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Category Archives: creativity

Living in art

23 Monday Jan 2023

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Artist Stephanie Barrow, artist's daily practice

This is a clip from a Stephanie Barrow painting, and if you want a feast for the eyes, visit her website.

I confess I am biased, but I can’t help loving her art. A friend, I have watched her work evolve over the decades we have known each other.

If I were to create a video of Stephanie, everywhere she walked rainbow colors would flare out and away from her, and gardens, too, curling tendrily vines, bright flowers, verdant ferns emerging, rising wherever she wanders.

Wherever she lives, the space becomes a 3-dimensional painting. And she doesn’t keep it to herself. She shares with others. Her motto: art and gardens everywhere.

If you are a little blue, if you need a bit of brightener in the winter, visit Stephanie virtually. And if you want to know more about her, the blog is a fine and honest expression. I love her wisdom about the value of a daily practice.

Renaissance woman

12 Thursday Jan 2023

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extraordinary people, Renaissance women, writer Elizabeth Engstrom

My good friend Liz Engstrom has a way with words. An author, an educator, she also has a way with yarn. She made me this felt bowl last year in what seemed like no time at all, and I keep hats, gloves, neck gator, etc. in it close to the front door. Every time I see it, I both smile and marvel.

Some people seem to come pre-loaded with talent. But even as I write this, I know that Liz is all about the work. She puts in the effort at whatever she does. And because she seems to have a propensity for organization, many many things get accomplished. Her garden, for example. Beautiful, lush, productive.

She’s written multiple novels, mostly in the horror genre. If you want to lay awake at night twitching at every odd house-settling sound, read Black Ambrosia. One of her novels Candyland, was made into a movie so she also has a listing on IMDB.

She’s taught many writing courses in many venues over the course of her career and threads that tricky needle of providing useful feedback while not dimming the hopes and aspirations of neophyte writers.

You could also consider Liz an itinerant minister, not connected with a specific faith tradition but deeply spiritual. Her master’s degree in applied theology and certificate in pastoral care from Marylhurst University inform her approach to the day. Love and mercy. So, yes, a complicated soul. Great laugh, generous heart. I’m honored to call her my friend.

Why am I writing about her today? It’s my new year commitment to recognize and celebrate the extraordinary people in my life.

In the presence of the original

10 Tuesday Jan 2023

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bronze sculpture, original art, Peter Helzer

Sculptor Peter Helzer‘s Parade of Animals at the state capitol in Salem surprised and pleased me when we walked by on a visit with family last month. I had seen pictures but hadn’t been in its presence.

Anyone who’s ever been confronted with an original famous work of art after years of seeing reproductions will know this feeling. Vincent van Gogh’s Irises have been reproduced endlessly on card stock and even silk scarves and dish towels, but to be in the presence of the actual painting itself at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is to realize you haven’t really understood the vibrant beauty of the thing before.

And this seems even more true of sculpture, which offers the fine three-dimensional experience seeing it from all sides. Better still, outside rather than roped off in a museum you can touch the cool metal and feel the fine shapes.

I loved the little details, specifically the glasses on the horn (perhaps a French horn?). Loved seeing the alligator, its eyes cast upwards where a crow (raven?) sits on its head playing a tiny violin. You catch a glimpse only in a picture. You feel the piece in its presence.

71,000 stitches, give or take

13 Sunday Nov 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Making it home, Random

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audio books, creativity, hand quilting

When I began hand-stitching this quilt last January, I discovered that sewing spirals took a lot longer than sewing straight lines. As I went along, I realized it would be months, not weeks, of work. Then I learned about temptation bundling, the pairing of enjoyable activities with tedious ones, and began listening to plot-heavy audio books that enticed me back to needle and thread.

Ten months later, I’ve listened to 30 books (novels by Elizabeth Bear, Ursula LeGuin, Gregg Hurwitz, Patrick O’Brian, Ellis Peters, and Alan Furst).

These authors attracted me for two reasons. The first: the narrators of the audiobooks had voices that I wanted to listen to. Secondly the authors wrote series, books with repeating characters or themes or locations — the Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters, the Night Soldiers by Alan Furst, and, of course Patrick O’Brian’s masterful Master and Commander collection).

Nine days ago I finished the quilt stitching. Two days ago I finished the binding.

I counted the stitches in an 8″ x 14″ section of the quilt to extrapolate the total stitches and that came out to 71,364. It took me roughly an hour to do about 350 stitches. That’s 198 hours of sewing.

It was interesting to notice that even though I only used one color of thread — a light teal — it looked white on the dark portions of the quilt and almost black on the light portions.

I think I may now be completely done with the whole quilting thing.

Totally sated.

A two-fer

07 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, journalism

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Oregon pioneer, Oregon sculptor

Every now and then, fate dishes up a surprise. The journalist scheduled to write about Oregon pioneer Louis Southworth and Oregon bronze sculptor Peter Helzer, had an unexpected family emergency and I was asked to step in and write the piece. It was a pleasure to meet Helzer, whose work graces many public spaces in Oregon. And it was an honor to be able to share Southworth’s story, all wrapped into one article.

