The language of art

Yesterday, I was talking to another coach- Hi Wendy! - and she said "The world is full of a number of things." to which I responded "I'm sure we should all be happy as kings." And we both started laughing like the schoolgirls we were when we both learned that quote from Robert Louis Stevenson.

Quotes, poems, verses from songs make up part of our common language. We don't try to be original in all cases. "Just like Romeo and Juliet," we say when we know a romance won't last. We have family shorthand to communicate with our loved ones. "Aunt Maude disease" we say in our family when someone gets a name wrong. Or I make a gutteral noise twice and my sister hands me a bottle opener. Language changes by profession. As a new supervisor, I was asked by a subordinate if she wanted me to "...put the Deltas in the shotgun?" Say What? I understood every word but not in that context. Translated, she wanted to know if I wanted the four-part timesheets in the inter-office envelope with the holes!  There are regional differences in language. Yesterday reading about Kate Middleton's pregnancy, I knew the source of the information was from England because it read that she was "in hospital." A U.S. based writer would have written "in the hospital." Our technology has changed our language. "c u l8r @11, bff," I might jokingly text my friend.

Language changes constantly. Language is how we communicate. Our ability to communicate in our art, whether it be through writing books, poems, screenplays or children's stories, visual art such as photography, painting or sculpture, or performance arts, say, dance, mime, street theather or improv is dependent on our ability to communicate to our audience. It doesn't matter if our audience is our five-month old daughter or thousands of people in a stadium.

So how do we learn the language of our audience? We get off our asses and go out among our audience. We go out into the world. We touch. We feel. We smell. We get smelly. We see. We hear. Not second, third or fourth hand over the Internet. Right now in real time. We get dirty. We get wet. We get cold. We get hungry. We cry.

Then we make art.

Changing Seasons

Recently, Bev Downs asked me to write an article for this newsletter “to inspire folks starting the new season?” I immediately flashed to images of big yellow school buses, bright orange pumpkins and rolling hills of that fabulous natural phenomena called Fall Foliage. It’s the norm in the area of the country where Bev lives and I had the opportunity to see it years ago. 

But it’s not the norm in West Texas where I live. We really don’t have a Fall season here. For me, the new season means slightly lower temperatures and time to plant my garden with lettuce and peppers. Spinach, tomatoes and beets go in later. We don’t have an Autumn to speak of and very little that could be called Winter.

And the Creativity Coaching Association is an international group with members and readers in Australia and New Zealand. For those folks, it’s the beginning of spring, is it not?

So, I had the quandary of deciding which season to focus on. Then I realized that as creative folks, we all have seasons related to our creative life. Some are obvious, like the season of a symphony orchestra. Others may not be so noticeable. So I challenge you to consider what are the seasons that surround your creative work? Do you have three creative seasons in a calendar year or five? Maybe a preparation time or ramp-up time, a completion time, say when the show is hung or the film finished and then a down time before starting again. Or is your creative life one of revolving deadlines? Have you ever considered that your creative calendar may start in November or even May? What would your own creative calendar look like? What seasons would it have? Think back over the last few years. Do you have more going on at one time of year compared to others? Recognizing the seasons in your creative life is one more way to enhance your creative time. I’d love to know what your creative calendar looks like. 

This first appeared in the September 2012 Creativity Coaching Association newsletter. You can see the whole newsletter here. 

Exciting News

Wow, do I have exciting news!

For the past year, it has been my honor to facilitate groups studying creativity at the Firehouse, a local community arts center, here in Del Rio. We have been using Julia Cameron's classic work, The Artist's Way. One group of folks was so enthused by the changes they saw in their individual efforts that we worked through the book a second time to catch what we missed the first time. How cool is that?

Then if that wasn't enough, we decided as a group to hold our own art show in the Firehouse's gallery! So the countdown has begun. One month from today, October 5, 2012, we will open our show at a reception from 7-9 p,m, that evening. There are five of us participating, Julia, Karen, Kendrick, Nancy and myself. We are a very diverse group of folks and even more so as artists. Our show is entitled LEAP! 

Our focus is more about the process of art than the product so there will be both represented in our show. It will be interactive, so the guests will be invited to do more than look politely. I will keep you updated as the month progresses but for now, mark your calendar.