creative journey – tierneycreates

As part of my ongoing series of posts on my sources of Creative Inspiration, I thought I would continue the discussion begun a couple of weeks ago by Melanie @ Catbird Quilt Studio and Chela @ Chela’s Colchas y Mas on Creativity, by sharing how I work out my creative ideas – using my two journals (and give you a peek inside!)

First here are the two posts that inspired this post:

Catbird Quilt Studio (I love her tagline: “Be powerful. CREATE!”): Creativity Tips from Experts — and Me

Chela’s Colchas y Mas: Creativity

If you have an interesting post on Creativity/the Creative Process, please share the link to your post in the Comments section to this post. I know I’ve read such posts on other blogs I follow, however these are the posts that recently come to mind.

I’ve posted about on of my journals previously, in my 01/16/2016 post Creative Inspiration: My Journals, but I thought it would be fun in this post to share a peek inside these journals (a glimpse inside the madness…smile).

As I shared in the 01/16/2016 post, I originally got the idea of keep an art quilt ideas/inspiration journal from Jean Wells Keenan‘s brilliant books Intuitive Color and Design: Adventures in Art Quilting and Journey to Inspired Art Quilting. I was also fortunate enough to take her series of classes, Journey to Art Inspired Quilting, twice and see in person her wonderful inspirational art quilting journal.

Journal One: Art Quilt Sketchbook (Windows to My Creativity)

My journal for sketching out quilt ideas and keep clipped images (like from magazines) or photos of inspirational ideas, has a handmade cover:

It is called “Window to My Creativity” (thus the window like pieces images on the cover); and here is the inside page:

Before we go any further, I need to warn you that you might be underwhelmed with my drawing/sketching abilities and as a bonus I have terrible, difficult to read handwriting – but it works for me!

Here are examples of some of the images pasted into my journal to inspire future art quilt projects:

I sketch out and write notes on any art quilt idea.

Example #1 – from The Recycled Door

hogan_tierney_davis-recycled_door-3040 — The finished piece: The Recycled Door (2017) by Tierney Davis Hogan, quilted by Guadalupe Designs, photographed by Marion Shimoda

Example #2 – The Lesson & The Equation

2018-04-08_08-35-01_827 — The initial sketch and working out the concept of the piece and the draft Artist Statement

2018-04-08_08-34-59_058 — Individual page 1

2018-04-08_08-34-49_149 — Individual page

Article 1_TierneyDavis — The final version: The Lesson & The Equation (2016) by Tierney Davis Hogan. Image courtesy of Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi

Example #3 – Recycled Love

2018-04-08_08-35-26_650 — The initial sketch

2018-03-29_18-22-25_471 — Current progress

As you can see originally I had quite ambitious plans – I was going to stitch or appliqué the following words onto each of the “folded quilts” in the piece: kindness, empathy, integrity, compassion, joy, respect, honesty or unity (I was going to have to get rid of one of those words to get to 7). Instead I decided to just do a different piecing of recycled materials to create each “folded quilt”.

There was a great quote (in the book Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking (1993) by David Bayles and Ted Orland about ideas being larger than ability or desire to execute. I forgot the specific words to, so I will just very loosely summarize: Your ideas for a piece and might be greater than your ability or desire to execute the piece.

After reading that book I accept that how I initially conceptualize, visualize, dream about a piece is likely going to be larger and more ambitious than how I can translate it into an physical quilt. This leads to much less frustration.

Recycled Love is still in progress and you can see it in progress in this recent post – Recycled Love (“What’s On My Lap” and Artist Statements, Part III).

By the way, I did decide to do a “facing” to finish the piece. I am nearly done with the hand quilting and hope to finish this piece soon (and share complete photos)

Journal Two: The tierneycreates Journal

I use my other journal, which does not have a handmade cover, for writing down ideas for my tierneycreates blog posts, and planning of my artistic journal.When I had an Etsy shop I wrote out the original ideas and planning for the shop in this journal. I also keep inspirational quotes I come across, and notes from self-improvement books or small business/craft business books for future reference and inspiration.

