Letting Go

I take on projects with passion and gusto. This is not as haphazard as it may outwardly seem. I enjoy, as they say, "casting my net in many directions." I meet interesting people and have interesting experiences when I do things this way.

For the past three months, I've kept up with doing this particular project, Across Mediums, even as I discovered that doing it wasn't serving me in the ways that I had hoped it would serve me when I began. I was hoping to have a continuous stream of work and from doing that work, inspiration.

What I found was that life did not always move in the linear way that I had hoped. Sometimes my time was limited, and during those weeks, it was hard to get anything done. When time is limited and then I don't have the opportunity to work on the art that is nearer and dearer to me, it became time to ask myself: Do I want to continue this project for the sake of continuing it, or do I want more authentic creation?

I think that I will keep up with my Across Mediums journal, on my own. And I can see myself at some point making a choice to update here, add more pictures to the flickr account, etc. But creating in this way--having the narrow constrictions of both a deadline and a week to do three projects across three different mediums did not work out as dreamily as I had hoped. Instead of experimenting, and discovering, I have found it to be a process of treading water, trying to stay afloat.

I don't want to live for those reasons.

So I'm letting the updates to this project go, in favor of focusing more on a pace of creating that works better for me. I love that I brainstormed 52 different themes. On days when I'm feeling low in inspiration, it will be a wonderful thing to turn to my AM notebook and pick a theme and just say, "Go."

It will be nice to give myself permission to let something go, without cracking the whip.

Blessings,
Kate

Week 12: Technology. Photo.

What interests me most when thinking about making visual connections to technology is looking at how cords, chips, etc., can be twisted into various shapes. These are all cords that are taking up residence in a drawer. Is it good that there are so many of them? How long will they last? What will happen to them, where will they end up, when the gadget that they go to is obsolete?

Week 12: Preplanning.

Preplanning for week 12's theme, technology, can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2341135790/in/photostream/

Week 12: Themes

Technology. Has technology been helpful, or not? What shapes can we see in technology? What is its role? Where is it taking us?

Week 11: Reflections. Photo.

It's hard to tell, but this is a small mirror reflecting into a bigger mirror with the camera trained on both mirrors at once (I had to get very "cirque de soliel" to contort myself and take the picture!).

Week 11: Reflections. Visual.

See:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2341135468/

The illustration was done in my notebook and then color was added in Photoshop to make it pop just a little bit more. Can't say I'm thrilled with it but I didn't want to leave it plain, in pencil.

Week 11: Reflections. Writing.

Reflection. To think back. To consider past events. When I reflect back on my life, and on my choices, will it really reflect who I wanted to be? Or will it be a string of intentions? I intended to be good, to be generous, to be kind. I intended to be patient, to be gracious, to make the most of this life. Does intention really count for anything? To reflect. To wonder about the weight of mistakes. To wonder about the degree to which I'll carry them, how long, and for how much suffering.

Our lives are reflected to us in our choices. What would my life reflect back to me, right now?

Late update: "Death" theme

The photograph I ended up deciding to use for the "death" theme is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2340302121/

Week 11: Preplanning

Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2327153590/

Week 11: Themes.

Mirrors, reflections, and double vision.

Week 10: Death. Visual.

Don't know what the deal is with blogger, but unfortunately no pictures seem to be uploading today. So, on over here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2326339139/

Week 10: Death. Writing.

What is death, but life,
and what is life,
but death?
In every moment
we are born
and reborn again
our shadows undulating
across the many souls' paths
that we cross.
We prepare
again and again
for birth
without acknowledging that first
there must be a death of an old self
a self that it would seem did not serve us
but in fact,
a self that paved the way
for this very birth.
The union of these two
fated to forever be the twin tides
of our Universe
cannot be pulled apart.
There is no gulf between.
The tide cannot be separated from the ocean,
nor from the surf.

Week 10: Preplanning

You can find it here (along with a lot of resistance!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2327153794/

Resistance

Speaking of "death," it's been a tough week for me in considering whether or not to continue with this project. On one hand, it has informed a lot of my artwork this year and stretched me, forced me to practice, etc. On the other hand, it's a pain to feel bound to something (ugh, control issues!) and have a deadline. Did I make a mistake by asking myself to come up with new work every single week? Or is this keeping it fresh, keeping me from trying to make something perfect before I try the next thing?

This week I have no photo. I just simply did not make the time. I almost typed "didn't have the time," but I find that this is a false statement that 99% of the world makes, and it bugs me.

I plan to catch up by posting a photograph, later. But for now, a visual and some writing will (hopefully) do.

xo,
K

Week Ten: Themes

Death. Metaphors for death, literal interpretations of death. Anything to do with death or endings.

