Tag Archives: Artists

A Year in Books/Day 212: The White Blackbird

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  • Title: The White Blackbird A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter
  • Author: Honor Moore
  • Year Published: 1996 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2004/2005
  • Source: A bookstore in Buffalo, New York
  • About: I love stumbling across books about people whose names and faces don’t register. It is fair to say that I am obsessed with the obscure and the odd and the oddly obscure, especially when the subjects in question are creative and rebellious women. Anyone determined to live a life of artistry has to break some barriers. Deterrents come in many forms, but we all have expectations that we must push past in order to have the freedom to create. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Days 199 and 200: MGM Posters/MGM When the Lion Roars

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DAY 199: MGM Posters The Golden Years

  • Title: MGM Posters The Golden Years
  • Text: Frank Miller
  • Year Published: 1994 (Turner Publishing, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 1990s
  • Source: I have no idea!
  • About: There’s nothing like an old movie poster. When art and commerce combine with history and nostalgia, the result is a visually stunning social commentary. In looking at the representative posters of five decades, changing attitudes and mores are as obvious as changing aesthetics. MGM was known for the luxuriousness of its productions, and the top talent of its employees. Although designed as throwaways, the posters that advertised its movies were no exception, and neither were their artists. My favourite era for this exciting medium is definitely the 1920s.The posters are stunning. At the risk of sounding like a crotchety hundred year old, it has been all downhill since then.
  • Motivation: Old movies are my friends. We’re tight. I’m pretty close with art, too. Continue reading →

[15th August Inspiration Board] Visually Inclined

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My writer’s brain requires a lot of different stimuli to keep on churning fast enough to function. A slowed down thought process is detrimental to my creativity. If you jumped out on the obvious limb and guessed that I probably have a hard time meditating, you were correct. Although I relish being alone, I do not handle quiet well. I need noise: a slightly too-loud television, a wide-faced Labrador crunching on a bone, a cat scratching on a door frame, low but audible music (The Clash or Patti Smith) pulsing from my laptop, discordantly lovely street noise breaking in through a few open windows, dogs racing and barking down the halls. Sirens. Car alarms. Screaming, skittering children. The sound of my bare feet beating against a table leg. A bus breaking to a stop. I could write with a baby squawking in my face. Noise. It’s beautiful. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 158: Bloomsbury Recalled

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  • Title: Bloomsbury Recalled
  • Author: Quentin Bell
  • Year Published: 1995 (Columbia University Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: The author was the younger son of Vanessa and Clive Bell, two central figures in the Bloomsbury group (which was really just a loose network of friends, family and acquaintances). His aunt was, of course, novelist Virginia Woolf. Bloomsbury Recalled is his brief but excellently engaging memoir of the fascinating adults who formed his parents’ social and professional circles from WWI to the start of the next  great international conflict at the end of the 1930s. The little boy who grew up in a sticky web of conflicting personalities and crossed goals became an accomplished polymath with a distinctive, intelligent and highly amusing voice. His relaxed nature, probing wit and compelling birthright give this book a sparkle that the average Bloomsbury retrospective sorely lacks.
  • Motivation: Bloomsbury? Check. A relatively unbiased insider’s view? Check. Writers, artists and theorists? Oh my! Seriously, this book covers one of my favourite literary periods. That is reason enough.

    English: Portrait of Clive Bell

    English: Portrait of Clive Bell (Photo credit: Wikipedia). The author’s father.

  • Times Read: 3
  • Random Excerpt/Pages 11 & 12 : “I was not alarmed. I was convinced that I was not really consumptive; also, apart from the cough and high temperature, I did not feel at all ill. I enjoyed some fierce arguments with a clergyman, managed to do a little painting, and embarked upon historical research on the principality of Monaco for which I was totally unqualified.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

A Year in Books/Day 121: The Artist’s Way

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  • Title: The Artist’s Way A Spiritual Path to Creativity
  • Author: Julia Cameron
  • Year Published: 1992 (G.P Putnam’s Sons)
  • Year Purchased: 1998
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: If you’re an artist, writer or other creative type you’ve likely heard of this book; it’s a classic of its kind. I have a confession: I’ve read it at least four times (maybe five) but have never done the exercises for more than a week. I know, I know. Reading it (the easy part) but not following through by actually putting in the work (the tough part) entirely defeats the purpose. I don’t know why I always stop at around the same point in the program: the whole thing makes sense, it is inspiring, my brain knows that it would probably be helpful. Maybe it’s because I’m not very good at following directions (I’m a control freak) and don’t like to be locked into anything with such an open-ended outcome. Given that it’s only a twelve-week program, maybe I will give it another whirl. On the plus side-for me, anyway-is the relative structure involved. I can get behind free writing every morning; that’s a sound discipline to have. I also love the quotes in the margins of nearly every page. The program seems to encourage artistic empowerment and creative openness, both good things. Whether it skews , in actual practice, to the side of personal revelation or empty promise remains to be seen.
  • Motivation: It is an attractive concept and was all the rage for the whole of the 1990s and into this century, when I was a very young aspiring writer.
  • Times Read: 4 or 5
  • Random Excerpt/Page 123: “Jealousy is a map. Each of our jealousy maps differs. Each of us will probably be surprised by some of the things we discover on our own. I, for example, have never been eaten alive with resentment over the success of women novelists. But I took an unhealthy interest in the fortunes and misfortunes of women playwrights. I was their harshest critic, until I wrote my first play.”
  • Happiness Scale: My jury of one is still out.

If you’ve actually read the book AND completed the program, I’d love to hear from you. Did it help in any practical way? What did you get from the program?

[Resources] Starlight Echoes

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 Starlight Echoes-A music, writing & art group* is an open, highly interactive community on Facebook. Whether you are a new or untried artist looking for a safe, supportive and encouraging community or a professional interested in expanding your network or widening your platform, you will find a warm reception. Artists, writers and musicians from around the world post their work. Taken as a whole the offerings are impressive; viewed individually, they are stunningly varied. It’s heartening to see strangers, united only by a common passion for creativity, be so open and eager to welcome the art of others. It is never easy to put yourself out there; it requires an emotional nudity and brazen nerve that never entirely resolves itself. If you are in need of a critique of your work, then you will have to look elsewhere. There are plenty of forums for that. Starlight Echoes is a place where positivity reigns; it is inclusive and inspiring. Who can’t use a little of that in their lives?

*FYI-This is NOT my Facebook group. It was started and is administered by a lovely, spirited woman named Angela Muchmore.

A Year in Books/Day 36: Shadows, Fire, Snow

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  • Title: Shadows, Fire, Snow The Life of Tina Modotti
  • Author: Patricia Albers
  • Year Published: 1999 (Clarkson Potter/Publishers)
  • Year Purchased: 2002
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: Tina Modotti, though little recognized today, was a woman of many talents: she worked as an actress, artisan, photographer (which is her main claim to immortality) and communist revolutionary. Her fierce abilities, ideals and passions took her from her native Italy to the shores of America, Mexico and Russia.
  • Motivation: I love strong, artistic, intelligent women. Her photography is stunning, never-to-be-forgotten.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 32: “Meanwhile, the military debacle had cut off communications with the family in Italy, leaving Tina, Mercedes, and Giuseppe frantic with anxiety. Was Tina also experiencing guilt that she had been absorbed in playacting as her loved ones suffered? If so, it was not the last time she would anguish over the thought of art making in the face of human affliction.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

    English: The white Iris (tina modotti)

    Image via Wikipedia