OF MY CREATIVE ECOSYSTEM
Note from Sarah
I am experimenting with photo essays to document my London trip.
I may write more another time, but I caught COVID on the journey home and have limited capacity at the moment.
This feels like something I might have done in 2013 so maybe it’s reclaiming a lost art.
Accessibility
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I’m attempting to recenter my creative practice.
If this feels cyclical that’s because it is.
My creative orbit spiralling closer and closer to something that’s right for me.
When throwing pottery on the wheel you have to center it first.
The pot builds around the center of mass and if that isn’t the center of the wheel you get a wonky pot. I’m actually not very good at centering clay, but we won’t dwell on this. I haven’t been able to throw pottery since Davy was born due to chronic pain.
That’s the last time I tried to throw a pot. My hands should be controlling the clay not the other way around. I also have a connective tissue disorder that makes this extremely difficult. (I really need one of these.)
The same thing can happen when artists share our work online.
Something still feels “off” about creating for Substack. Over the last 10-15 years I’ve seen platforms come and go. The places that we gather and connect online change and immigrate. The more I think about this the more I want an archive of my writing on my own website.
At the same time, I value the community and comments I find on platforms like Substack. With that in mind I am experimenting with writing for my own blog and cross posting to Substack. (For technical reasons it works MUCH better this way than the other way around. But it’s also a nice reframe about who I’m writing for and why.)
Right now I’m experimenting with a second Substack publication where I can cross post entries in my “Artist’s Log.”
Like a Captain’s Log, but for art.
This is an outgrowth of moving my hybrid note taking practice into Obsidian. I’ve been using it for a month now and it works brilliantly with my particular magpie brain.
So here we are.
I’m essentially turning my blogging process inside out. I’m recentering on my own creative practice. Then cross posting that to Substack. It’s a subtle difference, but it feels like a powerful one.
I’m also rooting more deeply into what I find interesting rather than guessing what you want to read.
Eclectic weirdos are invited to hang out and chat in comments here or over on Substack.
I’m still working out how I want to share what I’m reading.
Here are the books I’ve been dipping into this week.
Still working my way through this one. Nothing particular to share this week, but I’m wondering if I can manage to see Red House when I’m in London. If I manage to sleep on the plane (which I never do) I might just be able to squeeze it in. The trouble is that it’s not open over the weekend and is quite a long journey from where I’ll be staying.
by: Terry Pratchett
I’ve read Terry Pratchett on and off, but never made it through his completed works. It’s hard to explain why I love Pratchett so much. If you’ve never read him it’s a brilliant humorist twist on Fantasy that’s really an exploration of politics and culture. Full of imperfect and wonderful characters. And footnotes. Did I mention the footnotes? One of my all time favorite authors.
by: Terry Pratchett
I’ve just started this, but I’m quite excited about it. I thought it was a book about writing, but it’s a collection of nonfiction that seems to have been published after Terry began struggling with alzheimer’s.
by: Adam Savage
Loving this! The opening chapter in particular is like an ode to neurodivergent making. (Adam is ADHD although I’m not sure if he identified at that way when writing the book it’s something he talks about a lot on his YouTube channel Tested.) He didn’t mention neurodivergence outright in the opening, but it was the heart of what he was talking about and it made my heart happy to listen.
Because I’m listening to the audiobook while driving I have no quotes.
But I’m loving it so much I’ll likely order a used hardcopy and take notes from that.
Enter the tray of buttons. These vintage buttons from my mom have been admired, sorted, and strung into various necklaces throughout the week. The first day just looking at these buttons kept Davy busy for hours.
This led me, of course, to remembering this post by Rebecca Holden about sorting her mother’s button tin.
We also went to the thrift shop. I found this for my vintage clothing tag collection. I haven’t decided what to make with these yet.
I’m in a collecting phase with making this week. The tag above and also information.
Check out this flower clock. I love this idea for my fantasy novel.
I want the culture to be deeply embedded in ecosystems and this is wonderful.
1833 print depicting Carl Linnaeus’ “flower clock”, a horological device that tracks the day’s hours based on the circadian rhythms of flowers that exhibit “nastic” movement — the “opening” and “closing” of petals and leaves in response to light. Public Domain Review
My work is on exhibition at Mothering at Milwaukee Art Therapy.