Week Nine: Energy. Photo.

Week Nine: Energy. Visual.

Because of the size of this particular piece, I am uploading it to flickr and providing a link (rather than waiting for my grandchildren to be born while Blogger uploads it).

I hate wasting leftover paint and these colors were available to me from another painting I was working on, so I began to integrate all of it. Before I knew it, this was what I had:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2311133770/

Week Nine: Energy. Writing.

What has been on my mind in terms of energy this week has been an upcoming trip to Europe.

"It will be a wonderful vacation!" people tell me.

I am sure that on some level it will.

On another level, it will be weeks of navigating foreign lands, trying to figure out how to communicate basic needs in a language I can barely speak (I am memorizing, in particular, "Mi dispiace! Parli prego lentemente! Aprendo Italiano.")

It sounds very romantic, like a montage of Amelie and Under the Tuscan Sun and any other wonderfully romantic movie about another country that you've ever seen...complete with a set of those quirky Europeans.

And yet, I also know that the exhaustion will have me to my knees, that there will come a time when I practically beg and pray for something "normal," when just being among people who don't speak the same language as myself will exhaust me.

These are my thoughts on energy--a post of writing this week that is not particularly beautiful or flowing, but related to the topic all the same.

Week Nine: Preplanning

Preplanning for Week Nine can be found at flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2295183958/

Week Nine: Themes

Energy, unseen forces, spirit.

Week Eight: Life. Photo.

This is a plant that I had killed and then one day noticed a little bud was coming up again--the root had not been destroyed. It was getting a second chance at life.

Week Eight: Life. Visual.

I didn't mean to make her hair so Medusa-like, but she will do. Also--if I had the lotus to redo again I would have opted for more of a light pink with hints of purple than going for such deep tones of green and purple.

Week Eight: Life. Writing.

I could turn off the television and never turn it on again.
It seems to me that what we're told is living should be easy.
The self-help market has a corner on it
and everyone else is in to make their buck.
But I wonder about those people
whose livelihood is peddling 1-2-3, Look at Me,
I Did It
So Can You
Now Everything is Perfect.
I know they do not go home at night
with a deep feeling of inner calm.
So how do they sleep?
"Very well, thank you,"
I can imagine them saying
their clean-lipped smiles.
So I keep my distance
not really willing any longer
to feed myself their lies
I could grow fat on them
when the truth--the messy soil of life, the stuff that roots push down into
and leaves push up out of
is so much more nutritious
even if it will leave
its mark on me.

Week Eight: Preplanning

Week Eight Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2295183780/

Week Eight: Themes

Life. Metaphors for life, beginnings, literal interpretations--but the theme is life and living.

Week Seven: Famous Artists. Visual.

On the left, a printout of a portion of Gino Severini's, "Still Life (Centrifugal Explosion of Colors, 1916"). On the left, my attempt to recreate it. Whomever says this kind of art is "simple" needs to sit down and try it sometime! The piece is astonishingly complex.

Week Seven: Famous Artists: Photo

I technically want to use original works with Across Mediums, and this photograph was taken this summer at the Chicago Art Institute (the painting is by pointillist Georges Seurat). I decided to use it anyway because I like its focus and because I wanted to do something more original with the photography aspect of this than simply finding a photograph of a famous painter or taking pictures of modern renditions of famous paintings.

Week Seven: Famous Artists: Writing

Perhaps if I'd been at the Salon d' Automne,
in 1905
my first questions would have been:
"What color was her dress?"
As I am in the new milennium
I just wonder how you did it
how you knew to make her nose the color of seafoam
her beaked arm and fan
like a sunset reflected in a puddle.
I would wonder how you dared
to make the background
as vibrant as the foreground
when that is not what we are taught
in art classes.
I wonder how it is that
she could sit there for so long
and at the last moment I think of her eyes.
Brown, like the eyes of a young doe,
a slight sheen reflected by yet another color.
Looking off into the distance.
Looking at your children.
Two artists in the room
one making art
one breathing it and being it
and one hundred years later
or more
I wish I'd been there to see it happen.

Week Seven: Famous Artists: Preplanning

Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2274995481/

Make note of the comments!

Week Seven: Themes. Famous Artists.

Imitations of famous artists, portraits of famous artists, combining the works of famous artists...

Week Six: Landscapes. Visual.

When I conceived of doing this--finishing the other half of Ms. Cecil Wade with a landscape--I was inspired by something I'd seen at an open Friday event in Alameda in which the landscape was very Van Gogh's "Starry Night" like. I don't believe that this came off the way I wanted it to, and at the same time I'm just happy that I was able to finish and catch up and not fall behind after spending a week away from home!

