Lisa Call

Before I started working my day job and before I got super focused on my art career I used to read 4 or 5 books a month. Mostly at night, reading an hour or 2 before bed. These days I’m reading only reading about 15 minutes a night. Although some nights I’m too tired to even open the book and on a rare occasion I can stay awake a half hour.

I’m reading fewer and fewer books so a few years back I decided to focus on reading art books, mostly artist biographies. I’m really enjoying these books but I was missing the variety of books I used to read. I didn’t want to prioritize more time for reading so added books on tape to not miss out on the latest best seller. I listen to these in my studio when I’m working at a task that doesn’t require a lot of movement and thought.

Designing and assembling my compositions is a lot of up and down between my sewing machine, iron, design wall and cutting table and I have to think about where I cut the fabric to get the effect I want so I find I can’t concentrate enough to listen to a book. I either miss large chunks of the book or I make mistakes that are time consuming to fix. I sometimes listen to music and sometimes not during this part of my process.

Stitching together the layers of my final piece requires hours and hours of zen like repetition. A perfect time to listen to books. I’ve been spending 40-100 hours a month finishing a backlog of work in this manner so I’ve listened to a lot of books recently. My library has an amazing collection so I don’t think I’ll run out of good choices anytime soon but if anyone has suggestions for good books please leave me a comment and I’ll check it out.

Having just finished the Georgia O’Keeffe memoir last night next up on my art reading list is another O’Keeffe biography, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life by Roxana Robinson. It gets good reviews so I’m looking forward to it.

 
I also still need to finish Matisse The Master by Hilary Spurling. I only have about 100 pages left so I will get back to it soon. I am enjoying this book, but it is a bit dry and tends to put me to sleep fairly quickly. I probably need a few hours of time when the sun is up to finish the book.

 
 
But first I’m going to take a break from art related books and read Life on the Refrigerator Door: Notes Between a Mother and Daughter by Alice Kuipers. I put it on hold at the library and it just came up. It seemed to be a book that would lose something listened to on tape and looks like it’ll only take about 30 minutes to read so I should be back to O’Keeffe soon.

 
My favorite book on tape recently has been Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. While I had issues with some parts of the book (you can read some criticisms of it on amazon). I didn’t let the flaws get in the way of the captivating story. The author read the book so more of her personality came through in the reading and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s on my list of books to listen to again if I run out of ideas for other books, not likely to happen soon as I just returned from the library with 7 more books to listen to.

I guess this means I should get to the studio. Unfortunately tonight that isn’t an option, I’ve got to put in some overtime for the day job, and listening to books on tape while writing requirements doesn’t work out so well, for either the book or the requirements.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s House at Ghost Ranch
 

This weekend I finished reading Anita Pollitzer’s memoir about Georgia O’Keeffe, A Woman On Paper. I very much enjoyed Pollitzer’s personal view of O’Keeffe and found it a refreshing and enjoyable read after attempting to get through the rather dense biography of Matisse, Matisse The Master, by Hilary Spurling.

It wasn’t until yesterday I remembered I toured O’Keeffe’s house in Abiquiu, New Mexico in 2000.

I spent two weeks at Ghost Ranch in the fall of 2000 attending an art workshop and I went with some classmates down to Abiquiu for the tour. While fascinating, it was also a bit weird to be traipsing through and gawking at someone’s personal life. Not much had been done to the house and what really stuck in my mind was they showed us the container with the tea leaves for the tea she drank daily, kinda weird to me they still had it 14 years after her death (how long does tea keep?).

The house is no longer open for tours so it was a wonderful opportunity to see how a talented and focused artist lived, but I always remember it as a bit creepy also.

Many of us in the class also drove over to look at the area around O’Keeffe’s house at Ghost Ranch, which has never been open for tours. The above picture is her house and the amazing view she had. The best piece of land at Ghost Ranch in my opinion.

Below was O’Keeffe’s view of El Pedernal, which she often painted, from the house.

