Making things involves, well, everything.
When you commit to a creative practice-
when you say ” I can’t not make things!”, and mean it-
you take on a new lifestyle.

You expand your awareness
You develop dexterity and control.
You refine your ability to focus.
(or why would so many of you request my HA on Focus?)

You cannot not grow and change as you create.

This is why I keep telling you how powerful you are.
Not everyone is willing to do this.

Did you know that people all over the world, in all different media, use this exact phrase?
“I can’t NOT make things”

So what happens when you say that?

Look: Radical Gratitude
> Artists are the Go-To people for awareness of what is happening.
Being sensitive is a job requirement, as is mastering its use.

Two options arise immediately, and weave around each other:
We can get cynical and bitter,
or we can start to see the raw beauty of Life happening everywhere in everything.

Radical gratitude arises as we become thankful for the sheer transformative power of all we experience.
We may not like it, on a personality level.
Our creating selves, though, perceive the intense, passionate love affair that reality is carrying on around us, and we catch our breaths at its enormity

Radical gratitude is not volitional:
it’s being struck with gratitude for the process of Deep Creation, all of it.
For naked beauty in the smallest and largest of events: tiny weeds splitting apart concrete highways, to the 2 billion years required to create the Grand Canyon, way before humans were a possibility.
For the moment of insight into your struggles when you get it- Damn!-that you wouldn’t be where you are now if you hadn’t gone through all that.
For the astonishingly unlikely combination of optic nerves and the nuclear fusion of the sun, which allow you to notice almost 2,000,000 different colors and then try to mix them with your art materials.
What would you add here?

Extreme Patience
Creativity transforms the tiniest whisper of neuro-electrical impulses
through successive stages into, oh, the Hoover Dam,
or the Sphinx, or the city of Petra, or the Falkirk Wheel, or the Mona Lisa, or Don Giovaaaaaanni!

Imagine the perseverance and self-direction required to focus on that tiny whisper, that hunch, and not give up, or look away.
We keep after that idea until it exists in a physical form.
Artists are excellent at not blinking.
Artist, inventors, innovators: we cultivate extreme patience.
Imagine the patience to go from chipping arrowheads to the Martian Rover.
Imagine all those thoughts of yours, inside your mind since you were a little kid, still in there waiting for you to give them life.
Incidentally, patience also means knowing when to stop waiting and do it.
Just a thought.

Will of Iron
Creativity is all about will.
“I will make this”. “I cannot not do this”.
Of course, life is also all about creativity.
Creative action, your will and your life are verrrrry closely related.

To demand that Nothing go through everything needed to become Something is Will.
To require yourself to do whatever it takes to bring the unseen into reality is Will.
To learn whatever is necessary, to keep pursuing what you need to do what you have to do, is Will.

Artists need to develop wills of iron to deal with the effects of awareness and intention.

Gratitude for the unique idea and sensitivity.
Patience like a tiger in the grass.
Will to bring your idea into reality.

Next time you feel like you don’t make a difference, think about this.

——–

Elsewhere: On my site

Elsewhere: On my site
>> Creative Coaching click here: You had enough frustration and anxiety? This work is transformational. Are you ready yet?

>> The Five Simple Directions, click here. Your creative development, your timing, your words. One class-member had this to say
“This is the first time I see the process in really, really clear terms. It’s that great “aha” moment! Your thoughts are profound but easily understood. You’re allowing us to experience the chaos of creativity, with a new toolbox of really practical, sane and elemental ideas – And give us a new box of crayons to play with at the same time! I know already this is going to change my artistic life. I knew it when I couldn’t tear myself away from reading the first section!”

>> The Manual is currently $47, but this price will be going up to $67 on October 1. Subscribe now, and pass the word along to your friends and guilds. I want you all to have it at the lower price if you can.

