Making of a Maker - Third Friday Post - October 20th

The Road to Here

If there is one thing I have wanted to share most from my experiences in life, it is how I became a maker of things. And by that, I mean the long road to "here". From those first inspirations and indulgences as a child to the present moment.

This weekly third Friday post will focus on exactly that.  And maybe even exploring side-roads to talk about what and where "here" is exactly, since it is always changing. 

If there is one thing I want to put across right off, it's that what I offer here is just ONE individual's perspective on how it can be achieved. I cannot even be sure I see it clearly in retrospect. I can only talk about the beginnings, the course changes, the bits of luck, inspirations and decisions that led to here and now.

I do NOT think my way is the right way for even a good chunk of folks who want to be artists or indulge in creativity full time. What my path is, is one more viewpoint that perhaps you can take something from it all and go forward with it in your own pursuit of becoming the working artist you want to be. 


So where to begin? 

How about this, I believe you can reinvent yourself time and again ( I certainly have) but what I've come to learn, all thee years later, is that you have to embrace, or at least make peace, with who you are inherently. Where you come from. What "made" YOU.  

You don't have to live in and with it every day if it was, as it sometimes can be, negative or shadowy, but I think that you do have to give it more than just a nod of acknowledgement. 

How many times have we all seen that artist's statement, written in the third person, that just doesn't tell you anything about the artist at all? Oh, it's a list and who's who of degrees, schools and mentors to be sure. But then you turn and what you see on the paper or canvas or in three dimensions doesn't seem to have anything to do with that at all. I see that less and less, of course, and I'm happy that we seem to be moving beyond that as a whole in our world. I don't care where you went to school, where you reside, how long you've been drawing those concentric circles etc. . . I care about where you came FROM. What inspires you now and what did then. Who you are inherently and how that is honored today in your life. 

I came across a "modern artist" who was quick to tell you, in third person, about walking the same streets of Europe that the masters did and sitting at Van Gogh's cafes, living abroad. . .  but who was a midwest farm kid by birth. I never met that particular artist but I am guessing that no matter how they cover it or try to rearrange the parts, the farm-kid's spirit and essence is still there in everything they do and all that they are. Yet it seemed they were trying so hard to separate themselves from it. I know because I did that for years too. But now I'd say it's important to embrace it. You can reinvent yourself and still honor and pay homage to those beginnings. 

I say that because for me, going back to that origin, creatively, became a huge part of my road to here. Childhood imagination. The same one I used to escape school bullies and that filled the many hours I had alone in my room as a kid, was still there waiting for me when I ran out of "adult artist" costumes to try on.  

Keep in mind that before I came to this realization, I DID create sooooo much. I performed the music I wrote on stages, had gallery shows and was part of collective exhibitions here and there. 


What Interested me then was making something from nothing. Even in those childhood, neighborhood sports-playing days we were always making due with less. Less players, less equipment, less than ideal places to play. Gravel instead of grass, slanted side streets instead of level lots. . . sharing gloves and bats, hoping someone brought a decent ball. . . but regardless, we played just the same.


Outside of sports, which was never a full time interest, my attention was put into to creating worlds. With action figures, costumes, props etc a few of us spent entire days lost in scenarios from space exploration to digging out of post apocalyptic ruins, to medieval knights. Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Lost in Space, Planet of the Apes and so on.  Strangely enough, though it was becoming quite the thing and I was aware of it, I never got involved in role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons in those years.
We were, perhaps, the last of the "outdoor" generation of kids. Even on the worst of days weather wise, we spent as much time outside as we could. I mean, when else were we going to be able to pretend we were on that snowy, ice planet of Hoth other than when we were slogging around in the midst of a 12 inch snowfall with gusting 40mph winds! 
But I've discovered the amazing worlds of Role Playing Games as an adult and I can see the parallels between the experience we had in our outdoor imagination-born adventures and role playing in the tabletop gaming world. 


Paul Lafarge, an essayist, author and long time D&D player and enthusiast, writes how gaming is like reading a book:  


"You start outside something (Middle Earth; Dickens’s London; the fascinating world of mosses and lichens), and you go in, bit by bit. You forget where you are, what time it is, and what you were doing. Along the way, you may have occasion to think, to doubt, or even to learn. Then you come back; your work has piled up; it’s past your bedtime; people may wonder what you have been doing. In a society that conditions people to compete, and rewards those who compete successfully, Dungeons & Dragons is countercultural; its project, when you think about it in these terms, is almost utopian. Show people how to have a good time, a mind-blowing, life-changing, all-night-long good time, by cooperating with each other! And perhaps D&D is socially unacceptable because it encourages its players to drop out of the world of competition, in which the popular people win, and to tune in to another world, where things work differently, and everyone wins together."

As we grew a bit older, reaching 'tween years, that small group of us who relied on imagination separated further from the sports playing kids just as the reached that peak competitive phase. My social/play group dwindled to three and, often times, it might just be two.  

Of course, the advantage I had over even the D&D kids was that I didn't need a group to have my most memorable fun. The worlds that I explored individually in my alone time, and there was an abundance of it, were the best. Still, to this day, I can recall the games, the characters, the little places in my mind that I would return to again and again. 

