Hello, and thanks for stopping in!

I’m Tory Hughes, and you’ve found my website for all things creative.

I’m an artist, teacher, writer and creative consultant.
I help people be more creative.

This site hosts my artwork and teaching, including my blog about living as an artist. If you want to express your creativity more completely, I am so glad you’re here today!

( You have entered a job-site; pardon our mess while we renovate … And check back often for improvements! Thanks- Tory)

I make jewelry and sculpture and sell my work in galleries and online. The Museum of Art and Design and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among other places, have my contemporary art jewelry in their permanent collections. I also teach people to uncover and act on their own creative brilliance, especially using polymer and mixed media. We get together in weekend and weeklong retreats all over the world. My DVD series and my books are for sale on this site also.

Do you have a minute? I want to share an important idea with you, behind everything we do:
It’s called Creative Action

There is a huge creative power in every one of us, inherent in our human nature.
I call this process ‘creative action’, not creativity, because it is about the action of how we go from nothing into something. For more, read my short manifesto. Ornament Magazine wrote about creative action in a recent article on my new work

Creative action is what you do to move the IDEA into the FORM. This is Big Creativity, what we all are exploring here on earth. How do you move that idea from your mind and heart into something that exists here and now?

I have an idea! Follow me!

Everything happens for a reason.
It’s no accident
that you landed on my site.

Welcome and enjoy!

Tory
ps: I love to hear from you – email me with questions and ideas!

victoria@toryhughes.com

Fridays bring an end-of-the-week summary to studio days.

Spring has swept into my Santa Fe studio, and settled in. I immersed in metalworking, new color palettes, and a compulsion to create forms inhabiting a different relationship to gravity. This week I made brooches.

These are all variations of mokume gane, with the added enticement of other techniques. These will be heading over to my store. Details here. They are all available as of this writing. Email me to purchase, if you rather- victoria@toryhughes.com, by  Paypal or a check. Reef 101 1.5″x 1.5″x .5″ silver and polymer $220.

Reef Butterfly 1.5″x 2″ x .25″silver and polymer $350

Flare Reef 2.5″x 1.5″x .5″, silver and polymer $220

Reef Bask 3″x .5″ x .25″, silver and polymer $210.

This next piece is the first in a series of basking rays and sharks, in mokume and silver. I have been wearing this one, and enjoying the comments. The colors in my mind for more pieces in this series are just gorgeous! Looking forward to sharing with you next week!

Manta Ray 5″x 2.75″x .25″ silver and polymer $450.

If you have any questions or comments, or to purchase any of these, please email me or go to my store.
Pleasure to have your company here at my studio.
If you enjoyed this, please subscribe to my blog, to the left. It’s free and will make you happy!

May your work go well and your heart be glad of it!
Tory

Hello you creative minds!
Lots of news from Santa Fe; in this post-

Six Directions to enhance your creativity, and a class Fee Reduction for 2010 to introduce them!

You deserve a pat on the back for all you have done lately, docha think?
This has been a challenging dance for all of us lately.

Voyaging through the last few years has clarified many things for each of us.
It certainly has made visible to me what’s most important: I want to best show you the vast reserves of innate creative power and magic you have within you, and guide you into drawing on these gifts for yourself and all of us.

Your creative process deserves support, because you are creating your life experiences as well as your artwork.

Many of you know how passionately I feel about your own unique abilities and creative power.
To assist you in your own light-footed happy travel, I have been refining my maps for creative and innovative action.
And I’ve restructured our class experiences to take you on a journey with these maps, the journey from intention to object.

I am reducing my class fees for 2010 so that this information is available to as many of you as possible!

Six Directions:

There are
Six primary compass headings for your voyage across the creative landscape, going from nothing to something.
from departure: feeling that moment of desire, setting off with an idea,
to arrival: your finished piece in hand, standing comfortably in your ideal new spot, mastering your creativity!
These compass headings are
1. Set your intention
2. Define your resources
3. Act on your intuition
4. Constantly experiment
5. Finish before judging
6. Launch for your audience.
These are practical action steps, a set of choices for action and integration. Each of these is like a vehicle with extra features, made for this terrain.
As you create and innovate in these classes, you’ll travel using these steps, these vehicles.
You’ll become more familiar with them and how you can more and more effortlessly create what you desire.
The ultimate goal, the ideal second-home vacation spot? You apply these ideas to everything in your life, not only art pieces, but your expression of who you are.
The Big Creative Project, your life.

