LeRoy and Follow Up on Inspiration Post
LeRoy - mixed media movable sculpture
Remember the post I wrote about the “Mixed Media Movable Sculpture” class that I taught at Anderson Ranch Arts Center about a month ago? I finally got around to photographing my sculpture that I made in advance of the class to show my students. He’s been sitting on my piano ever since I returned home, just hangin’ with some ceramic bugs that my daughter and I made last year. I sort of forgot about him, until yesterday when one of my daughter’s buds was over and made a bee-line for him. You can see the sculptures my student’s made by clicking here.
LeRoy's fancy wingtip shoes,
I had a lot of fun making this sculpture which is really a caricature of my dog, Danzig, who we adopted in April from Front Range German Shepherd Rescue. Incidentally, we didn’t change his name because we decided that he had lived with this name for the past 6 years and it might add stress upon relocation stress to change it when he came to live with us. We think he was named after the the ’80’s heavy metal band of the same name, though Danzig is also the German version of the Polish town, Gdansk. We think it’s the former, however, since his previous owners kept him locked in a garage for most of his life. We’ve discovered a few issues over the past few months, but love him anyway. Despite his intense dislike of anything on wheels, he’s a goofy, gentle, lovable and good looking dog - this is what I think he would look like if he had a few human qualities thrown in. My daughter has christened Danzig’s effigy, “LeRoy Guajardo”, after I asked for help naming him.
My movable mixed media sculpture is constructed with low fire earthenware clay, wire, wood, fabric, stuffing, thread, beads, acrylic paint, glue, nichrome wire and a few misc. items that I can’t recall at the moment.
Meanwhile, I wanted to revise my last post on inspiration. I am not lacking inspiration and have a ton of it floating around in my head right now. I’m merely finding it difficult to switch gears from teaching and writing lesson plans to creating my own work. It’s taking me longer to do so than normal. Mary commented that it’s okay to take a break once in awhile and to just breathe. Beth emailed me and mentioned that teaching and creating use different parts of our brains and it gave me more food for thought.
Then yesterday, I listened to a podcast of Craftcast’s Alison Lee interviewing photographer Kathleen Carr and I felt validated just a bit afterwards. One of the things the two discussed was the notion that if an artist isn’t creating every single day then are they really just a pseudo artist?. The answer is no, that’s not true. We are constantly gathering information, inspiration, and formulating a creative response even when not making any work directly.
At the end of the podcast, Alison mentioned a gift one of her friends had given her. It’s an “inspiration tray” to store and display items that one finds interesting sort of like a creative incubator.
After listening to the podcast, I was reminded of the slide show that Dan Essig presented at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in July and his inspiration files. He showed a couple of slides of all the things he has collected over the years since childhood that he keeps in tiny little boxes in his studio. It was fascinating and it looked like he had 100’s, if not 1,000’s of little boxes filled with collected bits and pieces that he finds interesting - some of his collected artifacts even ends up in his sculptural mixed media books when the time is right.
I think I’m going to give the inspiration tray a try and I can start by adding the seed pods (see last post) to the tray so that my thoughts and ideas can develop and grow.
~Cynthia
