Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 68

Saturday Dip in Creativity

It’s Saturday, so it’s time for a skip through the interwebs, looking for creative ideas and projects. The describes itself as: “Wellcome Collection is a free visitor destination for the incurably curious, exploring the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future. “ Sounds good. I was intrigued by an exhibition called Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan, which talks about identity and the relationship between names and letters.

Rome Rooftops by Isaac Tobin. Details below.

There are many other areas on the site that I haven’t checked out yet, including High Tea, a game you can play on line, in which you try to make money in the teas and drug trade, 10 years before the Opium Wars. Before you wrinkle your nose, there are related articles including one which considers whether or not drug use is a sin, a crime, a vice,  or a a disease.

The Color Of is an app that shows you the color of abstract ideas. It does it by going to Instagram, grabbing photos that mentions the word, then creating an abstract by overlapping the images. Interesting.

The Graphics Fairy publishes hundreds of copyright-free images that you can use on cards or stationery. Sort of online ephemera, printable.

Nerhol is a two-artist collective who uses photography in unusual ways. In this series, subjects were asked to sit still for three minutes, while a camera clicked away, taking a series of photos. The photos were then layered and cut to show the subtle movement and facial changes of the “sitting still” subjects.

Isaac Tobin designs typefaces and works for Chicago University Press designing book covers. But the work of his I love are his minimalist collages. That’s one of them up there, but there are many more, some of them so spare, so not “layers on layers” we are used to loving now, that they are refreshing.

It’s the weekend! Enjoy your own creativity.

—Quinn McDonald is working on a collage of her own. It’s done with letters and numbers. Again.

Filed under: Creativity, Links, resources, idea boosts Tagged: collage, Creativity, creativity coach, outsider art, photography

Making Handmade Paper

Thistles are blooming now, but in a few weeks, the thistle down will be ready for gathering.

Note: The winner of the T-shirt from the Madeline Island School of the Arts is BirdingBesty! Congratulations! Thanks also for leaving a comment on the poetry class blog.

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Up in the hills of Oro Valley, North of Tucson (AZ) in a purple and turquoise studio, we made paper. Handmade paper was my first real art love many years ago. I allowed myself to think like an artist. I became an artist.  Taking a class  all these years later was a wonderful experience. Val Bembenek is the Paper Art Lady, and she was our instructor. Val gathers desert plants–thistledown, yucca, agaves. When she travels up North, she gathers cattails , irises, and grasses. And she saves pineapple, cornhusks, onion skins, and artichoke to make paper.

Val had the vats of beaten fiber ready for us and for two days we made gourmet paper (hops and artichoke was lovely) and wild grass paper. It was pure satisfaction. She let us have the run of the studio. Our places were set up with everything we needed and we could make paper till the fiber ran out. And there was plenty of fiber.

L to R, bottom row: thistledown, iris, corn silk in abaca. Top row, L to R: ocotillo flower in iris, iris with silk ribbon bits, abaca with hibiscus flowers.

I made a whole stack of paper:

And when I got home and spread the papers on the hot patio to dry, one of the cats ignored the art aspect and just used the paper to cool her tummy:

I have some collage plans and maybe a book-making plan for the paper. Too many people never use their handmade paper, and the real beauty for art is to see it in use.

–Quinn McDonald has never stopped loving paper making or making bowls out of handmade paper.

Filed under: In My Life, Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: handmade paper, paper from plants

Giving Away Your Work and Benefitting

Note: Thanks to all of your thoughtful comments about the poetry class. I’m mulling over your suggestions and will let you know about the class as soon as the details are done. And the winner of the T-shirt will be chosen on Friday. Thanks for the thoughtful comments.

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If you are a freelance writer, artist or have a talent, offer a service or product, you will be asked to give it away for free. Often it comes with the promise of “getting your name out—good marketing.” I’ve talked about avoiding false marketing schemes, but today the issue is different.

Donating your work for free can be a gift to you. . .

A good way to get your services, company’s name or your own name in front of people is to donate your product or services in a way that it will get seen by your target audience. The key is, as always, the right audience. Let’s assume you are fielding requests from several good organizations, all with your target audience.

The request involves both your time and materials, which have a value. They also require time and effort, which has a financial worth–part of the price. (Price and value are two completely different things.)

. . .or you can feel like a garbage truck is sitting on your chest.