Best to all
Tory

ps: Upcoming Classes, click here for contact info- Antique Hinged Pendants in Dallas area Sept. 10-12, Antique Hinged Pendants also in beautiful San Juan, Puerto Rico Oct. 14-17, Fantasia Mixed Media Wall Pieces fall foliage PCAF in Wisconsin Oct. 23-24 + a special faculty roundtable discussion about Personal Creative Voice, and  Imitative Ivory and Coral: Trina’s Way classes Deeeetroit, yah! Nov. 5-6. Come! Make things! Get creative!

Live long and prosper
(now that creative act was Gene pulling in energy from across the cosmos. I want to create like that!)

Okay really, bye.
Tory

The Five Simple Directions is an interactive manual, a pdf,  that combines text, hands-on and written exercises and online resources to help you master your innate creativity, get unstuck, and get things done.

Are you ready to take action on your own unique talents?
Are you ready to find out if you really are the creative force you want to be?

The Five Directions has expanded into a longer experience-based self-study program. It’s a functional manual to use to make a difference in your art and life. It will show you who you are, and how to take action on your creative gifts, whatever they are.

Five sections, 178 pages, about 65 exercises in all, and links to many resources. Each of the five sections is emailed to you at two-week intervals, so you can have time to work through the ideas, suggestions, and exercises before you get the next section.

The cost of all this is just $47 for eight-weeks of self-directed training in the same tools that I use for coaching. “Transformational!” said one of my clients.

Think about how frustrated you are with the things that you want to make and can’t quite get at; or the ideas you have that never pan out, or the goal of being an artist that you don’t really trust is in you.
You were taught  to feel that way
Isn’t it about time you un-taught yourself?
That’s what this manual does: You’ll find
• What you really want (it’s grander and more beautiful than you let yourself know)
• What tools you already have to make this happen (more than you expect)
• Where to find help and additional tools (so many around you already)
• How to take action and finish (how joyous this is!)
• What the next steps are and why you have to do them (and you’ll benefit in more ways than you realize)
• And a bunch of other wonderful things about you that you don’t see yet.

“This works. This really works!” Thank you, Catherine-

This manual distills the essence of my coaching on creative process in a form that you can do anywhere, on your own time frame (in your own time zone…)

On paying, you will receive a pdf file of the Preface and first Direction. 44 pages.
Print it, read it, do the exercises.
Every two weeks I will send you the next section, until you have all 175 pages of ideas, questions, exercises, games and links.

I am not into wierd sales techniques. I’ll just point out that an 8-week course of mine, covering what we do in the coaching for $150 an hour, for only $47 is pretty good. Works out to less that $10 a class.
Hit that yellow button and get started now.

Stop waiting and take action on your own creative gifts! You can do it. I know you can.

All my best to you. I am so delighted  to get this manual and coaching program off to you!
Tory
victoria@toryhughes.com

WHAT BOX?

> Five ideas for innovative approaches
to your creative business

Last week I offered my email list a free 7-page booklet “FOCUS”

Most of this email talked about you, me, creative coaching, and four places that I had opening up in my schedule for individual work with me.

The email below was typical of those I recieved:

“If I were working this would definitely be on my list of things to do. But there’s no way this is going to happen. So I hereby release my spot to some other lucky person who has the money to do it. Maybe sales will pick up and I’ll be able to do something like this at a later date. In the meantime, thank you so much for your Focus PDF, it’s going to be helpful!”

We all know times are tough.
Yet there are many people doing well in many fields.
So what’s true? And where do we apply our energy?

THE BOX – you know the box, right? -
says you will always be where you are now.
Says you are alone and helpless, a victim of many things,
and the safest place to stay is
IN THE BOX.

But look at all the people that are
OUTSIDE THE BOX.

I’ve sent you links to many sources and people,
and you can find lots more on your own.
From the woman with no lower legs who is a model and athlete
to the 3rd richest man in the world giving away 99% of his money
you have so much more power to change your game
than you accept.

You can be / live / create
OUT OF THE BOX.

Here-FIVE IDEAS to explore.
Deliberately written in brief:
Go personalize them, report back.

