Lisa Call

Upleveling

As long time readers know, I began working with Christine Kane in December of 2007 and since then my life has changed in amazing and positive ways. Christine calls this Upleveling.

My journey to improve my life began after listening to the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert in the summer of 2007. A truly awesome and fun book.

From there I attended Christine’s retreat and then participated in her Uplevel your Life Mastery Program home study course (she called it something different back in 2008 but it is the same thing – although I think it’s even bigger and better now). I redid both the uplevel program and attended a second retreat later in 2008.

Now in 2009 I am part of Christine’s platinum coaching circle. It’s all amazing. Christine is amazing. The group is amazing. Life is truly wonderful.

I knew I wanted things to change in my life and Christine provided the tools by which to make those changes.

Recommendation

I wrote a testimonial for Christine’s Uplevel your Life Mastery Program and since then I’ve gotten quite a few people asking me about her. Wanting some assurance I meant what I wrote. Indeed I did mean it.

So now Christine has offered an opportunity for me to recommend her further by creating an affiliates program, which means if you sign up to do a program with her I will get a percent of the price (her affiliates payout is 35%).

I have signed up to be an affiliate because I 100% believe in what Christine is offering. I also signed up because I spend a lot of time talking to people about Christine and it takes time away from my art and my art business. It’s nice to have an opportunity to be compensated for my time.

Free Teleseminar

If you want to see what Christine is all about and if she has something you might be interested in she is going to be giving a free teleseminar on June 10th in the evening. It’s titled 5 Simple Action Steps to Take Your Life to the Next Level this Summer.

You can sign up here (this is my affiliate link): Sign Up for Christine’s Free Teleseminar

Yes – the teleseminar is free – costs nothing and I get paid nothing. It’s only later if you do sign up for one of her programs that I will receive a payment.

So this is a chance to not only check out Christine’s amazing coaching talents, but also support me in my journey, currently all for free.

My Journey

What follow is the post I wrote on Christine’s blog last December about my word of the year Courage, it’ll give you and idea of the changes I made in my life in the past year (as will looking over the last few years of my blog posts).

I’m Not That Kind of Girl

When I first saw the information for Christine’s Great Big Dreams Retreats I thought with a bit of regret, I’m not the type of person that does things like this, and went back to my very busy life. Female bonding and getting all touchy-feely was not my thing, being the ever so competent INTJ.

Upon recommendation from friends, the internet and the universe, I listened to the book Eat, Pray, Love in the summer of 2007 and, like so many other people, it had a profound impact on me. I realized I was not living the life I wanted, yet I had no idea how to create the life I wanted. I wasn’t even sure what that might be. I was just sure it wasn’t what I was doing.

Taking a Leap

That fall my father passed away and a long term relationship came to an end and I was exhausted. It finally pushed me over the edge and even before selecting my word of the year, courage, I took a huge leap and signed up for the December retreat.

I thought, maybe if I were the type of person that did these retreats I would have a life I liked a lot more. Unfortunately I learned the single room I had wanted was sold out.

In an act of pure clarity (and a lot of experiences I did not wish to repeat), I declined the chance to attend and share a room with someone else and asked to be put on the waiting list for a single room, of which there are only 2. At the time I didn’t realize my chances weren’t all that good for getting this, I just knew what I needed for the retreat to work for me, and I knew I needed to attend.

So I was very happy, but not at all surprised, to get an email a few weeks before the December 2007 retreat that a space was available.

I am that Girl

So off to Ashville I went and not only did I survive my girl bonding weekend, I loved every minute of it. It wasn’t nearly as touchy-feely as I feared and I was welcome to be whoever or whatever I needed.

During that amazing weekend I had one aha-moment after the an other. Yes, I could indeed create the life I wanted, as I now had a treasure chest of tools to help me do just that.

I started by setting aside my usual beginning of the year ritual, that of setting dozens of aggressive goals and jumping in getting things done, and instead I choose just a single word to focus my year around.

Courage

I selected Courage. Courage to slow down. Courage to listen to myself. Courage to find my feelings. Courage to listen to the tiny voice that was my true desires. Courage to follow my dreams no matter how foreign the territory or scary the path might be.

