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Hi Hi-
I am in a creative rut. What can I say? I’ve had a year. People I love mightily are struggling. I received not-the-news I wanted to hear from my agent. I’m caught in an adminstrative nightmare dealing with my stubborn mother’s ill planned financial life… not to mention the woes and disasters of the world. Worry lives rent free in my head and thus, my creative self has dried up.
How do you express your creative self? Poet? Proser? Chef? Gardener? Knitter? Painter? Dancer? No matter how you do what you do, sometimes we dry up.
Enter Wendy MacNaughton and the GUT, that is the Grown Ups Table!
I had to be in California to visit family and friends before our long stay in France. I saw there would be an IRL drawing lesson at SF MOMA in conjunction with the RUTH ASAWA show. If you’re there, you must go! For me, the timing was perfect.
Of course it was wonderful to see Asawa’s creative expression across mediums. Her output over decades was inspiring (including 6 children!) and flexible. When she was diagnosed with Lupus in midlife she could no longer make her wire sculptures. So, inspired by her gardens, she pivoted to drawing flowers.
You cannot force a plant to bloom. It has a cycle. You have to tend it and care for it and wait for the bloom to happen. If you don’t take care of it, it dies. The more experiences you have like this the more you begin to understand your own cycle. -Ruth Asawa
When she came to the flower decision she told her mentor, Joseph Alber. He responded, “If you are going to draw flowers, make them Asawa flowers.”
…
After the galleries, I went to be ensconced with other DrawTogether peeps. OMG! So much fun. I met new people. We did blind contour drawing of one anther. Mine was terrible! We drew loops and branches and waves.
Then, before Wendy set us free to draw the gorgeous bouquets set around the space, she reminded us:
Drawing is looking. Looking is loving.
Slow Down. Look Deeply.
Draw what you see, not what you think you see.
Then we settled in. (And look! I have the receipt from the event photos!)
Am I now writing like a delighted mad-woman, or like prolific Joyce Carol Oates? No. But I felt so good to touch that little place in me. Massive, massive thanks to Ruth Asawa and Wendy MacNaughton, and all the people who worked to put together a nourishing afternoon.
I encourage you to check the GUT page with all the instructions for drawing your own bouquet. Also, maybe subscribe to Wendy. She’s def a jewel!
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What do you do to break free from a slump?
Thanks for reading. I hope your day is filled with amiable companions.
If you missed the last few jewels… no fear! Here they are: cookies. melon salad. novel. dance. poem. cake. friendship. school shopping.
And, to stay in the loop:
Tell your people you love them, and take care of your skin!
i would just work on something else, pick a piece out of my large pile of unfinished/unpublished stuff and work on that, or ask for feedback on it from one of my groups. i might do the drawing exercise, sounds like fun.
Being stuck is so hard. I don't have any suggestions for getting unstuck but I'm learning to be kinder to myself when I can't write or can't write well. The self-berating is not good, it turns out. Haha!