Week Six: Landscapes. Photo.

Also see a comparison photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2262493935/

Week Six: Landscapes. Writing.

Exploring the landscapes of my mind, the thoughts that roll in thick like fog and then dissipate as the sun warms, the ever-changing moods...sometimes the fog is like those days in San Francisco, the thickness that sticks. I realized how I am tired of wading through something so heavy, yet its heaviness cannot be seen. I'm tired of the fog, the stickiness of it, the way I breathe in and can feel it ling to the oxygen on the way down. I want only to be clear, clear in my love for God and myself and the world, clear like the unending ocean's horizon.

Week 6: Preplanning, Landscapes.

Preplanning for week 6, landscapes, can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2262494251/

Week Six Note:

I'll be out of town Feb 5th-10th, AND in a seminar with no internet access and due to the rigorous schedule, very little time for art-making. But I'm still committed, boy oh boy. I started my pre-planning for this week last night, I stopped on my way home from the city to snap photographs of the Bay in Alameda, and I'm slating time tomorrow for getting some painting done before I leave. That leaves the writing component, which I may not have a lot of time for while at my seminar, but at the very least I'll be able to attempt getting something done (and won't have to haul art supplies with me).

Onward!

Week Six Theme: Landscapes.

Landscapes, wide vistas, strong views. I'm already thinking of ways to make this more abstract--taking a Van Gogh's "Starry Night" approach to a landscape, moving away from something super literal.

Week Five: Profiles. Preplanning.

Preplanning can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2240369365/

and here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2241163428/

What's up with me drawing such big noses??

Week Five: Profiles. Visual.

Ms. Cecil Wade by John Singer Sargent is by far and away one of my most favorite paintings. It is housed at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child we took field trips there and I stared up at it, a rather large painting, and was completely lost in the folds of her dress, the way her neck slants so delicately to the side. While doing the pre-planning for this week, it hit me that when I thought of profiles, hers was the one. As it happens, I have a book of selected acquisitions from the museum (fished out of a recycling bin while volunteering, if you must know) and I thumbed through to that page and began trying out different options for drawing Ms. Cecil Wade. It was tough, but again--I had fun doing it! I also felt like I had just a tiny bit more facility while using acrylics. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it's what I went with.

Week 5: Profiles. Photo.

What is one to do when they don't have time to stage a real photoshoot with various people in order to capture profiles? Why, use your boyfriend for the shot while he watches television! And then, just to up it a bit and make it a wee more interesting, play around with curves, bright/contast, and other assorted textures and features in Photoshop.

Week Five: Profiles. Writing.

This much he knew from her profile--she was haughty, given to excesses, a woman of secrets both complex and simple. She would tell no one that she really hovered on the fringes of crowds, and only appeared to be in them. From her sideways glance she evaluated the people in them. Her pride, evident in her upturned nose, would not allow anyone's pity--the kind that might come about if just anyone could tell of her seclusion. Now her chin lilted down, her sea-gray eyes far away, her cheekbone one graceful arc into her temple. She discreetly stuck one finger into the small honey dish that accompanied her tea. There was a flash of pink--her tongue--as she sucked her finger. No one noticed but him.

Week Five Theme: Profiles

Profiles of people, animals, buildings, shapes...anything viewed from the side instead of face-first.

Week Four: Faces. Visual

This is the first portrait that I've ever actually completed. I've always, always given up, before. To do this portrait, I had to learn something--I had to learn that in fact, when doing portraits or acrylic paintings, I can't just slap the paint on the canvas in interesting ways the way I do with mixed-media collage. To get this far with a portrait--I've tried before and been so frustrated with how goopy things were--I actually got on the internet and found video tutorials on using acrylics. I tried different methods of blending color to get a skin tone. And then I sketched and layered on the color. I grew frustrated with my first attempt and re-distributed the color over the canvas. Then I liked the "burlap" textured affect that came up.

I don't think this turned out particularly well, but I had fun doing it, was glad that I pushed through the resistance, and felt like I learned some important things about doing more realistic renderings of a portrait when using acrylics.

Week Four: Faces. Photo

Dammit. Had to cheat again and use an older photo because I just did not make sure I had enough time to do some portrait shots today. I decided, though, that if I used an older photo of a face, I would make it one that was very different, an oddball shot, rather than a straight shot with the portrait lens.

Week Four: Faces. Writing.