I’ll be the first to admit, 2008 has been an incredible fabulous year for me. I thought of my word often and have managed to free myself from many of my old limiting beliefs. Every day I choose to create and live the life I want to live.

The list of positive changes I have created in my life over the past year is astounding, from health improvements, to an upcoming amazing vacation in Africa, to deeper and closer friendships, to an art career that turned a profit for the first time ever. I could write for pages on all that has come about this year. But this is a blog and I’ve already rambled on for longer than recommended, so I’ll just touch on one which took great courage.

Leaving the Burbs

One of the first things I tackled upon arriving home was to declutter my house. I rather smugly sat through the discussion of clutter during the retreat thinking I had very little. When I got home I discovered I just had a really big house to hide it all in. Clutter was everywhere. Er oops.

No wonder I was stuck. Did I really need a box full of 18 year old hand made mints from a marriage that ended 7 years prior? Tossed were the ski equipment, racquetball, scuba diving, etc, etc, etc. I gave away furniture, clothes, toys, keepsakes. I tossed it all. (Although I admit I kept the frog made out of icing that was on my birthday cake when I was 8 years old because you never know when a 37 year old amphibian made of sugar and fat will come in handy. Don’t tell Christine.)

After a few months of freeing myself from things that only served to drain my energy, I found the courage to admit to myself that I didn’t want to live in this big beautiful house anymore. The suburbs no longer appealed to me and it was simply too large.

I had always been afraid to admit this because the thought of moving was too daunting. As the house emptied out, it became very doable to pick up myself and my 2 kids and move to the city, close to both my work and their school.

So that’s what we did. In early April I talked to a real estate agent and 2 months later I had the house fixed up and ready to hit the market. I told her repeatedly the house would sell in 1 week or less, and yes, this was during what was supposedly a very difficult housing market.

I learned my lesson in 2007, getting really clear about what I wanted resulted in it manifesting, be it a single room at a retreat or a fast home sale.

So that’s exactly what happened. The house sold in 1 day and after a bidding war, sold for substantially more than my asking price. So much for the buyers market.

A few days later I found a small house within walking distance to my kids’ school and we moved at the end of June, less than 3 months after first having the thought that it was possible. I’m a 3 on the enneagram, the achiever, I don’t just sit around and wait for the universe to do it’s thing, I take action and help it along.

Dream Home and Studio

I first told myself this was a temporary move and after the kids were out of the house I would move again, because I could not afford to live in Denver long term. I stopped telling myself this story when it was clear I didn’t want to live in a 900 sq ft house with no studio, even temporarily.

That took about 5 minutes. Who was I kidding, I was not going from a 600 sq ft studio to a non-existent studio so I could claim some virtue about living small. I had this idea that I would find it easier to start selling and marketing my art if I had a tiny house, cause I’d look more like I needed money.

That’s crazy. I sell my art because it provides value to the world and people connect to it, it enhances their lives so they want to own it, not because I live in a small house with bad electrical and broken plumbing. I can’t create the art I want in that environment.

So enough playing small, I had the courage to admit I wanted a bigger house and I hired a contractor to build me my dream home and studio. Why wait? I could have both the art career and the cool house and big studio if I wanted it. And so that is exactly what I am doing. I found the courage to admit I deserve it and to take the steps necessary to make it happen.

 
PS – Here’s that link again if you want to attend Christine’s free teleseminar: Sign Up for Christine’s Free Teleseminar, 5 Simple Action Steps to Take Your Life to the Next Level this Summer.

Ascending #1(working title)
Textile Painting
©2009
8" x 8" – To be mounted on stretched canvas
In progress

Ascending

The other day I was browsing facebook and came across a note that Martin Puryear had a fan page.

I started looking through photos of his work, which I love, and came across this piece: Ladder for Booker T Washington and it reminded me that I was going to do ladder themed art way back in 2001 but got side tracked by fences (my structures series, which currently is comprised of 111 textile paintings and still growing).

I wrote a note (ie tweet) about this on twitter. Encouraged by a friend who saw the note (thank you Joanie) I headed straight to the studio to get to work.