1. BUSINESS DANDELIONS
Look at all the professional connections you have.
All of them could be business partners or clients of yours.
The woman who works near you might want to buy your jewelry.
The guy in accounting may want to paint but needa a tutor to start.
Creativity (yours!) is to apply to all of your life situations, not just in your studio.
Spread your creative abilities across the whole meadow.

2. PERSONAL DANDELION
Now do the same for your personal connections.
Look around, ask questions! You will not know till you start talking.
The guy who does your car may want a birthday party class for his kid.
The woman who does your nails might carry your earrings in her salon.
Go forth, find fertile ground, spread yourself around.
Light and abundant.

3. CROSS APPLICATION
Investigate the skills you’ve developed in your work
Make a mind map. you> objects> qualities of objects
Distill the objects into the qualities they show you’ve mastered.
Are you great with line?
Have an excellent eye for design?
Really good in your booth talking and selling?
Now expand: where else can you apply these skills?

4. ART BIZ STONE SOUP
Community- the lack of, the presence of – is crucial to the success of your art and life.
First, make sure you know and are well-connected to your community. Local and online.
Second, get everyone in a grand expansive business project together.
One person has a big space but little money? Form a coop studio and sales area.
One person has a printingbusiness? Sponsor and publicize others’ work.
And so on.

5. CROSS-POLLINATE
You know all about your work, but others don’t.
So how can they buy it, or promote it?
Expand your ideas of where to show your work.
Expand your ideas of who would benefit from your work.
Expand your ideas of how you market your work.
Your collection of new pictorial brooches in small frames in the bank lobby.
Your watercolors of your garden at the local greenhouse.
Your assemblage wall-pieces at your favorite restaurant:
and offer to curate a monthly revolving show of compatible local artists.

> There doesn’t have to be a box
if you don’t choose one.

——

In line with this, news from me:

Classes coming up-
Dallas area Sept 11-12
Puerto Rico Oct. 14, 16-17
Wausau WI Oct. 23-24
Detroit Nov. 5-6

Creative Coaching continues to win rave reviews: are you ready yet?
Creative Coaching New monthly fee scale, you’ll like it
News about 5 Simple Directions the Interactive Manual tomorrow. Excited!
Email me with questions or click on these links.

Best wishes for your creative endeavours!Tory

Tory Hughes — Artist, Coach, Teacher,
Tory Hughes on Facebook
Tory Hughes on Etsy
victoria@toryhughes.com

Are You Ready? Part 2

Another 32,759 Ideas for Positive Creative Change

Everywhere you look, there are people adding their inspiration, energy and ideas to the creatively developing mix of our global culture.
As one of you said in a comment on my blog yesterday “You can either see the glass as half empty or half full – It’s a choice!” People everywhere are doing intelligent, beneficial, sustainable, positive things and sharing them.
What are you doing that comes from your creative core?

Are you ready? We need everyone’s creativity engaged now.  We need the problem-solvers, the innovators, the inventors and experimenters, to get active and keep at it. We need a conspiracy of creative minds. We need you.

Another few ideas ripe and bursting with positive creative opportunity and across-the-board inspiration

fear.less magazine
fear.less – stories of overcoming fear

” fear.less is a free online magazine that empowers people through unique stories of overcoming fear. From entrepreneurs, business leaders, artists and scientists to survivors of extreme experiences, these stories demonstrate the hidden potential we have to confront our fears and come out victorious. Fear.less is our answer to an emergency.”

The Daily Art Muse, curated fine craft from around the world and close to home brings the unusual and beautiful to you every day. Susan Lomuto, daMuse, steers us to this excellent new site:
Apprentice Mentor
http://apprenticementor.com/index.php
A great new non-profit program linking artists in all media with potential apprentices. Timely and quite a resource. Thanks, Jennifer and Celie!

daMuse found ApprenticeMentor in her research for her new project:,
daMuse would like to apprentice with working artists
http://dailyartmuse.com/2010/05/29/damuse-seeks-east-coast-artist/
Her project- to  write in depth about a working artist’s life. Brilliant win-win for all!
I am looking forward to reading her essays and posts about her experience.