Price Reduction for Classes:

So for the rest of 2010, for all classes booked and held this year, I’ve reduced my fee to $95 a person per day.
You will still get the same abundant and useful technical information on whatever topic we choose – Mokume, Hinges, etc. Plus we will walk through the Six Directions as you apply them to your work, so you can immediately begin implementing them in your art and life.
You’ll Everything I know and have developed, based on thirty-five years of award-winning, internationally known innovative polymer techniques. And in our classes, I will lead you step-by-step through implementing these compass headings directly into your creative process.

Can you tell I am excited about this?

This special is good for the rest of this year, for classes held this year.
Please get in touch with me soon, since my schedule is filing quickly.

victoria@toryhughes.com

The brooch above is from a new series, as I get back into metal-working.
Evening Star Manta Ray is about 5″ long, polymer and sterling silver: using mokume gane and other techniques.
My intention was to make things that made me happy.
I will show you more tomorrow in the Friday Studio Roundup.

For more information on the Six Directions, go here.
To set up a Six Directions class for this year, please go here.

Hope you can join us somewhere as we explore together!

Until then-
In art as in life, all my best to you.

Tory

Fridays bring an end-of-the-week summary to studio days.

This week, I’ve had a great time combining different polymer and mixed media elements into one-of-a-kind hinged pendants and necklaces. These will be heading over to my store.
Here, I want to show you what I made, and give you details. They are all available as of this writing.
Email me to purchase any of these with Paypal or a check.

Teaching: I will be teaching “Imitative Ivory with Surface Enhancements” April 17-18, and “Hinged Pendants in Polymer” April 24-25, both in Columbus Ohio. This is the first time I have taught in Columbus, and I am so looking forward to it. Email Rosana Van Horn rosana426@hotmail.com for more about these great classes!

These one-of-a-kind pieces, from the top:
Happy Buddha 3-piece hinged pendant, 20″ long  $240.

Chinese Ivory Village, 30″ long  $220.

New Turquoise Pyramid 3-piece hinged pendant, 23″ long  $240.

Sumerian Agate hinged pendant, 32″ long   $230.

Copper Sumerian hinged necklace, 21″   $260.

Today’s Territory :

Put Elise Winters into the craziness of Manhattan’s Fashion District, with the Museum of Art and Design just a few blocks away. What do you get?

Quality shows.

Elise Winters’ perseverance and talent- yes, Elise, talent- have enriched our lives. She brought about the Polymer Art Archive, and the Museum Project, which have solidified polymer’s place in the art world. Our work is at MAD and other well-known museums due to Elise’s efforts.

And her own artwork continues to evolve, seen in MFA-Boston, MAD, the Racine Museum, numerous private collections, Ornament Magazine and prestigious shows around the US.

Her latest? Her drop-dead-gorgeous Ruffle neckpieces were at NYC Fashion week, on models for Cynthia Rowley.  Cynthia Tinapple in Polymer Clay Daily featured Elise’s runway coup today, and links to a video of part of the event.

At this point, polymer as a medium is no longer a topic. The topic is what is being done with it: how individual artists are using this medium to express and amplify their creative voices. Congratulations, Elise! It was just a few years ago that Elise began her professional artistic journey – her determination and self-awareness can inspire all of us to be true to our own art.

Please donate to the Museum Project which is enabling polymer’s presence in museums to inspire generations of young artists. This is the best congrats you can give Elise! Give whatever you can. Thanks from all of us-

Until later-
Tory
ps: If you want to connect and act from your own creative nature, email me at victoria@toryhughes.com. Let’s see what creative goals we can help you achieve!

Today’s territory is creative style.

Some people refine they do,
some people expand what they do.
There are no wrong answers.
What is your primary creative activity?

We all do a bit of both, granted. But some of us are natural deepeners, and some are natural explorers.

Each brings with it special benefits and costs.

Recognizing these, and using the right style in the situation you confront
- rather than defaulting to what you habitually do -
will bring you closer and more easily to your goals. You’ll get best effect from a style that fits the type of result you want.

A scientific illustrator refines and clarifies; a community arts festival expands and actualizes. The Japanese are famous for their refining of designs and techniques. Nicola Tesla was an explorer and expander first.