It’s taken a few more studio sessions to work out the kinks but Ascending #1 (still working on the title) is above. It’s not yet got the surface stitching so the texture, which will soften it a bit, is missing. I’m loving what I see so far. Much to explore in this new series.

Why Ladders?

It feels like the right transition from my Home series,which might be over, or it might not, we’ll see, right now I’ve got ladders on my mind.

This year is about expanding and growing. Ladders are all about moving up. And I’ve certainly looked at plenty the last few months during construction.

Not to mention the original inspiration behind ladders, which was my growing up in Northern New Mexico. I spent many hours at Bandelier National Monument climbing up the ladders to hang out in the caves.

We used to tell the tourists we were native Anisazi – er – make that Ancient Pueblo People – apparently Anasazi is no longer correct according to the Bandelier website:

This outdated term has a Navajo origin and can be roughly translated as "ancient enemies," thus the term is no longer used.

Hm – guess I missed that update.

Anyway, back to ladders, a popular hike in Bandelier is to the ceremonial cave which requires ascending a very large number of ladders to get to it. Or at least I recall it being a large number as I was terrified of heights and of those ladders. Every time we did this hike I’d be stressed about the ladders. So part of the appeal of doing ladder motifs is about courage and doing things anyway, in face of the fear.

Ascending – expanding – courage. That’s what the ladder series will be about.

The Studio is Painted

And speaking of going up – look at my studio! The paint went up today. I’m am dancing with joy over this.

They are scheduled to finish the electrical in there this week (well maybe not lights, they aren’t here yet) and I can move in (without carpet) by the weekend! Yay!! It’ll be another month before I bring in all my studio furniture and really set up but this is the first huge exciting step.

I’m going to do a series of post about building a new studio, I think in the month of march, so I’ll talk about paint colors and all that in more detail later. Everything is white except the stairway wall, which is a pinky/purpley light brown color, which ties the studio into the rest of the house as it’s all open.

It is absolutely beautiful!

Habits in a Construction Zone

Last week I was very disciplined, got a ton of stuff done. This week I’m just going with the flow.

My post about starting the habit of walking, well, out the window that went. It’s 9 degrees here in Denver. Who am I kidding, I’m not starting a new habit in 9 degrees.

I’m still thinking about habits I want to put in place, but when your kitchen moves around your house every month or so, it’s hard to have any sort of habit.

As you can see my latest construction photos – the kitchen is now in the entry way – which used to be my son’s bedroom until 2 days ago. New front door, many walls are gone and the place looks awesome (although maybe not finished): January 27 Construction Photos.

Four Days Remaining

I have been absolutely thrilled with the positive response to my announcement that my prices are going up on February 1st. Thank you to all of you for the positive comments, thoughts and a big huge thank you to those buying my art this month.

There are only a handful of pieces left on my small artworks for sale page. Thank you – it’s so exciting to sell my artwork.

I plan on focusing my effort in the smaller works to pieces mounted on stretched canvas and am not sure I’ll be making these little ACEO’s anymore. I like the look of the little textile pieces mounted on canvas so I might phase these guys out for a consistent look in the smaller sizes.

I still have a few available if you’re interested in owning one of these. [ACEO stands for “art cards, editions and originals”. Originally known as ATC, Artist Trading Card, and are traded between artists. When sold to the public they are referred to as ACEOs. The primary rule for an ACEO or ATC is they be 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ - the size of a trading card. They are created in many different mediums and are collectible, trade able and affordable art for everyone.]

Available ACEOs [Update - they've all been sold] (I’m going for the world’s longest blog post here it feels like):

ACEO #28
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #19
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #21
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #23
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #24
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

ACEO #25
©2008
2.5" x 3.5"
Sold

Structures #15
©2005
12" x 13"
Private Collection

My Intention

Expand: to open up, to increase in extent or scope

Expansion: the act or process of expanding

Integrity: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility

I set my intention for the year by selecting these words to guide me.

Expansion

I am focused on growing by leaps and bounds in 2009. I chose the word expansion over expand as it’s the process of expansion that excites me. The end result will be great but I’m going to love getting there as much as being there.

