Hey all!
Second Fridays are for sharing a few links to things that caught my eye the last month and that have all inspired my imagination in some way:
With the newest Star Wars installment hitting the theaters I am reminded of seeing the very first as a young child and how it effected my imagination. Well, 40 years later there is no loss of the film's impact and how it still inspires to this day. This Kickstarter campaign fully funded and is over but it's worth a peek.
Lightsaber Oil Paintings
Scroll down a bit on that page to see the three amazing portraits of the lightsabers from the first film. Highly realistic and detailed. Odd and, yes, beautiful. :)
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I adore masks. So when I stumbled upon this site and the folk who design these amazing paper masks that you download the templates for and make yourself, I was absolutely giddy!
Wintercroft Masks
Use their category list on the left to choose your section. Masks from animals to mythical to sci-fi! I love them all.
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I am always looking for strange inspirations for musical instruments or games for my worlds. Here is a lovely collection of odd "instruments",
Music as it's Made
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And another new twist to an oldie but goodie. Dungeons and Dragons has been around for ages now but I just read that 2016 was the most profitable year for the old RPG game and 2017 is on track to better it. I am always amazed that there are artists that find new ways to bring the old game more to life. This kickstarter which I myself supported was for artistic renditions of D&D first level magic scrolls.
D&D First Level Scroll Art
I LOVE scrolls and manuscripts of any kind and was immediately taken by the artwork, the "old tongue/language" and the thoughtfulness that went into creating these. Can't wait to get mine to frame and hang for inspiration . . . but I still have to decide which one I want!
Hope you've all had a wonderful week!
XO
nicolas
Showing posts with label artists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artists. Show all posts
Friday, December 8, 2017
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Loss and Gain - Inspiration
This week has seen both. . .
It is almost impossible for me to imagine the world we live in without David Bowie. He's just always been there. . . the thin white duke. . . the man who fell to Earth. . . Major Tom.
He taught us to dance under the serious moonlight. . .
It's taken me three days to figure out what I'd like to say because I wanted to offer something meaningful and heartfelt. Something to sum up his place in my own world. What I can think of is this. . . Growing up we all had this small window of time when, for most of us, music was just this magical thing that was a part of our world. Before we knew of radio stations, MTV, Concert tours, the business of it, the sometimes disfunction and self-destructive tendencies of it, the money and politics of it.
A time when it really was just pure sensory bliss.
For me, there is no other artist that sums that time up in my life like David Bowie. Songs like Starman, Rebel Rebel, Changes, Golden Years, Jean Genie, Young Americans and Fame were all over the radio stations and became the soundtrack of my single digit youth. I'd often sit in my room on weekend nights at age 10 and 11 and pretend to be a DJ with my own radio station on my old red plastic record player and I'd look so forward to playing those songs in my "rotation".
There were other artists and songs that stand out, to be sure, but there was something so magnetic about Bowies songs. And in my pre teen years, getting my first look at the visual world of Ziggy Stardust or Alladin Sane. . . well I, and my hair, at least for the next 20 years, would never be the same again. : )
And I am reminded how at my first cooking job at an Italian Restaurant the gregarious dishwasher named Rudi who was literally straight off a boat from Italy, and who seemed so out of place and spoke so little English, warmed up to me and my flame red hair right away and pretty much from his first day just called me, "Bowie".
And no doubt, due in great part to that chameleon aspect of Bowies public image, I've also changed personas over the years. Reinvention is how I have always thought of it but, when one phase of my life ended, I tend to move on completely and reinvent the outer/social/expressive me to suit my new environment. Keeping the best o the past incarnations and leaving all of the rest behind. Those days are far behind now too in all likelihood but, with his passing, I am reminded of it all again.
This is one of my favorite quotes from David Bowie. It has served me well for years in many facets of my life and perhaps never more so than now. . .
"I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me." - David Bowie
And then, this past Wednesday, I received a book in the mail that I have been waiting awhile for. I know many of you probably are not very interested in the world of comics today but, if you'll bare with me, this may be one of the most wonderful art books, period, I have ever seen.
In 2006 a friend of mine, and employee at the coffeehouse I owned then, handed me a comic and said,"I just think you might like this." That comic was the first issue of "Mouse Guard" by David Petersen.
I had not read or even considered a comic book for I don't know how long and was not prepared for the effect it would have on me. The art is, as I think the cover of this hardbound collected edition alone shows, simply amazing.
It inspired me
It lifted my soul
It righted a listing vessel which was, in many ways, my whole life at that particular point in time and it steered me back towards the possibilities and wonder of my youth.
It was just the first of many comics I would come to love over the next few years (comics today are such a far cry from what I grew up with!) and, whenever things felt a little dark or I lost sight of the connection between those early days of imagination and where I was at the time, I'd just pull out those issues and let them take me away again.
Mouse Guard reminded me of my love of Redwall as a child and brought back a sense of purpose to the world I wanted to create as an adult. And, it led, indirectly and with many other little factors and influences, to what I create now.
To this world I live in now.
Never happier
Never more certain
Though, these past few days, a bit of sadness. . . missing Mr. Bowie and realizing time is always and endlessly marching forward for us all. . .
“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming” ― David Bowie
xo
nicolas
It is almost impossible for me to imagine the world we live in without David Bowie. He's just always been there. . . the thin white duke. . . the man who fell to Earth. . . Major Tom.
He taught us to dance under the serious moonlight. . .
It's taken me three days to figure out what I'd like to say because I wanted to offer something meaningful and heartfelt. Something to sum up his place in my own world. What I can think of is this. . . Growing up we all had this small window of time when, for most of us, music was just this magical thing that was a part of our world. Before we knew of radio stations, MTV, Concert tours, the business of it, the sometimes disfunction and self-destructive tendencies of it, the money and politics of it.
A time when it really was just pure sensory bliss.
For me, there is no other artist that sums that time up in my life like David Bowie. Songs like Starman, Rebel Rebel, Changes, Golden Years, Jean Genie, Young Americans and Fame were all over the radio stations and became the soundtrack of my single digit youth. I'd often sit in my room on weekend nights at age 10 and 11 and pretend to be a DJ with my own radio station on my old red plastic record player and I'd look so forward to playing those songs in my "rotation".
There were other artists and songs that stand out, to be sure, but there was something so magnetic about Bowies songs. And in my pre teen years, getting my first look at the visual world of Ziggy Stardust or Alladin Sane. . . well I, and my hair, at least for the next 20 years, would never be the same again. : )
And I am reminded how at my first cooking job at an Italian Restaurant the gregarious dishwasher named Rudi who was literally straight off a boat from Italy, and who seemed so out of place and spoke so little English, warmed up to me and my flame red hair right away and pretty much from his first day just called me, "Bowie".
And no doubt, due in great part to that chameleon aspect of Bowies public image, I've also changed personas over the years. Reinvention is how I have always thought of it but, when one phase of my life ended, I tend to move on completely and reinvent the outer/social/expressive me to suit my new environment. Keeping the best o the past incarnations and leaving all of the rest behind. Those days are far behind now too in all likelihood but, with his passing, I am reminded of it all again.
This is one of my favorite quotes from David Bowie. It has served me well for years in many facets of my life and perhaps never more so than now. . .
"I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me." - David Bowie
And then, this past Wednesday, I received a book in the mail that I have been waiting awhile for. I know many of you probably are not very interested in the world of comics today but, if you'll bare with me, this may be one of the most wonderful art books, period, I have ever seen.
In 2006 a friend of mine, and employee at the coffeehouse I owned then, handed me a comic and said,"I just think you might like this." That comic was the first issue of "Mouse Guard" by David Petersen.
