Kat Eye Studio

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Growing a Garden

Today it’s back to England, continuing my stories of creative connection. The day after my Hebden Bridge workshop I was able to gather with friends again for a visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I had seen pictures of this place before, and it looked intriguing. How often do you see sculptures just randomly popping out of the bushes? Not very often. It’s a photographer’s dream, this kind of interesting juxtaposition.

On a rainy Sunday morning four of us met up in Hebden Bridge to drive out to the park: Me, Fiona, Hannah, and this time adding the lovely Helen Agarwal into the mix. Helen is another artist I met at the Do What You Love Retreat in 2011. She is a wonderful photographer with a lovely point of view on the world. I enjoy her dreamy style and her calm approach to life.

We were lucky enough to have a break in the weather as we arrived, so we wandered outside for a while. It was fun to see what caught our eye. There were all of these interesting sculptures, but I think we spent more time photographing the beautiful vines and interesting leaves.

Helen is another mobile photographer. Her dSLR had been broken for a while, so she was trying to figure out what to do about repairing or replacing it, using her camera phone in its place. It was fun to see how she worked with it! Another influence for me? Perhaps. Just seeing other photographers whose work I enjoy using different tools than my own is often enough to get me thinking.

The special exhibit at the park was Joan Miro. I haven’t always been a fan of his work, but seeing so much more of his paintings and sculptures, and reading about his life gave me a new perspective on him. I do love the bold colors and simple shapes he repeats in his work. We couldn’t take photographs of the inside exhibition, but I was able to photograph his outdoor sculptures. I always find it interesting to see an artist who works across many mediums, like painting and sculpture, because you can see their style come through regardless of medium.

He talked about how he works in this quote, posted on the wall:

I think of my studio as a vegetable garden. Here, there are artichokes. Over there, potatoes. The leaves have to be cut so the vegetables can grow. At a certain moment, you must prune. I work like a gardener or a wine grower. Everything takes time. My vocabulary of forms, for example, did not come to me all at once. It formulated itself almost in spite of me. Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water, as you do for lettuce. Things ripen in my mind. In addition, I always work on a great many things at once. And even in different areas: painting, etching, lithography, sculpture, ceramics.

Yes, things have to grow and ripen. Our ideas. Our art. Our connections and friendships as well. Perhaps my visit to England was a gardening trip, nurturing the connections I had planted while living in Italy. Coaxing them to grow a little further, to see how they might blossom in time.

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Hebden’s Bridge

Of course Hebden Bridge has a bridge. The town is in a valley, with many streams and rivers running together. It has many bridges. But “the” bridge of Hebden Bridge is this one, the “old” bridge. It’s just over 500 years old. There probably was a time this was the only bridge across this waterway. It’s hard to imagine, with the town built up all around.

Since I read about bridges non-stop to my son when he was a 2-year-old, I recognized the type of bridge as a stone arch with pointed abutments, which not only help reduce the wear and tear of the water on the bridge supports but provided places for pedestrians to pull out of traffic when a cart went by.

There is no cart traffic across the bridge these days, only pedestrians. I was struck with how steep it is. You literally have to climb up, over and down this bridge.

Now it’s a gathering place for the ducks, and a nice place to pause and take in the view as you walk about the town.

The town is quite fond of their old bridge, and I can see why. With time and use this bridge has earned it’s place as the icon of Hebden Bridge.

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Buddy and the Bay Bridge

Oh, the beauty of a big city with mild weather – scooter sightings galore! All around San Francisco, I noticed a new brand of scooter I hadn’t seen before. These “Buddy” brand scooters are very cute with classic styling and colors. How fun to find this one parked where I could get a reflection of the Bay Bridge in as well!

There are many more scooter sightings from San Francisco to come. I’ll try to not overwhelm you with them all at once, or you might think I have an obsession with scooters or something…

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Back to Balance

Under the Bridge, Chicago, Illinois

Under the Bridge, Chicago, Illinois

For the last half of October, I’ve been focusing on balance in my life. It’s been an interesting period, because for each idea I had about achieving and maintaining balance, there was an asterisk attached to it. It was as if there was a little footnote added in my brain:

*After the website is launched.

Now that the website has been launched, there is this gap in my time. You know that gap, the one that happens after a big project? Where suddenly you have time on your hands and no big overriding goal to fill it? That gap is a critical time. It sets the stage for what is to come. Do you fill it with lots of little things or one new big goal? Normally, I would fill it with one big new goal, or maybe lots of little goals, but for now it’s time to put my plans for balance into practice.

Those plans include planned time for my own creativity and fun. Time for the activities that give me energy. It’s too easy for me to let my project “to do” list take over, which drains my energy. If there are items on the “to do” list, I feel like I should do those first instead of the fun. Before I know it, these wonderful mornings I created by going part time are used up. I know I’m not alone in this kind of work ethic. It’s time for me to change up the dynamic, and I’ll do that by setting some rules about my time. Setting a schedule for creative fun and for the “to do” list. It’s not spontaneous or random, and, damn, if it isn’t uncomfortable! But, it will get me back to that creative play that is so important to maintaining the rest of my creative spiral.

Along with that, I’ll be working to avoid overcommitting, the bane of people with too many ideas. I realized that much of my lack of balance came from commitments I made, mostly to myself, way back into April and May. Yikes! Six months later… here I am recuperating. Can I commit a little less into the future, and leave space for new and interesting things to develop? You bet.

For me, November is going to be a month of focusing on my own creativity and what gives me energy. Photography, blogging, teaching my classes… all of these give me energy. They are part of my core creative processes, so they stay.  Learning gives me energy, so studying Lightroom is on the schedule. Painting is just plain fun, so I need to make time for it. Other than that, I look forward to going with the flow.

It’s time to get back to balance, and see what develops. Want to join me? What things can you do to get back to balance into your life?

PS – Visit me over at Mortal Muses today, musing on some fantastic light.

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So Far Away

I’ve been thinking a bit more about Italy lately. Missing it a bit more. I’m happy to be back, it’s been a whirlwind of moving and excitement. It is good to be back, so good, but there are still things that I miss. I miss my walks in Parco di Monza. I miss the idea of Venice being three hours away. I miss being in the same time zone as my European friends, or even a time zone that I could easily chat online with my East Coast friends. Pacific Standard Time seems like it is at the edge of the world.
I’m finishing Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea right now. A beautiful, short book, full of much wisdom. I was reading it in Italy, but it got lost in the shuffle of moving. On going from her island writing retreat back to her life in Connecticut, she writes:

For the natural selectivity of the island I will have to substitute a conscious selectivity based on another sense of values–a sense of values I have become more aware of here.

I feel like that’s what I’ve done with my time in Italy, found a set of values that guide my creative life. Distilled them down and brought them back. It’s worked well.

For all that planning, it can never change the physical difference. It doesn’t change the yearning I feel when I look at photos from my time in Italy. These feelings are something that probably only time and space will help with. Nothing can diminish the personal changes that I made while in Italy, but that only helps so far on a day when I realize I’m now living far, far away.

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