What does it take to grow my art business? What structures, routines, and systems will I need to succeed? What goals do I need to set? What habits do I need to form? I love thinking about the process and then executing on it.

This isn’t just about my art career it’s about internal things also like expanding my acceptance and understanding of others. About deepening my relationships, expanding my view of the world, etc. The list is endless.

And of course building a great big new studio to make more big art. That’s the easiest and obvious expansion at the moment.

Integrity

When I settled on the word expansion it felt incomplete to me. I wanted to qualify it. I wanted to say "Yes – I want to expand but I want to recognize and honor my values – to be authentic." Not just to clarify the expansion but also because exploring and defining exactly what I want is an ongoing process.

While I have a good idea of who and am and what I want and how I want to say it, I’ll be doing quite a bit of marketing of my artwork this year. So to that end it is vital I am very clear on the message I want to send.

I wrestled a bit with the word integrity as the definitions sound very moral preachy, but that’s not how I think of the word. I think of it more as just being authentic and not being easily swayed by things you don’t agree with.

I considered authentic but it doesn’t sound as good with the word expansion. So I read more about integrity on wikipedia and felt it really was the right word. And it sounds great with expansion. Given my current studio construction I also like the connotation to the integrity of expanding a physical structure.

My intention is to identify my values and honor them, as well as expand beyond my wildest dreams.

Courage

I won’t be abandoning my word for 2008, Courage, as it will take much courage to proceed with some of the plans I have for the year. Expanding and living bigger is scary. Courage is about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. I got a lot of practice with that in 2008 and expect it will come in very handy again this year.

My Studio Newsletter

Yesterday I emailed my 4th studio newsletter for 2008, making my goal of 4 in 2008. It was my first year for newsletters and it feels great to have met that goal. If you aren’t a subscriber and are interested you can read it and subscribe here: Lisa’s December Studio Newsletter.

Structures #15

I wanted to include an image with this post so strolling through my folders I hit upon this small hand embroidered textile painting. I rarely hand stitch my textiles and to date this is the only one of the Structures series where I’ve done this.

Now that I see this I’m getting ideas for incorporating some stitching with my thinner lines. Hm…. Maybe time to explore and see if this idea pans out. Expanding the series in a new way. Cool!

 
Happy New Year Everyone!

As a way of setting my intention for the year 2008 (thank you Christine Kane), I selected a single word to help guide me. The word I selected was Courage.

Last January I wrote a blog post about why I selected the word, which you can read here: Courage. I’ve written about it fairly often throughout the year in relationship to my art career and life in these posts.

Yesterday my guest post on Christine’s blog was published. You can read how my year of courage turned out here (maybe no big surprises for my long time readers but you will learn about my 37 year old icing frog): Lisa’s Courage Post.

It’s been an amazing year. Yay!

I’m still thinking about what my word for 2009 will be so stay tuned as I’ll soon be writing about it soon, along with my annual summary of my art accomplishments for the year. It’s good to look back and recognize and honor all the progress we make throughout the year.

Structures #104
©2008
6"x 6" – Mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Confession

Time for a confession. When I listed the textile paintings for sale on my small art for sale webpage a few weeks ago I said 6 of the pieces (Lines #1-#5 and Structures #104) were mounted on painted canvas. Truth was I had painted the canvases and I was pretty sure I could figure out how to attach them, but I didn’t think they would sell right away and I was going to take them with me to North Carolina to figure it out.

Er – nope – Lines #1, #3, #4 and #5 sold via twitter within a few minutes of tweeting about it. I hadn’t even announced the sale on my blog. I was leaving town in a couple days and had to figure out how to do this asap so I could get the work in the mail.

Turns out the little 3" square textile paintings are easy as the stretcher bars are small and I can stitch from the backside of the canvas and it went fairly quickly. And looked really nice. Like this:

Lines #2
3" x 3" – mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

I had a few minutes before leaving on my trip to tackle Structures #104 and wasn’t quite as successful. The stretcher bars are much larger on these larger 6" canvases and stitching next to them is not an option. The stitching has to go under the bars to hold the textile painting correctly and I was having a really really hard time figuring out how to do it. Oops!