I had not read or even considered a comic book for I don't know how long and was not prepared for the effect it would have on me. The art is, as I think the cover of this hardbound collected edition alone shows, simply amazing.
 |
| If you were ever a fan of Redwall or any animated animal series, DO check this out!! |
 |
| David Petersen draws, colors and writes the entire series. |
It inspired me
It lifted my soul
It righted a listing vessel which was, in many ways, my whole life at that particular point in time and it steered me back towards the possibilities and wonder of my youth.
It was just the first of many comics I would come to love over the next few years (comics today are such a far cry from what I grew up with!) and, whenever things felt a little dark or I lost sight of the connection between those early days of imagination and where I was at the time, I'd just pull out those issues and let them take me away again.
Mouse Guard reminded me of my love of Redwall as a child and brought back a sense of purpose to the world I wanted to create as an adult. And, it led, indirectly and with many other little factors and influences, to what I create now.
To this world I live in now.
Never happier
Never more certain
Though, these past few days, a bit of sadness. . . missing Mr. Bowie and realizing time is always and endlessly marching forward for us all. . .
“Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming” ― David Bowie
xo
nicolas
Sunday, February 16, 2014
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
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
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Paracosm
It has been awhile since my last post and the reason is singular and simple. Writing does take my soul deeper into my own experience and, recently, in writing some unrelated thoughts to answer someone else's questions about my life as a maker-of-things, I came to a deeper revelation about that very part of myself. . . and so I have taken the time to really mull it over internally and explore it fully before writing about it here. And this is what I have discovered. . .
If there is one thing that most artists I know have in common who have been able to create a successful art business, and even most people I know who are TRULY happy with their day to day lives, it is that what they live, what they are creating and what they love in life is a direct link to something from their childhoods and that untainted past. Some part of them that never quite went away and fuels, in some way, their life pursuits today.
On the extreme end of those childhood experiences, there is the idea of the creation of a paracosm which is defined as: a detailed imaginary world or fantasy world, involving humans and/or animals, or perhaps even fantasy or alien creations. Commonly having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is often developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time: months or even years.
I had many such worlds in my childhood.
Nothing I played, drew or created was just a game but had back-story and detail and a running dialogue within. From my imagining of being alive in ancient Egyptian times or in the Roman Empire, Pompeii, Alexandria, Druid times, Viking times etc and on down to my creation of little towns and worlds each year with the model railroads I built under our holiday tree.
Everything had a place, a story, a reason.
When I sit and create the things you see in my shops, in all three of my shops, they are, in no uncertain terms, a direct link to my childhood experiences and explorations of the world around me.
As I grew into my teens and 20's I, like most, felt a need to become more "grown up" and set off into the "real world" to find my way. . . this was, unarguably, the greatest mistake I ever made. One that I plan to rectify for the rest of my days.
And I truly believe that the "mistake" part of that was the desire to leave that childhood past far behind. Of course, in my quiet, alone moments, I allowed myself to indulge and revisit it at times but, as my world became cluttered with people and social events and owning businesses and adult life. . . I left more and more of it there.
I will, in the near future, reveal more of my own paracosm and try to show how it formed me and how it has come full circle. How I believe that life is indeed cyclical and how we often allow the negative aspects, people and events to remain with us along our path while discarding the most integral parts of our soul which are meant to help us as we grow into our later years because they wre there at the foundation of who we are.
The thing that is often NOT talked about with paracosms is how so many adults are creating them daily in what we like to think of as our adult world. This life is. for lack of a better definition, ALL fantasy. All paracosm. It is US who creates the place, the story and the reasons for anything in our worlds. And if you can step back and allow that one idea to sink in and become truth, then you may recognize how the choosing of it is always up to you.
Whatever you subscribe to is indeed part of your created paracosm. Career pursuits, ideals of success, ideals of relationship, security and contentment. . . even the dialogues we desire to hear, the way we fantasize about one thing or another. . . we create all of those too. Do they work? I can't speak for anyone but me. Except to say that whatever you believe in is strictly YOUR creation. And often we are so caught up in wanting to "belong" in a union, a community or group, an accepted circle of some sort that we allow too much outside information and influence to shape our world within.
I tried many adult paracosms over the last 20 years that just did not fit because the inherent landscape of my childhood was simply too strong to be changed that much.
So, when I began to return to it and allowed myself to roam within it freely again just a few years ago, I immediately recognized that what I sought, what I desired and what made me happiest had been there all along. . . I began creating the creatures and worlds that were alive in my thriving childhood imaginings. I allowed them all to come back and through that indulgence I suddenly began connecting with others who found them appealing for whatever reason.
The more I allowed myself to dwell within that paracosm again, the happier I became.
The more of the "adult life" I left behind, selling my business, moving away from the grind of the city, leaving happy hours and social commitments and the larger community behind, the happier I found myself being as well.
My world of many and much became a world of few and little and allowed me the space to grow into that vast landscape again. It requires a lot of space. . . a lot of solitude. . . and a lot of internal silence.
I do believe paracosms are truly meant to often be singular experiences. But for children, that never seems to present much of a problem does it? For me, as that child, that alone time was so precious and desired over almost any activity involving others. I had friends. More than I can remember but only a few who were able to occupy the landscape I created in my deepest imagination.
It is funny how, as adults, so many take such a strong dislike to being alone. And maybe, just maybe, that is because we are not happy with the paracosm we have created as an adult. If it requires others for happiness, it is not deep and true enough. There is nothing wrong with wanting to share what is within. . . but that will follow the act of creation. . . not the other way around. Find and know yourself completely first and THEN others can follow safely in your footsteps. YOU are the explorer of the landscape within. The better you know it, the more likely others can traverse it with you in safety and
the more likely you will attract the right people to be a part of it.
I had that wrong for years too.
And of course, for me, this is all ultimately about creativity. One of my favorite writers once said that "if you want to be a writer you just have to be crazy enough to sit down and let the words bang out."
Often people come to creative pursuits from the perspective of how they can make a living doing the thing they want to pursue. . . but this is really backwards thinking. . . the creator must create first and find it within . . . it must come from the places deep within that are the storehouses of the inherent.
Those who try to "create to sell" rarely find success and almost never find lasting happiness or fulfillment within that pursuit.I tried that as well and guess what. . . it never worked.
I am glad I found my way back. Reconnected with the child within who had been waiting all this time for me to finally understand that HE is who I am. He was, after all, there first. He was born, not of a plan or a constructed architecture of hope. . . not of a reinvention that I contrived or designed. . . but of something so deep and pure that it simply can not be ignored.
I shall never set him aside for anything again.
So think about the idea of your lifetime thus far and the paracosms you may have once created and continue to create now.
Do you see the paracosms of your yesterdays and today?
Do you find it all to flow in a cyclical way too?
Do you see the pure essence of YOU in the child you were?
Does he/she still have a foothold in your adult world?
Are you kind to him/her when he/she appears?
I hope so.
There will likely never be a truer "you".
-nicolas
If there is one thing that most artists I know have in common who have been able to create a successful art business, and even most people I know who are TRULY happy with their day to day lives, it is that what they live, what they are creating and what they love in life is a direct link to something from their childhoods and that untainted past. Some part of them that never quite went away and fuels, in some way, their life pursuits today.
On the extreme end of those childhood experiences, there is the idea of the creation of a paracosm which is defined as: a detailed imaginary world or fantasy world, involving humans and/or animals, or perhaps even fantasy or alien creations. Commonly having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is often developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time: months or even years.