So lets lay the groundwork for this Third Friday post series like this:

I am a product of many events, circumstances and actions. Like all of us, I made choices, took roads that were more or less traveled and, at times, had to double back to find my way forward again. But in the midst of all of that, there has been a firm, foundational knowledge that the world around me is a magical place. A place of possibility. And that the world we experience and see is just a fraction of what is out there for us.

When that world around me became less than magical, I changed it. When the people around me became less supportive, too destructive or just got too caught up in their own version of the real, adult world, often meaning they gave up on their own dreams and creativity, I left them behind. When the places I've lived became less than magical, I've moved. And I'm aware how that could seem like I am running from something but, in truth, I am protecting something deeper. 

And I'd say the greatest lesson I learned was to treat your creativity like a gift of creation itself. I have come to think that our creative pursuits should be treated much like having a child (or kittens, baby birds, puppies. . . whatever you prefer) Your idea for a creative life is born or hatched as the case may be. . . And it needs your attention, care and, especially early on in it's infancy and development, your nurturing and protection from certain influences and experiences. You wouldn't turn your child over to just anyone to "rear and raise", and you wouldn't take just anyone's advice about how to raise them. . . so treat your creative work the same way. It's your dream, your pursuit, your passion. Your child. 

It most certainly can be harmed by the wrong hands, the wrong mouths, the wrong hearts. 

And, most of all, what parent out there would tell you their life didn't change drastically when their child was born or, to a lesser degree, when a new pet came into the house. We rearrange our lives to take care of them, yes? You put aside many of your other pleasures and indulgences to be there for it at all times, right? 

Then that is how you should approach your creative notions too.  

Ultimately, if you are really going to develop the creative soul you wish to bring forth. Even the idea of "success", of making a living from it, is just another point on the map, and the map we draft is a lifelong pursuit of putting beauty, whimsy, color, imagination, words, imagery, ideas and thoughts. . . even utilitarian items. . .  into our world. 

I make a living at what I do. I work harder than I have at anything else in my life. More hours. Like a small child, it's not something I can put away at 5pm, turn off the lights and go home. Since I reached that goal, I've come to realize that it's just another rung of the entire ladder of my life's journey. I want to evolve and grow with it. Whether I can make MORE money from it is immaterial because I know i can adapt and change MY life to suit it. 

To close this first installment of the Making of a Maker, there is a poem I adore that I actually was first shown by my Zen teacher. She thought it was perfect for me then because at the time, as I tended to from time to time, I was struggling with these same issues of the making and care of a creative life. To this day, some 15 years later, it remains one of my favorite poems and I think that it sums up the creative soul, the maker, that dwells in all of us so well. 

The Way It Is
William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. 

It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Thank you for reading, following and commenting! 
Keep MAKING!!!!!

Nicolas XO

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Beginning in October of 2017 I started to follow the following format for my blog, posting every Friday and under the following headings:

1st Friday of Each Month - New work ( New to the shops and a look at the making of one item each month)

2nd Fridays - Inspirations and Oddities (Links and thoughts about what inspires me) 

3rd Fridays - The Making of a Maker (advice and shared experiences of how I got "here" to where this is my full time job.)

4th Fridays - The World of Bewilder and Pine ( peeks into the world of the Bewildering Pine, the stories and books to follow and all around fantasy world making)

We Need Secrets

I read the following a few weeks ago and it has stuck with me ever since.

"I’ve written in other venues about the “thrill of the hunt.” And by that, I mean the hunt for that one back issue of a comic series you loved, that old album by the band you loved, or that out of print book by that author you loved. These “hunts” were a big part of my youth, and the very concept is gone now. Everything is easily found on the Internet with a few keystrokes.

But there’s more to the phenomenon than just the hunt for material goods. Just a few decades ago, it was hard to be an expert on something—even something frivolous. If you wanted to deep dive into something, it took time, determination, and sometimes a bit of creativity. When my friends and I could quote Ghostbusters verbatim back in the day, it was because we went to see the movie over and over again in the theater. If someone knew about a rare, alternate track by Elvis Costello, it was because they immersed themselves in Elvis Costello fandom over the course of years. When my friend could recite the names of all the First Age elves mentioned in The Silmarillion, it was because he pored over the book and made the list himself. 

Now, all of those things could be accomplished with a quick Internet search.

This isn’t “back in my day” complaining. I love the fact that all this information is readily available at our fingertips. We’re better off now, despite the loss of what I’m talking about. But I think there’s still something in human nature that wants to discover. To hunt. To learn some secret not easily found—or, perhaps more importantly—not found by someone else. For some of us, we don’t want to read about someone else’s discoveries; we want to make them on our own.”

- Monte Cook - MCG game design blog

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I could not agree more with Mr. Cook and what I also identify with in those thoughts above is the core of what makes creativity such a compelling pursuit for me. Everything I do, I realize, is about the slow discovery. The unfolding of time, abilities and the way we grow incrementally closer to what we create the more we put ourselves into it.  The secrets within.

For me, hand crafting in the internet age is an absolute salvation. I have been blessed by a lot of wonderful twists and turns along this road to making a creative life and the internet and technology are crucial in the avenue of selling, marketing, even offering inspiration. Yet one of the most refreshing discoveries was that folks, for the most part, still love a handmade item over something easily reproduced. 