Success

I ran out of the 3" canvases and wanted to make some more work this week so I decided to go for the 4" canvases and I bought and made a few new textile paintings in that size: Home #6, Home #7 and Lines #7.

Today was the day to tackle attaching these things on to canvases with 1 1/2" wide stretchers. Turned out that it isn’t all that hard. It’s not exactly easy but other than the one I got on upside down (never sign the back of the canvas before getting the textile painting in place) it went pretty smoothly. The trick is to sew from the front – in between textile painting and canvas. It’s a bit funky but works out great.

Here are my results:

Home #7 and #6
4" x 4" each – mounted on stretched canvas
Home #6 – Sold
Home #7 – Sold

 

Lines #7
4" x 4" – mounted on stretched canvas
Sold

Even Bigger

That accomplished I went back to Structures #104 and it’s 6" canvas, shown at the top of the post and mastered it. It’s just more stitching than the 4" canvases but same size stretcher bars.

Structures #104 and Structures #103 (not on canvas but also a small work for sale) were informed by Structures #45. I had it on the wall in my studio because it recently came back from an art consultant so it became the object of inspiration.

Here’s a quick look at these (it’s picture day on the blog tonight):

Structures #103
©2008
6"x 17.5"
Sold

 
 

Structures #45
©2005
28" x 28"
$4000

For Sale

Yes – I know – as I talk about affordable art the subject of sales seems to be brought up a lot. Probably because that is the point. I’ll finish this up soon and be back to my normal posts, but I have a few more things to say.

I’m working on a post for Christine Kane’s blog about my word of the year, courage. Talking about my artwork being for sale on my blog requires courage. Art and money are a bit weird sometimes and commerce on a blog is also a bit touchy, but forge ahead I am, knowing that my art does add much value to the world and unless I make it clear it is for sale it tends to just hang out at my place with me.

So, all the pieces in this post are available for sale on the Small Art for Sale webpage, except Lines #2, which sold in the middle of preparing for this post.

Most of these shown today are new so I did a bit of clean up and moved the sold pieces off that page and onto a sold page. In addition to the work shown here there are a few other new Lines piece (#6 and #8) and a couple of new ACEOs (#28 and #29).

I also did this because rumor has it a blogger with a huge readership is going to mention the 2 group artists websites I’m a part of so we might be getting a lot of traffic tomorrow. That would be great! (A reminder they are Fine Art Department and Small Art Showcase – I will get these into my sidebar soon so I don’t mention them so much in the blog).

And one last photo of all these guys on canvas at more of an angle so you can see how cool they look on there. I ordered some 2.5" x 3.5" canvases and will be putting some of my ACEOs on them cause I’m loving how this looks.

Markings #12    ©2007    44"x 32"

Giving

One of the things we talked about in Christine Kane’s E-seminar in January was what she termed expansive giving. Sharing our resources because we are inspired to do so. It goes beyond donating money to charity and for some it’s related to tithing. Many that believe in the Law of Attraction have a bunch of rules about what constitutes this type of giving back to the universe.

I’ve always donated some portion of my income to charity each year but it’s never been a huge amount. When I made the decision to rearrange my life to make a living from my art I decided to build in the giving up front so it’s a part of my business.

At the end of each month I work through my art business finances and give 10% of my gross income to others. I’ve decided I don’t have any rules about what this might mean. Some months I’ve given the money to charities that support causes I believe in. Some months I’ve given the money to people that have helped me or inspired me. Some months I imagine I might buy something to support an artist or small business owner and then give the item to someone else. I can imagine all sorts of ways of giving back to my community and the universe without feeling trapped by someone else’s rules.

It’s been very fun the last few months to sit and think about where I want to give my money. And I’m thrilled to say that every month I’ve had at least of bit of income so I can give.

This month I sent a check to FINCA, an organization that provides financial services to the world’s lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living.

Courage

In many ways the point of expansive giving is about opening up and trusting that the universe always provides. That there will always be enough. It takes courage to not hold on to it all too tightly.