I had many such worlds in my childhood.
Nothing I played, drew or created was just a game but had back-story and detail and a running dialogue within. From my imagining of being alive in ancient Egyptian times or in the Roman Empire, Pompeii, Alexandria, Druid times, Viking times etc and on down to my creation of little towns and worlds each year with the model railroads I built under our holiday tree.
Everything had a place, a story, a reason.
When I sit and create the things you see in my shops, in all three of my shops, they are, in no uncertain terms, a direct link to my childhood experiences and explorations of the world around me.
As I grew into my teens and 20's I, like most, felt a need to become more "grown up" and set off into the "real world" to find my way. . . this was, unarguably, the greatest mistake I ever made. One that I plan to rectify for the rest of my days.
And I truly believe that the "mistake" part of that was the desire to leave that childhood past far behind. Of course, in my quiet, alone moments, I allowed myself to indulge and revisit it at times but, as my world became cluttered with people and social events and owning businesses and adult life. . . I left more and more of it there.
I will, in the near future, reveal more of my own paracosm and try to show how it formed me and how it has come full circle. How I believe that life is indeed cyclical and how we often allow the negative aspects, people and events to remain with us along our path while discarding the most integral parts of our soul which are meant to help us as we grow into our later years because they wre there at the foundation of who we are.
The thing that is often NOT talked about with paracosms is how so many adults are creating them daily in what we like to think of as our adult world. This life is. for lack of a better definition, ALL fantasy. All paracosm. It is US who creates the place, the story and the reasons for anything in our worlds. And if you can step back and allow that one idea to sink in and become truth, then you may recognize how the choosing of it is always up to you.
Whatever you subscribe to is indeed part of your created paracosm. Career pursuits, ideals of success, ideals of relationship, security and contentment. . . even the dialogues we desire to hear, the way we fantasize about one thing or another. . . we create all of those too. Do they work? I can't speak for anyone but me. Except to say that whatever you believe in is strictly YOUR creation. And often we are so caught up in wanting to "belong" in a union, a community or group, an accepted circle of some sort that we allow too much outside information and influence to shape our world within.
I tried many adult paracosms over the last 20 years that just did not fit because the inherent landscape of my childhood was simply too strong to be changed that much.
So, when I began to return to it and allowed myself to roam within it freely again just a few years ago, I immediately recognized that what I sought, what I desired and what made me happiest had been there all along. . . I began creating the creatures and worlds that were alive in my thriving childhood imaginings. I allowed them all to come back and through that indulgence I suddenly began connecting with others who found them appealing for whatever reason.
The more I allowed myself to dwell within that paracosm again, the happier I became.
The more of the "adult life" I left behind, selling my business, moving away from the grind of the city, leaving happy hours and social commitments and the larger community behind, the happier I found myself being as well.
My world of many and much became a world of few and little and allowed me the space to grow into that vast landscape again. It requires a lot of space. . . a lot of solitude. . . and a lot of internal silence.
I do believe paracosms are truly meant to often be singular experiences. But for children, that never seems to present much of a problem does it? For me, as that child, that alone time was so precious and desired over almost any activity involving others. I had friends. More than I can remember but only a few who were able to occupy the landscape I created in my deepest imagination.
It is funny how, as adults, so many take such a strong dislike to being alone. And maybe, just maybe, that is because we are not happy with the paracosm we have created as an adult. If it requires others for happiness, it is not deep and true enough. There is nothing wrong with wanting to share what is within. . . but that will follow the act of creation. . . not the other way around. Find and know yourself completely first and THEN others can follow safely in your footsteps. YOU are the explorer of the landscape within. The better you know it, the more likely others can traverse it with you in safety and
the more likely you will attract the right people to be a part of it.
I had that wrong for years too.
And of course, for me, this is all ultimately about creativity. One of my favorite writers once said that "if you want to be a writer you just have to be crazy enough to sit down and let the words bang out."
Often people come to creative pursuits from the perspective of how they can make a living doing the thing they want to pursue. . . but this is really backwards thinking. . . the creator must create first and find it within . . . it must come from the places deep within that are the storehouses of the inherent.
Those who try to "create to sell" rarely find success and almost never find lasting happiness or fulfillment within that pursuit.I tried that as well and guess what. . . it never worked.
I am glad I found my way back. Reconnected with the child within who had been waiting all this time for me to finally understand that HE is who I am. He was, after all, there first. He was born, not of a plan or a constructed architecture of hope. . . not of a reinvention that I contrived or designed. . . but of something so deep and pure that it simply can not be ignored.
I shall never set him aside for anything again.
So think about the idea of your lifetime thus far and the paracosms you may have once created and continue to create now.
Do you see the paracosms of your yesterdays and today?
Do you find it all to flow in a cyclical way too?
Do you see the pure essence of YOU in the child you were?
Does he/she still have a foothold in your adult world?
Are you kind to him/her when he/she appears?
I hope so.
There will likely never be a truer "you".
-nicolas
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
After the Pause. . .
When it comes to starting or maintaining blogs, more than anything else, the one thing I I hear people say about starting one is, "I just want to wait til I know exactly what I want to say."
Which is when I turn and say, "It's more important to just sit down at the computer and write and let others decide what is of value and what is worth reading. . . you can always delete later"
It comes down to fear, of course.
But there are times, once the writing is started, to pause and think this over too. Not out of fear but out of a desire for more succinct expression. And, for me, the first three weeks of 2013 have been that.
I could keep on going with just random thoughts, creative inspirations, mystic meanderings and poetic expression and that, of course, would be just fine as they are all part of me. But I am finding myself, on this rising side of 40, wanting to be a bit more succinct and to lay down the stories and thoughts that have taken me thru my life to this place. To a life I have CREATED just as I have created all thru my years and will for the rest of them, if I am able.
So first, what is "this place?"
It would be easy to say the "place" is a very small town on the Oregon Coast I chose because it allows me to live and work as an artist with little or no worry about needing to make more money to survive or combating the frantic and disconnected vibe of a city.
But it would be more succinct to say that this "place" is the whole of my inner existence. Much of which I , as many of us do, tried to shake off in my young adult years thru my early 30's. under the guise of "growing up".
I feel fortunate now to have been allowed the gift of seeing myself clearly again. To have recognized that the only people I have met who are truly happy souls are those that are doing what they love. Those who are living their entire lives creatively and choosing their actions each day with thought and consideration to how it does, or does not, facilitate that dream.
It's not the creativity of painting or writing or sculpting. . . it's the deeper creative force of living.
I am fortunate to have come to this place and time and to have believed in it, and in myself, enough to walk away from the rest and to create this world of my own imagining. To trust what feels right and what opportunity seems to be presented along the way.
I also have left so much behind.
This life includes few people by nature of the necessity of so much internal and uncluttered time .
Few material "things" that are not true needs and only truly soulful luxuries.
It is not about acquisition or compiling something for the unforeseeable future.
It is about the one thing I know I have to believe and trust in.
The greatest privilege that any of us have
Living FULLY today
My direction then, for this blog, is to tell the story of how I got to this place again. The cycle from childhood to adulthood that took me right back to what I always was. A maker of things. And how I came to believe again in it and to create a life built from that instead of from what we are taught life is supposed to be.
If I am lucky, I will find the words to put even a piece of it into some sensible structure. . . and I will hope that it helps someone else out there to have the courage to step into who they are and to leave the rest behind as well. . .
Allowing them to come home again and to live their todays as fully as they can too.
Here's to hoping that is you. . . today. . . and always.
nicolas
Which is when I turn and say, "It's more important to just sit down at the computer and write and let others decide what is of value and what is worth reading. . . you can always delete later"
It comes down to fear, of course.