An example from closer to home: My old buddy Charlie Hunter, a painter from Vermont, just visited Santa Fe.

He has always loved trains, old buildings, independant music, and painting. Thus, he paints pictures of old train stations, sets up luxury train trips with musicians, makes collectable posters of the train trips with the musicians, writes a personable, witty and inviting newsletter about the trains and his art, takes trains to come out here and paint…There’s more, he is smart and good at getting things done, but that’s the big picture. Recent paintings of his are at charlie hunter, and his excellent national train trips at Flying Under Radar / Roots on the Rails

He is doing now what he loved as a kid, and continues to love.

When he arrived, he drove around looking at the old train depots out here. Although he hadn’t been here before, because of his national businesses and the artists that congregate here he arrived with invitations to openings and social events. In a week, he did paintings of several of the train stations, showed his work to galleries, and found three galleries interested in representing him. He chose one, and already has a show with them in the works for early May. He is coming back in two weeks to do more painting.

He is not pushy or arrogant. Rather, he has that true charm of someone who genuinely loves what he does, all of it, and would be doing it whatever reception his work gathered. And he appreciates others’ engagement in what they love.

Charlie has been refining these three things as long as I have known him: painting, trains, and music.
His ‘what-if’ questions are ones that take him deeper into these elements.
His activities integrate these three elements in different ways, changing but revolving around those same things.

My creative style is more exploratory and expansive, but not always as specific or deep. I love how our minds work, creativity, historical culture and byproducts, geology, the ocean, the weather, being on earth, peoples’ ideas, dogs, airplanes, teaching, writing, technology, science, digital phenomena, motion, invention, innovation, communication… Process of all kinds. Experience.

I want to experience everything, see what happens next, and then communicate it to the world.

So I make and do things because I want to see what happens if I do. I want to push past what I know and try something else. Most elements that present themselves to me trigger a ‘but what else can I do instead, or more, or further?’ response.

So many of the innovations I have brought to polymer techniques come from that. Constantly experiment. Looking back, though, there are times when I would have served myself better by pausing and refining for a few weeks. There are techniques that I developed and showed others that are now thought to have originated with other people who spent more time with them than I did.

And yes, there are techniques that I developed, expanded and refined. Like imitative techniques, hinging, mixing diverse media with polymer, and others. I am happy about the combination of exploration and deepening in those areas.

I expand first, then refine. My primary elements seem to be human experience, physical materials, and inner awareness.
My ‘what-if’ questions take me across elements, actions; combine, cross-reference, add, synergize, among these elements.
My activities are lateral investigations of experience. That’s true, but not specific.

Then I do my best to bring those experiences into a physical form – an object, a text, a seminar – that I can communicate with you.

Watching my friend Charlie’s easy, successful movement through his creative life, I recognize the real value in refining and deepening.
Having spent so much of my own creative history in expansion, I see value in that as well. Balance is the key. Love is the litmus test: do I love this? Have I loved this for a long time?

Can you say that about what you do? Refinement and expansion, based on longstanding love.

A dynamic pairing for creative style.

What about you?

Let me know what you notice about your own style and what balance most successfully brings your goals.

And just for grins, describe your unique nature in a noun and an adjective. (For instance, I am a communicative explorer) Ponder that one for a while. Let me know what you find out, and what you do with this persepective on yourself.

Until then,

exploring in art and life-

Tory

Today’s territory is trusting in material abundance.

Normally I would have held onto that gorgeous big silver bead for longer, mulling whether this was the right moment to use it…….
However, knowing that soon I’d be at the World’s Biggest Retail Bead Showz allowed me to gather that puppy right up.

Because I didn’t have to hold back from starting this necklace, but gave in to my impulse, this necklace came into being quite easily. Right at the beginning I decided that whatever I wanted to act on, I could. Big silver bead? Sure. Lots of luscious imitatives in the same necklace? Sure.

We need to cultivate trust in our creative selves. Especially us women. How weird that we do not, when you think about it!

This part of us that knows what to do, what to use, how to flow and dance in the creative process. Hampering and restricting ourselves at the beginning of making something will often backfire because it sets up a field of poverty and of mistrust in our own creativity.

Letting ourselves be guided by that tug to use or do something, on the other hand, aligns us in our creative flow. We trust the current.