A master craftswoman

08 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, reading, Retro reads, writing

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Edith Pargeter, Ellis Peters, Historical mystery

British author Edith Pargeter, who also wrote under the psuedonym Ellis Peters, does a masterly bit of work in the second novel of her fine Cadfael Chronicles. That book, One Corpse Too Many, is set in 1138 England and includes a scene pivotal to the plot of the story, but also meaningful for its glimpse into human tragedy. Following the hanging of more than 90 men who were in rebellion against King Stephen, the families of the fallen come to claim their bodies for burial. It’s quiet and sad:

Some dozen or so had been claimed by parents and wives. Soon there would be piteous little hand-carts pushed up the slope to the gate, and brothers and neighbors lifting limp bodies to carry them away. More of the townspeople were still coming timidly in through the archway, women with shawls drawn close over their heads and faces half-hidden, gaunt old men trudging resignedly to look for their sons.

Among the men hung by the orders of the king, is one murdered and then thrown in among the other dead and it falls to the series’ hero Brother Cadfael to both discern that one corpse is not like the others and then to discover the killer.

I found myself moved by the small detail of a horror of war — the trauma of reclaiming the dead — and impressed that this scene was also pivotal to the development of the plot.

I’ve been enjoying Pargeter’s Cadfael Chronicles, impressed with her diligence in creating a believable historical setting but also with her skill in building a compelling narrative. It’s one thing when a scene evokes deep emotion. It’s a mark of expertise when it serves the plot so well.

Real world projects as metaphor

31 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Random, Story, writing

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joy of short-term projects, pre-writing pep rally, tedium of writing

I’ve had these director’s chairs for 32 years and the original white canvas finally failed on one of them. Since I’d taken them apart a few times over the years to clean the canvas, I knew replacing the old canvas wouldn’t be too difficult.

In the realm of projects, this was a short one and satisfying not the least because it’s simple and in the summer these chairs get daily use on the patio. A medium-term effort, bug screens for the van windows, took a few months. My long-term sewing project (a hand-stitched quilt begun in January) is two-thirds complete.

The varying length of these projects matters. Conceiving of, working on and finishing a creative task in a few days while other projects perk along at their own plodding pace, offers the reward inherent in finishing. Things that take longer — these middling length things that spin out of control because they involve unexpected problem-solving — provide the satisfaction of the ah-hah! moment when a solution presents itself and the making can continue.

They are like way-points, reminders that the long-term project, the 70,000 word book, just needs its own daily infusion of effort — solutions to thorny plot problems, taming of characters threatening to kick the book to pieces (a line I borrowed from E.M Forster’s “Aspects of the Novel”), releasing of the shy folk of the story who will unexpectedly step up to fix that plot issue. But it can only happen in the daily tedium of words going down on the page. Thinking of it in smaller chunks — this scene, that chapter, etc. — is useful.

And that is today’s little pre-writing pep rally.

Small bites

23 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Random, writing

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facing challenges, marketing tasks, novel synopsis, query letter, writing tasks

In July I wrote about creating a better query letter. And then I promptly forgot all about it. That’s my go-to response to difficult tasks: I’ll do it later. Then months go by. So, today, I’m changing it up. Not going to do it later. Going to write 300 words of query letter today.

There’s another piece of the puzzle I’ve been avoiding: Writing the synopsis. This task I’ve started and stopped because it seems, on the best days, impossible, and on the worst days, futile.

I’ll keep showing up to both tasks — a little chunk at a time — until they’re done. This strategy may also help me improve them by virtue of the benefits that accrue from taking breaks, noted in this Scientific American article.

Or as my dad used to say: Little by little you can go a long way.

The mystery of a good book

20 Saturday Aug 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Random, reading, writing

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author Betsy James, good book, the perfect reader

I’ve read or listened to more than a dozen books this year, but I only fell into one. You might know this feeling. You start reading a book and somewhere in the first 20 pages or so you become immersed in the story. When you open the book the world around you drifts into fog. When you are away from the book, it is sitting in a corner of your mind, waiting for you.

This is not the demand of a compelling plot that lures the reader on through the simple device of making you want to know what happens next. This is something else. The place of the book comes up around you. You see it, you hear it and smell it and it becomes a place you feel you know. As the characters in the book reveal themselves, you are drawn to them. You begin to feel what they feel. They rejoice or recoil, or are filled with wonder or alarm and you with them.

In the best books, you find yourself thinking in the special language of the book.

And when the book ends well, not happily but truly, having fulfilled the promise of its early pages, you are a little bereft because you will never have this experience again. You can never read this book in this way again, revisit it though you may.

Betsy James’ Roadsouls was this way for me. I don’t know how this happens, exactly, this resonance between book and reader. And we are all so individual in our tastes, in what resonates, that it can’t really be predicted. In a perfect world a book find its way to its perfect readers.

A writer wants to achieve this. To create a world a reader slips into like still water. And yet while writing, you don’t think about this. You are thinking about the plot. You are moving characters around in a room or on a mountain. You are describing place and setting mood. You are thinking about the words, the way they sound together. You are making choices every day in the writing that limit the choices that will come later. It doesn’t feel like a magical process. Some days it feels, in its middle parts, tedious. But worth remembering, at the end of a tedious writing day: the goal. Using words to create the illusion of a world and a story that will draw in the perfect reader, the one your book is written to, is a fine goal. And difficult. And worthy.

Inspiration in an unlikely place

19 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Random, Story, What they said

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inspiring quotes, making the effort, rom-com

Sometimes you queue up a rom-com because it’s been a long week and you pick “Lost City” because Sandra Bullock is fun to watch.

And you get an unexpected gift.

Her character borrows a slogan from the crest of the Ferguson clan: Dulcius ex asperis, Latin for “sweeter after difficulties.”

In the middle of challenges, it’s a reminder that making an effort has rewards.

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