But there are times, once the writing is started, to pause and think this over too. Not out of fear but out of a desire for more succinct expression. And, for me, the first three weeks of 2013 have been that.
I could keep on going with just random thoughts, creative inspirations, mystic meanderings and poetic expression and that, of course, would be just fine as they are all part of me. But I am finding myself, on this rising side of 40, wanting to be a bit more succinct and to lay down the stories and thoughts that have taken me thru my life to this place. To a life I have CREATED just as I have created all thru my years and will for the rest of them, if I am able.
So first, what is "this place?"
It would be easy to say the "place" is a very small town on the Oregon Coast I chose because it allows me to live and work as an artist with little or no worry about needing to make more money to survive or combating the frantic and disconnected vibe of a city.
But it would be more succinct to say that this "place" is the whole of my inner existence. Much of which I , as many of us do, tried to shake off in my young adult years thru my early 30's. under the guise of "growing up".
I feel fortunate now to have been allowed the gift of seeing myself clearly again. To have recognized that the only people I have met who are truly happy souls are those that are doing what they love. Those who are living their entire lives creatively and choosing their actions each day with thought and consideration to how it does, or does not, facilitate that dream.
It's not the creativity of painting or writing or sculpting. . . it's the deeper creative force of living.
I am fortunate to have come to this place and time and to have believed in it, and in myself, enough to walk away from the rest and to create this world of my own imagining. To trust what feels right and what opportunity seems to be presented along the way.
I also have left so much behind.
This life includes few people by nature of the necessity of so much internal and uncluttered time .
Few material "things" that are not true needs and only truly soulful luxuries.
It is not about acquisition or compiling something for the unforeseeable future.
It is about the one thing I know I have to believe and trust in.
The greatest privilege that any of us have
Living FULLY today
My direction then, for this blog, is to tell the story of how I got to this place again. The cycle from childhood to adulthood that took me right back to what I always was. A maker of things. And how I came to believe again in it and to create a life built from that instead of from what we are taught life is supposed to be.
If I am lucky, I will find the words to put even a piece of it into some sensible structure. . . and I will hope that it helps someone else out there to have the courage to step into who they are and to leave the rest behind as well. . .
Allowing them to come home again and to live their todays as fully as they can too.
Here's to hoping that is you. . . today. . . and always.
nicolas
Friday, September 28, 2012
Warhol's Soup Cans
I am listening to a podcast about an event in the art world 50 years ago. That being the day when Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup can paintings first were exhibited in an LA art gallery.
I do not want to rehash the story, it has already been written to death. What amused me were the words of one elderly art critic who was part of the scene at the time and, clearly of the old school, went so far as to blame Andy Warhol for changing all that was "good" about art and taking the value and structure out of it, ushering in an era when "anyone could call themselves an artist" and it would be ok.
I have to laugh at the audacity of that statement. To look at the era of abstract expressionism that was dominating the art scene at that time and to read some of the lofty praise thrown about, even going so far as to compare some of the gallery works to artistic acts of "shamanism". . . is just as ridiculous to me.
Do not get me wrong. Jackson Pollock is among my favorite painters of all time. Though Willem de Kooning is not. Yet many see them both as almost one and the same. They bantered back and forth about who was the greatest artist of their time, often in very choreographed and rehearsed dialogues and then, out of the blue, were affronted when someone upstaged them and the art world was turned upside down.
What seems clear to me is that the establishment of the art world did not like that it's end time, as with all great empires, came too soon. It has rarely been suggested that perhaps the changing times meant the public simply grew tired of the reign of artistic elitism and the same rehashing of lines, geometry and colors that people later accused Warhol of in his pop work.
If anything, it seems to me that he exposed the art world for the frail, hulking skeleton it was.
Just as I , as a child, feared the 4 story tall T-Rex skeleton at the Carnegie museum in Pittsburgh. . . even knowing it was just old bones, it's size, stature and ferocity overwhelmed me. As the art word did, and still can do, to many.
I cannot disagree with the critic's dismay with the word "artist" being so easily thrown about. It has become increasingly annoying, not solely because of it's own rampant and nonchalant use, but because there is usually little explanation beneathe the word to give it meaning for each individual. While this is not necessarily a discredit or disservice to other 'artists" it IS a discredit to the individual using the word so loosely.
There are skills that accompany any working profession. The profession or pursuit of an artist is no different. I do believe that everyone has creative miracles within them but often the vagueness of the word, in it's context, is what makes it so for the person who calls themselves an artist.
A "laborer" is another common term of similar ilk. It does describe a large general swath of the work force. But, there are hundreds of jobs under that cloak, each with it's own varied skill set, that are worth taking pride in.
And I DO see art, in any form, as a labor.
Not a high and holy calling that deserves lofty praise.
A simple and austere blue collar path.
One that requires a lifetime of patience, investment and spirited input
I call myself a maker-of-things
I work in polymer clay, paint and miniature scales.
I go to work on my art EVERY day
Though unlike the artists of DeKooning's era, I do not sit around drab bars at night and espouse my genius and my soul searching, gut wrenching art. I have no interest in that bullshit.
As a child of the 80's I felt far more in touch with Warhol. His creations were more immediate than the art I found in many galleries and high art publications. It was, if I had to choose one word, accessible. And that, in my own opinion, is what all great art should be.
Looking back 50 years, I believe Andy Warhol opened doors for future generations in many ways.
If not in the elitist art world which, though no longer an intimidating T Rex, does still thrive and exist, then in the world that came to realize that it is the viewer, and only the viewer, who truly determines the worth of any object.
There should be no turning back the hands of time
I applaud the abstract artists for their time as I do Warhol for his.
This then, is a new time
A new world of art is created every single day
And as another icon of the pop era said, quoting a 19th century poet:
We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams. . .
~nicolas
I do not want to rehash the story, it has already been written to death. What amused me were the words of one elderly art critic who was part of the scene at the time and, clearly of the old school, went so far as to blame Andy Warhol for changing all that was "good" about art and taking the value and structure out of it, ushering in an era when "anyone could call themselves an artist" and it would be ok.
I have to laugh at the audacity of that statement. To look at the era of abstract expressionism that was dominating the art scene at that time and to read some of the lofty praise thrown about, even going so far as to compare some of the gallery works to artistic acts of "shamanism". . . is just as ridiculous to me.
Do not get me wrong. Jackson Pollock is among my favorite painters of all time. Though Willem de Kooning is not. Yet many see them both as almost one and the same. They bantered back and forth about who was the greatest artist of their time, often in very choreographed and rehearsed dialogues and then, out of the blue, were affronted when someone upstaged them and the art world was turned upside down.
What seems clear to me is that the establishment of the art world did not like that it's end time, as with all great empires, came too soon. It has rarely been suggested that perhaps the changing times meant the public simply grew tired of the reign of artistic elitism and the same rehashing of lines, geometry and colors that people later accused Warhol of in his pop work.
If anything, it seems to me that he exposed the art world for the frail, hulking skeleton it was.
Just as I , as a child, feared the 4 story tall T-Rex skeleton at the Carnegie museum in Pittsburgh. . . even knowing it was just old bones, it's size, stature and ferocity overwhelmed me. As the art word did, and still can do, to many.
I cannot disagree with the critic's dismay with the word "artist" being so easily thrown about. It has become increasingly annoying, not solely because of it's own rampant and nonchalant use, but because there is usually little explanation beneathe the word to give it meaning for each individual. While this is not necessarily a discredit or disservice to other 'artists" it IS a discredit to the individual using the word so loosely.