Note: this is different from deliberately setting up parameters to define a project, so we can explore creative options within these limits. This can be very useful. What I am talking about today is noticing and avoiding any subconcious contraction around taking action, fearing that it will require giving something up.

Creative action is based on trust: trust that the action will enhance or expand us somehow. We trust that what we need to use, to take action, will be amply repaid by the results.

Trust in material abundance. There are many reasons to be fond of camels. Depending on the weather, they can go from 8 days to 6 months without taking in water. Imagine a camel fearing its own ability to nourish itself. Wouldn’t hardly be a camel.

Trust also in an abundance of time, energy, risk-taking, and joy.

Master your resources. Act on your intuition. Trust yourself. If a material is not right for a project, then don’t use it yet. But if you have something that is obviously perfect for your purposes, use it, let it go, make room for more.

One more lovely serendipitous example: the wooden camel in the photo.
This camel is the twin of my favorite object in the Girard Collection at the Museum of International Folk Art.
The original is behind glass getting dusty: was made by an Ethiopian carver decades ago, now stuck inside not going anywhere. Poor camel.
Now: Imagine going to a local antiques show and seeing this camel, the twin. Of course I bought it. The dealer gave me a fabulous price for it, because after five years I was the only person who’d commented on it.
She even knew the back story: that the original pair that were commissioned by a collector friend. One of the camels went to spend his life at MOIFA, the other one went to Taos for years. When her friend died she took over his collection and chose pieces to sell….And this camel entered the world again, right in front of me.
I would never have expected to have this camel myself, but not only was there more than one, there was such an abundance (okay, two) that I could have one of my own!  And another note- I only found it because I took a chance that I  had time enough to take an afternoon and explore Santa Fe for a bit, rather than buying into old ideas that there wasn’t enough time for me to take a break. Abundance of time and camels, how great is that?

So send that camel off, trusting that its journey will reward all of us – you first – and that another camel will be here when you need it.

Until then
Exploring in art and life-

Tory

Today’s territory is getting grounded.

Hey there! Happy New Decade. Doesn’t that feel better?

I am working on my website. A big hello to all of you: let me know what works and doesn’t out there in laptop land. I am thinking of you as I do this!

And I am getting ready to go to Arizona next weekend!
Phoenix classes Feb 6+7, two classes
Surface Effects and Mixed Media on Saturday,
Hinged Pendants on Sunday. Those of you who take both classes will be hinging together the pieces you make in the surfaces class.
Tisha Huntsman is the contact person  tisha.huntsman@cox.net with all the details.

Tucson classes Feb 13+14, two classes
Imitative Ivory on Saturday
Bodacious Bead Buffet on Sunday. Yup, we are making gorgeous one-of-a-kind beads during the mega-bead extravaganzas that are the Tucson shows. Come and make your own beads to go with the lovelies you bought!
Barbara Sosna is the contact person   crsosna@msn.com with all the details.

The image is of my polymer/mixed media book Several Inches of Earth. Earth from locations around the world is enclosed on the pages, and the pages themselves are the earth from outside my studio, mixed into translucent polymer.

Getting grounded is a necessary step before creating. It can seem wrong because, well, nothing much is happening. But a smart friend compared it to the winter, when the trees are making roots underground, extending their invisible network to take in more nutrients, and make more fruit when the summer comes back.

So I am in my gorgeous studio, finally getting all my materials and tools out again, sorting through old and new ideas, sending my roots out underground. Connecting and reconnecting with the things that feed my creativity, and there are a lot of those.

More class updates coming: I am teaching in Ohio in April, and Massachusetts in June.

Nice to talk with you again, I have missed you all!
Please be patient with the renovation of this site: it will be big, rich, full of images and information when we are done.
If you have questions or comments, please email me at victoria@toryhughes.com
Until the next time, breathe deep, send your roots out, connect with your own ground, and enjoy your life!
My best wishes for your creative endeavours-

Tory

Today’s territory

Language and creativity.

Perception can mean different things.

I use it to mean ’the range of sensory input we take in: sight, hearing, smell, tactile awareness, kinesthetic sensing, etcetera’.

Recently a friend used it just as emphatically to mean ‘what we decide about something, that may or may not be true’.

Seems simple but in fact these are almost opposite uses of the word.

