is a mile long this week! I’ll write about The Armory Show next with lots of pictures as well. Please share any thoughts you have about any of the art, I’d love to hear from you!