There are skills that accompany any working profession. The profession or pursuit of an artist is no different. I do believe that everyone has creative miracles within them but often the vagueness of the word, in it's context, is what makes it so for the person who calls themselves an artist.
A "laborer" is another common term of similar ilk. It does describe a large general swath of the work force. But, there are hundreds of jobs under that cloak, each with it's own varied skill set, that are worth taking pride in.
And I DO see art, in any form, as a labor.
Not a high and holy calling that deserves lofty praise.
A simple and austere blue collar path.
One that requires a lifetime of patience, investment and spirited input
I call myself a maker-of-things
I work in polymer clay, paint and miniature scales.
I go to work on my art EVERY day
Though unlike the artists of DeKooning's era, I do not sit around drab bars at night and espouse my genius and my soul searching, gut wrenching art. I have no interest in that bullshit.
As a child of the 80's I felt far more in touch with Warhol. His creations were more immediate than the art I found in many galleries and high art publications. It was, if I had to choose one word, accessible. And that, in my own opinion, is what all great art should be.
Looking back 50 years, I believe Andy Warhol opened doors for future generations in many ways.
If not in the elitist art world which, though no longer an intimidating T Rex, does still thrive and exist, then in the world that came to realize that it is the viewer, and only the viewer, who truly determines the worth of any object.
There should be no turning back the hands of time
I applaud the abstract artists for their time as I do Warhol for his.
This then, is a new time
A new world of art is created every single day
And as another icon of the pop era said, quoting a 19th century poet:
We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams. . .
~nicolas
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Playing with Passion
I constantly get asked where I find the time to create such a variety of items in such a wide range of mediums. In addition to the three online shops I also write music and poetry too. And, yes, I make time for all of it.
The truth, as closely as I can tell it is this. Since I was a young boy, creating has been the most important thing in my world in one way or another. What people get to "see", through my online shops, is just the tail end of that lifelong process.
The shops have only been open for two years. But the creativity and passion behind them are a force that has guided me for the last 40 years.
I try new ideas all the time because I have, thru that 40 years, eliminated that angst artists often feel about how "good" their work is. I know when I make something for the tenth time it will be many times better than the first iteration. But I know that my calling for creating is going to make sure that my first iteration is definitely setting the bar high.
If I have one true "passion" in life it is to make things. Now, the list of things I love or have deemed as a passion thru the years is quite long. Cooking, golf, travel, history, mythology, ice hockey, Zen study, building tree houses etc etc from ages 10 to 40 I filled my "spare time" with all sorts of pursuits. . . and they have all served me well.
But there from the start, before and through them all, was the desire to make things.
This is the inherent quality I talk about a lot.
Figuring out what is at it's core is a must for each person to be truly happy in life.
And I can almost guarantee you that your true passion somehow, someway, ties into who you were at a very young age.
It will manifest in a variety of ways throughout the years.
But it will have a raw and undeniable form that you will recognize.
And that form will not be based on how much money it can make you or how many other people will relate or understand it. It may be the one thing that leaves you feeling so very much alone. . . that too, in my opinion, can be a beautiful and healthy thing.
Creating your life, creating the happiness you seek, is inevitably tied to things we have always known in life.
How we can best manifest that in a daily form is ours to discover. . .
And then, when we do, it is up to us to change our lives to accommodate it fully.
So, how do I manage to create so many things?
I simply NEED to. . . more than I need many things that other people fill their days with.
More than I need any of those things I used to list as my "other" passions. . . there just is not time and, if I want to succeed in creating a life from creating, I have to be willing to let some things go
So far, so good. . .
I have 40 years of history and passion behind me every step of the way. :)
nicolas
The truth, as closely as I can tell it is this. Since I was a young boy, creating has been the most important thing in my world in one way or another. What people get to "see", through my online shops, is just the tail end of that lifelong process.
The shops have only been open for two years. But the creativity and passion behind them are a force that has guided me for the last 40 years.
I try new ideas all the time because I have, thru that 40 years, eliminated that angst artists often feel about how "good" their work is. I know when I make something for the tenth time it will be many times better than the first iteration. But I know that my calling for creating is going to make sure that my first iteration is definitely setting the bar high.
If I have one true "passion" in life it is to make things. Now, the list of things I love or have deemed as a passion thru the years is quite long. Cooking, golf, travel, history, mythology, ice hockey, Zen study, building tree houses etc etc from ages 10 to 40 I filled my "spare time" with all sorts of pursuits. . . and they have all served me well.
But there from the start, before and through them all, was the desire to make things.
This is the inherent quality I talk about a lot.
Figuring out what is at it's core is a must for each person to be truly happy in life.
And I can almost guarantee you that your true passion somehow, someway, ties into who you were at a very young age.
It will manifest in a variety of ways throughout the years.
But it will have a raw and undeniable form that you will recognize.
And that form will not be based on how much money it can make you or how many other people will relate or understand it. It may be the one thing that leaves you feeling so very much alone. . . that too, in my opinion, can be a beautiful and healthy thing.
Creating your life, creating the happiness you seek, is inevitably tied to things we have always known in life.
How we can best manifest that in a daily form is ours to discover. . .
And then, when we do, it is up to us to change our lives to accommodate it fully.
So, how do I manage to create so many things?
I simply NEED to. . . more than I need many things that other people fill their days with.
More than I need any of those things I used to list as my "other" passions. . . there just is not time and, if I want to succeed in creating a life from creating, I have to be willing to let some things go
So far, so good. . .
I have 40 years of history and passion behind me every step of the way. :)
nicolas
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Three Hearts in the Happy Ending Machine - #2
Here are my September selections of work samples from my three Etsy shops.
My Antarctica
"From the Inside Out"
Photographic Construction 8 x 10
Bewilder and Pine
Miniature Onegai Jizo Statue
Shadow of the Sphinx
Full Ibis Form Djehuty Votive Statue
Thank you for looking!
Whatever it is you are seeking in this world, I hope you find it in everything that you see!!
nicolas
My Antarctica
"From the Inside Out"
Photographic Construction 8 x 10
Bewilder and Pine
Miniature Onegai Jizo Statue
Shadow of the Sphinx
Full Ibis Form Djehuty Votive Statue
Thank you for looking!
Whatever it is you are seeking in this world, I hope you find it in everything that you see!!
nicolas
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Spirituality in Miniature
Why do we do what we do?
I am not sure I ever asked my self that question until I hit my mid thirties. I always enjoyed my work. From chef to coffeehouse owner to musician to recording engineer to multimedia performer. Everything I set out to do in my life has been, for the most part, a joyful experience.
Each brought new insight and understanding to my world and each has imparted something to the creative path I am on now.
When I think about what I do now, the reason I make miniatures, why I create little worlds and spiritual descansos and dabble in whatever suits me on any given day, I see it is directly related to the days of my childhood.
There are, in play, rituals as profound as any other we may experience in adulthood. Ones that set us on a path that, if it is true to our nature, will remain with us forever. As I began to ask the questions of "why" in my life, all the answers seemed to point back to those early days. And, the more I realized this, the less satisfied I was with the things I pursued as my "work".
When I was 12, and my mother decided it would be ok for me to have my first true model railroad,
I had no idea what lay ahead of me. I was instantly consumed with the planning and layout and creation of the miniature "world" beneathe our holiday tree. It came naturally to me. Just as I had done my whole childhood, I created stories and sub-plots for what went on in my little train town.
It became a ritual to bring the town to life every year and create new stories within it by adding new features. I started earlier, often planning the setup as early as my school summer vacation and I left the village and train up later each year.