I am befuddled by the number of people who set out to try something, creative or otherwise and, if it is not an instant success or at the very least, if it does not quickly show signs of being so, they move on. Now, I've done my share of "moving on" in my own life but we are talking about moving on after investing years in something before making that ultimate decision. Really taking them as far as I thought I could go, sometimes further. And all those things I left behind still play a role in my new discoveries at times today. The same way that a 16th century map informed the 17th century cartographer and on down the line. 

When I look at the sculpting and making-of-things that I have invested myself in over the last 8 years now, and I see those first pieces that sold, that people actually gave me money for, I am truly amazed.

I never questioned if I would get "here" one day. I knew that from experience and from the fact I grew up in an era when you HAD to put the time in. For anything. Nothing was available with such immediacy. And for that I am extremely grateful. 

It just takes time.

When I sit down each morning to work on my book, I know very well how far I still have to go. I'm new to that creative form of expression and I have to learn things on the fly, stop often to seek out a reference or sidestep the story to explore a character, setting, idea, grammar usage or ancient myth. It takes time, yes, but it has to be done.

In a day when folks are abandoning the well written blog left and right, the hard form of writing, for the ease of instant I-phone photo glam, for the lifestyle account and the Instagram fix, I feel grateful to have been brought up in another time. At the very least, one that bridges both worlds.  

I am so grateful for the fact that the one thing the internet will never change is that, to be good at something physical, something creative, be it sculpting, writing, RPG game design, painting, illustration, dance, cosplay, architecture, acting, landscape design, and on and on, you are going to have to be willing to sit down and put in the time. All the instruction, how-to tutorials and step by step instructions won't give you the skill without the hours of application. And they won't give you an original voice/style/expression either.

In the work of almost all of my blog friends here I have been given the gift of seeing YOU uncover those secrets in your own work over years. I've watched them grow and reveal themselves in time. There is so much beauty in that and it sustains me and inspires me as well. 

Those who are just starting or still dreaming of a creative life.  .  . you are going to have to take that deep dive, start at square one and do the work, try to refine that technique or reinvent it until you think you can't possibly do it again, then go ahead and do it again anyway. 

You'll pore over the hints, tips, instructions whether they came from a 100 yr old book or from a website. But trust me, it WILL be worth every moment you put in down the road.  By all means, embrace technology as a tool, just not as the means to the end. It will never be creative in and of itself. People made it so. People opened that door and refined it for you too. Now go further.

And if you, like me, want secretes to be revealed? 
Stick with the art. 
Stick with the practice.
It will make you so glad that you did one day.
I promise you.

And along the way

You will make those important discoveries

You will improve and know yourself better

And you're going to learn those secrets.

The most important of which will be the ones locked within yourself. 
The ones that nobody else can access for you. 

And those, no matter what the internet and our digital age provides for you as far as information at your fingertips, THOSE secrets will be the ones you will cherish the most.

XO

nicolas

New mini woodland Muridae Market mouse. Chettes is the first but more to come soon!

One continuos build/sculpt, layering colored clay, onyx eyes, a culmination of 8 yrs of secrets revealed and discovered.
Worth every moment spent. :)

Musings from a Timeless Journey #1

Hi All!!!

I am back from my cross country trip to visit Mom and my childhood home.

I'll be doing my best to get caught up with you all and your lovely blogs as soon as I get caught up here with shipping and get back on track.

Instead on inundating you with a long post about my trip, I think I will share the experiences in brief, short-short story versions in the coming weeks. It will be a writing exercise for me. Trying to tell the story is one or two pages, no more than 500 words per story.

Little vignettes of past and present all tangled into one.

I hope you'll enjoy them!

nicolas

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"The Farmhouse"

Driving towards the comic book store which thrives in the now nearly-vacant mall, I'll be passing the old farmhouse I so fondly remember from the year I was enrolled in a scholars program. Only two students from each middle school were chosen to attend the year long program and I was lucky enough to be one of them from our small, neighborhood school.

The program consisted of only three classes, every Wednesday, with each class almost two hours long.

Creative English

Science

Ancient Art History

This is one of my favorite memories of those difficult “tween years”.

My classmate Paul and I were first to be picked up on the bus each Wednesday before dawn. The next stop to pick up a student was a full 15 minutes later along a stretch of the old river road where several smaller houses sat framing this grand, three story farmhouse.

During the winter months we’d arrive at the farmhouse still cloaked in winter darkness and the radiant glow that emanated from the first floor windows of the farmhouse cast a palpable warmth across the snow covered yard. A warmth that always managed to touch me as I sat on the bus staring at that beautiful old house. I still love and covet farm houses like that to this day,

Julie, the girl who we were picking up there, I’d come to learn was wicked smart though we barely talked beyond the weekly “Good morning” as she got on the bus. Since the scholar classes were divided into three groups of fifteen students each, and Julie was not in my group, we only really saw each other on the bus and at lunch.

The year of “Good Mornings” passed, and I went on to high school and life beyond but the impact of those classes and the creative support I received from the teachers, remains with me to this day.

And, of course, the farmhouse.

I knew as I drove out towards the mall last week that I’d be passing by it along that same river road.

It’s still there but the years have taken their toll. Most of the houses that were once situated nearby are completely gone and the farmhouse itself has fallen into a state of general disrepair, like many things do across decades of time.

I drove by slowly, conflicting feelings turned inside, saddened at the state of the farmhouse but also glad that it was still there at all because so few things from those formative years are.

