Books are a uniquely portable magic. ― Stephen King
There are now 3 new fabulous art journals in my Etsy Shop, full of potential and anxiously awaiting their new homes. What will become of their temporarily pristine pages? Only you can say.
Check out the details and see more pictures here. If you are looking for a specific kind of journal that you don't see or a style of book that I've made in the past, please let me know. Custom orders are always welcome!
5 Sure Ways to Kill Your Innate Creativity:
1. Spend all your creative time thinking about art, buying supplies for it and looking at others work but never actually making art yourself.
2. Compare your work to everyone else.
3. Constantly replay the one negative criticism you received instead of the 10 positive ones.
4. Believe that everything you create should be great.
5. Expect that you can make great art without hard work and fighting Resistance every step of the way.
How to Make Bad (and eventually good) Art:
1. Show up. You have to get started to accomplish anything at all. This is quite literally half the battle.
2. Give yourself permission to make something ugly.
3. Let your focus be on the creative process, not the final product. Creating is an end in itself.
4. Have fun with your art. Experiment, play, rediscover the childlike joy of making a mess.
5. Expect that the voices of doubt and fear will come but refuse to listen to them.
6. Embrace failure as evidence that you are done sitting on the sidelines.
7. Surround yourself with people who support your creative pursuits and inspire you to grow. Limit or eliminate time with negative people who drain you of creativity.
8. Repeat steps 1-7 every day, or as often as possible. The more art you make—even bad art—the better.
And for tomorrow: How to kill your innate creativity.
This weekend we started getting the yard in shape for spring planting. With the compost bin built (made of recycled shipping pallets), our next projects will be to finish the pond and start on the chicken coop. I'm also attempting to start my veggie garden from seed this year, something I've not had very good luck with in the past mostly because I love to start new garden projects but don't always see them through to the end. But this year will be different! I have big plans for not only tomatoes, peppers and herbs but peas, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuces, kale and spinach. Because we live in town and have such a small yard, we'll have to take advantage of the front flower bed as well for our veggies with no real room for flowers. But that's fine by me. I like my flowers just as well indoors.
Notice the red wine drip smack dab in the middle of the page? No big deal. Just a contented sign of a good day's journaling.
Sometimes I like the backside of a page even better than the front.
Is it feeling like spring where you are yet? I've been having thoughts of seedlings and ponds and chicken coops, but I'm still a little skeptical that the mild weather is here to stay. Still, we are expecting near 80 degrees today so I'll be stepping away from the computer and out of the studio for a little fresh air and sun--however long it lasts. These not-so-new journal pages are from...oh, December. Guess after my day in the sun I need to get busy playing catch up on the blog. So many journal pages (and music videos), so little time.
You weren't hoping I had given up my Best Songs Ever quest were you? I hope not because you'd be sadly disappointed. When I think about best and music in the same sentence, Over the Rhine has been one of the first to come to mind since 1996 when we first saw them live at Cornerstone Music Festival and everything changed. (This is no hyperbole, you know, because great music can do that. And if it hasn't done that for you then you need this Best Of, so pay attention.) The hard part, again, is not just selecting my personal favorites but letting the Song, apart from the Album or Band, stand on its own. It has to have that timeless quality and still move me every time I hear it.
I think it would have been impossible for me to make a Best Of list and not include Over the Rhine, but this particular song (among so many others that I love and feel I might have betrayed by not choosing them) qualifies for every Best Of list I could possibly put together in this life and the next. But I'll stop going on and on about it and let you decide if I got it right.
When I first saw your face, it hurt you to smile/Your lips tasted like tears I could kiss them for miles/On a midnight train--may it never arrive/Baby, our love song must survive.
We were back in Texas these last few weeks visiting family and our favorite old haunts. Kerby Lane Cafe, The Salt Lick, Congress Avenue, even Oat Willie's. I had every intention of blogging along the way, but the dripping humidity mixed with too much southern home cooking made my limbs sluggish and my brain foggy.
Favorite bumper stickers spotted (Bumper sticker philosophy always was alive and well in Austin):
If we don't protect the First Amendment, how will we know who the ***holes are?
What Would Scooby-Do?
Visualize Whirled Peas (An oldie, I know, but it still makes me laugh.)
I know not with what weapons WW3 will be fought, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones. --Albert Einstein (and my paraphrase)
But now that we're safely back in the land of blue skies and clean air, I'm reacquainting myself with my studio and my journal--always my first priority after banishing dust bunnies and turning dirty clothes into clean ones. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it is good to be home.
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Did I mention that I'm now on Twitter?? I held out for years, but finally gave in in an attempt to maximize my online presence, whatever that means. Anyway, if you're not already on Twitter, trust me, just don't do it. You'll never get those hours of your life back. But if you're already addicted to Twitter like I've too quickly become, you might as well follow me: DebraCooperArt. For a really good laugh (that hits a little too close to home now) check out The Dark Side of Twitter.
Scenes from a Saturday afternoon. Sun in my eyes, music turned up too loud, swimming in saturated color.
Next up on the Best Songs Ever list (I'm obsessed, I tell you.): A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke (with a video montage--not mine) and, if you can allow a white boy from the south to sing it, a piano version by Seth Avett.
More journal pages. Another song.
No "Best Of" category would be complete in my mind without Ray. It is a little painful to choose only one, as if I am representing him here, but I had to remind myself this is about the songs. And besides its commercial success, his intoxicating voice and every other intangible thing Ray brings to the table, this song still makes me want to break down completely and gather it all up again every single time I hear it. Because he gets it: Empty by Ray LaMontagne.
