Poking The Muse

A message from Buff

What do you do when your Muse is asleep?  How do you poke her awake?  We’ve all gone through it as artists – you feel you’ll never again have a good idea, or even a halfway good idea.  You’re dissatisfied with your last body of work (which seemed like a great idea at the time) but now, you can’t even find the glimmer of an idea for your next great opus.

There are probably as many techniques as there are artists.  Here are a few of my favorites, and a few gleaned from my fellow CAG artists.

1. Tops on my list is to look at other art.  If I have a day free, I’ll take the bus into New York City and go to one of my favorites, the Metropolitan Art Museum or the Modern.  There are also the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the American Folk Art Museum, the Natural History Museum; and myriads of smaller specialty museums and galleries.

If I can’t get to the City, I look at art books and magazines, and find virtual museums online [cite]  Whether in person or virtually, I make a point of looking at all kinds of art, not just textiles and clothing. The cross-fertilization of ideas is important and exciting.

2. I review my notebooks of ideas, which I have kept for years.  In these small spiral-bound books of drawing paper, I jot down ideas, notes on interesting things I have seen, designs and patterns I like, sketches of clothing, trees, flowers – anything and everything.  They are in no particular order, and not at all fancy; I use a ball-point pen.   

Margaret reviews her finished art.  She says, “One sure way for me to get in the right “mood” to work on my art is to look through work I’ve already done – especially work from a while back. I’m able to look at it with a more objective eye and always think of ways I might do things differently if I were to do it again. This gets the creative juices flowing.”

3. I also review photos I’ve taken over the years – mosaic floors in Italy; colorful houses, cemetery monuments and exotic plants in Mexico; flowers in my backyard; frost formations on my car after a cold night; interesting sand patterns on the beach as the tide recedes, etc.

Tom goes out and looks for inspiring scenes for his photography.  “. . . [W]hen it feels like I'm in a rut, I'll explore Google Maps for a new location to shoot.  Going out with a purpose, traveling unexplored roads and viewing fresh scenery helps sharpen my senses.  I like to arrive at a location at first light to find promising subjects to capture as the sun rises. . . While I don't always come home with good shots, watching the world come to life NEVER disappoints.”

4. I doodle.  I’ll take a large pad of newsprint and a couple of sharp pencils out onto the porch of my studio, then let my hand draw while my mind roams.  Sometimes I’ll switch to my left hand, to see what happens.  I cover the sheet entirely with animals, leaves, squiggles, letters, and patterns, all totally unplanned.  This is not so easy for me, since most of my life is full of plans, deadlines, and “to-do” lists.  If I can’t always “turn off” my left brain, I can tone it down a bit.  Doodles can give me an idea or even lead to a finished piece, translating them into fabric and ink.

Doodles #1

5. When I asked Kathy, she said,  “. . . mine is getting my work area cleaned up!!”  I totally agree! A neat space is very inviting.  Working with the materials as I clean up, however, is just as important.  Folding up fabric to put away, I’ll notice that this color is pretty interesting with this other color. . . and before I know it, I’m sliding into putting a piece together.  A number of years ago I was inspired by a bag of black and white fabric scraps and I turned them into an abstract herd of zebras.

Above all, I try not to worry (hard as that may be).  I’ve had ideas before and I’ll have them again; something will pop up one night in bed, at that gray area  between awake and asleep, where the active brain is quiet enough for the unconscious to shine. For this very purpose, Thomas Edison would sit in a chair with metal plates on the floor and metal ball bearings in his hand. As he would begin to fall asleep, and his fingers relaxed, the bearings would clatter into the pan and wake him up.  He would do this over and over.  And he was no slouch when it came to creativity, holding over 1000 patents by the time he died!