the itch that i'm TRYING to scratch

 

So, it's been a WHILE since I made anything outside of my sketchbook.  Which is fine...non-output has its purpose...artists I've talked to about plateaus or blockages all say that sometimes you have to stop making so that you can absorb, take in and digest new information, breathe.  But that itch has been there for a couple of weeks now, and now it's a matter of creating that SPACE for a creative process to occur.

A studio practice, when one moves into a 35 foot space with 5 other people, feels like a pipe dream.  For the past two weeks, every normally mundane aspect of survival has felt alien and intimidating and requires twice as much energy as it should.   I think we've all spent more than a healthy amount of time worrying about whether dinner will get made or if someone turned off the breaker or if I left my dirty socks under the kitchen table again or if everyone else is just OKAY.  These concerns are natural at the beginning of an odyssey, I realize, but I think we are all getting closer to finding a balance between our whims and structure, others and self, go-time and rest.  With those balances I think we are also collectively shaping our space and our individual adventures, so we may use the bus and the format of this trip as a vehicle for accomplishing what we need to to feel ourselves again and chase our personal dreams.

With that transition in mind, I can't WAIT for tomorrow.  I suspect tomorrow will bring the moment I've been waiting for...in which I fill a bag with some pens and pencils and National Geographics and the sketchbooks that contain the studies depicted here, set out in search of some quiet light, retreat into myself and explore this bag I have full of REALLY EXCITING lichen, rocks, and wood for a while.

Studies for what I think might be a journey back into a studio practice: