In the meantime with books

A Creative Life, art commission, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, books, creative thinking, fine art, Fine Art Commission, life of the mind, mundane and magical moments, sketchbook, visual thinking, words and pictures, writing and illustrating

Needless to say I’ve been carefully balancing my time between work on the commission for Caplan Art Designs and time for rest and playing towards the art exhibits scheduled for this year. The commission has a firm deadline and I’m steadily on schedule. In order to stay on schedule I’ve let go of much of my social media. If I haven’t responded to you this is why. Anyway, around the commission priority comes work towards a new painting series.

As I mentioned last week extra paint from the commission gets used on another painting in progress. This way I don’t get distracted from the commission and am still making progress towards future exhibits. Last week I was working on this painting and this week I finished it.

Here’s a Reel of my new painting “In The Meantime” in progress along side the song “Itty Bitty Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cn2vDiBMvIR/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

As I mentioned on my recent email newsletter I’ve been reading and thinking about time. Specifically time and creativity. Human brains simply need time in order to put ideas together. Here’s some of what I’ve been reading. (Details about the books are available here https://bookshop.org/shop/clancy)

Yes, despite being busy I’m still carefully making time to read every day. It’s how I maintain my creative focus, enthusiasm and fun. Same with my sketchbook work which I share via my email newsletter.

A book – whether a library book or a personal notebook/sketchbook – occupies time in uniquely personal ways. The reader moves through time and space as they page through a book at their own pace and magically whole worlds, memories and ideas are built letter by letter, word by word, page by page in the readers mind!

As I say on another page of my website the definition of an “artist book” is “… a book conceived as an art object. It reveals a story over time and space using a combination of content and art techniques in a way that directly involves the viewers participation. “

Books and artwork both use time – time itself – as a creative technique!!! These thoughts about time and the book format also lead me to thinking more about handwriting, hand created art, handmade books and the value of the handmade in this Artificial Intelligence, rush rush, hurry hurry, often prefabricated and canned world. Can both handmade paintings, handmade books and handwriting be analogous to homemade cooking? What does it mean to be real? To be authentic? To be human? To be a time bound being that exists in space?

There is no one grand answer to any of these questions (that would be too hedgehog-y – in reference to the book “The Hedgehog and the Fox” by Isaiah Berlin) but all of this is in my mind as I work. You’ll see some evidence of my musings on these topics in the upcoming illustrated short story about an alien in outer space on my email newsletter…🤣… but I digress.

I hope you too are being mindful of your time this week. It’s a precious resource. Thank you for sharing time with me. See you next Monday.

Welcome winter break

A Creative Life, artist book, author illustrator, book design and layout, books, business of art, functional art, mental health

I’m taking a winter break and will resume this blog after the new year. Did you find your gift book? Hope so. Here’s a video flip-through…

My wife and I made a list of 14 books we’ve loved and collaborated on a short first person sentence (because that was easy) description of our thoughts and feelings about each book. Then I took the book list and illustrated the list, on a sheet of handmade paper folded into an accordion book, using color inks and color pencils. After the artwork was finished I made an ebook version of “Portraits of Loved Books” that can be downloaded for free here https://sueclancy.substack.com/p/a-gift-book-for-you

Enjoy!!! See you soon! Happy New Year!!

New hearing aids and new perceptions

A Creative Life, art gallery, Art Word Combinations, artist book, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, books, children's book, creative thinking, gift books, mental health, Patchwork Poems, reading, sketchbook, words and pictures

This week my new hearing aids came in! Besides the new aids I got kisses from Gus the Labrador! The hearing aid fitting went very well and I’m amazed at how good I hear with the new aids! As per directions I’m keeping a journal about my adjustment to my new perceptions. Did you know that freezers and refrigerators make sounds when you open and shut them? Rice cookers too make bub-bub-bubbling noises when they’re cooking. Who knew?!

Needless to say I’ve been thinking about perceptions in the mornings when playing in my sketchbook. Here are some pages.

It occurs to me that having words and metaphors for our perceptions of the world is a big reason to read and read widely. Having ready access to language helps us think, be creative and to be fully human. After all a main quality of human beings is our use of words and pictures/symbols.

This human use of words and pictures is also why we want 5 working senses – and that’s including assistive devices like eye glasses and hearing aids – so we have the ability to grasp images and words. I tell you it’s been a treat to hear my wife’s voice after the last 3 hearing-aid-less weeks!

Which gets me to wondering – what if books are assistive devices for our minds? In that case having a personal reading program takes on a new meaning. In the past I’ve shared my own ongoing use of the Ray Bradbury Reading Program (and here’s a great article about the Bradbury Challenge) but today I want to share a great article I read listing 14 ways to get out of a reader slump! It’s good to keep these 14 ways handy just in case. Two of my favorite ways to get over a slump are 1) read short things and 2) to remember that I don’t have to read the whole thing – I can stop anytime and switch to something that’s more fun. Yes, there’s value in persistence with a difficult topic but if I find myself dreading to read something then I consider switching. It’s important to my creativity to maintain my enthusiasm for my reading program.

BTW here’s what I’m currently reading. It’s lighthearted fun. And it pairs well with that fluffy yellow throw pillow on the couch and a mug of hot chocolate.