The art of miniature from railroads to dollhouses to terrariums to keepsakes allows for the creator and the buyer to indulge in this highly spiritual ritual. The time spent on such things is meditative and relaxing and allows for the creator to "get away" from the other life they may lead.
We can create ideal places and can pour our innermost dreams and desires for how we wish to live our own lives into them. We make a ritual out of the creation and care of such places and, indeed, the way we tend them over time often runs parallel to the way we tend to our other, adult lives. And sometimes, when that falls out of balance on the imagination side, it is a sign that we should look at changing that "real world" around us to reflect what it is we are missing.
So yes, for me the creation of miniature is truly about ritual and a spiritual application of the work it takes to make such things.
Ritual combines repetition and a certain spiritual or religious observance . . . and both of these are traits that, I believe, are common in many of us during our childhood years.
We cultivate ritual in our games and in our imagination. Those worlds we create are what keep us aligned with our true inner voices. They speak through the roles we create and adopt within those adventures, It stands to reason then that I also believe one of the things we cast aside all too often in our desire to be "adults" is that ritual of wonder.But it is never far away.
Life offers every opportunity to find or create such places again.
Along the way we do need reminders though.
We need little votives marking possibility
Miniatures may act like polestars.
They may be signposts
They can keep us on track
I have never been more content than I am right now in my life. I feel completely at ease with what I do and where I am going with it. In between childhood and this moment, I definitely lost my way at times. But it is funny how, along the way, there would always come a reminder. . .
A model railroad catalog
An artist working in miniature
Walking through a toy store or hobby shop
Sitting in the silence and ritual of a monastery
Visiting old, forgotten towns that seem to linger in simpler days
These were my polestars
They kept me close to the path
Tugged at my childhood love of ritual
Once again became my religion
They brought me back home
And I will never leave again. . .
nicolas hall
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Any Given Path We Choose
I, and so many more people I know, are certain that their life's "spiritual path" lies along the lines of creativity. In this day and age when it is becoming ever more realistic to entertain the idea of making a living from ones creative work, I think it is important to say a little something about the reconciliation between the two.
For one, I see a lot of people give up way too quickly on their creative goals, both as a means of making part, or all of a living from it, and in terms of exploring it as a spiritual path. I suspect this is, in great part, due to what my Zen teacher used to say all the time. "Anything that you truly love or love to do will be lonely."
Creative work usually demands we spend time alone and many people simply are not good at this.
So I would just like to share a quick thought on these ideas above. Just my own perspective.
I am fortunate in this way to have always craved my time alone. It's a preference I developed very young and though it came from a myriad of factors, some just circumstance and some created, it is something I treasure for all of those reasons now.
The spiritual part of my creativity is easy for me to accept. I have been creating since I can remember and there is nothing in the world that makes me feel more at peace, more at one within my own life and more true to who I am. It can take many forms and, in truth, I have been working in fields that always allowed some creative outlet since I was 19.
Now, that spiritual exploration is separate in every way from creating with an idea of it being considered "art" or being "marketable". The two do not coexist in most ways. Any idea of what art is is a creation outside of the spirit. A marking of the time and place and a mix of history and relevance but not at all to be linked with the spirit of creating. For me, this makes it easy to see my creative work as my spiritual path. It is also why I work in so many different disciplines.
Making music, for years, was how I dealt with the world around me. A therapy undoubtedly. . . but not my creative spiritual path. When I realized that, I began to try other disciplines. Photography, painting, writing. . . of course, they were all there all along. But the spiritual path has to come from something deeper. More from your landscape of childhood and early experiences.
That path was reserved for the creating of worlds and sinking into them. . . BELIEVING in them. . . that is at the very heart of who I am. It is how I live my life daily. And it has always been that way since I can recall.
As a child, empty cardboard boxes became houses and cars for action figures who not only were part of a world with identities and lives of their own, but who were integral to my own. Not separate.
I became part of the sports teams I followed through my own invented games and ways of playing those games all on my own. For the most part, I could not share them. . . nor did I want to. They were a part of me. A spiritual part I realize now.
But then I just played because it came naturally. As it does to most of us in childhood.
So, after 20 years of playing the "adult world" games and never feeling the same satisfaction, I began working towards merging it all again.
I am just two years into this process and nowhere near where I want to be though, yes, I do primarily create for a living now. I work at home and spend countless hours in my own imagination once again.
But in both the potential for that creative life and for it's spiritual depth, I am just scratching the surface.
Everything I create for sale has a story, Each story has layers to go before I reach the depth I want to achieve with my creations. Also, the level at which I execute each piece is just beginning to grow. This ideal is also what keeps me from ever being bored. There is always more to learn and deeper levels to go to. And this is another area where many often fall short and give up.
There is such depth in routine and in working through repetition that cannot be found any other way. Especially in the spiritual realm. Much like people who travel, bouncing from place to place for a day here a day there and never settling in and really taking in a culture or a locale. It is still wonderful to travel but it lacks the depth of understanding that comes only with investment of time.
I feel like the transition back to this creative, all inclusive world was somewhat easy for me.
I was fortunate in this way too.
I have always believed in what I do.
In the things I make.
In what I have to offer.
That has come with the 20 plus years swimming in the adult world. And the time invested in places, people and endeavors. . . all learning lessons preparing me for now.
That's all I can say at this moment. . .I am still just beginning in so many ways.
And I do not believe one masters this or any path.
I think it is a daily process of learning and growing that never ends.
But at the core, either creatively or spiritually, are a few truths
Be strong enough to work at it daily
Embrace being a beginner and the learning curves that go with it
Believe it is the most important thing you can do for yourself or your life
Accept that it will be hard and lonely at times
But if you love it, if you have ALWAYS loved it. . . know that it is the right path for you too.
Thanx for reading,
nicolas
For one, I see a lot of people give up way too quickly on their creative goals, both as a means of making part, or all of a living from it, and in terms of exploring it as a spiritual path. I suspect this is, in great part, due to what my Zen teacher used to say all the time. "Anything that you truly love or love to do will be lonely."
Creative work usually demands we spend time alone and many people simply are not good at this.
So I would just like to share a quick thought on these ideas above. Just my own perspective.
I am fortunate in this way to have always craved my time alone. It's a preference I developed very young and though it came from a myriad of factors, some just circumstance and some created, it is something I treasure for all of those reasons now.
The spiritual part of my creativity is easy for me to accept. I have been creating since I can remember and there is nothing in the world that makes me feel more at peace, more at one within my own life and more true to who I am. It can take many forms and, in truth, I have been working in fields that always allowed some creative outlet since I was 19.
Now, that spiritual exploration is separate in every way from creating with an idea of it being considered "art" or being "marketable". The two do not coexist in most ways. Any idea of what art is is a creation outside of the spirit. A marking of the time and place and a mix of history and relevance but not at all to be linked with the spirit of creating. For me, this makes it easy to see my creative work as my spiritual path. It is also why I work in so many different disciplines.
Making music, for years, was how I dealt with the world around me. A therapy undoubtedly. . . but not my creative spiritual path. When I realized that, I began to try other disciplines. Photography, painting, writing. . . of course, they were all there all along. But the spiritual path has to come from something deeper. More from your landscape of childhood and early experiences.
That path was reserved for the creating of worlds and sinking into them. . . BELIEVING in them. . . that is at the very heart of who I am. It is how I live my life daily. And it has always been that way since I can recall.
As a child, empty cardboard boxes became houses and cars for action figures who not only were part of a world with identities and lives of their own, but who were integral to my own. Not separate.
