Kat Eye Studio

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The Possibilities of Emptiness

What do you see in this image? Maybe you see the empty room, and wonder what will go there. Maybe you see the red wall. Maybe you see the tree beyond the window, the world outside. To me, this room is not empty, it’s full of possibilities. Welcome to my studio. The Kat Eye Studio. Like a blank canvas, what will exist here is what I will create.

Kat Eye Studio has become real in more ways than one with my move home. First I have this room, what should be a “formal living room” is my physical studio, where my creative space will be. It has the best light in the house with the only south facing window, and it’s a nice big space. I’ve also officially created Kat Eye Studio, LLC as a registered business to offer my classes and whatever else I get inspired to do. I’m so excited to make the “studio” I’ve been dreaming of real in multiple ways!

This room is going to morph and change over time. During my assignment in Italy I’ve carefully thought through how I want to use this space for my creative endeavors, and now I get to execute the plan. The final incarnation is going to take a while to get to. I already plan to repaint the wall, and know what furniture I want to go here. The room is currently full of random bits and pieces as we get settled into our house, as you might expect.

But a studio is not much use if you don’t use it, and this week I took steps to move it beyond just a computer and storage room into a truly creative space. I painted! With a borrowed easel, a purchased drop cloth, the painting supplies I brought from Italy in my suitcase and a table and lamp in storage I’ve cobbled together the start of my painting space. I can’t tell you how great it felt to turn on the new Matt Nathanson CD (love his music!) and get messy with paint.

Here’s a pic of what I’ve got in progress. The blue canvas is the one I started this week (I was in a blue mood) and the other two were started in Italy before the move. I’m just adding layers right now, and am interested to see where these go. I don’t have any intention with painting right now, other than to find joy in the process. Happy Paint Party Friday! I’m back!!

Today I thought I would leave you with what I have going on “in the Studio” (I’ve been dying to say that for some time now, can you tell?):

  • Reflections in Glass is the current Exploring with a Camera theme and I’m loving the images being shared! I find reflections complex and interesting and worth seeking out.
  • Are you signed up for Superhero Summer Camp? If not, consider if it’s time to do something good for yourself. We have almost 400 participants – yay! If you’re signed up already, let me know what you think of it so far.
  • We have a wonderful group of people joining my July-August Find Your Eye series of classes. I’m so excited! Registration is open for the next week, and class starts August 24.
  • The Liberate Your Art postcard swap is bringing new mail to my mailbox every day. It’s quite amazing to see! If you missed my post Monday, head over to see a bit of the art that’s been arriving at my house. In the next two weeks that art will be liberated all over the world. So much fun!
Have a wonderful Friday and a fabulous weekend all!

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How are you Hard-Wired?

Each of us is hard-wired a certain way. And that hard-wiring insinuates itself into our work. That’s not a bad thing. Actually, it’s what the world expects from you. We want our artists to take the mundane materials of our lives, run it through their imaginations, and surprise us. If you are by nature a loner, a crusader, an outsider, a jester, a romantic, a melancholic, or any one of a dozen personalities, that quality will shine through in your work.
— Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit

I ran across this quote while reading over the weekend and said a huge “YES!” It’s always amazing to me when I read the work of these famous, creative people and it basically restates what I’ve come to believe through my own experiences. This quote from Twyla Tharp in her book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life so completely expresses the idea behind my Find Your Eye classes: We all have a unique vision to share with the world, and it comes through in our work. We just have to look for it.
In my photography, I find that I typically like the scenes that show both details and context. Not the grand sweeping vistas so much or super close-up details, although you will see those on occasion. This one, a new one in my market/wheels series, is from Milan. A little scene of a market in the Brera district, the same market as my Orange Power shot but a different perspective capturing different details. Kind of typical of my work, don’t you think? Not just in this series, but in the selection of composition, subject, camera settings. How are you hard-wired in your art? Do you know? If you’re a photographer, I can help you find out in the Find Your Eye series of classes, and I’m so excited about that! Registration is open now if you’re interested.
I’m barely into reading The Creative Habit and it’s fantastic so far. It’s been great to get my back into my own creative habits of journaling, reading and blogging in the mornings since the move. Together, these habits are my personal recipe to keeping me grounded, aware and creatively charged. I look forward to reading more of Twyla’s wisdom in the coming days. You can expect me to share the bits and pieces I find interesting here! 

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A Realization of the Heart

There are some things that loom larger than life in your future, and then there are the things that sneak up on you unaware. I had a moment yesterday where a “larger than life” part of my life managed to sneak up and catch me by surprise at the same time.

