(At long last!) QUESTION OF THE WEEK, 04-21-2010

[Guest guest]

Dear Feisty Friends,I hope this finds you warming up and seeing some trees in bloom around your neck of the woods.Before I reveal this week's Question, here's a quickie-backgrounder from my unwritten memoirs:As you may know if you have known me for a while, I gave up all my dreams of being an artiste some time around the second grade. That was when Patty came to our school. Her dad was a commercial artist, and he had taught her some great techniques and tricks. Patty could draw ballerinas in agile poses She could draw a variety of facial expressions and hairstyles. She could draw a person in profile. She could even draw a person in a striped bathing suit who was starting to sink beneath the waves of an ominously stormy sea and was hollering for the lifeguard. I was stunned and admiring. I was astonished and awed. I was completely devastated. I was no longer the best artist in the class. I had been summarily wrenched from my childish delusions of grandeur and demoted to the #2 position. (Why did I have to be "the best" to engage in a particular activity at all? We will save that inquiry, dear reader, for another post -- or perhaps for my next incarnation, in which I become the Number #1 practitioner in the yet-to-be-witnessed Second Wave of Psychoanalysis and plumb the depths of my own unconscious conflicts, mapping the dark metropolis of Intrapsychic City and publishing five best-selling self-help books in the process.) For the next five decades or so. my personal activities did not include any artmaking whatsoever --well, except for short interludes of spiritual crisis or uplift accompanied by impulsive and happy dabbling (such as the weeks after my son was born in 1982, when I anticipated the popularity of "scrapbooking" by -- forgive me if this sounds too braggy --putting together an imaginative baby book unlike any I had seen before.Then in 1997, while I was living a reasonably normal and satisfying life apart from a few marital woes and fiscal stresses and the usual juggling act required of a working mom -- Sudden Disaster came calling! My insidious inner secret, unbeknownst even to me -- the now-notorious Flatback Syndrome --passed some critical "tipping point." The roof fell in, my world departed from its orbit, and I grabbed for any port in a storm, if you will excuse my mixed, blended, and liquified metaphors here. In the bleak months and years that followed, I dealt with my increasing incapacity by going for longer and longer walks. When I could do almost nothing else anymore, I could still walk, and I continued to do so, even when this required the aid of my trusty walker. And on one particular walk, who knows why, I walked through the doors of a small shop on a sleepy side-street which specialized in selling:-- art supplies! I was transported. I was mesmerized. I was seized by some inchoate, long-forgotten yearning. By golly, I had to get some art supplies! I just had to! I had to do this, somehow, even on my semi-nonexistent disability income, which barely extended to insurance co-pays! I heard myself asking a personable young woman what they had in their store which might be good to paint with. (That was how ignorant I was at the time.) She suggested acrylics and guided me to the most popular brand. And the rest, as they say, is history. It has taken me some years of gradually turning my dining room into a stash-filled studio full of half-finished mixed-media projects of every description, but I now consider myself (gulp) an artist.Ten years ago, I would not have believed it. I would not have believed how art has taken over my life and nourished my well-being and carried me through crisis and kept me keeping on. Now, please don't get me wrong: I have not progressed even to the point of selling anything commercially (though I craft lots of gifts for family members). I am a silent nonparticipant, still, at all the artist's blogs I now follow. The occasional suggestion that I look into galleries makes me smile indulgently and try not to chuckle at such shameless flattery . . . . but still, in my own way, I have become a person who makes art.So here is my question, and I only hope it is not too far afield or off-the-wall for the majority of participants in the Feisty Forum. Do you have a creative outlet? Do you quilt, cook, illustrate gothic novels or epic poetry, build the next generation of iPads out of salvage-store components and found objects, play with digital photography or giant Leg-os, fire pots in a small kiln in your garage, hook rugs and sell them at etsy.com or simply grace your floors with your handiwork? Do you make wholly new things out of other things? When and why did you start to do this? What does doing this do for you? How does it help you deal, if it does? Write whatever you want on this subject. Write whatever comes to you. Write with abandon. Spill the beans. Tell us your tale. Give us your insights. This is not a multiple-choice or true and false test. There are no correct or incorrect answers. There is no prescribed format. Participation is optional. I am just intensely curious about how others may have found their way back to art (or never lost it in the first place). Understand that the definition of "art," for our purposes here, is the broadest possible definition. Maybe you create all the henna tattoos for internationally hip young brides in your neighborhood or congregation. Maybe your twice-baked banana-pepper lasagna belongs on the cover of Bon Appetit. Maybe you make dolls or dollhouses for your grandkids which are the envy of their playmates. Maybe you whip up fabulous aromatherapy products from your windowsill herb garden. Maybe sheer necessity has driven you to repurpose and recreate two-thirds of your wardrobe using only a few packets of dye, a basket of beads and fabric scraps, and your ancient Singer. Maybe you have devised a radical new aesthetic in dog-grooming. Maybe you are rehabbing your family room with a single 12-volt drill-driver, a few basic hand tools, and a collection of unorthodox finds from the thrift shop and the plumbing aisles at Lowe's. Please share any stories or thoughts you may have on the subject of creativity in your life.Thanks!