Art, Artist and the Space in Between

Get Out Your Safari Hats

I have been working myself back into writing this blog for a while now.  Well, its been more like I've been resisting writing this blog for a while.  Writing in general has been something I have put on the back burner.   It seems like forever since I had tapped upon my keyboard my "qwerki" thoughts and musings.  When I checked just now, however, I saw that my last blog entry was August 3.  August !   Not as bad as I thought.  I know, I know.  I said I was going to keep it up...to write a blog at least once a week or more.  

I also said I was kicking around an idea I had/have for a new theme for a blog about food and the emotions and meanings around food other than satisfying physical hunger and sustaining life.  Well, my friends, I do intend to do that.  It is a work in progress, "coming soon" as they say.  But I thought I needed to start somewhere.  So, here it is, here is where I start...again.

I have been reading a little book called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon*.  It is subtitled Ten Ways to Share Your Creativity.  I like what he says about sharing your work as you work.  Insights, challenges, successes, creativie u-turns (as in Artist's Way by Julia Cameron) and so on.  So I'm thnking that is what I want/should/ought to do more of.  As Kleon says, it is more about the process than the product.  The product is what others finally see, but they never see what goes on behind the creation of the product.  Sharing that process, facilitates the creative impulse to produce.  Yet, the process is like life: it is in the living that we find life.

Anyway, I wanted to share some this process, the beginning again process, with you and see where it takes me...us, if you would like to come along.  

Should be fun.  And as usual, you comments and observations are always welcome.  And forgive me if I feel compelled to pull you gently back to topic.  I know I meander, but the point of this to create some disciplined habits to my process so that maybe, actually, really, the product will be more than an end...more of a beginning.  

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*From Kleon's website http://austinkleon.com/about/


Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of three illustrated books: Steal Like An Artist(Workman, 2012) is a manifesto for creativity in the digital age; Show Your Work! (Workman, 2014) is a guide to sharing creativity and getting discovered; andNewspaper Blackout (Harper Perennial, 2010) is a collection of poetry made by redacting words from newspaper articles with a permanent marker.
His work has been translated into over a dozen languages and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work “brilliant,”The Atlantic called him “positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet,” and The New Yorkersaid his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.”

He speaks about creativity in the digital age for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, andThe Economist.

In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter.

He grew up in the cornfields of Ohio, but now he lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Meghan, his son, Owen, and his dog, Milo.

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