Creative Process – Page 15

Art, Creative Process, Declutter, Sidewalk Faces

Bags of Crap Part 2 {Worth the Weight/Wait}

October 20, 2020January 14, 2022by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl2 Comments

Onerous, uncompleted tasks weigh on you, upending your peace of mind like someone you dislike at a good friend’s party. You don’t have to talk to them but knowing they’re there makes you self conscious and unable to relax. Not fair! Well, several years worth of unattended sidewalk face material crammed into three bags and a few spill over containers was frustrating my attempts to declutter the house and feel like I was on top of my game. It was making me doubt my ability to execute complex art assignments. It was messing with my domestic and creative mojo. Unh, unh unh!

I was tired of living with this problem and utterly unable to fix it.

Until. Now.

I was invited by a good friend to her desert house for a long weekend (we did Covid tests). Because I am who I am, my first stupid thought was, how can I make this relaxing weekend productive? Like, is there a way I can lay in a hammock and get some of my shit handled at the same time?

Well as a matter of fact yes! I realized I could lug these annoying overstuffed satchels to the desert and organize them there. Excitement!

It’s amazing how much more pleasant it is to sort through two thousand unclassifiable objects when sipping coffee in the desert. As I listened to the wind, not rushing, I found myself appreciating all the forgotten treasures, remembering my ideas for them, wanting to play, wanting to make faces.

*The out-of-commission too-heavy bags plus a spillover container. Some people use the freebie bags they get at makeup counters for makeup. I use them for trash*.

**1. Extra mask in case I forget. 2. So many poop bags! 3. I’ve had this purse**
**a long time.**

***Before and After*****. That feels better!**

It’s a bit tricky to maintain the mental looseness of art making in tandem with the focused discipline demanded of organization. First I sorted, then created, then eliminated, then stored. Below are three objects I’ve had for ages, waiting for these exact faces to be made. That green plastic tab was shouting frog face! at me until I picked him up. I could have made him so much sooner but he got lost in the bag and I forgot about him. You can’t act on what you’ve forgotten about. Minimalism is partly about not forgetting, keeping what’s a priority always at attention.

The metal thing is nothing special but with two seeds and a stick he is pretty cute right? And what of that leathery leaf bit. It’s a miracle it didn’t grind to dust colliding with everything else. I love the texture and that oval shape keep suggesting an eye to me. So he finally got his day in the sun. I’ve released the metal and leaf to new adventures. The green tag I’m hanging onto. Maybe some day I will have a gallery show and he can be in it.

***Throw away pile and*** **freshly sorted**. So much easier to find things!

There were some onerous and exotic items I collected as well including a broken car side mirror, a full length bicycle chain and a Prada business card. I made more complex faces with those and will publish them in Part Three. The bicycle chain face has a walrus mustache. And he’s bald. What a relief it is to finally cross him off my mental to do list. I’m going to give myself a gold star!

Click here if you missed Bags of Crap Part One.

Art, Creative Process, Declutter, Sidewalk Faces

Bags of Crap Part 1 {The Dark Side of Good Ideas}

October 13, 2020January 14, 2022by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl4 Comments

The bane of existence is too much crap to deal with. I get really stressed out by having more to do than I can do. So, let me tell you about a problem I’ve been living with for a few years that is the result of a great idea becoming so overwhelming it calcified into total execution paralysis with a heaping helping of hoarding. If you’ve read my last few posts you know I am not one for excess stuff so what exactly went wrong?

While walking the dogs I collect things that might be useful for making sidewalk faces. Even though I pick up very little on any given day, over time it adds up. It might take me a few months to notice but at some point, while rifling through a tornado of plastic poop bags for that blue marble I’m sure is in there somewhere, I come to realize the bag is full to the brim with disintegrating plant matter, bits of plastic headed towards a terrible end our ancestors will curse us for, sharp sticks and rusty nails (thank goodness for tetanus shots I tell myself when I put yet another rusty garden staple into the bag. I do worry I’ll forget it’s there and puncture my skin, but they make such great noses!).