I was walking in Parco di Monza and admiring the wonderfully refurbished Lo Scrittore* sculpture. It’s all shiny and looking its best after they worked on it last month. I was wondering how long it would take before it started looking worn again, with peeling paint and the wood falling off. Then I realized, I won’t be here to see it. I really won’t be here. I burst into tears. What I’ve known at an intellectual level forever finally hit me at an emotional level. We’re moving in three weeks. Three weeks. I will no longer be here, living in Italy. No longer walking in Parco di Monza everyday.

It’s interesting, how I can hold two realities in my head at the same time. The reality of living in Italy and the reality of living in Oregon. Both seem so comfortable and real. What is completely unreal and hard for me to even grasp is the reality of living in Oregon after living in Italy. What will it be like to be there, as a completely different person? Because my time in Italy has changed me, changed all of us in our little family, more than I ever imagined. And I’m so, so happy with the changes.

What I have finally realized is that I’m not returning to my “old life” in Oregon. I’m moving to a new life, that happens to be in an old place. Going back to an old place doesn’t mean going back to an old life or an old me. It reminds me of the time, four months after my son was born, that I finally realized life wasn’t going to go back to “normal.” There was a new “normal” with the addition of my son then, and there will be a new “normal” for my life in Oregon now. In a way, this realization is kind of freeing. I’m open to redefine things however I like, as long as I avoid falling into assumptions that life has to be the same just because it’s the same place.

I think I’ve been writing this blog post in my head, over the last 24 hours, as I’ve wrestled with some of these realizations. There was the little, planner part of my brain that said, “No, no, you’re doing Scotland photos this week!” But as always, what I need to write wins out over what I planned to write. This blog is about my creative journey, and I can’t write anything else and be true to me. I think that’s why I’ve avoided calling myself a travel blog, or an expat blog, or even a photography blog. Because my blog is all of those things and none of them, depending on the day. Conventional wisdom for “growing a blog following” is to know your topic, know your audience and write for them. Today I’m saying aloud something I’ve felt for a long time: To hell with conventional wisdom. I write this blog for me.

This blog is about one woman’s creative journey wherever she may be. I write about what is important to me, fascinating me, challenging me in that moment. It happens that I have a passion for photography and can’t help teaching when I’m passionate about something, and that’s why you see a lot of photography. I love art and creativity and reading inspirational books, so you get that too. Since I’ve been living in Italy, I write about my life here and our travels. All because it’s who I am right now. Where my life happens is going to change, but who I am will stay the same.

Thanks for joining me on this unpredictable journey. The fact that my little life and interests can connect with others is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever experienced. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

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*Lo Scrittore is a sculpture by Giancarlo Neri, installed in Monza Park (Parco di Monza) in 2006 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the park. The sculpture is painted plywood over a metal frame. The table  measures 7.5 meters high and 11 meters long, and the chair is 10 meters tall. I captured this picture while they were working on it last month, to give a better idea of the scale. I absolutely love this sculpture.

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Turning the Camera on Myself

I’m over at Mortal Muses today, kicking off a week of musing on self-portraits with this image of me in my little creative space in our apartment here in Italy. We’ve been talking about a self portrait prompt amongst the muses for quite some time, and I must admit I had been dreading it. I don’t like pictures of myself. I see all of my flaws, the things I want to change. I’ve never quite figured out the self-portrait craze that seems to be going on in photography right now.

The dread was reduced when I finally got the idea to capture a picture of me in this place, our apartment in Italy, which we are leaving so soon. This little space you see me in is where my creative journey has unfolded. Where I dream, plan, and capture all of my ideas as they emerge. This is me, right now, right here. In the process of doing this prompt, I discovered something interesting – I actually like this photo of myself. I still see all of my physical flaws, but it’s as if they diminish in importance because there is more context. This is a self-portrait of more than the outer shell, it shows what’s going on inside too. There are a thousand details in this photo I could point out, each representing some aspect of me that goes beyond what you see on the outside. I like that.

So often, with portraits, it’s all about keeping the focus on the physical person and trying to remove a distracting background. Sometimes though, the context found in that background is as important to the portrait as the person itself. Context can make a portrait something more. I learned this when I saw the work of photographer Jason Bell, at an exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The portraits were for his project, An Englishman in New York, and his work struck me for how he captured the setting as much as the person in the image. These portraits are about each person in their place, and they tell a larger story than just a great head shot alone.