MAKE Magazine
Make: Online
29,250 posts, ideas, videos, projects. Some geeky, some robotic, some DIY, some of everything.
The motherlode of doing stuff yourself, and talking to everybody about it. Browse through 5 years!!  of daily archives.
And check this one out then sign up:
30 Days of Creativity
Make: Online : 30 Days of Creativity start today
Join in. Photo, video, post.

Back to spreading ideas-

Yesterday I gave you the TED talks.
Today it is Ignite – “Enlighten us, but make it quick!” is their byline.
Ignite talks arrive as Ignite Conferences, held in cities around the world: 5 minute talks on more topics than you may have known anyone could discuss. Various ways to find the thousands of these talks:
Ignite | Ignite Show Video
The RSS feed for the talks by title
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/oreilly/igniteshow
My favorite talk: Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, on Language and Mapping
http://cdn.oreilly.com/ignite/2009/11/Tim-OReilly-Map.m4v

For those of you who have not yet rubbed up against Free Will Astrology, Rob Breszny is a lyrical poet and a deliciously wild interpreter of the universe. He is also relentlessly optimistic and adds many great links and resources on his site. This week’s post has a long list of true, marvelous, and unexpected things all around to inspire and delight you.

And last but not at all least,
the international business community increasingly recognizes and discusses the necessity for creativity,
as well as integrity and respect, in doing corporate business now. From IBM, Big Blue itself:
IBM Press room – 2010-05-18 IBM 2010 Global CEO Study: Creativity Selected as Most Crucial Factor for Future Success – United States

From Fast Company magazine.
The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs? Creativity | Fast Company

Also sign up for my effective, powerful creative coaching-
There are still a couple spaces for individual sessions. Go here 5 Simple Directions Coaching for details.

Well! That should hold you for a bit.
I am off to finish my book! Ready for you in a few weeks-
The Five Simple Directions: A Roadmap for Creative Success

Best to all of our creative endeavours-
Tory

Are You Ready?

7,551 Ideas for Positive Creative Change

You feeling as discouraged by the news lately as I am?  Things are a mess. Old ways of doing things, across the board, don’t work anymore. What we were promised would work has run past its ’sell-by’ date, and nothing to be done.

And you know what’s wild? At exactly the same time, things are doing really well. People are doing beneficial, sustainable, positive things everywhere.

New information is entering our culture from unexpected places, asking for different abilities and commitments from us.

We need to be willing to keep moving forward, and not be seduced by the dark side of the force.
Sure, it is seductive to join the negative and apathetic groups, whose main activity now is to destroy.

On other hand, what they destroy, we can create new and better.
The end opens the way for the next beginning.
The truth is that most of what we used to do really never worked very well, we just never get around to creating a better solution.

So?
Are you ready?
We need everyone’s creativity engaged now.
We need the problem-solvers, the innovators, the inventors and experimenters, to get active and keep at it.
We need a conspiracy of creative minds.
We need you.

Here are a few ideas for you to connect with positive creative opportunities:

Watch TED: Ideas worth spreading. There are over 700 TED talks so far, and many new opportunities to be part of the commmunity.
Listen to people who face into challenges and come up with brilliant, far-ranging solutions. See the problems they see, and the solutions they implement.
In your daily situations, where can you apply this same creative reframing?

While you are there, sign up for the TED Blog. Another few hundred ideas and aha’s. > 1,831 sources for ideas.
Plus enough awe-inspiring and astonishing human stories to make you wonder what you have been waiting for.

Read Seth Godin: Author, Agent of Change. Sign up for Seth’s Blog, by email or RSS. Seth motivates everyone. He is at the forefront of a highly active group of people creating a new world for us. Seth and others consistently up a lens of integrity, respect, and positive action to show us how to thrive in the new millenium. Read one or two of his Books, figure out how your goals can use his knowledge.  > 3,012 sources for ideas and inspirations.
Plus a good kick in the pants when you need it.

Figure out what your purpose is, here on this beautiful blue-green ball, in your set of years.
What do you get really passionate about, deep-down?
What really moves you and excites you?
What remarkable Goals do you need to do before you die?