I thought of Julie, Paul, and all the other kids who’s names are now as lost to time as the houses that once stood around that farmhouse.

I wondered if the classes, and the opportunities that they afforded, are remembered as fondly by any of the others. And I wondered what happened to the farmhouse thru all these years.

And though it’s not the pre-dawn chill of a long-past winter day, I allowed the words to come anyway.

“Good morning”

April 1st - New Work. . . No Fooling!

Watch out for the tricksters today! There is always mischief afoot on this day. . .

April brings me a bit closer to a time I have been looking SO forward to! Taking the first few weeks of the month to work thru the rest of my standing custom work before allowing myself a 6 week break to just make multiples of some things for the shop and continue working on my new items, stories etc for the summer ahead. Dragons, new fairy houses, Egyptian statues, figurines and more.
This is hard for me. Saying no to easy projects or, for lack of a better phrase, easy money, is hard. But I find myself constantly frustrated with the lack of time to explore new directions. I have to remind myself, time and again, that I am only a little ways down the path I am traveling thru this work. . . that while I could easily just keep making what I do now and selling it, I have so many ideas to expand and grow the world I have created and that, if I do not grow that world, it will become more of a box than a boundless landscape. 't think of anything more important actually. . .

I think it's important to stay true to that vision and to follow the heart where the heart wants to take us. I can't think of anything more important actually.


But for the day of April Foolerie, here are a few new items to share

The Enchanted Woods Inn - Hand Timbered plank by plank and the little lamp post glows in the dark.

A sweet little gateway for a fairy garden I think! Been thinking of making these with for some time but, you know. . . life!

These seem to fly off the shelf lately! My newest Mushroom Fairy House Upon a Star. 

I think little charms, like these sweet sun faces, can really add a quick touch of magic to the handmade houses.

A little experiment that went and got itself out of control! I am really determined, it would seem, to find out just how much tiny house I can cram onto the little 3" landscaped stars! :) More of these to come for certain!

 That's the latest. More soon on the "30 Day World Building" writing exercise I have undertaken, (on day 5 right now) and sharing some thoughts on looking back and seeing, with hindsight as the viewfinder, that path to "here".

Have a lovely April Fools day all!

xo
nicolas

Feeding the Soul

Even with the holiday coming far too quickly and custom requests piling up, I always make sure to take time and set it aside to create and finish pieces that are simply what my heart desires. Feeding the soul this way is the most important thing to avoiding any sort of burnout or the burden of overwhelming to-do lists and custom work. Nothing inspires me more than those precious hours. . .

The first piece is one I showed in progress awhile back but it sat here just waiting for the finishing inspiration. Those finishing touches came in the form of the two bluebirds and the treasure of "gold coins" and "jewels" in the tree hollow.

Dreamweaver Series #1

The bluebirds are made completely from polymer clay and no painting! A first fo me but I enjoyed the process

Little gold mica coins and Swarovski "jewels" really completed the piece for me.

Also I undertook a redesign of my Onegai (Wish Granting) Jizo statues.  I recently went back and looked at the evolution of these little statues over the last four years. Yikes! The first ones were really cute but so "rough" by comparison. I love the tiny, rotund bodies on these and the fact that the little bells on the hat actually tinkle! :)  Definitely a Wish Granting form if ever I saw one! :)

Anyway, that's all for today but in the next few days I am excited to show you the first version of my hand-bound fairy journal! Includes foldout maps on the end pages, pressed flowers and lots of wonderful elf illustrations! All in a very magical  2" x 2.75" size:)

nicolas

Ten for Thirty

I am, by all accounts, at my best in a strong routine. I don't fit creativity in here and there. . . it is the main focus of my days. I found, thru the years, that when I maintain a fairly monastic-like schedule that is centered around one or two main things, I am able to be at my most productive.

And as it turns out, my happiest.

But this means that many things and activities are sacrificed and get left out. It is  harder for me to make time for something once a week rather than every day.

It is one of the main reasons I seem to be unable to keep up a blog with any regularity here too.  I'll think of so many things I want to say or show but, often, the thought of trying to squeeze in half an hour here and there without it being scheduled is just hard to make a reality.

And there IS so much more I want to share here.  Ongoing work, thoughts, plans and experiments.  .

So I decided to try an experiment this month. I want to blog every morning, scheduling it into my morning check in's and day planning. But to do so I have to be realistic and say that I am only going to allow myself 10 minutes each day to do this.

Ten minutes for thirty days.

I hope you'll come along for the ride and enjoy the things I share here this month. If it works and I find that it has become a beneficial part of my days, I will continue it beyond the end of the month. 

So, without any delay ( as I am already 8 minutes in for today!) here is something new that I just finished for a client. It's a custom set of five miniature terracotta warriors.

This was right up my alley as I have long held these figures in my imagination and am overwhelmed by the thought of them being created in such scale and arranged as an army of the afterlife for Qin Shi Huang the first Emperor of China.

I'll just add that it is probably a good thing I did not know about these figures in my childhood for, as the boy who created an Egyptian tomb in his bedroom closet by drawing hieroglyphs on the walls and making royal statuary and jewelry out of tinfoil, fake jewels and paper I shudder to think what I might have tried to create to represent this in my paracosm. I can just see my grandmother going into the canning room in the basement of our house to be confronted with an army of papier mâché and cardboard warriors watching over the peaches and preserves!!! : )

So I will see you here daily this month then. . . short and sweet.
Thanks for coming along!

