Customizing

Circle 1, Circle 2
David Smith

Recently, I've been more deliberately customizing my life to my quirky needs.  You'd think I'd have thought of that before, but no, I tried to customize myself to fit into some mythical ideal that, being neither mythical nor ideal, made me feel crummy when I didn't match up. Feeling contorted and uncomfortable seldom moved me forward.

Now I'm working within my own odd little framework, and happy with my hops and skips into changes and fun.

A few examples of how to skirt around some roadblocks:

• Bring a friend. As the interviews and collaborative poems on this blog suggest, I do more when I have someone nudging me forward, if I feel accountable to someone else. How did I finally get over the threshold anxiety of actually taking a class at the yoga studio? Asked a friend to come along. And it was a great class complete with a teacher with a fabulous New Zealand accent, and now that the seal is broken, I'll go back easily. How did I decide to finally commit to the expense of trying a discovery test flight flying lesson in a small plane? Asked around and found another budding pilot enthusiast (test flight still pending as we had to reschedule because of high wind).
• Go with your gut. Rather than slog forward with the first hospital I talked to about volunteering (where, for a laundry list of reasons, rational and not, I got a bad vibe), I said, you know what, there are options. I talked to another hospital volunteer coordinator yesterday at a place that is a much better fit on levels both practical and personal, and now I'm looking forward to diving into the experience.
• Details matter; change approach. After roundly ignoring my oil paints all winter, I finally admitted oil painting fails the smell test of fun activity, particularly if you live in as small a place as I do. So I sold some of the paints, and invested the proceeds into buying more acrylic paints, a more straightforward medium for me. They don't smell, they're easy to clean up, and woohoo! I'm painting again, in the brief fits and starts that acrylics allow way more easily than oils.
• Ask the experts. Obviously, in the interviews I've been posting, I've been asking about expertise in arts, and learning from others' art talents. In the future, in more of a healing arts bent, I'll be working with a friend who does nutritional coaching professionally (more on that later). Notably, however, her first point of advise was, work within who you are. I'm just not an eight-course meal vegan raw food chef with nine food processors and unlimited funds. That doesn't mean finding ways to eat a few more veggies wouldn't make me feel better.  



Love that Calder

• Just go! Last weekend, it poured rain all day on Sunday, and by 4:30, I'd run out of steam for any creative project at home. Claustrophobia was setting in. Sunday has traditionally been museum day for me, and so a quick check on hours led me to the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art. I could have decided it wasn't worth driving downtown in the rain for 45 minutes in the museum. But the thing is, having hustled out the door and gone, it totally was. Having default places that are quick, easy, free and inspiring -- that's a fantastic resource. If it's your local coffee shop or a garden or a museum, making the effort to push out into the inspiring space means meeting inspiration half way, meaning a happier Muse. As it turns out, the Gauguin exhibit had opened, and had I not zipped out, I might have missed all those self-portraits of a very unusual man. 

So today's summary: find ways to take small steps in the direction of your dreams. And if you need to reconsider the details of that path, that's just fine too. Small steps allow for course corrections and clarifications. 
 
No photos allowed at the Gauguin exhibit, but I got to visit one of my favorites, Kandinsky.

Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle)
Wassily Kandinsky

Sunday at the NGA Sculpture Garden & Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

Sometimes, when you're having a frustrating day dealing with your own art, the solution is to get in your car and go look at other people's art.  So that's what I did today. 

I'd gone to the Hirshorn Museum's Sculpture Garden on Friday evening with a friend (the museum was closed, but the garden stays open until dusk). We had originally been thinking about checking out the Nat'l Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, as in the summer, the NGA Sculpture Garden has jazz on Friday evenings.  Alas, fall is upon us and jazz is over for the season.  I was happy to see some of my Hirshorn favorites, including the sculpture that I think of as the Gossiping Weebles (but is actually called "Last Conversation Piece" by Juan Muñoz).

But we'd only been able to look through the bars at the mice frolicking on the grounds of the NGA Sculpture Garden.  Having had that close-but-no-cigar moment, I decided NGA Sculpture Garden would be my first stop today.

A beautiful day, the NGA Sculpture Garden was in full swing, the fountain dancing. And, for once, there were people in something other than suits. It's been too long since I've seen a pink mohawk.

I cruised by one of my favorite pieces first, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's aptly named "Eraser." I find there's something comforting about folks making that large a sculpture honoring, well, essentially the need for fixing artistic mistakes (this blog is called Artful Mistakes - how could I not like that?).

My friend's favorite there (that we couldn't see through the bars) is "House," created by Roy Lichtenstein.  I actually remembered it as flat - but it is, in fact, 3-dimensional.  See the pics below for proof. 



3D



3D pretending to be 2D pretending to be 3D

The big news for me is that there was a new piece there that I hadn't seen before, new in 2009, and the first new piece in the NGA Garden since it opened 11 years ago.  It took me a minute to see it, both because it blends with the environment, a big ole tree, and because I am a space shot - the big ole tree is made of metal.  With my penchant for shiny things, I was enamoured with "Graft" by Roxy Paine right away. 

It's hard not to feel the re-inspired staring up through the branches of art at a blue sky on a warm afternoon. 

And so I continued on into the Hirshorn Museum -- that's the groovy round building with the fountain in the middle.  I recommend walking around the fountain, and listening carefully, as the acoustics change at some point, so that the water is just more somehow in some places. 

Of course, if you're in the Hirshorn, and you're me, with my taste for mobiles, your first stop may very well be the Calders, because, hey, it means that mobiles can actually end up in museums. That makes me happy right there.



After my visit to the Calders, I wandered the paintings.  The first one that caught my eye was Stuart Davis's "Tropes de Teens." 


After a minute of staring, I realized the reason it caught my eye was because of, well, the eyes...Note the woman's eyes on the lower left part of the painting, the red and the shape.

The painting I was working on this afternoon, the one I got fed up with and sent me out into the world, is called, variously, "Snake Eyes" (a play on the gambling term) or (when I'm feeling Biblical) "Adam's Eyes" when I'm going for an Adam-and-Eve type of thing (if a man eats an apple in the forest, and a snake isn't there to witness it, is it really a sin?).  So here's my eyes:

Not all that surprising that I tapped into that painting first.  It seems the Eyes have it today.  True, the only eyes of mine that may ever make it into a museum are likely the ones in my head.  But on a lazy Sunday afternoon suffused with art and light and nature and connection, well, that's just fine with me.