One word is information received, one is a decision about information.

One word references the outer world, one the inner world.

Creativity and artmaking are dependant on inner language.

After all, it is inner voices that we hear telling us this piece works, this doesn’t, or confirming or denying that we have the right to make the art we want.

Your creative processing has to use your language to support and inspire you.

What language do you use to yourself?

Are you allowing your senses to bring in all the richness of your experiences, to stimulate your artistic  mind, to entrance and fuel your creativity, to enjoy your life fully?

Some people inadvertently filter their senses, and decide what to take in before they really know what is there.

Our perception, our senses, are offering us the world’s biggest art supply store.

Everything is free, the place is full of materials and ideas, and the selection is tailor-made to our unique loves and goals.

Projecting onto our perceptions, deciding what value something has before we receive it and use it is like walking away from our personal free art supply warehouse.

Be bold and walk on in, gather up huge overflowing armfuls of all life offers to your senses, leave brimming with happiness and great stuff.

It’s yours, all yours.

Exploring in art and in life-

Tory

Today’s territory

Taste, satisfaction, and accomplishment.

Who are you making your art for?
How will you know you are done?
What lets you know you were successful?

If you don’t know the answers, you will never feel

1. Done
2. Successful
3. Proud

In my creative consulting business, I talk with a lot of people who feel they are creatively blocked. And many people who are sure they don’t have their own style; who want to make things that everyone can identify as theirs but feel constantly stymied in this.

First, as a well-known painter friend of mine says ‘It’s all just opinions’.
Your opinion of your art, in whatever context you want to evaluate it, has to come before someone else’s opinion. This may mean that it never sells, we all have peices like that, but it doesn’t matter because you know it is a good piece for what you wanted to create in that moment.
You can choose to emulate another’s taste, because you value their experience or integrity. But acknowledge to yourself this is what you are doing. Be in control when you agree to let others have a little control of their own.

Second, each made thing, each ‘artwork’, is by definition the only one of its kind.
This means there is no need and no justification for comparing it to something else. The only authority figure involved is you. Remember that, then read the paragraph above again.
If after you evaluate it, you use other feedback to continue to work on the piece, make this a conscious choice. Set your intention, go back into the process, adjust and refine as needed. Act on the inuition you hear / feel / see.
We all have times when it is harder to get a clear perspective. Another time-honored solution is to set the piece aside, and go do something totally different: take the dog for a walk, cook dinner, go to sleep, look at it in the morning. Numerous studies on how the mind and brain work, like this one on Jonah Lerner’s blog Designing for Creativity : The Frontal Cortex point out why getting distance from your work helps your creative process.
Incidentally, this is a great reason for thinking about coming to our retreat in France this fall! Retreat.

Third, remember the old adage – if you don’t know where you are going, how can you ever get there?
Many of us were trained to stop trusting our instincts about everything, including what makes us happy. (Especially what makes us happy) But that was then, and this is now. We have an idea by now of what works for us, and what doesn’t. We are the authority figures now, see above, and we get to decide and be right about it too. Do not forget this.
Eh bien, it is very important to all of art and life that we figure this out!
What makes you feel your art is successful?
There is no wrong answer, of course.
But you have to arrive at an answer, and then test it by checking it. You can change your answer later if you decide to, although you don’t have to. But if you never know what makes you feel successful then everything will seem a bit unsuccessful, and you will always feel disappointed and unclear about what you make.

The image above is from a postcard from Tarn, the region of southwestern France where our Perception and Play retreat is held. It is not my image, and yup, it is really cheesy, right, but I like it. Makes me smile everytime I see it. Pure and simple, and good enough for me. (“Bisous” means a friendly kiss on the cheek, probably like the old-fashioned word ‘buss’). This is a successful image to me. And you know what? You may loathe it. And that is perfectly okay by me as well. Although you may agree that for what it is and does, it is wonderful. Either way is fine.

Because:
The more you know about your own esthetic, the better pieces you will make, by your standards, so
The more satisfied and powerful as a creator you will be, so
The more responsible for all your accomplishments.
Then it really will be your art!

You are full of taste and accomplishment. You just may need to find it in there, but I promise you it is in there. Go forth, make something, look at what you make with love and curiosity, then make the next thing.

Let me know what happens next-
Big bisous to you in art and life!
Tory