Taweret and the Lure of Egyptian Art in My World

One of the reasons I love revisiting the origins of creative aspects in my life is that, over time, they can take on different forms and meanings. They reveal themselves slowly across the years, even disappearing on occasion only to comeback strong somewhere down the line.

They are always evolving and unwinding. 
They are the threads. 

At the same time, I do not want to lose my grasp on where they began as I truly feel those beginnings are always important and never pass into a state of irrelevance.

While it is always easy to say that Ancient Egyptian art has been something I have been deeply drawn to since I was 6 or 7, it is also true that, over time, the meaning of that has grown with me.

The pieces I have been creating these last four years have been allowing me to explore new avenues for their reasons of existence in my life. Always allowing me to deepen that connection and revisit those wonderful days of ancient history/discovery from my youth.

So, when I create a piece like the Taweret statue below, I am reminded that this link is now close to forty years old. From the first time I saw Her portrayed on tomb carvings and artifacts I was smitten. Some of it was the way my young imagination tried to grasp that this animal, the hippopotamus, was truly a part of Egyptian life. . . not something just seen in a magazine or in an urban zoo. I'd think to my young self, "Yes, I'd have made a statue honoring them too!!"

Sheis magnificent and what I love most is the way ancient artists captured her shape, her toothy grin and her delicate legs.

Taweret: Patron of Childbirth and Protector of Women and Children

Now, when I create a piece like this of Taweret, I am always aware of the connection to those early days when I felt that my drawings of Egyptian deities were protecting me somehow.  So much so that I drew them on the tops of my feet whenever I felt the need for extra "help".  Anubis, Bast, Horus, Sekhmet and Djehuty were all a part of my childhood circle of guardians. . . . but seriously, if you have to pick an animal to "protect" you. . . isn't the hippo going to be at the top of the list due to sheer size alone?? : )

I feel so completely honored that, in recreating these pieces today, I am able to send them off all over the world for others to honor in their own way and for their own personal reasons.  It feels as a service is truly being done in their creation and that each one is part of the growing understanding I have of their place in my life today.

What never changes is, at my core, they are all protectors of my dreams, my creative path and my life.  It's why they always have a place on my work table and by my bedside. The magic I found in them all those years ago is just as strong today. Except now I make them out of clay and not tin foil and paper as I did as a young boy. lol

Hope you enjoy seeing Her. :)

xo
nicolas

The Long and Short Of It All - Edition #1

One of the things about my way of creating that gets wonky sometimes is:

I have a longstanding habit, when choosing the "What next?" from my list of ideas, to go with the smaller, most immediately rewarding ideas. Often this is at the expense of moving forward the larger, more complex ideas that I really want to bring to a completion but that I can't seem to keep moving forward on as time allows. Instead, always seeming to choose the quick idea, or a multitude of them as it often goes, to "finish something".

Nowhere is this more relevant that my 2014 To-Do list and I am resolved to do something about it! 

So first, why is that an issue? I make oodles of fun creations that actually move through my shops very well. They make me infinitely happy to create them and I always find time to write a bit of a story to go along with almost each one. . . couple that with an ever growing list of requests and custom pieces and the time left to work on the larger stories and idea is already at a minimum. 

But those ideas haunt me as they are always the thing I most want to do every day.

Internally those larger. story based projects are the direct reflection of everything I loved about my childhood and want to re-embrace into the fold of mid adulthood and beyond. They are the lifeline from that era, the link in time to all I am and all I do.

They are my "Tardis" through time and space that take me back to the most wonderful and,  yes, sometimes less wonderful of those years too.

And ohhhhh I am a time traveler above all else. . . 

I am hoping, that by sharing the ideas here in a series of posts of their progress and intent,  the visual reminder of them each time I come to my blog will remind me that they are waiting for me to grow them into full reality.And with each large project I will also post a small, quick idea that came to fruition too. :)

So then

The LONG of It:

The Noble Ice Elves of Spangladasha:

Started this massive idea at the beginning of the year and it is only in the last 4 weeks that it sort of fell off the radar a bit. The little guy below, Fenewen, was the first to appear here. He toldme his story and I was beyond hooked. . . T

he idea is to create a total of 50 Noble Ice Elves ( not all at once mind you) and send each one, as it is adopted, off into the world with an atlas/maps of their land, Spangladasha, and scrolls that tell the story of the elves journey to our world and their purpose here and beyond.

The very-large of the idea is to send quarterly updates to each person as the elves are adopted letting them know the general location of other elves across the globe (by city/country only) and continuing the story through mailings of scrolls, symbols, etc etc as well as updating the Etsy listing with the story as it progresses as new elves appear.  So even I will not know exactly where it is going until it gets there.

Fenewen

I LOVE his furry compact body, the crown of polymer clay bones and his "petrified" driftwood power source with it's "ice crystal" attached!! And the ever growing map of the land he and his kind hail from:

Spangladasha - Realm of the Noble Ice Elves

Soooo much more to do obviously. Scrolls, books, wax seals, printing the maps, special packaging etc etc. The Noble Ice Elf story is about 5 pages now. That's about as long as I want it so I'll have a years worth of updates already in the bag. I just need to rewrite, edit and re-edit. 

Hoping to have 6 or so of these guys ready for Fall release! 

