Archives for January 2015

January 29, 2015 by Kat

It’s time for some Mail Art!

It’s time to shift gears a little bit on the blog, sharing a few pieces of art that have arrived in the mail as part of the Liberate Your Art 2015 Postcard Swap! I’ve received 10 envelopes so far from locations far and wide, including from The Netherlands, Norway and France. It is early, and there is still plenty of time to join and make your postcards before the deadline. You can learn more and sign up here.

This is always exciting, when the decorated envelopes start arriving. I want to share a few with you! If the artist provided a link on their postcard, I’ve included it, otherwise we will just have to leave our appreciation in the comments here.

This first one is from Christie in Florida. This envelope was a cornucopia of detail! So many layers and fun stuff to see, I couldn’t decide quite where to focus my photograph until the celebration of “Mail Art” caught my eye!

This gorgeous painted envelope came from Peggy in Colorado. (My home state! Go Broncos! Oh wait, they lost in the playoffs already…) Peggy brings to life a wonderful bare tree structure in some of my favorite colors. (Were you pandering to the swap leader, Peggy? Very smart of you! Here you are on the blog!)

Kate‘s doodles arrived on her envelope from Michigan, bringing to mind music and electrical engineering symbols! Do you see the resistors, capacitors and ground symbols? (Oops, the techie in me is showing…) I’m not sure if that was intentional, but I like it. What do you see?

Finally, we have one from Lisa in Virginia. I love it when the stamps are integrated so nicely with the envelope art!

And a lovely message was included on the back…

That’s what mail art is all about: Encouragement and inspiration. There is nothing like a beautiful piece of art arriving in the mail to make you smile! Liberating your art really does “let your heart speak to other’s hearts.”

If you haven’t joined in the swap yet, you still have time!

January 20, 2015 by Kat

Hitting the Wall

I’m coming off of a three day weekend of binge-working on my book, and I noticed an interesting trend. Each day, within a few steps of meeting my daily goal, I started to get tired, less motivated and less productive. Regardless of how much or little I had on my plan, I would hit a wall just before meeting the goal, and it was time to stop.

I thought I would have boundless energy to finish this project, but apparently my energy lasts only so long within a day. And that length of time is correlated to my daily goal. Hmmmm… There must be something psychological in that. Something inside that says, “Close enough, you can stop now.”

While it’s exciting to see the book progress, I’m now in the least favorite zone of completion. It was thrilling to get a first draft done, and fun to choose the best photo examples. I’m past that though… It’s now time for revisions of the manuscript and creating annotated figures from the photos and screen shots. It feels like slogging through mud, and I can only take so much at a time.

Hence, the daily wall.

I know from every other big project I’ve created, this is the part I like least. It’s always fun to outline and plan. It’s exciting to meet those first milestones. It’s the detailed work to push through to the finish, when everything should be downhill, that is the hardest for me. Always.

But I’m on track to my plan to meet the deadline, so guess there is nothing wrong with backing off when the wall looms close each day. Go for a walk, read a book, hang out with my family.

And the next time I start, picking up where I left off, I’ll be fresh. The wall will be nowhere in sight.

Apparently, it doesn’t appear until I near my goal for the day.

January 16, 2015 by Kat

What Makes Up “Creativity”

This morning I want to consider the definition of “creativity.” Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been talking here about how to facilitate creativity, through routines and deadlines, but what is “creativity” anyway? How do we know we are being creative vs. just filling time? I believe there are a few things that have to be in place to make an activity fit the “creative” name.

First off, creativity involves transforming something. Taking materials, ideas, whatever you’ve seen or learned elsewhere, and then putting something together in new ways.

Creativity involves transformation, making connections between previously disparate things.

I don’t believe being creative is “making something out of nothing,” but making something new out of what already existed before in pieces and parts. Whether that new thing is a painting or a meal or a novel, you can see that the pieces that make up the new thing — the paints, the ingredients, the words — existed before. The artist then put them together in a new way. This transformation is the first element of creativity, but it’s not the only element.

The next, and I believe vital, element of creativity is engagement and challenge. You have to be solving a new problem in order for creativity to be involved. You have to be actively thinking, working, and resolving as you move through the process. This doesn’t mean you have to be solving a new problem for humanity, but solving a problem that is new to you. A problem that engages your creativity.

If you are making something you’ve made before, time and time again, with no new element of challenge involved — that’s not creative. That’s following a recipe. “Take Thing X, combine it with Thing Y using process steps A, B, C.” If you can follow the steps to get a predictable outcome without problems along the way, that’s manufacturing. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, because accomplishing a finished piece involves skill and expertise, but it also doesn’t mean it’s creative. Creativity requires that there is some new challenge involved in the process of making something.

The element of challenge is one of the most important pieces of creativity.

It’s the challenge which keeps me learning and moving forward. It keeps me trying new things, seeking new ideas to add to the mix. It also helps explain why being merely productive is not enough for me creatively. Why I don’t stay in one place for too long with my art or my business or even my corporate job. Because once I’ve got something all figured out, once the process is in place and predictable, it not as fun anymore. It’s time to face new challenges, solve new problems, create new things.