How much should you give away? How much free time is too much to give away? Don’t get angry at people for asking you. It’s a sign they think you will generate traffic for them, so it is flattering. Be smart when you make donating time, services and product part of your marketing budget. (You don’t have a marketing budget, do you? OK, I know. But this will still work for you.)

1. Treat the request as a real job. Never give away something sloppy because you aren’t charging for it. If you are contributing, it represents you, so it has to be your best. Many requests will try to make the request look smaller by saying “just send anything.” Don’t do that. What you send represents you to your potential audience. Send your best.

2. Limit your time and costs. Not by being fast or sloppy, but through smart time management. Instead of starting from scratch, re-write a good article for this specific audience. Make new art, but not with a new technique. Create something you already know how to make, but in a new color.

3. Know when to say ‘no.’ Ask about the deadline before you agree. Most requests for “free” also come with tight deadlines. Don’t be afraid to turn down a request if the deadline doesn’t work for you. Know your limit for “free.” A good rule of thumb is between 5 percent and 10 percent of your non-committed time in any quarter. That figure includes all charitable work–from volunteering to producing. And count in all of your production–planning, buying materials, production.  (Check with your tax person about how much of these donations are tax deductible. It’s much less than you think–your time isn’t tax deductible in most cases.)

4. Plan out the project. Let’s say you offer to write an 800 word article. Use your calendar to block out the time for research, writing, re-writing, proofreading, as if it were a real assignment. The entire block of time is now not available for any other charity work. Putting it in your calendar is a handy reminder to do the work, but also a good reminder that you can’t do any more volunteer work at the same time.

5. Understand your motivation and stick to it. Most of us get in trouble because we want to be nice, friendly, helpful and loved. So we don’t say ‘no.’ We say ‘yes,’ become resentful, rushed, and do a bad job. And inadvertently become not-nice, cranky, a problem and hated. The opposite of what we wanted in the first place. You cannot accept work to be loved if you don’t have time to be loved.

6. Know how to say ‘no.’ Saying ‘no’ doesn’t have to be a rejection of the person who asked.  Here are some ways to say no that are both clear and kind–and that’s the real key to turning down an offer. Be clear and kind.

–Say ‘no’ to now, but offer a time that’s realistic for you. “Thank you for asking for an article, Mary, I’m honored you want me to be a guest blogger. I’m booked up for the next two weeks, so tomorrow doesn’t work for me. I could get you something in three weeks from Thursday. Would that work for you?”

–Say ‘no’ because you have booked up all your volunteer time. This shows you are already loved and booked. “Thanks for asking, Mary, but Carlos asked me last week, so my volunteer time for March is already booked. I’m honored you asked.” Delivered with a smile, this feels good and is clear.

–Point to another source. This will make you a valuable resource and not cost you future work. “Thanks for the offer, Mary, normally I’d jump at the chance. I’m booked right now, but you might want to ask Haji. He’d be great for your project.”

Free work, handled like real work, can be a good marketing idea. Or it can be the project from hell. Either way, it’s yours to accept or turn down. Don’t create your own hell, I learned that lesson the very publicly embarrassing way.

–Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who has to say No to things she would love to do. Choosing is always going to be hard.

Images: Giftbox from VectorDiary.com, garbage truck from DailyBargain.com

Filed under: Coaching Tagged: and energy., art, giving away your time, the business of art

Designing a Poetry Class

The research is done, and the poetry-writing class is taking shape. It’s going to be an online class, and it’s going to include information and exercises on traditional forms before we explore more free-form styles.

As I was thinking of ways to put it together, I had the bright idea–ask the people who read the blog and who are smart and inventive! So here are some ideas; please leave a comment about what you would want (even if you would not take the class) so I can get some really good ideas for the process part of the class.

1. Should it be work at your own pace, or work in a group with a moderator? (OK, that would be me.)

2. If you want to work in a group, should we meet once a week to exchange ideas or once every two weeks? (There will be homework–you’ll be writing poetry, after all.)

3. What sort of a platform works–Yahoo group, Ning Group, WordPress private blog (only the participants can have access, but anyone can post), combination of lessons posted in one place and a Facebook group? Something else (suggest something you would like).

4. How long should it last? Fives lessons? 10? More?

5. What kind of feedback makes you comfortable? Private emails? Public posting of poetry so we cal all ready it and comment? (There would be rules about commenting on others’ poetry.)