And that, my dear friends, is just ONE of the large ideas brewing in this brain lately. :)


The SHORT of it:

The Shen Amulet

So, the Egyptian pieces in Shadow of the Sphinx are a direct link to my early creative worlds  I imagined myself often in that time, often as a simple scribe or lay-person working for a Pharaoh. It was a far broader role to me than to rule all of Egypt. lol

The endless list of ancient pieces I have to inspire me has allowed me to continually experience a new thrill when working on these amulets and statues. And often, the ideas allow me to create quickly as with the Shen amulet below.  There must be hundreds of iterations of this one amulet/symbol alone.  So the inspirational source is endless.

Shen Symbol - Polymer Clay Amulet with Bronze Patina Finish

Trouble is I often get caught up in the fun of making smaller things and just let the larger ideas sit a bit too long. . . but then again, Fenewen is always on my work table and he won't be patient for long I suspect. . .

Wishing you all a creative and magical day!

Soon again. . .


nicolas

Do What You Want, Be What you Are

So I want to begin sharing more of the day to day process and inner workings of being a full time maker-of -things.  Let me start by sharing a little picture with you.

This is my studio work table on a random morning taken about a week or so back. Now, the funny thing about this picture is, I almost did not use it for this blog because, as I looked at it, I thought "Oh that's too neat. . . it looks staged." I'll pause while those of you with a neater bent to their organization and creative work spaces gasp and shudder at the thought. : )

In actuality, all I removed from the scene were paint rags and some scraps of notes that were not relevant. The rest, as seen, is pretty much how my work table looks. . . on a good day.

That little clear space on the front/right table, on the clay mat, that is where I make almost everything in my shops. All the rest are the parts of projects that are going on right now, things drying, things waiting for their day in the photoshoot sun, things in progress etc etc. This is the eye of the storm I suppose you could say. . . because it is always a clam and workable space to me. And, in the chaos, it all makes sense.

The point of this simple little post is this:

Too often I think we unlearn things that were simply inherent to us because our "teachers" believed their way to be better.  In the end, as we grow up, we fight our natural tendencies because we may have been taught that they were not good ways to be. Nowhere is this more destructive than in the creative realm.

In my world, that "teaching" was an endless string of contradicting statements that for years kept me from being the wonderful mess-maker that I am.

Family "teachers" said:
"When you are done (playing) put everything away! It's a mess!"

Except so many of my "games" were paracosms and ongoing worlds that didn't end when I had to stop playing for dinner, sleep or some other such nonsense. . . . They went on without me so how could I just pack them all away? How could I slip back into them seamlessly if they were neatly stacked in a closet or forced under the bed?

Art teachers in school said:

"Focus on one idea or technique. Don't try to do it all. Finish the project you've started. Perect what you are doing"

Except that I never was a one thing at a time person.
Not in reading books ( I have 5 going right now)
Not in traveling. The first time I went to Europe I looked at the map of the continent and said, "Right, 17 days and I'm going to 14 countries! (umm that did not work out once I hit France. . .  and so I DO learn you see!)
Certainly not in creative projects, which, I believe, tell ME when they are ready to be finished and not vice versa. So some sit for days. Weeks. Even months till the finish is apparent to me. 

In my first "career" of the culinary arts, I was taught by the chefs I worked for:
"Don't try to do too many things, just pick a cuisine and master it." (So, needless to say, I fell into the Fusion/cross cultural cuisine trend of the 90's with all my heart and soul!)

Oh the list goes on and on. . .

It took me years to learn that I have this pattern of creative chaos and that it works perfectly for me. 
Let every idea come forth.
Jump at making whatever makes me happiest
Figure the rest out as I go along.

That's being me.  That's who I am. Yet I spent a great deal of my early adult life trying to "do it the right way" by what I had been taught was best.

And while I had to do some work to learn how to make this authentic, natural me into a workable model that could make a viable living, it really only came together when I finally sloughed all that old, repetitive programming off and let myself be the creative soul I was born as. . . working with, instead of against, myself.

That's what allowed this to now grow into a full time occupation that suits me perfectly.

The interesting twist to the story is this. For all the "creative" mess one may see in my life, in my daily way of being a maker-of-things, let me tell you where my life has no mess and jumble.

Basically that would be in every other department.

There are few people who get my time, few outside distractions are ever allowed in, I make very few obligations/commitments and selectively extend myself and there are just very few things I feel compelled to do other than create. I have not heard my phone ring in four years and, like the old days, only return calls at the end of the work day when done. I moved to a place where I can walk to almost everything I need (including places in nature where I can be alone) each day.

That too was something of old programming that I had to break.  We are told to "do one thing" when it comes to work, art, careers, interests or anything we want to "achieve". . . but then we are told a well rounded life includes all that excess which pulls us in 20 directions at once.

How many people I have known that felt that a well rounded life was about having all THOSE diverse interests filling up their schedule and making the hours something to be counted and rationed?

How many people have I listened to as they lament not having the time to do the things they really love while constantly rushing off to yet another engagement or obligation?? How many friends have I watched running around frazzled all day long, every day, so caught up in being "busy" and saying it as if being busy were an accomplishment in and of itself?

But I'd swear, if you ask me, busy is a modern synonym for "messy" in regards to living life.
And when I did it, it just made me feel further away from what I most wanted to be doing. 