My friend Liz Gauffreau shared with me a book review of “Rescuing Socrates” by Roosevelt Montas. It talks of our perceptions of literature and reading. Naturally I’ve ordered a copy of the book! Reading is such a good gift to give our human words and pictures loving minds!

Speaking of gifts and holidays I’ve decided this holiday season to publish, via my email newsletter, many of my stories and sketchbook pages in a hybrid step between my creative process and a printed book (or ebook) publication. Kind of like an advance release book of the month club. On this WordPress blog I talk generally about my creative life. Well, on my email newsletter I’m primarily living/doing my creative life. For example I share my creativity from both my poetry/story sketchbook (the orange book in the photo below) and my art sketchbook (the black book) directly to people’s email. (You can get more info or sign up here.)

Since sensory perception is on my mind I’ve written a related story called “The Key” that I’ll share in one of my upcoming email newsletters for my paid subscribers. In the photo below you see the beginning of my story handwritten in my poetry sketchbook and beside it you see an in progress illustration for the story.

My newest book, Patchwork Poems, is doing well on Storyberries.com!! Look at that number of story reads! Barely a week old and my book has been read over 4000 times!

https://www.storyberries.com/bedtime-stories-clancys-patchwork-poems-seasonal-autumn-childrens-poems/

This week I took some copies of Patchwork Poems to the Aurora Gallery for their shelf of 14 other book titles written and illustrated by me! Some of my framed art is in this photo and to the right of the book I’m holding up you can see the book shelf!

I was a bit nervous at first about hearing in the large Gallery space but I did just fine! I tell you these new hearing aids are amazing!

I hope your week is full of pleasant perceptions. Thank you for reading and viewing my work! Happy Thanksgiving!

Odditerrarium on the winery walls

A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, artist book, author illustrator, business of art, fine art, miniature art, Odditerrarium, public art, published art, sketchbook, whimsical art, words and pictures

Last Wednesday when I delivered 20 paintings from my Odditerrarium series to Burnt Bridge Cellars 4 had already sold and before Friday 2 more sold via Caplan Art Designs! Many nice comments have been said about the exhibit too! Thank you all!

Here’s a photo of some of my art spread out on a table ready to be hung for display. A package of books is ready too.

Burnt Bridge Cellars is a large space and my 10 x 8 inch works filled it pretty well. There are more photos of the installation on my portfolio page here – below are a few pics to give you a sense.

There’s another area in the winery with more of my artwork and a basket holding copies of my book “Odditerrarium: a fine art album and nonsense poem”. (Copies are also available via mail here.)

Later this month the Caplan Art Designs Gallery will pickup the sold artwork and ship/deliver the artwork sold from this exhibit to the new owners. Between now and then I’ll make more art in this vein, beginning “Odditerrarium Too”, which will be exhibited in October at the Caplan Gallery!

I wrote in my last post about the Beat Generation and that I was expecting a book about the women of that era. The book came! It’s titled “Women of the Beat Generation” by Brenda Knight. The writings of Helen Adam and Diane di Prima are particularly fascinating; Adam’s use of rhythm and rhyme and di Prima’s ideas about the value of imagination. Diane di Prima’s “Rant” is wonderful and here’s a link so you can read it too. I am inspired by how the women of the 1960s and 1970s worked together, began their publishing their own and each other’s work, how they encouraged and supported each other, including the men, and generally persevered despite many obstacles. Working and sharing together is really potent stuff.

This cooperative encouraging spirit was in my mind when some of my friends told me that they want to be sure to get all of my posts – especially the ones with my sketchbook pages – and social media feels too random to them. So I’ve decided to send my sketchbook pages directly to people who want them via weekly emails using Substack. It will be nice to have a place focused on my sketchbooks. I’m thinking I’ll send these emails on Fridays. If you’d like to get my sketchbook pages via email please subscribe here https://sueclancy.substack.com/

This blog focuses on what’s behind the scenes in my creative life and I share my sketchbook here now and then to (hopefully) show how it fits into my work on the current project. The emails via Substack will be some of my sketchbook pages, a real-time looking over my shoulder, so to speak, at my developing ideas as they happen without a firm context. Perhaps weeks or months later you might see a sketchbook page, published earlier in Substack, pop up in this blog because it illustrates how I got to a place in the current project that I’m sharing about. For example if I had been on Substack months ago while working on my Odditerrarium project an email subscriber would have seen an email somewhat like this – even now this was a great way to share some of the sketchbook pages related to my current Odditerrarium series.

Anyway the Substack emails will be devoted to my sketchbook pages – which people seem to also enjoy and want a reliable source for! Isn’t that fun?

All of this sharing; this blog, my social media and now Substack is me attempting to follow this advice thumbtacked to my studio wall…

… and echo, at least a smidge, the cooperative spirit of the women I’m reading about in “Women Of The Beat Generation”.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes with “Clancy’s Coffee with a Green Dragon” – perhaps it will also be a way to eventually do serials of my books? I hope you’ll consider joining me over there too – https://sueclancy.substack.com/

I hope your week is filled with lots of low-level ecstasy and an abundance of imagination. See you here next Monday.

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