11 Comments

Comment by Sharon Bruner on June 8, 2008 at 1:37pm

Sandi, I found out that people around me......even close family....could not even image how the things that were happening were affecting our whole immediate family (by that, I mean my husband, myself, my middle daughter, our 2 older gsons......even out others daughters could not relate to what was happening to us because they were not living next door to it)....
Stay close to this group, look at their art, read their blogs, discussions and try to tune into something here everyday. It's hard to really tell someone else what they need to be doing because all our situations are different even though they may have similiarities. Each of us reacts differently to those situations and, finally, I don't think we ever get a hint of the shaking it can do to our psychies............I had never even given this a thought until we went through our ordeal. I think I am still reinventing myself......have some new views I never thought I would give a thought to, but, hey, I'm surviving................

Comment by Sandi Wedemeier on June 8, 2008 at 2:26pm

Thank you Sharon. Any advise is good advise right now. Part of my problem, through the whole of my life, has been spending too much time in my head. I do need to add checking in here to my morning ritual...coffee, email and Bookartz.

And not freaking until I've been froken to. That's the hard one.

Comment by Stacie Williams on June 8, 2008 at 5:55pm

>>And not freaking until I've been froken to.>>

That's cool. Start with that!

>>more than ever, I need to move, act, defy, create. Recreate me...who I am, what I do, how I move through my world.<<

If you need to create, but you're working things out in your head, try an art journal. You don't have to show it to anyone, but looking back, some things will become very clear. If you don't have a journal- make one. And start.....today. You'll be happy you did.

Comment by Sharon Bruner on June 8, 2008 at 7:16pm

Great advise, Stacie. I've just started some the past few weeks and it's a great place to put down things either literally (written word) or symbolically with your art. It's your own little world.

Comment by Sandi Wedemeier on June 9, 2008 at 11:05am

Thanks Stacie...I've never tried an art journal and have been envious of people who do them. I can see how valuable it would be for me to keep some sort of visual journal of this 'trip', but for some reason, it trips the same anxiety trigger as working on decos. Perhaps it's the ban remembered from my childhood to NOT mark up books! I may have to cut up some watercolour paper and punch holes in them with my rollabind and work on each page individually.

Comment by Stacie Williams on June 9, 2008 at 12:27pm

My art journal is a book that I made. I bought big sheets & cut them down to size, ripped the guts out of a book that I got at a library sale. Painted the covers. Made signatures & sewed (is that a word?) them into the book. I'm not nearly as consistent as I'd like to be. But that's a time management issue ;-)

Comment by Alicia Edwards on June 10, 2008 at 9:29am

Sandi, it doesn't even have to an "art journal." Call it whatever you want or whatever makes it easier. If it's a blank book, it's designed to be written in. The pressure of having to make something artful to go in it has made me hesitant to work in one. I think an approach of "putting something in this book everyday, even if it's writing one word with a ball-point pen" is a lot less stressful. At least it is for me. Maybe it would be for you, too?

Comment by Sandi Wedemeier on June 10, 2008 at 12:22pm

You know what's weird? I have no trouble working in my sketch book, not that I sketch much (I have an old art teacher from junior high to thank for taking the joy out of drawing and convincing me that I couldn't draw), but it's a place to write out ideas for...well, everything.

I think Alicia might be right though, it' the "art" part of art journal that might be tripping me up. that goes back to that same awful art teacher.

She was a "portrait artist", meaning that she took photos of people (not that she even took the photos, she just borrowed photos that clients liked) and painted their portraits from them. they looked *exactly* like the photo. I said and still say...what's the point of that?! She. however, decided that we were to make everything look exactly as she decided that it should look, so while others were on to other class projects, I was at the back of the classroom, trying to draw rotting bananas to look exactly like rotting bananas. Gosh, I hated her. I still do. I still feel the same humiliation when I try to draw.

However, I think what I may do, cut up some watercolour paper and make a bunch of backgrounds and use those for a page a day kind of thing. I'm fairly sure I can deal with a 6" x 6" page.

Comment by Christy on June 11, 2008 at 2:24am

Gee did your art teacher (she was an idiot by the way) know my 4th grade math teacher? My math teacher was very old school and felt that a child writing with her left hand was a waste of a chair. She would stand over me (sooo intimidating to a kid) and slap at my hand if I didn't have that pencil at a perfect 90 degree angle. Ugh to this day I think of her sometimes when I think about being left handed. Some teachers should simply not be teachers! Make art, and every single time you start to draw think about that teacher and smile... do it for you and if necessary to spite her. Heh.

Comment by Sandi Wedemeier on June 11, 2008 at 10:54am

Christy...I had a short and painless (for me at any rate) struggle with a teacher over being left-handed. She tried to make me write with my right hand one day, I went home and told my mother, who told my father, who (in a move that still boggles my mind today) called the principle of my school and told him, in no uncertain terms, that if I was naturally left handed, I needed to be left alone. The teacher never said another word.

Now if only he'd done that when the art teacher was humiliating me...

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