So, it was not a stellar money maker. The day was breezy and beautiful, but most of the attendees were not looking for what I, or what anyone around me was selling. These are hard times for little church craft sales.
I talked to a several people who were interested in what I was making, two or three who purchased and others who only looked and longed. I got a couple suggestions and three people showed interest in learning how to make a book or scarf for themselves and left their names and e-mails, picked up a brochure of classes.
Quite often I found myself talking to the vendor opposite of me, wondering about how to promote what we made, discussing other venues, what worked and the long list of things that had not worked. Complaining, yes, but also looking toward the future, sharing information, not defeated by this long day with few sales.
Now, after a night of sleep, a cup of coffee, and sitting with my morning pages I think this is what I have learned...where I need to go in the next week or two ahead.
This week I have to get EVERYTHING on
etsy. I have been terrible about that. It has seemed so time-consuming to post pictures, go through the steps, etc., etc. But I need to just sit at this computer and do it.
I need to find at least five places where I can leave my class brochures/ business cards where people who are interested in personal growth and creativity wander.
I need to complete the applications for teaching community college classes and the application for the summer at
Holden Village.
I need to find a couple places... church youth groups? teen centers? shelters, maybe... where people might be interested in making their own journal... I had a charcoal eyed, fishnet wearing teen who so wanted one of my books. She didn't draw but she wrote poetry. I stood and showed her how she could incorporate both. But in the end, the folks who controlled her money said no. The book was not important to them.
I feel so strongly that the process of making art - paint, fiber, words, pencil, pen - is so much more important than the final piece of art we make. That allowing ourselves to enter the flow, the click of needles, the scratch of a pen, the movement of our arms as we firmly rub fiber into fiber, the tension in our fingers as we hold and sew signature to signature in the construction of a book, is the creative meditation our souls need to rest and renew.
And while I love the process of making art so much for myself, I am at heart a teacher, and as such compelled to share this love of process where I can.
I like the whole cosmic idea of negative space... that stuff that lies behind... the darkness, the holy ground where all growth begins. We are in the dark part of the year, just turned the corner, but it will take weeks before the sun seems to catch up with the reality that the winter will be vanquished... but winter has it's place, as does darkness... and so I tried to concentrate at first just on what lay behind, I tried to ignore the stuff on the surface. I tried to put the uncertainties, the decisions I think I need to make now, the to-do list aside and spend a little time not trying to take care of things that will take care of themselves.
I played a little with the positive, and put this floating head in, but mostly I added color and shine, adding depth to what was behind.
I heard the words, come out, come out, wherever you are, playing in my head and put them running up a couple of the stems. I added thorns and texture to the bramble and painted in the head a bit more, then muted her with a blue wash.
And last I hid her behind tissue paper leaves... she isn't ready to come out just yet. She needs the dark and values the solitude... anyway, it's cold out there, and she doesn't have any answers yet.