I’m heading out today for another week of vacation, this time to Scotland. It’s our last week-long vacation here in Europe before we move back to the US on July 1. You’ll see a few scheduled posts from me over the next week but I’ll be back, live and in person, on June 6. Have a great week!

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Don’t Reject Yourself

Yesterday’s conversation on fear was fantastic. If you are thinking you are the only one who feels fear, go and take a look at the comments. You and I are definitely not alone.

This topic was on my mind through the whole day. Funnily enough, a message with the title “Your Fears are Lies” appeared in my inbox later in the day. I’m on a list for fear.less magazine, which periodically sends out notes about overcoming fear, in addition to the free online magazine they publish “to show people they’re not alone in their fear.” The message was a perfect continuation of what I started writing about yesterday, highlighting some of the same points and adding others. If you want ongoing encouragement to overcome your fear, you can subscribe to the fear.less free online magazine and the emails here.

Later in the day, I also had a conversation with my husband about how we “pre-reject” ourselves. Here’s the scenario:
1. We see something we want to do or have an idea and want to propose it somewhere.
2. We think about asking or proposing and the little voice in our head starts talking. It says, “They will just say no.”
3. We are so afraid of rejection, we don’t want to hear a “no,” so we don’t ask.
Guess what! No one else had to reject us in this scenario. We did it for them!

Have you ever done this? I have. So, so many times. I’m starting to realize that I should let someone else say yes or no, not decide for them. Some of the time, when you put a question or proposal out there, the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is a big, blank void. That’s almost worse, to my mind. But sometimes, the answer is yes.

The only way you can get an answer of “yes” is to actually ask the question, send the proposal, submit your work. You open yourself up for rejection, but you also open yourself up for success. No one is going to come  knocking at your door or in your email inbox asking for this wonderful idea, because they don’t even know it exists until you put it out there.

Think on this. Look for times when you don’t even give others the chance to reject you, because you are rejecting yourself. When that happens, take a deep breath, put yourself out there and let them make the decision. Who knows, the answer might just be “yes.”

Photo is from Murten, Switzerland.

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Feeling the Fear

Sometimes, as we travel through life, it may seem that we are the only ones with problems. The only ones who feel fear. We may read the stories of these big successes, people we admire, and think, There’s no way they feel like I do. We tend to look at the outward positive things and tell ourselves a story, when we can’t see the fears that are inside of someone else.

I feel fear. As I start to dream big, after the creative retreat I attended a couple of weeks ago, my fears are growing to match. I recognize now that my fears have accompanied me on every step of this creative journey. Fear of sharing my work. Fear of putting my honest self out here on the blog. Fear of trying something new. The only way I’ve grown is to face the fear and move past it.

The bigger the steps we take on our creative journey, the bigger our fears become. Last winter, as I was getting ready to start my first run of the Find Your Eye class, I was assailed with an attack of, “Who do you think you are?”  Who did I think I was, to create a class and put it out there to the general public. To think I had something to contribute to the conversation, since I don’t have a photography degree or years of professional experience under my belt. Luckily, it was too late – the class was being advertised, people were registered – I was committed and couldn’t quit. It didn’t mean I felt those fears any less, however.

We all feel fear. Fear of rejection, ridicule, failure, hurt. Maybe even fear of success. Fear is there to protect us, to keep us from getting hurt. Everyone has doubts and insecurities. The face we put out to the world may be a brave one, but I guarantee there is some fear going on inside. We are not alone in this. While it may be a comfort to know others feel fear too, it doesn’t make it easier to deal with our own fears.

The only way I personally know how to deal with fear is to acknowledge it. If I can define the fear, understand where it is coming from, I can make a plan to deal with it and move ahead anyway. If I can name it, I’m less likely to let it stop me. The fear doesn’t actually go away, I just carry it along for the ride. I think of it as having a conversation with my fear, “Hello there Mr. Fear. I see you lurking there. I see what you are trying to do. Thanks for trying to protect me, but this time I’m not going to listen to you. We are moving ahead anyway. You can come along with me and see how this turns out.” Somehow, that helps. But believe me, it’s not comfortable, to carry this fear along. It would be easier to run away in the other direction.

Now, as I get ready to hit the submit button on this post, the little voice of fear is talking in my head. Should I admit my fears publicly? Won’t this just look weak? Maybe it will to some of you, but to others, it might bring a sigh of relief. You aren’t alone.

What do you do when faced with fear? How do you recognize and address it? Move past it? Please leave a comment, and today let’s help each other deal with fear.

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