Sidestep your judgement and comparisons here. In an empty house, yell out what you want to do, until you hear yourself enough to accept that you have to do this. Then go do it!
> say 2,516 of you and 192 countries for Chris G.

What do you need to do?

How can you take action on this, and get creative with your unique skills, desires, passions and ideas? How can you ask the question from another angle, look at what really makes a difference, add new people to your team, motivate your own group?

You are so much more powerful than you realize.
I keep telling you this, do you believe me yet?

What happens if you believe this, and act from it?

Things happen, too, I know that.

Do you still have a challenge wading through all those old ways of doing things, and want more help taking action on your purpose?  My 5 Simple Directions Coaching for individuals and groups has been effective.

Look it over, email me. I have a few spaces still open in June.

And speaking of  June! I am working full-time this month on my upcoming  book. “Five Simple Directions” a guidebook and roadmap to help you pinpoint your purpose and get it out there.

Best for all your creative endeavours.
I will keep you updated as my book launch date ! gets closer-
Tory

ps I do not get anything from any of the links I’ve provided: rather I am sharing my own secret weapons with you.

Meaning.   Growth.   Yer Art.

Five ways to link meaning and expansion to your art.

Five ways to ground your unique perspective and purpose in your creative action.

The more personal you make these,
the more effective they will be. Look within.

ONE

• Use your creativity for a cause you personally support. Not a group action, your individual action.
Either give pieces for fundraising, or give time as an artist/teacher for community outreach.
Do this for something that you personally feel deeply connected. Your local greyhound rescue. Your local historic society. Your community garden.
Your point of power here is the depth of feeling that you bring to the cause; and allowing your creativity to emanate from that.

TWO

• Make something for yourself at other ages.
Make something you would like to give your ten-year-old self.
Make something you would like to give your 100-year-old self.
Make something for yourself on the day you graduated.

THREE

• Talk about your work. Yes, I mean like a presentation, a show, an exposee.
This is not a class. This is you saying ‘Here I am, and this is what matters to me!’
You can do this at your church, at your library, wherever your community hangs out.
People who don’t make things are fascinated to talk to people who do.
You may bring a brief demo to do, but remember, you are not teaching them, you are showing them what you do.

FOUR

• To do and notice:

Put together a collage or a one-off book about your life, but leave out the creative artist part.
What happens? Where are you? Where are you not?
This takes guts but can be very useful.
Extra credit to share your findings with me/us.

FIVE

• To do and notice:

Make a photo album for yourself of what you’ve done that has love and meaning in it.
You can share with others if you want, but not required.
Include pictures of things you have created / fabricated / assembled that you love.
This is not a portfolio of your work in one medium or style to show others.
This is a reminder to you: how your creative actions have supported what matters to you.

_____________________________

These are simple and potent exercises to connect you back into your creative core.

To get their benefits, you have to DO THEM not just think about them.
Do them and find out what happens next.

What happens next for me are coaching sessions with you all, and finishing my book!
My Simple Directions Creative Coaching with you all is going grear:
I am impressed by the intelligence and creative energy youal have.
For more personalized guidelines and support to get your brilliance into the world
join me in individual or group sessions.Go to Creative Coaching

I would love to work with you!

All my best for your creative endeavours!
Tory

Today’s Territory:
4 Actions Against Creative Fears

Why fears and doubts arise as you create.
What to do about it.

or:

TIGERSandMAMMALSandFEARS, oh my!

First, realize that every stable person has fears.
You are not unique, and your fears are not unique.
You are unique in other ways, but not this one. This is a good thing.

So I bet I know some of what you feel when you are fearful:
you feel like you’ll explode from panic, your head will fly off, your heart will stop, all 6 billion people on the planet think you are pathetic, you were stupid to try, people are just being nice to you, the lion is behind you about to pounce, you are paralyzed and will never paint again, dance again, compose again, should I go on?

