Creatively Thinking

  Featured image: Straight From the Heart I  cherish life I  cherish love I  come to bring peace to be and love to the world and to you love of life to this little part of the world then  I  will be happy I   come so you can reclaim your personal  connection with the earth and with your spirit I  come so that you can deepen your connection  to benefit yourself a nd to others. So you can  pass it on.

  Featured image: First Robin Have you seen your first robin yet? I saw mine a couple of weeks ago. So exciting, because for me that means that spring is just around the corner. But wait—what is this? Snow yet again. Oh dear, all those wonderful birds coming back. I know that they know how to stay warm when they get caught in a snowstorm, but humans, once they shed their winter coats, there is no turning back. At the same time I saw my first robin, I saw a human walking into the grocery store in shorts and flip-flops. There was no way he was going back to a winter coat. No way. And he wasn’t the only one. Gosh, he has to be cold—and he does not have whatever those birds have to keep them warm. Silly people. I had my hat on, boots, lined pants, a sweater, and a winter coat, and I was still cold. Happy spring.

  I’m honored to share that my work, Wolf—Don’t Fence Me In , has been accepted into Collage Artists of America’s Freedom Reframed exhibition . I’m deeply grateful to juror Shannon Currie-Holmes and to Collage Artists of America for including this piece in a show that centers on freedom, perspective, and the many ways we reframe our experiences. For as long as I can remember, my work has circled around the real, the imagined, and freedom , so it feels especially meaningful to have this piece included in an exhibition built around those ideas. Wolf—Don’t Fence Me In speaks to something I return to again and again in my work—the longing for freedom, the untamed spirit, and the quiet strength of what refuses to be contained. Nature has always been my greatest teacher, and the wolf, like the bird, carries a presence that is both symbolic and deeply felt. It reminds us of instinct, endurance, and the wild inner life that remains intact despite the fences we encounter. The exhibitio...

  Featured image: Intersections I Continuing Monday’s question about imitation and originality, I’ve realized that it’s difficult to talk about origins. Instead, I think about creation. I create from what already exists—from tangible things around me. I don’t invent from nothing. The challenge, then, is not the object itself, but how I use it: how I arrange it, combine it, and mark it with my own ideas. That is where originality lives. Some works merely imitate. They copy. What we are really searching for is the idea. As I begin new work, I feel this tension strongly. I look at where art is going and where I want to go, and I return to one simple desire: I want my work to be free. If it imitates, it isn’t free. If my mark imitates, it isn’t free. I will feel it. I will know. Be ready for the new work. Look for it.

  Featured image: Intersections II How does an artist find inspiration?   Do ideas simply appear in an aha moment? For me, those moments are rare. Most of my inspiration comes from looking—really looking, really seeing. We miss more than we realize. Have you ever walked the same path twice and noticed something new the second time? Or looked at someone and questioned whether their eyes were blue or green? We often see things without fully realizing that we’ve seen them. This way of seeing shapes my work. People frequently ask about the black-and-white bars that appear throughout it. There isn’t a simple answer. They come from my history—from an exhibition I once guided as a museum docent, featuring objects from an African tribe adorned entirely in black-and-white patterns. After seeing that work, I found myself drawn to those patterns as well. Was I copying them? That question comes up often in art, especially around copyright. I recently read about a photographer wrestling wi...

  Featured image: Rotating Earth “Touch the earth and plant your heart into what comforts you.”   CEA