This is such an important cause. Art can be such a beautiful way to support mothers. I wish art therapy was more accessible to all.
The show opened this week and will run through May 8.
Image Credit Milwaukee Art Therapy on Instagram
Image Credit Milwaukee Art Therapy on Instagram
Some of the big picture themes that have come up for me this week.
I’m not sure if it’s a millennial thing or an autistic thing, but I often feel personally responsible for solving systemic problems. It feels like an important reframe to remember I can only do my bit. Even people who dedicate their lives to solving big problems can’t solve everything.
This piece was a bit of a relief.
“Try as hard as you'd like, you just can't shop your way out of a monopoly – that's like trying to recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Systemic problems need systemic solutions – not individual ones.” Source: Cory Doctorow
I can’t find the video right now (I’ll link it up later if I do), but I remember Hank Green vlogging about focusing on specific problems and working on them rather than getting whiplash with every news cycle. We can’t solve all the problems at once. But if a problem exists there are people working hard to solve it.
On a related note Cory also shared this on his blog,
“For most of human history, we've treated energy as scarce, eking out marginal gains in energy efficiency – even as we treated materials as disposable, using them once and consigning them to a midden or a landfill. That's completely backwards.”
I come from a family of farmers. Growing up my mom could fix anything.
This is something I’ve thought a lot about since visiting my extended family when Davy was a babe. Seeing my uncle’s workshop reminded me of those roots and I started seeing the world differently. Tapping back into those roots to repair and be resourceful with what is available rather than tossing something out and buying new. There’s still a lot of room for growth and improvement here so I’m glad this post brought it back to mind.
Thank you RSS feed.
Especially the singing part. Everyone should have a community like this.
“I don't need you to love football, I only need you to love something that brings you together with others whose love is pointing in the same direction.” John Green
This post by Brad Montague about Mr. Rogers and the concept of guided drift really resonated with me, to be "guided by our principles, but also free to embrace the flow of life".
Brad’s reflection on job hopping and changing majors could have been my own, “What a gift this mindset would’ve been for me early on… Each job transition felt like a mistake I’d made instead of the growing, guided drift I was part of.”
He then shared this page from Mr. Roger’s archives.
Humanizing our creative heroes can be so powerful.
Maybe you’ll find the idea that Mr. Rogers doubted his own creativity inspiring too.
Tap over to Brad’s post The Doubting Hero to read his whole reflection and see his illustrations.
Want to melt a mother’s heart?
Try this,
Why, yes.
Yes I will get the crayons down.
(We put them away after he tried to decorate the second hand keyboard we just bought.)
He went on to illustrate and dictate a story inspired by Zelda. I think this qualifies as his first story. He’s told me a few others, but they haven’t been written down. The first was almost a word for word recitation of Peter Rabbit. Since then there’s been more mix and match.
"Today Ganondorf went to the sky islands. What will happen next? Soon he needed a paraglider. Soon she was scared for the depths. Soon she needed a weapon." To the right is an image of Ganondorf orange with two eyes, a secret stone on forehead, and red hair.
Davy found some worms while we were gardening. Over winter we read How to Say Hello to a Worm a LOT. Which we discovered through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (she sends free books to any kids who signs up!)
He also loves Slimey the Worm (Oscar the Grouch’s pet) so every worm he finds is named Slimey. Here he also found “Slimey’s sister.”
It’s a cloudy day after a rainstorm so the air is cool and the ground is soft. Perfect gardening weather in my opinion. 🌱
We unearthed a patch of phlox and cleared two more patches of dead grass from the giant garden bed. Then we planted some herbs from Atwoods to help fight off the grass.
Watching Totoro: “Not just any bus! A Totoro bus.”
A visit from extended family.
This moment of Davy with my cousin Hank. He was like his little shadow.
This inspired a new photography prompt I’m considering starting up on Substack. I miss shooting black and white.
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The weather was nice so we did a fair bit of gardening this week (pulling up dead grass from around the poor bulbs trying to surface in the garden beds. We took a few photos to document my gardening stool for a post I’m writing about supports & accommodations.