Let me know, I’m looking forward to hearing from my smart and clever comment-leavers. And just to make it more fun, I’ll give away a cool Madeline Island School of the Arts T-shirt to a random comment writer. There is always room for one more 100 percent cotton T-shirt. And I’m excited about teaching the deep-writing and mixed media class this July.

Filed under: Journal Pages, Poetry, The Writing Life, Tutorials Tagged: online poetry course, poetry class, writing poetry

The Blogger Is Not the Blog

A few weeks ago, I got a hard-to-take evaluation. It was an art journaling course, and the evaluation said, “Quinn is fake. She is not authentic,  and I will never take a class from her again.” Hard to read. But every evaluation is important to me.

Mirror ball from Pickthebrain.com

I separate evals (as I do opinions of me) into ones I recognize and ones that are not about me. Often, in classes, a lot of insecurity, competition and fear comes up for participants. Feelings of not understanding fast enough or perfectly enough.  The easiest thing to say to ourselves is, “the instructor is not giving me what I need.”  And sometimes that’s true. And sometimes the instructor is just the mirror for what the participants doesn’t like about herself and recognizes in the instructor.

How much of this evaluation is mine to own? How much to I need to adjust to make the class better for everyone?

A contributing factor:  the person who wrote the evaluation reads my blog. And that is always a danger. Blog readers create visions of what the writer is like. It is a vision they love (occasionally one they love to hate, but then they don’t take the course) and one they think is the “real” blogger.

Chicago Park reflection by Maria Chanourdie

Just like the movie is never as good as the book, a class is not as good as the blog.  Your imagination reading a book is much bigger than the reality the director can conjure from actors and special effects. So I am less than what people imagine. I can’t possibly be the calm, loving, generous person I try to embody when I write. At least not for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Here is what is true: I do not write about disagreements I have with friends or family, unless I talk about my own behavior and what I learned. When I do write about others (as I am writing about a class participant) no identifying details are included. But that does not mean I do not squabble with my spouse or disagree with my friends or disappoint my clients. Indeed, I do. But you won’t find drama details on my blog.

When I show a piece of art in progress, or a mess I made while in the studio, you can assume the rest of my life follows suit. I learn from making mistakes and fixing them.

There is a huge difference between being authentic and sharing every problem in my life. The difference is one of discretion and discernment–what I call emotional editing. The lessons show up, told in a way that makes the point approachable. There are blogs that build readership on drama, but this isn’t one of them.

When you see me in class, you get who I am–and that’s not going to be the blogger you imagined. You will see imperfection and mis-speaking. But you will get the absolute best I can be that day, speaking to you wherever you happen to be on that day. And if we can honor the creative force in each of us, we will both have a rich experience.

Come join me in Minneapolis on May 18 and 19 for Monsoon Papers and some explorations of your creative path in deep writing and mixed media. And then, come join me at the Madeline Island School of the Arts in July  (22-26) for a week of deep writing and creative awakening.

—Quinn McDonald thinks the difference between authentic and pleasing everyone is that “authentic” is being me, and pleasing everyone is impossible.

 

 

Filed under: LinkedIn, Quinn's Classes Tagged: evals, learning from mistakes, owning your mistakes

Collage by Numbers

Words and letters are important to me. They shape my world, they help me see what others feel. And I almost always use some version of words in my art.

When I combine the love of collage with the love of letters, I got an interesting result. A collage made entirely of letters. OK, a few numbers, too.

It was in interesting experiment. It was fun to find the small and bold letters and figure out how to use them for detail and shadow.

I don’t want to continue this type of collage, because, odd as it sounds from someone who loves monochromatic work as much as I do, I would miss the color after a while. But meanwhile, I have another pear to add to the collection!

Here are a few other pears I’ve done:

Journal page with Maya Angelou’s pear recipe

Pears, watercolor pencil on journal page

Pear on free-standing journal page.

Pear mosaic on free-standing journal page

--Quinn McDonald does not feel compelled to move on to apples. Yet.

Filed under: Journal Pages, Raw Art Journaling Tagged: pear mosaic, pear with numbers, pears, Raw Art Journaling

Tearing Paper for Collage

A few weeks ago, I sent Elizabeth St. Hillaire Nelson some Monsoon Papers. During her collage class, she told several stories about people who sent her papers and how they could show up in a collage of hers. I love sharing Monsoon Papers, so off they went. And then, today, I got an envelope of colored papers back from Elizabeth. Colorful, printed, wild, interesting. And after a week of  doing paperwork and getting the work done, I wanted to play. Perfect excuse! Off to the studio I ran. It’s still got boxes from last week’s demoing I did for Arizona Art Supply. I pushed them aside and got to work.

