.the littlest water bear.

somebody paid me to do this...sort of

We're having a goals/team building/ something or other day at work today.
It's kind of wierd.

And I built this arch...thing out of books.
I'm calling it Book Henge.

It was way huger and more spectacular, but naturally that led to it falling over and breaking a lot (and almost taking two people out). Clearly this is a learning process.
Lesson of the day - industrial hot glue is WAY better than Liquid Nails.

ALSO!
The etsy shop is back open.
Coupon Code "SCARYMONSTERS" is active and waiting for you to use it!

.reenchantment.

I picked up a new book the other day.
Literally picked it up off the floor in my studio. Turns out it's one of my husbands books from his art teacher in high school, and it probably accidentally migrated when I was moving bookshelves from his studio to another room.
This book is an art book, philosophy-ish, and probably a little out of date in terms of the fine arts world - but very possibly totally relevant to what's going on in the bellydance world right now. One paragraph has hit me particularly hard:

"Some artists have taken offense at what I write because it doesn't appear to validate what they are doing; but a paradigm shift can't occur without the consequences to the way we see and do things, and the uprooting of accustomed habits of thinking often has uncomfortable personal consequences. Condemnation of the ways that our society, as currently structured, fails to provide any context for a socially or morally sensitive art is easier, and less likely to demand a change of consciousness, than the more formidable effort of trying to construct a new vision and put it into practice. It is not part of our legacy to view ourselves as powerful agents of change; however, we are being confronted with the necessity of transforming our old modes of understanding if we are to survive the predicaments that are our collective fate right now."

-Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art

I really look forward to reading the rest of this little monster.

Art and Fear

Yesterday I finished rereading Art and Fear.
This book.....essential - to any and every Maker. Visual Artist, Writer, Dancer, Musician....Essential.

It's an almost impossible book to write about - read the reviews on Amazon. They say it all better than I could... If you were to pick up my copy - it's battered and splattered with paint, and written in all over.
But essential.

From the first chapter, which you can read free on Amazon if you have a Kindle:

• Artmaking involves skills that can be learned. ...In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinct.
• Art is made by ordinary people. ...our flaws and weaknesses, while often obstacles to our getting work done, are a source of strength as well.
• Making art and viewing art are different at their core. ...To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork.
• Artmaking has been around longer than the art establishment. ...the current view equating art with "self-expression" reveals more a contemporary bias in our thinking than an underlying trait of the medium. Even the separation of art from craft is largely a post-Renaissance concept, and more recent still is the notion that art transcends what you do, and represents what you are.

  Now go - pick up your copy. It's worth the money and the time.