I became part of the sports teams I followed through my own invented games and ways of playing those games all on my own. For the most part, I could not share them. . . nor did I want to. They were a part of me. A spiritual part I realize now.
But then I just played because it came naturally. As it does to most of us in childhood.
So, after 20 years of playing the "adult world" games and never feeling the same satisfaction, I began working towards merging it all again.
I am just two years into this process and nowhere near where I want to be though, yes, I do primarily create for a living now. I work at home and spend countless hours in my own imagination once again.
But in both the potential for that creative life and for it's spiritual depth, I am just scratching the surface.
Everything I create for sale has a story, Each story has layers to go before I reach the depth I want to achieve with my creations. Also, the level at which I execute each piece is just beginning to grow. This ideal is also what keeps me from ever being bored. There is always more to learn and deeper levels to go to. And this is another area where many often fall short and give up.
There is such depth in routine and in working through repetition that cannot be found any other way. Especially in the spiritual realm. Much like people who travel, bouncing from place to place for a day here a day there and never settling in and really taking in a culture or a locale. It is still wonderful to travel but it lacks the depth of understanding that comes only with investment of time.
I feel like the transition back to this creative, all inclusive world was somewhat easy for me.
I was fortunate in this way too.
I have always believed in what I do.
In the things I make.
In what I have to offer.
That has come with the 20 plus years swimming in the adult world. And the time invested in places, people and endeavors. . . all learning lessons preparing me for now.
That's all I can say at this moment. . .I am still just beginning in so many ways.
And I do not believe one masters this or any path.
I think it is a daily process of learning and growing that never ends.
But at the core, either creatively or spiritually, are a few truths
Be strong enough to work at it daily
Embrace being a beginner and the learning curves that go with it
Believe it is the most important thing you can do for yourself or your life
Accept that it will be hard and lonely at times
But if you love it, if you have ALWAYS loved it. . . know that it is the right path for you too.
Thanx for reading,
nicolas
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
The Value of Time - Etsy Lessons - Creating a Life Around Creating
It is one of the biggest discussions in the creative marketplace.
"How do you value of the time you spend making an item you sell?"
The mistake, to me, is in the asking of the very question itself.
The question, from the working or want-to-be working artist's perspective should be:
"What is the value of the time you are given to spend creating?"
Subtle difference? Only in the wording.
The first question asks us to look at how much we want to make for our creative efforts. Regardless of the skill level, the perceived value, the quality of materials, the market that exists for the finished product etc etc. It's a sales/financial oriented question top to bottom and often, in my experience, it puts people in a huge hole from the beginning in their attempt to make a viable living from their craft.
The second question asks us to define how valuable it is for our SOUL to spend time creating. There are only 24 hours a day. How many of them can be spent doing what we truly love is directly influenced by only one thing really. How we have built our life around us to sustain those creative hours. In other words, how simply we live. The less money we have to make "out there" to support ourselves, the more time one can spend within. In that creative space.
The question, at it's deepest root is, do you value "having" or "being"?
I believe the reason more people focus on the first question is because it is how we are programmed to think by the society we have grown up in. An acquisition based philosophy that leads to so much suffering and sadness.
How much money we make is at the core of so much stress in our lives. But that is a perspective that needs to change for the better good in this world. How much we need to make is directly influenced by one thing only. What kind of a life we have created and are creating for ourselves.
I am amazed when people talk about the problems within the world economy today that no one mentions the one thing that seems, to me, to be at the heart of almost all of it.
Greed.
Gone are the days of valuing a simpler life and in it's place we have sunk deep, thirsty roots in the soils of acquisition, status and wealth.
Call it whatever you want but when we NEED the newer car, the faster computer, the nicer house, to live in the middle of a city, the designer clothes, the two week vacations, the dining out, the best concert tickets etc etc etc we are choosing that. They are not necessities. They are superficial needs and that need is a product of human greed and desire. We choose them. And, that is perfectly fine. . . but, if what we want most, if our soul NEEDS is to create? What do those niceties have to do with anything in that chosen life?
We choose. It is all our doing and our undoing.
So, my next question to anyone who wants to make a living creating is:
"How much are you willing to do without?
It might mean tough choices. Giving things up. Doing without. Settling for less.
But sometime less IS more.
Somehow we have gone from a society that once believed in building towards a dream to one that believes we simply DESERVE and have a right to be living the dream.
Charles Bukowski, in one of his better known works, put it best:
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone . . .
<><><>
Our time here on this planet is deceptively short. Too short to think we have enough of it to do all that we might like to do. So it is important to first define what we truly need, one or two things at most, then show that we value them and build our ENTIRE life from those points and ONLY those points. If it does not serve them, it does not belong. Period.
Remember that if it is in our soul, it is a lifetime's work. It will take a long time to fulfill it. A lifetime of building towards that dream we hold. No guarantees. Just the pursuit of a soul fulfilled.
It's enough,
Trust me
Just let go. . .
"How do you value of the time you spend making an item you sell?"
The mistake, to me, is in the asking of the very question itself.
The question, from the working or want-to-be working artist's perspective should be:
"What is the value of the time you are given to spend creating?"
Subtle difference? Only in the wording.
The first question asks us to look at how much we want to make for our creative efforts. Regardless of the skill level, the perceived value, the quality of materials, the market that exists for the finished product etc etc. It's a sales/financial oriented question top to bottom and often, in my experience, it puts people in a huge hole from the beginning in their attempt to make a viable living from their craft.
The second question asks us to define how valuable it is for our SOUL to spend time creating. There are only 24 hours a day. How many of them can be spent doing what we truly love is directly influenced by only one thing really. How we have built our life around us to sustain those creative hours. In other words, how simply we live. The less money we have to make "out there" to support ourselves, the more time one can spend within. In that creative space.
The question, at it's deepest root is, do you value "having" or "being"?
I believe the reason more people focus on the first question is because it is how we are programmed to think by the society we have grown up in. An acquisition based philosophy that leads to so much suffering and sadness.
How much money we make is at the core of so much stress in our lives. But that is a perspective that needs to change for the better good in this world. How much we need to make is directly influenced by one thing only. What kind of a life we have created and are creating for ourselves.
I am amazed when people talk about the problems within the world economy today that no one mentions the one thing that seems, to me, to be at the heart of almost all of it.
Greed.
Gone are the days of valuing a simpler life and in it's place we have sunk deep, thirsty roots in the soils of acquisition, status and wealth.
Call it whatever you want but when we NEED the newer car, the faster computer, the nicer house, to live in the middle of a city, the designer clothes, the two week vacations, the dining out, the best concert tickets etc etc etc we are choosing that. They are not necessities. They are superficial needs and that need is a product of human greed and desire. We choose them. And, that is perfectly fine. . . but, if what we want most, if our soul NEEDS is to create? What do those niceties have to do with anything in that chosen life?
We choose. It is all our doing and our undoing.
So, my next question to anyone who wants to make a living creating is:
"How much are you willing to do without?
It might mean tough choices. Giving things up. Doing without. Settling for less.
But sometime less IS more.
Somehow we have gone from a society that once believed in building towards a dream to one that believes we simply DESERVE and have a right to be living the dream.
Charles Bukowski, in one of his better known works, put it best:
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone . . .
<><><>
Our time here on this planet is deceptively short. Too short to think we have enough of it to do all that we might like to do. So it is important to first define what we truly need, one or two things at most, then show that we value them and build our ENTIRE life from those points and ONLY those points. If it does not serve them, it does not belong. Period.