Everyone gets this way from time to time.
Creative people are willing to notice it more.
We want to notice everything and fear is part of the Everything. Right?

The truth is that you are fine. Your fears are protective mechanisms keeping you safe. Fears are your brain’s way of saying ‘look out for the sabertoothed tiger!’

But like the sabertoothed tiger, many of the things that our every-helpful brains protect us from don’t exist anymore. If they ever did.

We forget often that we are a sentient species, for better or worse. Sentient means ‘the ability to feel or perceive subjectively’. And humans are self-aware.

The combination means that we feel and perceive, and then we think about what we feel and perceive.

Notice something? If the feeling wasn’t real, and we start feeling it more so we can be thinking about it, we make our response to the feeling real, and get trapped trying to figure it out, and it was not real to begin with!

The last sabertooth tiger died ten thousand years ago.

We do not need to fear them.

But you are a large mammal descended from the small mammals who did fear the tiger and ran away. So the programming has stuck.

Many of our fears are similar to this.

They are programs that are in our minds and that will get triggered, but that serve no good use anymore.

However, at one point we owed our existence to taking them seriously. Even now, when we feel these reactions, we often believe we have to take them seriously.

We don’t.

Then we have feelings and thoughts about how we feel, and there we are again, stuck. Feeling and thinking. Oops.

Action Number One:

KNOW WHEN THE FEAR IS FALSE.

Start by checking your actual reality.

Look all around.

Nope, no sabertooth tigers.

Also no art teacher from second grade still there, telling you you are using the wrong color. No older sibling laughing at you because he was into being a brat. No bully on the school bus stealing your flute and ruining your music.

You are now a grown-up, tall, strong, successfully adult. Act your age!

Turn and look at the fear closely, do not fear the fear. Examine it.

As you master this, you’ll be able to feel when the fear program turns on in your psyche. You can practice: watch it run its tape and then end. Do not engage. Turn away.

These old programs are actually quite short and simple.

What gives them power is not any complexity or truth of their own but our willingness to buy into them, give them our beliefs, and be lead by the nose by lies.

Ha. You want that? I sure don’t.

The easiest way to recognize this is to pause for a moment. Small mammals run away and then check to see what they are running from. We have big analytical minds, so when we turn to look and don’t see anything but the fear we assume we should deeply investigate the feeling of fear. And then we re-stimulate it.

Action Number Two:

KNOW THAT YOUR CREATIVITY CAN FEEL AND MASTER FEAR.

Creative people love to create.

Create means to bring the non-existent into existence.

We are at the edge of the known and the unknown all the time. That is where the non-existent arises.

The biggest fear a small mammal has is of the unknown. Think of a cat: she slows down, explores, is cautious, looks all around, checks things out. She is using her fear to guide her next few steps. Then she has new information, and relaxes into enjoying the new experience.

We are wired to do the same thing.
But fear is a developmental stage of the creative process.

The better I am doing my job of adventuring on the edge of the unknown and bringing new things back, the more I will be aware of the feeling of fear.  My goal is to recognize what it is telling me about where I am and what my options are.

We can use and master fear as a tool for knowledge and development.

Action Number Three:

KNOW THAT YOU WILL KEEP FEELING THE FEAR ANYWAY

Fears in creativity are directly related to what we have already accomplished and to our expectations for ourselves.

The more we have created in our lives, the bigger the selection of elements our fears can use when triggered. And concurrently the more we want to continue to create something new, the more time we spend in the realm of the unknown, and the more often we feel that fear.

This still does not mean they are real. There probably is not a sabertooth tiger about to tell you that your new paintings suck. But there may be a neighbor who wished he’d let himself paint, who will tell you your paintings suck because of his own grief. So what? It still isn’t true for you.

Fear tells us how far we have come, how much we have accomplished, how much we have already mastered, and how courageous and brilliant we are to be moving in this direction.

Or as my friend Charlie says ‘the greater is our accomplishments, the more subtly nuanced is our self-doubt’.