I know when I first make the big leap and quit my job I’ll be living a different standard of living. From software engineer to artist just starting down the road to being self-supporting. When I first thought about it I was pretty scared. Then Christine introduced the idea of giving away 10% of our income I thought "no way, I’ll barely have enough to live on". Those thoughts are about fear.

So I made the decision in January to commit a full 10% of my gross income to giving, sharing and donating. I don’t want to live my life being afraid. Courage is my word of the year and this is part of that. Trust and love are a lot more fulfilling than fear.

Moving Progress

I’ve had painters at my house all week painting inside and out. Everything inside has been draped in plastic for a few days as they were spraying the walls (I have an 18 foot high ceiling). So just like last week not much art is going on at my house. I’m out of the house all day and just home at night to sleep in beds in the middle of the room. My son thinks it feels like a haunted house in here with all the plastic.

This long weekend, it’s memorial day weekend here in the US, the unofficial start of summer. It isn’t going to be much of a holiday for my family. I’ll be working on small house and landscaping projects all weekend with the help of my kids.

We’re in the home stretch. I’ve now got a real estate sign in my yard that says "Coming Soon" with the goal of having that switch to "For Sale" the first week in June.

Markings #12 – Moving Sale

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, all of my artwork is for sale. The above piece is one of those pieces. It’s full retail price is $2500 and through June 15th it’s available for $1500.

For those curious about my pricing, it’s roughly $230-$260 per square foot based on the year it was made. I round up or down to reach an even number. If you are interested in purchasing Markings #12, or any of my available work please email me.

Structures #62    © 2007    33" x 19"

A Slow Reply

Eight or nine months ago Meagan asked me the following question on one of my posts:

Something a little off topic, but still related: How do you know when your art work is “good enough” to start marketing it? (Obviously this isn’t a problem for you, Lisa, since your art is amazing!) Previous commenters (Ed) have mentioned that in the beginning of their career, they sold stuff that really wasn’t very good. How do you know when your art work has reached that particular level?

I’ve had a draft of this question sitting around waiting for an answer ever since. As I wasn’t up to a dissection of my studio newsletter as promised, I decided to go back and deliver on an older unanswered query.

It’s about Growth

The article I wrote was about selling my artwork (click to read). My thoughts have changed over the years and today I will answer this differently than I might have 3 or 5 or 8 years ago when I was not looking to pursue an income generating career from my art.

Today my answer is: You are ready to start marketing your artwork when you are ready to take that bold step and put yourself out there. It’s a big leap as it comes with many risks but also many rewards.

Sure, five years from now you might look back and think "Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I tried to sell that junk." But that’s the future. What matters is right now, today, this moment. How do you feel about your artwork? Are you happy with it? Do you think it is good? Do you want to market it? Great – go for it.

And I don’t think that’s such a bad future, to be a bit embarrassed about your work from years back, because it means you are growing as an artist. This is a great thing. Maybe something to look forward to.

How Will You Handle Set Backs

Artists are often advised to ask others for opinions about their work. Is it good enough? Will it sell? While this isn’t bad advice I’m not sure I’d recommend that. I suggest just going with your intuition. If you have the desire and resources to market your artwork, then go for it!

What’s the worse thing that could happen? You might fail on first try. The question is, what will you do with that failure? Will you let it destroy your dream? If so maybe you aren’t ready. I think this is probably the single most important question to answer.

Sure you might never face rejection, but chances are good you’ll face more than a few "we aren’t interested" situations. As Christine Kane says:

SWSWSWSW: Some will. Some won’t. So what? Someone’s waiting!

[Read her excellent article about not taking things personally here]

Even if you do face failure you might learn something. You might get better and grow. You might find new ways to do things. You might meet people that want to help you over that hurdle.

When you are ready to fall down and get up and keep on going. That’s when you are ready.

I’m Finally Ready

I’ve been making art that I really love for the past 10 years. Yet I’ve never taken the leap to go after an solid income with my art. I always have an excuse:

• I need to build up cash reserves.
• The kids are only at home for a few short (18) years.
• This work isn’t quite good enough yet.
• No one buys art quilts.
• I could never replace my software engineering salary with an art income.

Well, no more. I’m doing whatever it takes to get rid of the day job and replace it with the art income.