Remember that if it is in our soul, it is a lifetime's work. It will take a long time to fulfill it. A lifetime of building towards that dream we hold. No guarantees. Just the pursuit of a soul fulfilled.
It's enough,
Trust me
Just let go. . .
Monday, July 30, 2012
The Name Game - Etsy Lessons - Creating a Life Around Creating
Etsy Lessons ( short essays on making a creative life )
"The Name Game"
I have wanted, for some time now, to begin to write about my experiences as they pertain to making a living as a "maker-of-things". I suppose that very phrase may be as good a place to start as any.
This question is for the creative soul. . . What do you call yourself?
I prefer to describe myself as a maker of things as opposed to an artist. The reason has nothing to do with my thoughts about the word itself being too general, which I DO think by the way. Saying one is an artist narrows the field about as much as saying physician, custodian, counselor, teacher, performer, laborer etc. Nothing wrong with it really. . . but beneath the surface it usually seems to belie a lack of certainty and confidence while still attempting to stake claim to a desire to be creative.
For me, the realization came that calling myself an artist allowed me to stay stagnant and not move forward with my desire to live a creative life. I floated in apathy and dead space. Though I never stopped creating.
I realized that the term artist described nothing about my passion or my creative soul and offered me no motivation to get moving. At the same time, I had come to think of some of my favorite people around me as artists though they had no traditionally creative outlets.
They were artists at living. They created a life that suited them in every way.
That appealed to me greatly
So, a maker of things? Yes, that, although as general a term at first glance, came to seem far more true to nature. At least, to my nature and to the life I wanted to live.
I make a living by making things. Simple and true enough.
What is most important to me is to be working with my hands and my mind in unison. Exploring many avenues and always in search of new roads to explore and ideas. All with the intent to tell my stories and offer my customers and casual observers the opportunity to be a part of them.
I didn't want to settle on one form of expression. If I was to be true to my creative origin, I could not do that. Though it seems that is what an "artist" is supposed to do.
But me?
I make photographs
I make miniatures
I make entire worlds in forms and words
I make music
I make poems
I make things
And above all else, I play
I felt that, to be successful, I needed to embrace every fiber of the vivid and unending imagination of my childhood. . . or more precisely. . . to bring it all forward into my "adult life" and allow it to take over now as it did then.
With that comes the pleasure and the pitfalls and the constant fight against the programming I believe we all receive about what life and adulthood are "supposed" to be and look like.
Also, it is imperative to say that nothing went as planned during this transition period of my life. I had to think on my feet and constantly rework the original plan, sometimes daily.
I was able to change my life completely in a little over two years. And while I feel that I am well on my way, the path is just beginning in many ways too.
The excitement as raw as it was in my youth.
So, yes, a maker of things indeed.
Not just art
Not just craft
But of a life itself.
nicolas hall 2012
"The Name Game"
I have wanted, for some time now, to begin to write about my experiences as they pertain to making a living as a "maker-of-things". I suppose that very phrase may be as good a place to start as any.
This question is for the creative soul. . . What do you call yourself?
I prefer to describe myself as a maker of things as opposed to an artist. The reason has nothing to do with my thoughts about the word itself being too general, which I DO think by the way. Saying one is an artist narrows the field about as much as saying physician, custodian, counselor, teacher, performer, laborer etc. Nothing wrong with it really. . . but beneath the surface it usually seems to belie a lack of certainty and confidence while still attempting to stake claim to a desire to be creative.
For me, the realization came that calling myself an artist allowed me to stay stagnant and not move forward with my desire to live a creative life. I floated in apathy and dead space. Though I never stopped creating.
I realized that the term artist described nothing about my passion or my creative soul and offered me no motivation to get moving. At the same time, I had come to think of some of my favorite people around me as artists though they had no traditionally creative outlets.
They were artists at living. They created a life that suited them in every way.
That appealed to me greatly
So, a maker of things? Yes, that, although as general a term at first glance, came to seem far more true to nature. At least, to my nature and to the life I wanted to live.
I make a living by making things. Simple and true enough.
What is most important to me is to be working with my hands and my mind in unison. Exploring many avenues and always in search of new roads to explore and ideas. All with the intent to tell my stories and offer my customers and casual observers the opportunity to be a part of them.
I didn't want to settle on one form of expression. If I was to be true to my creative origin, I could not do that. Though it seems that is what an "artist" is supposed to do.
But me?
I make photographs
I make miniatures
I make entire worlds in forms and words
I make music
I make poems
I make things
And above all else, I play
I felt that, to be successful, I needed to embrace every fiber of the vivid and unending imagination of my childhood. . . or more precisely. . . to bring it all forward into my "adult life" and allow it to take over now as it did then.
With that comes the pleasure and the pitfalls and the constant fight against the programming I believe we all receive about what life and adulthood are "supposed" to be and look like.
Also, it is imperative to say that nothing went as planned during this transition period of my life. I had to think on my feet and constantly rework the original plan, sometimes daily.
I was able to change my life completely in a little over two years. And while I feel that I am well on my way, the path is just beginning in many ways too.
The excitement as raw as it was in my youth.
So, yes, a maker of things indeed.
Not just art
Not just craft
But of a life itself.
nicolas hall 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
Poem and Visual Art: Theory of Flight
Featured image in my Etsy Shop : My Antarctica (link in the margin to the right)
Theory of Flight"
It's not necessary to hold tight to this so-called reality
The mystery does not always need to have answers
Science is lacking in it's charms anyway
Knowing too much is always a weight upon the soul
Once, we drew the plans for airships and
Mythic, winged creatures filled the margins of our notebooks
The red, vertical line a boundary no one dared to cross
We dreamed and doodled every possibility
We were better for that innocence
We were
Better
And now we look back at those same, red lines
Standing here on what is supposed to be the usable part of the life "page"
A page we fill with urgency and to-do lists
We fill with hellos and goodbyes
We fill with budgets and breakdowns
We've forgotten how to hold on to a dream
We've forgotten the way back
We've forgotten and we've grounded
All of these
Mythic
Impossible
Winged
Dreams~
nicolas hall 2010
Theory of Flight"
It's not necessary to hold tight to this so-called reality
The mystery does not always need to have answers
Science is lacking in it's charms anyway
Knowing too much is always a weight upon the soul
Once, we drew the plans for airships and
Mythic, winged creatures filled the margins of our notebooks
The red, vertical line a boundary no one dared to cross
We dreamed and doodled every possibility
We were better for that innocence
We were
Better
And now we look back at those same, red lines
Standing here on what is supposed to be the usable part of the life "page"
A page we fill with urgency and to-do lists
We fill with hellos and goodbyes
We fill with budgets and breakdowns
We've forgotten how to hold on to a dream
We've forgotten the way back
We've forgotten and we've grounded
All of these
Mythic
Impossible
Winged
Dreams~
nicolas hall 2010
Friday, May 18, 2012
Death Knell For Another Coastal Community
I read this in a small coastal business paper today.
"The creative class of people is one of the signs of an emerging area. Then rich people are attracted to that gritty feel."
I felt immediately ill. . .
As I reflect on it, my gut feeling is that this story, played out in community after community, is killing this country faster than anything else I see on the near horizon.
It is also in great part why I removed myself from the hipster haven of Portland to the small, blue collar fishing village I now call home. One with no room for pretentiousness or attitude. It is the antithesis of a town like the one described in that quote. One that will never likely turn itself out for the quick fix of the "revitalization" and "progress" that others have sold the soul of their own towns for.
Goodbye Astoria. . . I'll remember you as you were while the wave of hipster attitude quickly erodes your unique landscape and charm and tramples your historic soul, I wish you peace.
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