How I Got a Five Star Review

Typos and Bad Art Included

I recently awoke from a dream where I got a 5-star review on YELP. That’s all I remember. The review was for practicing art. Nothing about how good the art is! Breakthrough!!!!

It matters where we put time and energy. In apocalyptic times, maybe more if we are to preserve our soul seeds of beauty, wisdom and peace.

I’ve been making good and bad art for a while. I paid for studio space in Oakland’s Redux/Phoenix Studios from 2013 to 2017 and at Jingletown Arts from 2017 to 2020. I called myself a glue artist. Fancy folks call it “assemblage.” I considered a lot of what I did temporary or Shrine Art. I told people it might not hold together as I let go of worry about adhesives and how it could be shipped or hung. (Also makes it bad art.)

I’ll never forget the first day I sat at my desk in a tiny shared studio. When I left, I felt my visuality alive in me like a song that had been waiting to be sung. I need to think and know life in imagery, not just words and movement.

When I moved to Sacramento during the Pandemic, I hauled my art-junk along in plastic bins, but space and studio time were nil. I was caring for a grandbaby and a family in crisis. What to do? A couple of InterPlaymates and I gathered a Zoom group called the Parallel Universe and met up to make art for just over an hour each week. We each shared what we planned to work on (sometimes nothing), and then proceeded to play side by side for an hour. It ended with a brief check-in, minus encouragement and comments. It was studio space. I needed the accompaniment to restart my practice and figure out a direction, and showed up there for four years. During the first year, I bravely joined the Sacramento Open Studio Tour and displayed a few new artifacts and some old ones in my sweltering garage. My cohousing neighbors curiously looked in, and I felt both amused and shy, unknown as an artist of any kind.

It's not easy to practice doing something useless, even if it’s important, nurturing, and necessary. Any change of practice, like in eating, exercising, crafting, or caregiving, requires will. The trick is to take the will out of it. Will is a short-term strategy. Ritual routine, repetition, fun playmates, and mentors are key!

Am I a visual artist? In a world where gifted people learn to draw and paint scenes and portraits, rendering is considered real art in the same way that those of us who are unskilled consider ballet to be true dance. It’s highly technical, but heading into my 70s, I know the joy of creativity. I know that my art is me, my brain-heart-soul-body, and voice.

Gladly, in 2021, I found Carol Hawkins’ workshop on painting with paper at the Sacramento Fine Art Center. I thought. “Collage! I can do that!” When I arrived, she handed everyone paint and brushes. What! I freaked out, but her quirky, caring affirmation held me. Like many others, I’d become art phobic around rendering external images, as well as a weird fear of painting with color. Remember, this was after being an artist and even selling stuff in two Bay Area Art Studios!

Carol coached me through my phobias and taught me some basics. Building my courage, I stepped into a figure drawing group where accomplished artists practice alongside people like me. Carol formed a studio group where five of us work on our own pieces. Last summer, I found a drawing class taught be Patris in her downtown studio.

Slowing down to the speed of seeing is new for me. I learned that my inner world had taken over and that movement and gesture were in charge of my hand-eye coordination. The art of rendering feels like doing pliés. I am slowly embracing the beauty and care of rendering something that is not about ME.

I call this art exploration “Going to Art School.” Do I expect anyone to care about my art? No. Do I expect to make a difference with it? No. Do I expect to gain followers? No, although I did just read about a writer who collaged her writing with images and got 2000 likes on Substack. Hehe.

Increasing my practice is part of getting my 5-star review. But that’s not all. Last month, I canceled airplane tickets to attend a paid-for retreat for Contemplative Networking so that I could attend an art and meditation retreat that same week. I chose art. I also paid for an expensive local three-day art workshop with Elizabeth Hilare, a nationally known collage artist.

I am paying to learn, and I’m doing it on good advice. My soul-friend Phil Porter sits on my right shoulder, an artist extraordinaire who’s moving himself bit by bit from workshop to workshop into the mainstream of Polymer Arts. He and I have a solid history in seeing what happens when you go wild in true ways.

My visual art is currently all over the place. That’s OK. I get five stars for practicing. Even accomplished artists are jealous!

Original Innocence happened this week in one session.

BOTTOM LINE! I LIKE TO MAKE THINGS.
I learned a long time ago that making is enough, if not EVERYTHING.
“Making” is Prayer. It’s my Gratitude and Life irresistibly flowering forth.

P.S. What I share below is where today’s Substack started. Me trying to tell you my bad art news. Glad I remembered to get to the point. Nonetheless, if interested here’s a bit more about my art journey.

In college, I enrolled as a dance major. It was either that, art, or English. My fifth-grade teacher liked my creative writing, but I didn’t have a clue that writing and reading would be key to my life, or that writing helps me make order out of chaos. I chose dance because of the way ideas popped into my head anytime my kinesthetic lights turned on. Who cares that my feet turn in rather than out, that splits are out of the question, and I could barely manage one pirouette? Dance lit me up like a Christmas Tree.

Who knew that I had a kinesthetic intelligence?

Visual art pulled on me, too. In 7th grade, I took oil painting classes from a neighbor and that led to a snowscape, ocean scene, flowers, and a still life of a hunting rifle for my dad. My technique was the kind you get from public school. In other words, nada. It’s a wonder that I painted as big and fearlessly as I did.

That first semester in college,. I bravely took an art class, excited to get some training and maybe even double major. Charcoal in hand, mid way through still life focusing on contrast, the professor aggressively scribbled over my drawing as he made a lesson out of my ineptitude. I finished the class, seeing my drawing skills lagging way behind others. Developing technical chops in two arts was going to be hard. I promised myself I’d study visual art in my post-performance days.

In those days, I had no idea that I “see” things or that one's visual intelligence needs a visual practice. Fortunately, play doesn’t require technique. Most of my notes happen with a Sharpie on watercolor paper.

Whatever!

I’ll make art several days a week, usually in my living room or in a class. More shall be revealed.