In my art right now, I have lots of problems to solve. I still have so much to learn about mobile photography. I’m facing new challenges every day, in every piece I create. The image I’m sharing today is no exception. The tools are not always there or the way to achieve my vision is not straight forward. That’s perfect.

Combining existing elements in ways that require overcoming challenges, that’s what makes up “creativity” to me.

January 13, 2015 by Kat

Can you put Creativity on a Deadline?

Last week, we discussed what creativity craves. Between my experience and reader comments, we successfully debunked the myth that wide open, unstructured schedules are good for creativity. Creativity craves routines, along with a second element I didn’t talk about in last week’s post: Deadlines.

Love them or hate them, deadlines do make a difference in our creative productivity. Having a real date that something is due makes you use the time you have available to be creative. Having a routine builds on that, making the time you have available really clear.

I’ll share with you a very real example on what deadlines can do for your creativity, one I’m living right now: My book on iPhone photography.

My manuscript deadline is March 1, 2015. By March 1, the manuscript and all associated files, releases, etc. must be physically (not electronically) in the hands of the publisher in order to be on the Fall publishing schedule. March 1 is a Sunday, so my real deadline is Friday, February 27. Since the files must be mailed, I need to mail them out no later than the morning of February 25 to ensure they arrive on time. So my real deadline for finishing everything and having it packed up and ready to go is February 24.

Between now and February 24, I have six weekends left. Why do the weekends matter? That’s where the routine comes in. Because I work a full-time corporate job Monday-Friday, weekends are my only opportunity right now for extended stretches of time to work on the book. I could do it in snippets in other free time, but I’m reserving weekday mornings for creating new art and blogging (still have to keep things going here!) and weekday evenings for all of the other little things that have to get done (like framing work for upcoming exhibitions). So weekends it is.

With that in mind, I have mapped out a plan of work that gets me through to the deadline, with weekly goals spelled out. The first draft is done and last weekend I finalized all of the photo examples. Over the next couple of weeks I need to complete the first revision and create the more complicated figures, so I can have an edited copy complete with photo examples out to first readers by the end of the month. It’s a lot, but I can do it without stress if I stick to the plan. I’ve already warned my family – I’m busy every weekend until March 1!

So here’s the equation that comes out of my experience:

Deadline + Routine + Plan = Creative Success

The answer is yes, you can put creativity on a deadline. In fact, I’ve found I’m more creatively productive when I do. How about you?

January 5, 2015 by Kat

Liberate Your Art 2015 Postcard Swap is here!

It’s here for 2015! The Liberate Your Art Postcard Swap has officially opened for the 5th Annual Swap. Can you believe we’ve been doing this for five years?? And it’s just as fun every year!

If you are not familiar with the swap, here’s how it works: You create postcards printed with your artwork on them. Any type of artwork, all mediums are welcome. You send me five postcards, and you receive six back — from five other participants and one from me! It’s a fun and easy way to learn to reproduce your work and to get your art out in the world if you haven’t done it before. There are also lots of ways to connect with the participants and increase your network, like the Facebook Event group, the Participant List and the Blog Hop. I’ve got more ideas, too!

Last year, we had just over 200 artists from 10 countries participating. Do you think we can increase that this year? I think so, but I need your help. I need you to share, share, share about the swap! Blog about it, post it on Facebook, tweet it. Use #liberateyourart on social media. Send everyone to the swap landing page to get more info and sign up. Working together, we can get the word out!

To get all of the details, sign up for the email list here. Already on the list from last year? Great! Check your inbox, because I sent an email yesterday to kick things off.

Ready, Set, Go! Let’s make the 2015 swap BIG!

January 1, 2015 by Kat

The Final Photo-Heart Connection: December 2014

Nothing is ever black and white.

It isn’t, is it? We think it could be, it should be.

Right or wrong. Easy or hard. Fair or unfair. Always one or the other. Black or white.

We’re on the edge of another opposite today: Old or new. The year is changing, and we like to think that we get to close down a chapter of life and start fresh on this one magical day of the year. As if multiple “ones” on the calendar give us something new, something white, to work with.

It’s not that easy, is it? Not that black and white. We bring our selves into the new year, and we are chock full of shades of purple and blue and vibrant orange. Our histories and our wishes and our beliefs color us a rainbow of shades that are with us wherever we go.

I think that is a good thing. It’s what makes us who we are. Do we really want to live in a black and white world? Out with the old and in with the new? Starting over every January 1?

I don’t. No blank slates for me. I’ll just continue from where I’ve been wandering along, thank you very much. Trailing my pink suitcase and my turquoise scarves. Painting the world in unlikely colors because that is so much more interesting than black and white.

It took too much work to get here. I don’t want to start all over again.

Here we are at January 1, and the last Photo-Heart Connection. I’m back from a bit of a creative break. The last week has been a blur of travel and sickness and family visits. Not a planned break, but a break nonetheless.

I thought writing this last post I would feel a bit nostalgic. I thought I would wax poetic on this practice and what it has meant to me. But it doesn’t feel like an ending, or a beginning, but a continuation of the journey I have been on all along. Time for the next step.

Do you have a last Photo-Heart Connection to share with us here? If you do, share a link in the comments. Or just share a comment on endings or beginnings or continuations of the same. No rules here, because nothing is ever black or white. Not really, even on New Year’s Day.

Archives for January 2015

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