And so my advice to others, about a creative life, when asked,  is:

Neat or messy, one thing or a whole basket full of ideas, or anywhere in between makes no difference
Do what you want but be . . . what. . . you. . .  are.
And what you are IS inherent. Yes it can be molded and tightened up and tinkered with.
But the core of it is going to be something you always and already were. . .

Because following that path and being just what you are is always going to lead to happiness doing what you most want to do.

So as a word of advice from a mess-maker extraordinaire, messy is cool. . . it's fine to stray and wander and indulge in many wonderful ideas and pursuits. . . just tidy up the REST of life and let the true you rule the creative day.

xo
nicolas

The Thread

I think my blog will be taking a turn in the coming weeks.

I have, for two years, been telling myself I wanted to write (seriously) more often in the hope of sharing and explaining my creative path and the way my childhood informs all of my creations today.  I’ve been successful in fits and spurts. Yet it has been extremely hard to write about the most important details of that childhood and share them.

To be truthful, I had no idea why. 

Last night I read a wonderfully thought provoking short story called “Mr. Goober’s Show” by the esteemed sci-fi writer Howard Waldrop which, today, has me going deeper into my own world to understand why some things “work” and some don’t for myself, for others and for and within the creative life so many of us wish to live.

In the story a man relates the experience of his sister and he in the 1950’s when, while visiting with an Aunt, they uncover a mechanical (pre-war) television that, according to the Aunt, does not work because the way television is transmitted in the story’s active time (1950’s) has changed and so there are no programs broadcast the old way anymore. 

The children, left alone one evening, plug in the old TV and, after a bit of fiddling with the knobs, they DO find a broadcast which, since there is no sound, they can only watch.  They dub the show “Mr. Goober’s Show”. The genius of not explaining exactly what they see is part of the draw of the story. The years pass, the sister becomes obsessed with discovering what they saw as the brother seems to be less concerned and interested over time. The sister goes to work in the technical/ TV field and, in a series of letters over the years to her brother, explains the futility and ever-increasing obsession with wanting to know what they saw. How it was even possible given the technology and the science.

I won’t give the end away but, the thoughts that are now in my mind began with my own recollections of two shows I saw as a child that I simply have never been able to find in adulthood, even in this vast internet age of every little detail of every single movie, show and program being catalogued. They seem to not exist.

Now, the two characters, the brother and sister, go in opposite directions with Mr. Goober’s Show. While they both are totally taken with it as children and talk about it into their young adult lives, the boy, we are led to believe, simply loses interest and the girl becomes obsessed with  unraveling the magic though the obsession leads her deep into the technical aspects of what it COULD have been and away from the early experience of it.

To me, it reads as a dual warning for adulthood.

When I was a child, my world, from a very early age was filled with my inserting myself into many roles and fantasy worlds. These were based on historic or dramatized events. At one time or another I was an astronaut in a cardboard capsule fitted with hundreds of christmas lights and switches I taped in place or poked through holes. I was a high seas pirate on a front porch ship, a Shaolin monk, an Egyptian scribe (and sometimes pharaoh) , I stormed the beaches at Normandy and climbed Mt Everest, explored alien worlds and fell through time portals. I lived in Medieval castles and fought dragons and demons time and again the victor.  I lived on the Prairie along with the Ingalls family and solved crimes as many 70’s TV cops (often Kojak because it involved the lollipop and wearing my grandfather's fedora).  I created entire sports leagues in the back yard and invented my own futuristic sports, made up board games and card games of my own in winter too.

What happens in adulthood is clearly a duality that we often choose one or the other path as laid out in the story I read. We either lose the sense of magic and wonder of childhood and move on leaving it behind, or we get so caught up in the explanation of all things magical, how things work, what they mean, that they must make sense and what is and is not possible, what we imagined versus what is “real”. We get so wrapped up in this that those early worlds are torn down by the time we reach adulthood and left in tatters around us.

But adulthood is just another fantasy world.  And while people look at artists as dreamers, it is often the average 9-5er who is living just as distorted a dream.  Usually one that is constructed of, and constricted by, equal parts “have to” and “reason” that the magic is often left out altogether.

Have to and reason can destroy artistic magic too. . . which is why I think art schools ultimately damage as many as they help. . . so why would any other lifestyle be any less damaged by the same factors?

What’s the balance then? For me, it seems to be that we never should leave that magic behind or totally understand it either.  This is why, in a nutshell, I have been unable to write about those early experiences.

Technical explanations and scientific certainty can be fascinating but deadly to the imagination as well. I’d rather not know how things work and I’d rather not try to explain where my ideas come from or how they are completely linked, every one of them, to something within that has been nurtured since my childhood. There's a magic in them that I lived, have understood as inherent, and I have tried to explain without success even to myself. And there are those few events that are truly and simply unexplainable. How can I write about them without feeling like I have to explain them or say, "This is what I have come to understand about that day, that event or that memory." 

 I think the key to telling great, compelling stories, and that is what all artistic outlet can be reduced to, is in what you do not reveal. I tell bits and pieces of the whole but I leave just enough out to allow for the viewer to have a door in for themselves to my world and my work. I want to create things that inspire imagination and open to larger landscapes within. It’s pure storytelling and it is the core of every creative being.

It’s the ephemeral, untouchable essence of who we are. . .