It felt right to make the same kind of collage we did in class–almost. I inked the backgrounds instead of collaging them. But I did enjoy shading the flowers by using different colors of paper. And I loved ripping into the papers. I still have a little trouble getting the shape right, because I tear left-handed, which can confuse me.

And of course I had to do another pear. I think there are art least two in the book, although I made four. Maybe I’ll frame all the different pears, but meanwhile I have two more loose-leaf journal pages. Now I can use Barbara Abercrombie’s book from yesterday’s review to choose a prompt and fill up the back of the pages!

Hmmm, looking at the pear, I want to take that flower in the center, meant to be a highlight, and push it down one-quarter of an inch. The nice thing about collage is that you can paper over paper.

Thanks, Elizabeth, these papers are already fun!

-–Quinn McDonald is a sucker for collage. She’s still working on white-on-white collages, but a burst of color cheers her up. She still has to clean up the studio, though.

Filed under: Journal Pages Tagged: collage, ink journal pages, torn paper collage

Book Review: Kicking In the Wall

Time for another book review. No giveaway this time, while reading the book, I began writing in it, but more on that in a minute.

Title: Kicking In the Wall: A year of writing exercises, prompts, and quotes to help you break through your blocks and reach your writing goals.

Whew, that’s a super long sub-title (I can’t really complain, the one on my next book requires a gatefold, too.)

Details: Paperback, 233 pages. Published by New World Library. Price: $15.95

Author: Barbara Abercrombie.  Here’s an excerpt from her website:

Barbara Abercrombie has published novels, children’s picture books, including the award winning Charlie Anderson, and books of non-fiction. Her personal essays have appeared in national publications as well as in many anthologies. Her most recent books are Courage & Craft: Writing Your Life Into Story and Cherished: 21 Writers on Animals They’ve Loved & Lost. Her latest writing book, A Year of Writing Dangerously, was just published by New World Library, and chosen by Poets & Writers Magazine as one of the best books for writers.

Barbara Abercrombie

What I like about the book: This is a book with 365 writing prompts in it. Each page starts with a quote in a gray-screen box, followed by one or several prompts that somehow relate to the quote. This idea appeals to me.

Even better, the prompts are strong and interesting. Examples:

23. Write about a time you worried about something, but then nothing happened. Did you feel foolish? Relieved? Disappointed?

102. Write about a time you couldn’t see. Literally or figuratively.

162. Write about someone carrying a purse. How they carry it, or where they put it when entering a room.

The idea behind each prompt is to spend five minutes writing about the prompt, whatever shows up in front of you. It’s a traditional free-writing method, and very effective.

My favorite chapter is at the end–a collection of five-minute writings by her pupils, using the prompts in the book. It was fascinating to read answers to the same prompt from different people to see how perspectives vary.

What I didn’t like: Not much. I’d like to be told a bit more about the quotes at the top of each page–perhaps I should know all these authors, but I don’t. In the back of a book is a bibliography followed by a list of all authors quoted. That should allow me to cross reference and find who wrote what. It doesn’t always work that way. For example, Clive Barker’s quote is on page 41, but his work is not listed in the Bibliography. Maybe the quote is from this Clive Baker. Or this Clive Barker. It’s a small gripe, but as someone who uses quotes books for reference, I like them easy to use.

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You could answer the questions in any order, checking them off as you go. The quotes sometimes support fiction writers, sometimes non-fiction, sometimes discovery questions for journalers.

Some pages have enough white space to write on. That’s how I accidentally started to write in the book. For a flash, I thought, “this would be a great commonplace book, writing in the book and commenting on the prompts, dating the pages I write on as I go along.” After a while, I thought, “this would work so well in my new collage piece, particularly if I tear up and use some of these prompts.” I abandoned both ideas, but maybe not forever. I just don’t know yet. And until I do, I’m not ripping up anything. But I may do more writing in the book.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer intrigued with quotes and resulting prompts, even if she’s not sure which Clive Barker said, “I think the fear of insanity touches everyboy who works in the imaginative arts, who is really plunging deeply into themselves.”

