Intention & Flow

What I Want to Make vs. What I End up Making

Dear Friend and Fellow Maker,

It is interesting to look back over a very full week of creativity and see the interplay of what I intended to accomplish and what I actually ended up doing. I am learning to hold both “must-do’s” and “wanna-do’s” together and allow them to intertwine. To enjoy the moments in which I need to be intentional AND the times when I can allow myself to meander. Both are necessary for me. Well, I think I could be happy meandering in a flow of creative curiosity all the time, but I would eventually want to “make something of it” thus requiring a bit of finishing work and framing and whatnot in order to share with others via my ETSY shop or in an exhibit. ❤️

I have had the happy fortune to be offered an exhibit space at a local independent living community which has run a gallery, changing their exhibits every two months, for many years. I’ve been working concertedly the last two weeks to frame up 27 tapestries, most of them small, but a few on the larger side. It is nowhere near as simple as framing a painting on paper.

These fiber works must be stitched to card¹, making sure they are squared up and not leaning one direction or the other, which I’m not sure I achieved in every case. 🤪 I’m also having to add wire to the back of every frame since their framing system doesn’t allow for use of the brackets on the back of frames. A few of my tapestries are stitched to canvases that I painted this week and that is also a fun way to present them! I will share those in an upcoming post!

But if I stood at my kitchen counter, doggedly framing for too long, I needed to switch things up and draw in my sketchbook for a bit, letting my imagination go free, or spin some characterful wool I had blended on my blending board. I made a fiber “log” from a variety of wools dubbed “felting wool”, but I wanted to spin it and see what might happen, blending them with a bit of sparkle thrown in. I LOVE the resulting yarn, plied with a gorgeous blue Romney wool I had spun.

It seems to me that there needs to be intention AND flow, instead of one or the other. Indeed I can even get into some sort of “flow” with the framing process, but I have to do other things in between to keep my energies up and to be able to continue with the must-do’s an artist must do to share her work. When I sit back and look at the ticker-tape of my creative mind, I can either despair that I don’t stick with one thing very long before I’m off delving into something else, OR I can revel in the variety that keeps my imagination and curiosity simmering.

And it has surely been simmering…I have something I’m going to try as soon as I finish the framing. It will be like a little celebration to allow myself to indulge in trying…entering into that “what-if-I…” state that I love so much. It’s an idea, a melange of so many of the things I love to do, something I have done on a smaller scale before and yet different. Isn’t that always how we evolve and grow? A little of what we have done before, combined to create something a bit different and new? Yesss…

I have also pulled out my ink bottles to draw with the dropper and swoosh water around before some of it has dried. I’m already dreaming of #inktober² and wanting to fully participate in that this year! However, it is likely that I may be onto something else by then, and the idea of drawing with ink every day in October might not be as enchanting as it is now. But I shall resist trying to predict what my fingers will want to get up to in the future, and just stay here, in the ongoing frame-work, and flow-work, letting it evolve as I go.

³So I’m off to a week of framing more tapestries and whatever I get up to in-between. Thomas Edison said that “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Same could be said for creativity!

Sending you hope for daily inspiration and cheers for all the perspiration!

With gratitude,

Jennifer

P.S…

1. If you are wondering how to frame your own small tapestries, here is just one way to do it. There are so many possibilities, from mounting them on canvas, or cloth covered boards, or on wood, or dangling free from a lovely hook like Sarah Swett has done here.

2. Inktober occurs in October and is a daily thing on Instagram where folks draw something with ink of any kind and post it throughout the month. You can follow me @jenpedraws if you’d like to see what I get up to in October! 😍

3. The above is a photo of my back deck garden seen through the morning light. When temperatures aren’t too crazy hot, as they have been lately, I love being out here to reflect, draw and spin!