First up on the list of to-dos is to sell the house that requires a really big income. If I wait until I have enough money from my art to pay this mortgage it could be a pretty long wait. So I’m short circuiting that problem and downsizing.

It’s a huge task and when I think of all that needs to be done to get this huge home on the market I freak out, which is the reason I’m still here. I thought about moving 6 years ago after my divorce and then again 3 years ago, but I didn’t have the courage to do it.

Now it’s the year of courage, which gives me the focus needed to work through all that needs done. I don’t think about the huge list of to-dos. I make short lists of easily doable tasks. Things I can accomplish in a few hours. I’m just focusing on each step, one and time, and steady progress is made every day.

In the meantime I’m not ignoring my art. I’m in the 7th day of Artist Breakthrough Program with Alyson Stanfield and it’s fabulous. I’ve made huge strides in getting my new website ready to go. Tomorrow I’ll blog about how I did with my goals this week and what’s up for next week.

And yes – at some point I’ll write about all I learned when doing my studio newsletter. Hopefully you will not have to wait 8-9 months for that answer.

The above image was the one I selected for this post 9 months ago, I can’t tell you why. It’s orange. Maybe that was it.

O’Keeffe House, Ghost Ranch
©2008 Neil Myers
24" x 36"

Ghost Ranch Painting

First, the art. Arizona painter Neil Myers found the photo below on my blog and asked if he could use it as reference for one of his paintings. The wonderful results are above. You can see more of his amazing work on Neil’s Website.

I love that Neil contacted me and asked for permission to use my photograph and I’m even more thrilled that he will pay me a 5% commission when the painting sells for that use. Very cool. Thanks Neil and good luck with the sales.

Georgia O’Keeffe’s House at Ghost Ranch

Taking a Leap

Last week I made a big decision. I’m putting my house on the market. Selling my big suburban dream home and beautiful studio. I’m downsizing – smaller house, smaller mortgage, smaller studio, smaller commute. I’m going to leave the suburbs and move to Denver close to my kids’ school.

My word for the year is courage and this decision was a huge opportunity to use that word. I’ve been in this house for 13 1/2 years so moving is going to be a big change. Yet it all feels right. I’m excited about the positive changes in my life that will come about as a result of this move.

Giving up my large studio in the short term (I’ll likely move again in 6 years when my daughter graduates from high school) feels like the right decision. I know I can make art anywhere and I’m determined to keep pushing my career forward. So that is exactly what will happen.

Markings #10    ©2007    69"x 77"

Another Sign on My Wall

In January I started a series of posts about intent and things I do to help me hold my intent and stay on track. I got sidetracked with all the postings about my show, Markings: Repetition and Pattern, now on exhibit in Boulder but it felt like a good day to write about fear so I’m combining the two topics.

In 1998 or 1999 I read Who Moved My Cheese along with millions of other people.

My favorite quote from the book, which I immediately wrote on a piece a paper and hung on my studio wall:

Real Courage

I had just joined my first critique group and I was terrified. I had a group of women I respected that were going to tell me what they thought of my art. I started to second guess everything I was doing in my studio. What would they say, would like like it, could I handle their comments?

The fear ground my art production to a near halt. I remember sitting for long periods of time staring at this sign. Slowly I let the message sink in and I went back to work.

Real courage is not about waiting until the fear is gone before you proceed. It’s about proceeding in the face of fear. I rarely let fear stop me from creating now but I can still taste that feeling I had almost 10 years ago. And I’m not going back there.

I still have self doubts but I don’t let those voices speak very loudly anymore. I now act as if I am not afraid and move forward and the fear slowly dissolves.

Enough Time

When I wrote the post about there always being enough time to do the important things in my life, I mentioned that when we find ourselves not doing something it is likely to be something that we don’t really value.

The other thing I find is that I avoid things that I am afraid of. I use the excuse there is no time to do it, but the reality is I’m afraid of it. Recognizing this fear and admitting to it is a huge first step to just getting on with things. To having the courage to do it anyway.