Thus as we mature in our abilities, and expand our vocabularies, we develop new phrases for our fears. We call them self-doubt, existential angst, second-guessing. These are all words for fear arising. We usually pick the phrases that – unfortunately – have the most ability to paralyze us, like the eyes of the sabertooth tiger glinting yellow in the firelight. eeek! Doubt. Anxiety. Nervousness.

Action Number Four:

AND TRANSMUTE THE FEAR TO EXCITEMENT

We are on the edge of the unknown, and see something glinting. Glinting makes the mammal in us very nervous. But it is just glinting.

What if what is glinting is your own light? The preciousness of what you, uniquely, are here to create?

Artists, scientists, mystics, and other humans- the fact is we want to see into the unknown. We feel the fear and head into it anyway because everything else ahead is even bigger: the gold of creative action is in the action.

It is very exciting on the edge of what’s known.

One last thought: a few weeks ago I had a question to you all on my Facebook page:

“what is the opposite of fear?”

Your answers included
Faith
Contentment
Courage
Hope
God
Wisdom
Love

To me, these all express how we feel being in the presence of the unknown, and knowing who and what we are. We already have what we need to stay grounded in whatever happens.

Excitement, fear and love. Sounds like creativity to me.

I ain’t been et yet, you?

Until next time,
all my best for your creative adventuring-

Tory

ps- you’ll notice these blog posts are a bit less frequent because I am writing my next book, and very excited. Should be out by the end of June!
Oh, and the image is a one-of-a-kind postage stamp brooch of mine from 1989, the Tlingit Shaman. Scary guy, for chasing away demons and sabertooth tigers.

Today’s Territory: Inspiration!

Our creative projects all spring from an original inspiration. And the more inspired we are, often the more excited and satisfied when we are through.

Here, 13 ideas for inspiration in celebration of Spring Herself.

( Thirteen is originally a sacred and lucky number, the number for transcendance and change. Did you know that? Look it up.)

These ideas are intended for all creative art media: polymer,visual, written, mobile, and otherwise.

>> What reliably inspires you? Answer in the comments section

Enjoy!

1. Admiration Make something for a person you love or admire, living or dead.  Queen Elizabeth the First. Akenaten. The entire Pixar crew. The first Polynesian navigator. Your grandmother. What would they really like to have, that you can create?

2. Let’s pretend Pretend you are an artist in a different culture/time, and make something in this setting. Try both of the following, and see what happens: Pick a culture you relate to easily. Pick a culture you do not relate to easily.

3. Immersion Immerse yourself in high-quality created works in your field. Soak them all up with your senses, not your mind, and make something. If you are fortunate enough to live near a big museum, take a day to look closely at just one room’s worth of art.

Hint: Make sure you do not limit your notion of what your field is. If you do, then you have limited your creative growth.

4. Next please Look at something you made that you love, and think about what a different version of that could be. If you made a poem about a color, write poems about several other colors and their personalities, habits, and accomplishments. If you painted a view down a country road, paint what happens around the bend in the unseen part of the landscape.

5. Translate Translate each sensory input you have during an experience into an object /poem/dance. If you are feeling full of delight, walking down the road in the spring sunshine, then listen to the birds sharing their news. What color is their song? What shape? What size? Is their song – and your experience of hearing it – a brooch? A mobile? A dance? A poem?

6. Inspire Inspire actually means “to take in breath, to take in spirit”. Your body is full of its own inspiration and ideas, and will share them with you if you connect with it. My way to do this: Run around the block and don’t think about anything, just run as fast as you can, then come back in and look at your materials. Another way: Lie down on the grass and don’t think about anything, just breathe as slow as you can, then come back in and look at your materials.

7. Ha! Surprise your mind. Do a routine thing in an unexpected way, at the last minute. Walk backwards through your house. Use your left (non-dominant) hand to write down your favorite colors and places. Take a different route back from the store: it is good if  it takes a bit longer! Recite a short text but break up the words and rearrange them as you speak. ( YouTube – talking to whale! ) Or find a copy of Ladle Rat Riding Hut and read that! (The Complete Anguish Languish Site has one).  There are endless ways to play like this. They break the routine patterns of our mind and free it to see bigger arrays of possibility and play. Let me know what you find!