Expectant. Skeptical. Disbelieving. Preoccupied. Distant. Hostile. Eager. Anxious. Worried. Not-good-enough thoughts. Bored. Excited. Interested. Possibility. Exhausted. Tired. Angry. Amused. Silly. Blank. Unreadable. Smiling. Happy. Easygoing. Caring. Concerned. Hopeful.

I look around the room and read these expressions on their faces. It overwhelms me sometimes, to take it all in. To think that I might play a part in their lives--or, worse, that I might not. I stand in front of the room, this person who is supposed to have answers, and I am afraid that the answers that I might give won't be of any use to them. That, like the rules of the English language, the exceptions to the rule will get them. I miss their faces. I miss the way they would light up when I first arrived in a room. I miss the way a student who struggled in the class would wait with anticipation to get their test back, and as I walked around the room, passing out tests, I would sometimes feel their anticipation, too. Their faces are so readable and yet not.

I have written a million times and in a million ways about what it is like to stand in front of that room and see those faces. I've never yet hit on anything that captures what it is really like. Words aren't enough. It is unlike any feeling I've ever had, to walk into that room at the beginning of the semester and know that it is my job to be a steward of sorts, and to feel so afraid that I might not be up to the task.

Week 4 Pre-Planning

Can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2223895754/in/set-72157603703340864/

Week Four Theme: Faces

Because I'm a portrait photographer, I admit that this week I'm especially excited because I love, love, love capturing the expressions on people's faces. And that said, I want to keep in mind this week that I can do other aspects of faces--faces of buildings, different expressions (maybe one person with 4 different expressions??), the faces of animals.

No clown faces, though. Clowns are creepy.

Week Three: Hands. Photography.

Well, then.

Since I'd slacked on the photography end of things for the past two weeks, I decided this week I needed to go the whole hog. That means--actually making a very real project out of the photography that I'm doing. So I brought this card to Berkeley, stood outside of Cafe Gratitude, and asked people if I could photograph their hands. You can see the results at:


flickr

Week Three: Hands. Pre-Planning

A link to the scan of my pre-planning to week three:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2204551291/

Week Three: Hands. Visual

A self-critical part of me wondered if I was copping out. I did a sketch of the hands when I was doing pre-planning, and then liked the hand that I drew and decided to re-draw it and then shade and color more for my visual. But was this copping out? Clearly it is the most literal interpretation of hands, and not as interesting or original as claws. Well, so be it. This was what came out. The color was an accident--I'd intended to layer yellows, blues and reds to make a flesh tone, but applied the pencil too heavily with the blue tones and then had to compensate in other ways.

Week Three: Hands. Writing.

Mis Manos queridas, My dear hands.

Lately she had been grasping, holding on more tightly than she would like to admit. It had been a life of nail-bitten fingers, cramping joints. Caffeine at two a.m., cigarillos smoked covertly in the dark shadows alongside buildings, as if to do so were an illicit thing. Better this than clawing at his face, his dear smooth face. Better to ravage her own with smoke and grease-laden food. The photograph she kept in her jacket pocket was a sepia toned picture of his hands. A friend had taken it, focusing only on how he cradled her jaw between his palms.

She stamped out her cigarillo on the sidewalk, wished it was his heart. He could cradle someone else, now.

Week Three Theme: Hands, Paws, Claws

Hands, paws, claws. Up close, far away. Grasping. Relaxed.

Week Two: Visual. Animal Life.

The most successful part of this week was this painting. I consider it successful for several reasons. One: I am intensely uncomfortable with any sort of illustrative painting, mostly because of grade-school experiences with art teachers or peers who did not encourage me around illustration. Basically, I tend to think "I can't do it." So to experiment not with mixed-media and found art, but with directly trying to create an image, was huge for me.

Two: The direction this image went in is, obviously--strange! I first had the idea to do this while doing the pre-planning work in my journal. Something in me said, "Yeah, go with that. Try it out." And so I did.

Three: This week was just...awful in terms of creating and feeling like a decent and competent human being. I felt like a total hack the whole time. I had to keep reminding myself and reminding myself that the whole point of doing Across Mediums is to create work that is hack-ish if need be. They are not all going to be homeruns. I kept working on this piece in spite of feeling like I had no idea what I was doing. And I derive an odd satisfaction out of how it turned out. It's strange and funky and fun, clearly influenced by Maira Kalman's book, "The Principles of Uncertainty," which I am re-reading, and it just was fun to make.

Week Two: Writing. Animal Life.