In the simpler sense, there are parts of me that desperately want to know what those two old shows I saw as a 6 or 7 year old were. . . and an equal part of me that never wants to see them again.  I want to maintain my own memory of them as they were experienced then which, in seeing them 30 years later, can never be the same, can they?

So this creative dream I live now. . . yes, it is a construction of my own. No one wrote the book on living it and no one told me how to make it happen.

 I am asked constantly, "You can make a living doing THAT?" and while the simple, actual answer is "Yes." it leaves out all the magic because, in truth, not everyone can. It's not enough to be good at something or to excel in business or have great people skills and even a staunch self belief matters only a smidgen. The creative path requires the absolute presence of magic. And the magic requires that we never answer all the questions ourselves. We leave them for others to discover and to find within their own creations in their own time.

That’s the magic of the story.
Of life.

I’ll be trying to create a more revealing feel here in the coming months. Posting more updates on projects and little bits of inspiration here and there going forward. Turning the focus into more of a daily process of what I am actually doing and how. 

Focusing on the magic of my todays as much as my yesterdays.

In those posts, some of the larger story will come through but, in the grand scheme of things, the magic I want to convey is not from the past.

It’s in the here and now.
Today.
It’s not a memory but the one constant and unbroken thread of my life.
The one, as in the William Stafford poem, that I will never let go of.

I hope you will continue creating the magic of YOUR life
And follow along with me too. : )

nicolas

The First Creations

It has taken me a long time to get to where I am comfortable talking about my creative path.  And a couple of years to realize what I want to share here, in blog form, as well.  Many a New Year's resolution to write more, blog more, share more have come and gone without success.

Some things just can't be forced before its time.

The delay was, mostly, because part of that story is about the events of my childhood. Not all of them pleasant and several outright harrowing but, in fact, they are a part of that creation inside.

So, no better time than today, on the cusp of a New Year, to start. . . without a resolution or promise. It's just time.

I would count myself among the millions who probably utter this phrase, "I have been creating since I can remember" more than I would like. It is, of course, true but I always have a bit of an issue with non specific statements like that.

I could say that it was a finger-painting a did at age 4 ( and vividly recall making)  that my mother still has framed and on her wall almost 40 years later. I can still see the spot where I started to finger paint my name before realizing that did not constitute a "picture" and promptly smeared over it with a blend of paints.

That was done in the bedroom of the apartment my mother ad I lived in the first 10 years of my life.

But the memories of my first creations artistically are blended with the meory of my first creations in my head of the sing-songs, games and mantras that were to keep me safe from what  can only say was a very dark entity in my room. 

That is not a cloaked statement alluding to someone evil or any sort of abuse. It was most definitely some "thing" that I feared. And it haunted my horrible nightmares from my earliest memories. I would fight to not have to go to sleep in that room and often would convince my mom to let me stay up and fall asleep on the sofa in the living room or on the floor. Then she would get me into bed once I was already out.

In the nightmares it was something about the curtains/window of my room. The hideous floor to ceiling orange curtains might have been enough without their animating and speaking in those dreams. lol  I also had a series of health issues then. Spontaneous nosebleeds that would not stop but, luckily I was told, I awoke just before they would start every time.  So it seemed a battle of forces and, in my mind, I did all I could to appeal to the forces of good.

So, in that part of my paracosm, I found it useful to create ways, in my head, to defeat that darkness. I had games that, if I won, would keep me safe. Chants and sing-songe repeated the right number of times or for a minute straight etc.

In the case of the nightmares, perhaps it helped.

One night, in a most frightening dream where the darkness was closing in on my bed and the curtains were flailing across the room trying to grab me, I watched as that the ceiling of my room split and a shower of millions of gold spinning snowflakes (sort of shaped like little nuclei with tiny round orbs at the flake points but all gold and sparkly)  , the size of a dime, cascaded down from the sky spreading over my entire bed. In the dream I sat uptight as the snowflakes poured over me and, then, awoke, sitting in my bed, still able to feel the last snowflakes falling on me and I could literally "see" them as well. Once they stopped falling I realized it was still very dark. . . late night. . . and I was alone. But then, as I stared into the darkness waiting for my eyes to adjust, I saw one spinning gold snowflake appear in front of me.  Hovering and constant. I lay back down in my bed, realized I was sweating and got up to get a drink of water.  When I returned, the snowflake was gone.

I never had another nightmare again.

In fact, to this day, I only remember dreaming once every couple of months or so and I sleep, most of the time, only 5 hours a night (which may be a hold over from those childhood years).

Also I should mention that anytime since that night that I think of those little spinning snowflakes one, and only one, will appear right in front of my eyes be it dark or daylight . . .  as one is here in front of me now as I type. I'm used to it and, in all honesty, I find it most comforting.

All those little games, rhymes and songs were invented to keep me safe. To help me cope with nightmares, fears and the darkness. . . it would not be a stretch to say that now, in my adult life, they came back to do the same though the shadows were most definitely more internal and they had names we all know like expectation, self-doubt and all around general adult world illusions and societal programming.

The stories to come get stranger. . . but the power of creativity will be the theme throughout.  The struggle to stay close to that possibility and wonder that permeated my youth. . . to this point where, once again, my whole life revolves around it now.

So I'll tell it as best I can and hope that it leaves something behind that will resonate with someone else one day.

Wishing you all a happy start to your new year!

Create it to be pure magic!

nicolas