For example: Below are the contents of my bag from November 2017. That doesn’t seem like much stuff to me now but it’s enough junk to make locating any specific item difficult.

*Broken sunglasses, Mardi Gras beads, kurrajong seeds pods, coins, blue and yellow faux flowers and plastic bits; with and without poop bags and crumpled receipts*.

Three years ago I do a simple act and dump the contents of this messy satchel onto a white table for sorting. No big deal. Easy peasy. Being the type of artist I am, I make a face. Then several faces. It was really fun because there was so much to work with. I posted some photos to Instagram stories and thought maybe I’ll make this a regular part of the practice.

Did you spot the big paralyzing idea? In addition to making multiple faces a week, color correcting, writing up captions, sharing on Instagram and occasionally blogging about it, I will now also never ever clean out a sidewalk face/dog walk bag without making a whole bunch of new faces and sharing them on social media. Honestly it seemed like a good idea at the time. It is a good idea. But it’s also an idea that necessitates a ton of work. It’s not a thing you can just dash off.

I did it again four months later, felt good about the results and kept stuffing my bag with items.

**March 2018 – He looks freaked out. Can he see into the future?**

For a while the bag was filled with wonderfully useful material all organized into easy access containers such as the little Altoid boxes above. But some things resist being contained such as a four foot long bicycle chain. Surely that would make an awesome face outline, right? It’s pretty heavy, should we pick it up? You bet! It’s greasy, should we put it in the bag? Pop it in a poop bag first! Just do it! You’ll be glad you did.

With this type of positive attitude the bag quickly came to weigh 7 lbs and I was growing tired of lugging it around. The pleasure of abundance was feeling more and more like obligation. I desperately wanted to thin out the contents but…do you see where this is going?…I would have to make a whole day of it. I would have to film the process and make art and do stuff I theoretically want to do but don’t actually want to do. The bag got heavier and heavier.

I don’t know exactly when, because who marks on a calendar, today’s the day I give up, I left the heavy-laden bag at home and grabbed an empty one. I have two beautiful handmade leather satchels and I started using the 2nd one. I used her until she filled up. Then I started using a fabric bag that’s older than my 16 year old son. When that one was growing obese I started to worry. My storage closet floor was home to these two hibernating bags of crap and they were crowding out the vacuum cleaner. It’s not like there is another place I can put the vacuum cleaner. But the bags couldn’t be properly put away because they were full of stuff that needed to be dealt with. Artistically dealt with. What the what?! There is a dark side to having good ideas.

In Bags of Crap Part 2 I will show you how I recently got out from under this crushing conundrum. I did what I said I would do. I cleaned out the bags and made faces. In Bags of Crap Part 3 you will get to see a giant face made from a rusty bicycle chain, one made from a broken car mirror and one made from a Prada business card. Are you trembling in anticipation! Was it all worth it? Stay tuned! Part two coming next Tuesday October 19th.

Art, Creative Process, Sidewalk Faces

Red Pom Poms

October 7, 2020March 15, 2021by Sidewalk Face at Eagle-Crow-Owl4 Comments

Despite my previous post about purposefully making more art, yesterday I left the house without my good camera. My recently cleaned out satchel doesn’t contain a single seed or stick. I was adamantly NOT looking to make a face. I have way too many waiting to be shared and I don’t need any more. I am trying to get projects and faces already started to completion. And, as if I need an and, I had to get back home and get to work. Lots to do! So what does the neighborhood say to that? It says red pom poms.

This scenario has happened many times before. I stop and look at the pom poms. I walk past the pom poms. I return. An art practice is not about a list of things to do. That’s ambition. My practice doesn’t care about the camera or the color correction or the caption. My art practice compels me to make a face from pom poms. It’s the compulsion, I value the most. The compulsion is the gift.

*Her eyes are dried olives and torn olive leaves*

The next day she was still there but looking like she stayed at the party too long. Maybe the second incarnation is more interesting. I like how the olive leaves stopped being the whites of the eye and instead became eye bags. Even sidewalk faces get tired.