Filed under: Book Reviews, Opinion, Reviews Tagged: abercrombie, journaling, journaling prompts, quotes

The Commonplace Journal

The instant Kaisa from Valkoinenponi mentioned it, I recognized the Commonplace Journal.  For me, it was a book I had seen before, with the words Vade Mecum printed on the cover, that my father used. It was a small notebook, and he took notes in it. About the weather, numbers and measurements he needed to remember, quotes on prices and on wisdom. Vade Mecum means “Come with Me” in Latin, and the book went most places with my father, the original life-long learner.

In the early days of printing, Vade Mecum became a name for books that published information–general or specific–in a variety of topics. They contained medical information, wieghts and measurements, and recipes for healing, cooking, even alchemy.

Vade Mecum had another name, starting in the 15th century: Commonplace books and Zibaldone. These notebooks were a combination of a scrapbook and a note-taking device. Students who were studying by apprenticeship would sketch or write information for their professional learning into the books. As the students became masters, they would allow the next generation to learn from these books. In the 1600s, most college students learned from the professors through keeping a Commonplace Book. Oxford University and Harvard taught via Commonplace Book well into the 20th century.

When I was in college, I created a Commonplace timeline in my room. Every time I learned something in one field, I’d mark it on the timeline–when it happened, who did the work. I’d add notes from other fields. By the middle of the year, I could tell you that while Bach was studying music, Peter the Great was building St. Petersburg (later Leningrad) and that 9,000 people died in England in a huge windstorm with gusts that reached 120 mph. The timeline wrapped around the room. The arts, music, science, literature–all trailed around the room, helping me understand the relationship between politics, culture, and science.

I still keep a Commonplace Book. It holds quotes, book titles, ideas. I wish it looked more like Count Laszlo’s private diary in The English Patient (the 1996 movie made of Michael Ondaatje’s book). You can see a glimpse of it at the 4:00 mark in the trailer. But it is, well, commonplace. It is also the reason that I can’t keep an art journal without words as the origination source. I understand books without words, just colors or images when others do them, but for me, words create the book. And the image.

I love the idea of important pieces of learning and experience caught in one book. Paging through it, I can remember so much of where I was and what I was learning.  You can start your own, but if you already have one, please leave a comment about what you keep in it.

--Quinn McDonald is a romantic at heart. But don’t tell anyone; it’s hard to be a level-headed creativity coach if people think you are a wild romantic.

 

Filed under: Coaching, Dreams, Journal Pages, The Writing Life Tagged: commonplace journal, diary, scrapbook, vade mecum

The Hard Work of Hard Work

When I teach work skills to the unemployed, there is a section about re-writing your resume for online job applications, and I tell the class the two steps that are vital to make your resume visible. Inevitably, someone asks if they need to post a new resume for every job application. When I say yes, there are frowns.

Without direction, you are just wandering. Image from rambling-frans.blogspot

Hands shoot up in protest. I hear about a friend who never updated his resume who got a great job, a woman who wore flip-flops and torn jeans to an interview and got the job, the cousin who got laid off and in a month the boss begged them to come back because they were indispensable. It’s the urban legend and Holy Grail of the unemployed–there is a job that is wonderful, pays well, has a great boss and is easy to find. And then comes the clincher: all you have to do is manifest it by believing, or praying, or following the steps in The Secret.

The horrible truth right now in Phoenix is that there are not enough jobs for everyone who wants one, and the only way to find a job is to keep looking for one. It’s hard, tedious work, and the best person is not always chosen. But you can’t stop trying. And while I believe in prayer and having goals, and positive thinking, I do not believe in magical thinking.

I do not believe that the websites that promise you the “job of your dreams” if only you click on “tell me how” or takes you to another page that doesn’t list a price for anything, and calls the money they are scamming from you, your “investment.” I’ve seen the same websites for finding the partner of your dreams, the SEO of your website’s dreams, and the secret that will make your video go viral.

What’s missing from all of this the is practical application of the ancient Arab wisdom about losing your transportation: “Pray to Allah, but tie up your camel anyway.”

I believe in hard work. I know that people with connections often get the job before people who would be better suited. But if you don’t have connections, you are going to have to work around that lack. In the end, it is doing the heavy lifting, the tedious application, the refusal to give up that moves you along your journey. You can chose to sing to make the work easier, laugh to make the time lighter, or pray for spiritual support and strength. In the end, what you get from your effort is what you put into it. There isn’t any other way.

—-Quinn McDonald has not yet manifested the magical short cut. So she’s doing the work, plodding along the trail, and keeping a journal.

Filed under: Coaching, Opinion Tagged: doing the work. luck, hard work