Fear is not comfortable but the only way I know to make it go away is to face it head on. It’s why my word for the year is courage. Much of the marketing stuff I used to claim I don’t have time for is really stuff I’m afraid of doing. My intention is to become a self supporting artist and to hold this intention I have to face fear every day and just do the marketing work anyway.

Markings #10

Back in October I posted some images of Markings #10 in progress that capture the texture that is created with my extensive surface stitching. This piece is the largest artwork I’ve made to date (not counting traditional bed quilts I’ve made) at almost 37 square feet. It took me 55 hours to do the surface stitching on the entire piece.

It also speaks to what I wrote about Friday, the disruptions in the pattern. I feel that without the unexpected changes in the pattern, my art and my life would get a bit monotonous and stale. The trick is to appreciate these disruptions for the beauty they provide instead of getting bent out of shape, just like the mice in Who Moved My Cheese.

Related Holding Intent Posts

Transitioning and Intent
Holding Intent – Part I [Realistic Goals]
Holding Intent – Part II [Excuses]
Holding Intent – Part III [Focus]
Holding Intent – Part IV [Enough Time]
Holding Intent – Part V [Self Care]

Markings #16    ©2007    45"x 68"

Courage

I decided I wanted to give an artist talk during my show because I think there is huge value in talking about ones work out loud. I do a lot talking about my work in my head and I do a lot of writing about it, which are both super valuable. I’m looking to add more speaking about my work to my life.

It was also about courage. Doing something that seems scary is the only way to feel courageous.

For me getting up in front of a group of people and talking isn’t super scary because I love teaching. It is a little scary, I can’t deny that, but standing in front of group of people and rambling on is something I love doing and it’s why I love teaching.

My biggest fear was not standing up and talking but that I wouldn’t shut up and people would wander away bored.

Preparation

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I wanted to say about my artwork and wrote up an outline for the talk. I didn’t really practice it much other than to run through the outline in my head and get down the order of things I wanted to say and try to remember the main points I wanted to highlight. I think I do a better job speaking when I just ramble about a topic rather than repeat a rehearsed speech.

One thing I knew is I had never gone to an artist talk, or at least not one I had remembered so I was a little nervous I didn’t really know what one was. When asked by friends at work what an artist talk was I said I wasn’t sure as I had never seen one and probably should.

So the universe stepped in and a week before my talk a friend invited me to go see an artist talk at a gallery here in Denver. I didn’t find the talk very good but it was a great experience because while sitting there I finalized the outline for my talk by thinking about the things I wanted to hear as an audience member.

Intending an Audience

In early January I set an intent that there would be 30 or more people at my opening. This gallery has no mailing list of it’s own as their goal is to decorate the walls of the lobby of the theater. Although the gallery has amazing traffic going through during performances, which is why I love showing there. So those 30 people were most likely to find out about the show as a result of my publicity efforts (blogging, postcards, trying to get the press to pay attention).

I journaled about my intent for 30 people, told a few people about it and asked them to send me good thoughts along those lines.

The week before the opening many of my friends told me they weren’t going to make it to the opening. I tried not to panic and think: Where were those 30 people going to come from when the people I thought might be there weren’t going to be there?

Instead I told myself that this meant I would get a chance to meet new people. I took a deep breath and continued to believe that 30+ people would attend.

The Talk

Although I didn’t count, the number of people in attendance through the opening was near 30 with over 20 in attendance at my talk. Woohoo. I was thrilled.

To top it off an amazing artist I’ve had the pleasure of working next to in a workshop for 2 weeks came to my opening. From Chicago! She flew out to Denver just to see my show. I’m still smiling. What an honor and wonderful surprise.

I feel my talk went well. I said what I wanted to say and I loved every minute of it. People asked really great questions and I met some new people after the talk and enjoyed getting to talk with them.

And no one wandered off bored because I wouldn’t shut up. (at least that I noticed)

Markings #16

Another piece in my show, Markings: Repetition and Pattern. My thought in this piece was to include a wide open area in the composition. I had to rework the design a few times but I’m quite pleased with the final results. I’m definitely going to explore this idea in future work

In addition I managed to put a bit of white in this piece. One of my goals in 2007 was to put some white in my work. I didn’t get much in there but this is a start.