8. Mix it up Spread your materials out and rearrange them, put them in different piles, put all the red things together in one place, irrespective of what they are. See what ends up. Or if you instinctively organize like me, rearrange things so they are not in the same predictable order. Either of these will jog your brain out of predictability. I’ll save the neuroscience for another day, but fact is it is really healthy and desirable to move your mind from its expectations and give it new things to see / do / experience / integrate.

9. Assimilate Make something that goes with something you already have and like. Select an outfit you feel great in, and make a coordinating necklace. Make a painting for the kitchen you just redecorated. Write an article for your blog that refines ideas you and others like. Dance your heart out because you are full of joy already.

10. Wild card Expand further on an idea you realize you keep coming back to, but this time add a wild card, an extra dimension, a twist. If you work in two dimensions, challenge yourself to create the same effect in three dimensions, or to develop and push the hints of dimensionality from 2-D to 3-D. If you write about lives in foreign countries, write about moving to another planet – or another dimension.

11. Newbie Interact with ideas and concepts that you do not normally get involved with. Take a class, see a different kind of movie, go to some other kind of museum. Then really pay attention to what your senses are taking in. Investigate the surfaces, the interactions, the sounds. Let a new world expand yours.

12. What box? Become aware of the assumptions you make about how things should look /sound / act. Watch what you automatically decide should happen next, what color has to go where, what responses you stick with:  and purposefully move across the edge of the box of pre-set ideas.  Get used to ignoring conventions. Play with what is outside the box.

13. Reframe Reframe any thing and everything. Change physical scale, block edges off, expand, go into, pull way back, speed up the time frame, take out one color, say the words backwards. This is one of my favorites, and always effective. I always notice attractive combinations of elements, patterns of sound, gorgeous phrases, that were being hidden in all the other stimuli I take in.

Let us know how these ideas and others show up in your work! Pass this post around, and sign up for my email list and RSS feed!

I am writing a great deal on creativity and taking action on ideas, as my next book takes shape:  The Five Directions: Your RoadMap for Creative Success in Art and Life.
Stay tuned: I intend to get it to you by the end of June!

Email me with questions, comments, and ideas!  victoria@toryhughes.com
Enjoy your creative actions until we talk next-
Tory

“Polymer, the Chameleon Clay- Polymer Clay Techniques for Recreating Natural Materials”
is now on sale!
$15.00 + $3.00 s/h, $8 overseas.
(List price $23.95)

I am also offering a Collectors’ Limited Edition for $40.
- Signed for you
- Includes sample of properly baked translucent
- Includes also an actual sample of properly made and finished imitative ivory.
Each of the samples comes with a small folder of info for your baking process and the imitative techniques.

Why am I doing this?
Because  I am mid-way through my NEXT BOOK,

“The Five Directions, Your RoadMap for Creative Success in Art and Life!”

To celebrate I am having this book special on my soon-to-be last book.

You all have been so helpful in telling me what you want in this next book.
You’ve told me what works and doesn’t in how I convey ideas to you.
You’ve shared where you struggle, and where you fly.
This’ll sound like web-hype, but it’s not- I appreciate each and everyone of you so much!
We have created such a community, all of us strung like pearls around our beautiful planet…

Please email me at victoria@toryhughes.com to buy this book! We can do checks or Paypal.
Tell me who you want it signed for, if you are getting the Collectors’ Edition.
Incidentally, you could wear the little ivory sample as a pendant….

And email me if you have more ideas for what you would like in my NEXT BOOK!

Thanks! Tory

Do you want to be on my mailing list?
If so, would you please email me with Yes in the subject line? You’d really help me out.

I am streamlining all of these media and there are things that a quick email accomplishes better than any Facebook post.
Not everyone who’s subscribed is on my list. Thank you! Tory

victoria@toryhughes.com

Hungarian Postage Stamp Brooch 1997
polymer and mixed media 2″ x 1.75″