What astonishes me
is that moment
when I become an animal.
Like turning a knife blade over
that second when the fold
of the blade
catches on the light
and flashes
before exposing the other side.
My anger, primal
greedy,
blood-filled and raw.
My mind toys with that flash of light
how it happens so quickly.
I become not myself.
I become someone else.
I become that which my anger wants to destroy.
It would seem that every sense is engaged
waiting to pounce
in battle.
But in fact I am
serrated
dull
unable to make a clean cut, after all.
Unable to wield my weapons like a true warrior.
It seems to me that when
I become like an animal in that way
I am doing my own blood-letting
doing my enemy's work for them
because in this battle there is no passion
only the loss of self-control.

Week Two: Photo. Animal Life

Dammit, Jim! I cheated (again). Yesterday afternoon the boyfriend and I took a mini-road-trip out to some bay area suburbs. I was hoping to find an area that was perhaps woodsy and where I could snap photos of animals. Some of you who are more in the know are probably laughing already. From Oakland to Pittsburg, CA, it's nothing but scenes from "Over the Hedge." Tract housing, the same ubiquitous corporate businesses, and the like.

Thus, I provide you with snapshots of a cat that I stalked over the summer, while it was stalking something else. What I love about this cat is the fierceness in his eyes, the alertness. He's a cat that lives at Green Gulch Zen Center, and I don't believe he belongs to anyone in particular but rather he is cared for by all. I'll be adding a few more shots of him to Flickr under the Across Mediums set of photos.

Pre-Planning: Week Two (Animal Life)

Pre-planning for week two:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2190565016/

Pre-Planning: Week One

I'm quickly noticing that it is probably faster and more expedient to upload images to flickr and provide links, when it happens that the images are particularly large or detailed. When I have the time (or--as I'm trying to cure myself of the habit of phrasing it that way--"When I MAKE the time")--I want to scan a rough scan of the pre-planning that I'm doing each week in my Across Mediums journal, and then post it. However, because this is a somewhat large scan, I'm going to provide links to it each week.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateswoboda/2189778045/

Week Two Theme: Animal Life

Animal life. Animals. More abstractly--primal. The structure, fur, feathers, gills, fins, scales of animals. Animals we despise, animals we love. I find myself wanting to challenge myself by *not* drawing the animals I'd be inclined to sketch--dogs, kittens, horses. I want also find myself wanting to make a note to go beyond the macro and get into the micro--the real, up-close nitty-gritty of fur, feathers, scales. How those things look so different up close, with the greatest attention to detail, than they do from far away.

Week One: Plant Life. Writing.

When I was doing my "pre-planning" for this week I noticed that I was especially interested in roots. The roots are where the growth happens, where someone hunkers down and gets grounded in something. The roots are where one digs deep. The roots are in the dirt, and the dirt is where the messy stuff happens, and it is the stuff we so often try to avoid, but it's also where the nutrients are, the stuff that will ultimately be catalyzed into life force to push the plant upward.

It's not the leafy stuff that is important. In my life, I tend to want to focus on the flower, and not on the support beneath that flower, the germination, the dark, damp places where "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower" (Dylan Thomas) hides out.

And what is that force? What is that primal human urge that pulls us from our beds in the morning? I'm finding that I've spent most of my life saying that "If I could just do what I wanted, then I'd be happy." I've rebelled in every possible way from the monotony and the routine, the "get up and live in such a way that you are part of a machine" stuff.

And yet, having the freedom I have now, I'm so often struck by--terror. Living on autopilot made it easier for me to not examine what that "force that through the green fuse drives the flower" was all about. Living on autopilot made it simpler. Having to ask that question--because it essentially gets down to "What am I living for? What do I wake up for each day?"--is scary.

I am alive because of the dirt, the muck, the roots that have so firmly grounded me, now. I am alive not because of the pretty foliage that I have put on display, but because there is something enlivening about getting down on my hands and knees and playing in the dirt. Potting something. Getting messy. Watching what shoots up.

Week One: Plant Life. Photo.

I have to confess that this image is a cheat. (!!!!). My plan was that I would have an actual designated photoshoot time in which I would go out and shoot images for this project. As it turned out, this past week I was sick, detoxing, and then later in the week it was pouring down rain and there's no way I'd take Le Bebe (the camera) out in such horrid conditions. So I went through old photographs that I'd taken at Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin, and found this one, which I've never before used or published. It was awesome to review those lush, green gardens--since we're just now getting into icky gray rainy weather here in the Bay Area, I especially appreciated the reminder that spring will come!

Week One: Plant Life. Visual.

This is the part that I was least satisfied with. I was working on a painting of some kind with a tree. It didn't turn out well. But I found that when I scanned the painting in, there was something that interested me about the way the scanner captured the threads of the canvas, my pencil markings, the way the paint was slightly uneven and outside the lines. So I ended up cropping just this piece. Who says I have to make it an entire, cohesive painting? Not I!