How can one not make amazing art surrounded by such stunning colors and landscape. I’d move back to Northern New Mexico in a heartbeat if I won the lottery. I grew up in Los Alamos, only 40 miles from Abiquiu and I very much miss the southwestern scenery.

 

El Pedernal as seen from Georgia O’Keeffe’s House at Ghost Ranch

 
When I was a kid, I knew Ghost Ranch as the Ghost Ranch Living Museum and they had a lot of desert animals like a zoo. I’m not sure I spent much time appreciating the scenery but animals were very cool as they were in small cages and very close and scary: wolves, mountain lions, snakes and I’ll never forget the gila monster, ick.

Although my favorite spot on the drive past Ghost Ranch was Echo amphitheater just up the road from the animals. Definitely a place to visit if you are in Northern New Mexico.

 

Echo Amphitheater

Georgia O’Keeffe’s high school art teacher remembered O’Keeffe once declaring to the class:

I am going to live a different kind of life from the rest of you girls. After we are through school, I am going to give up everything for my art.

Quote from A Woman On Paper by Anita Pollitzer.

 
Reminds me of my posts about sacrifice last month here and here.

I spent a lot of time in my studio last month but this month has not gone as well and I’m averaging only 16 hours a week in my studio. With one week left I’m resolving to regain my focus and get back to work. I want to end the month with 100 hours for the 5 weeks. So I’ve got to put in 30-35 hours in my studio by sunday. I don’t have my kids this coming weekend (a 3 day holiday weekend here in the US) so it shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m also going to sit down and plan out the remainder of the year for business. I said I was going to do this over my five day 4th of July holiday but as usual I shrugged off the business stuff in favor of my studio. I’m notoriously bad about justifying ignoring the business and I’ve got to stop doing this.

It isn’t okay to ignore these things anymore. My first edition of my studio newsletter is at the top of my list. I had planned to email the first one last march. Obviously I didn’t fulfill that goal and I’m feeling rather lame about it. So instead look for the first edition to be mailed out by September 5th. If you haven’t signed up yet you can do so here: My Studio Newsletter Signup Page.

I’m currently reading A Woman On Paper by Anita Pollitzer. It’s a memoir about Georgia O’Keeffe, much of it in the form of letters the two wrote to each other.

My very good friend and talented artist, Julie, recommended this book when I told her I was struggling through the rather dense biography of Matisse, Matisse The Master, by Hilary Spurling. I’ll return to the Matisse book soon but this easy to read and inspiring book is a nice break.

I’m not far into the book but I could relate to the following event:

In the summer of 1915 O’Keeffe had to decide if she would return to New York and continue to take classes at the Art Student League or to take a teaching position that she was offered in South Carolina. In a letter to Anita she wrote about her decision to take the teaching position:

It will be nearer freedom to me than New York you see - I have to make a living - I don’t know that I will ever be able to do it just expressing myself as I want to - so it seems to me that the best course is the one that leaves my mind the freest.. to work as I please and at the same time make me some money.
…
If I can’t work by myself for a year with no stimulus other than what I can get from books - distant friends-and from my own fun in living - I’m not worth much…

O’Keeffe obviously did go on and make a living "just expressing" herself but I can very much relate to her thought process here and I’ve posted about it several times in the past when I talk about working as a software engineer to pay the bills.

 
One thing I think about when reading this book, and other artist biographies where much information about the artist is gleaned from private letters, is that noone writes letters anymore. Where will our history come from?

Email? Blogs? Is it the same thing?

I recently listened to the audio recording of
Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy on the recommendation of Alyson Stanfield. I borrowed the audio tape from my local library.

Tracy mentions at the beginning of the book that you can only teach someone something they already know and that many of this tips might be familiar. That was definitely the case with me. I make lists and prioritize, etc,etc. This book was a nice refresher of those techniques.

The book is well organized and easy to read (or listen too). I usually can’t make it through most self help books but this one was short enough I could stay focused. Well mostly, it did get a bit repetitive and I maybe didn’t give it my full attention at the end but overall it was pretty good.

It’s packed full of tips to get past some of our most common techniques for putting things off. The book helped me get past some serious procrastination at my day job and I’ve used some of the techniques to prioritize my to do list for my art business.

My favorite tip is something I’ve always done naturally. I make master lists with all of my goals and then make smaller lists for each week picking the items I want to accomplish that week. Then most evenings I’ll make a list for the following day. The result is lists all over my house (I’m not much for day planners - although the master list is on my computer in an excel spreadsheet) . I find all those lists a great indication I’m making progress, which inspires me to keep working.

As I mentioned in my comment back in December I finally decided to look at the following 2 books because so many people had recommended them or were talking about them:

• The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
• Coaching the Artist Within by Eric Maisel

 
My kids reviewed the books and now it’s my turn.

My goal with this review is to explain what I think about these books in terms of their usefulness for me. They are not overall critiques of the books. I could do that but I’d have to actually read them first and I don’t really want to do that.

 
I’m at a point in my art life right now where I have more ideas than I have time. I have more motivation than I have time to create. I love the work I’m making and feel it is really pretty good work. I’m able to push myself out of my comfort zone when needed and try new things. For example I have 2 new series in the works, I recently took a new direction with my Structures series and I’m learning to draw to see where this will lead me in my fiber work.

 
I didn’t read either book from cover to cover but I found that each one had a chapter that resonated with me.

In Tharp’s book it was Chapter 1. I think she spells it out in very clear language. There is no magic. There are no secrets. It’s just hard work. Put in the time, practice and you get better each day.

When I started making “art” quilts I didn’t have hundreds of ideas as I do today, that came over time. The more I work, the more ideas I generate. The process feeds on itself. I’m not doing exercises to come up with new ideas, I just work and the ideas come. There really is no magic. There is just a passion on my part to work hard as an artist.

In Eric’s book it was skill #6 that I could relate to “Creating in the middle of things”. The exercise is to answer the question “How will I manage to create in the middle of things?” It’s a hard question but he makes the very obvious observation that most people are never able to answer this question and hence they never create. His advice is to “drop everything” and just create.

I’m a single mom and I work full time as a software engineer yet I still manage to make a heck of a lot of artwork. I think I’ve done this by doing exactly what Eric says - I have learned to create in spite of everything else going on in my life. I don’t have more hours in the day than anyone else. I just choose to use my time in my studio vs. just about anything else.

 
For me those 2 chapters were all I needed to read of these books. Anytime I get lazy or feel unmotivated I just need to think about what these 2 chapters say. There is no magic, there will be no art if I’m not in my studio.

 
I did skip around and read parts of other chapters but I wasn’t very inspired by what I read or interested in what they had to say. I’m just not a self-help book type person. It’s not to say I don’t think getting outside help with motivation isn’t good, I just don’t get that motivation from a book.

I think Nancy Crow has by far been the biggest help and motivator for me. I take workshops from her every year or two and it helps me refocus and redefine my work. I also have a coach of sorts that has me set goals and holds me to them. I see her 4-5 times a year and I find it very helpful.

I think what it comes down to is I don’t feel that there is anything in my art I need to change or want to change right now. If I felt like I needed change I’m not really sure I’d read these books, but I can see that for some people they could be helpful. I say do whatever works for you. I really admire Gabrielle Swain. She was looking for a change in her work and is now working directly with Eric Maisel as her creativity coach and making great strides.

 
And now it is very late and my download (33 MB) to modern postcard completed and I can check “order postcard” off of my list. Hurray! I’m also about 1/2 done quilting Structures #39. Tomorrow I’ll post a picture of what I’m doing, it’s rather tedious work. But very meditative and I’m listening to Johnny Cash again, which is really fun. Reminds me of my brother, he loved “Ring of Fire” and that train song when we were growing up.