Below are some journal page examples:

Fun with Sharpies

Finally, I love Sharpies pens/markers, I think I have them in nearly every color made and keep them in a pouch by my journals.

I use Sharpies to write in my journals and the fun of using these markers (and other cool colored markers I’ve picked up over the years) is also a source of creative inspiration for me!

So – what about your journaling practice: do you keep a journal to work out your creative ideas? Pleas share!

Creative Inspiration

Creative Inspiration: Just Cut Out the Bad Parts and Keep Going

July 26, 2017July 26, 2017 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

This post continues my series of posts on sources of Creative Inspiration.

One of my quilting mentors, Jean Wells Keenan, once said in a class (paraphrased): When you are really stuck on a piece and you want to give up, don’t give up. Just push through your discomfort or unhappiness with the piece; keep going and you will be surprised how it evolves.

So what does this have to do with my featured image for this post – a pile of sweet potatoes?

Well, at lunch today (I am a telecommuter), I pulled out the remains of a bag of several weeks old sweet potatoes. I forgot about them in the veggie drawer in my fridge and I hoped I could possibly use them (I hate wasting food) in a salad or veggie bowl if I boiled them.

As I washed the sweet potatoes, a first glance, they looked kind of icky and their only future was compost. However on closer inspection, I realized there were good viable parts to each sweet potato – all I had to do was cut out the bad parts.

While trimming each sweet potato to remove the “bad parts”, I thought how this relates to creating a piece of art. I have worked on several art quilting project when I wanted to just give up, crumple the piece into a ball (and burn it) and discard it.

Occasionally I did just this, throw away the piece and try to forgot the time I spent on expending my creativity on the piece. This was until I took a series of art quilting classes with Jean Wells Keenan and heard her statement about not giving up – it resonated with me.

I learned to work or rework what I have created already, cut the bad parts out, and keep going with creating the piece.

An example of an art quilt that I wanted to throw into the trash pile (or burn as an effigy of what-not-to-do-when-creating-an-art-quilt) was my piece Abandoned Water Structure. This piece, which was eventually sold to the City of Seattle/Seattle Public Utilities for their Portable Works Collection nearly made it to the trash or fabric recycling pile several times (or as potential kindling).

It began as an art quilt project based on a photo of a beach structure for a series of classes I was taking with Jean Wells Keenan, called Journey to Inspired Art Quilting. I absolutely hated the piece and it seemed like to would never go anywhere (I felt like I was stopped in my journey anywhere, much less to inspired art quilting).

The series of classes ended, and I took the unfinished piece back home with me to sit in the abandoned project pile (where projects go to die..).

Randomly rummaging through my abandoned project pile a couple months later, I rediscovered the piece and I was suddenly struck with the feeling that I was not using the correct inspiration for the piece. The piece WANTED TO BE SOMETHING ELSE.

I had a photo on my inspiration board of an abandoned/closed water power facility in Central Oregon and I knew this is what the piece was to become (or at least be inspired by)!

After reworking the piece for a couple hours, I was tempted to return it to the abandon project pile (or just soak it in lighter fluid) but luckily I heard Jean in the back of my head to “just push through, keep going“. I cut out the bad parts, the parts that were not working in the piece, and eventually it became the Abandoned Water Structure art quilt.

If I were to summarize my thoughts and advice from this experience (and my ramblings above) for my fellow crafters and artists, it would be:

Creating can be like working with a partially rotted sweet potato. 
You know there is yumminess still there but you don't want to eat 
"the bad parts".

So cut out the "bad parts" and keep the good/viable parts!

Keep going, don't give up, be patient with yourself and the piece.
Let it become the yumminess it eventually wants to become.

Well I have stretched that analogy as far as it will stretch, thanks for reading to see where the heck I was going with my sweet potato story.

Oh and in case you were curious, my trimmed and boiled sweet potatoes were delicious (full of yumminess) in my salad at lunch!

Feature image credit: khongrithSV, free images.com

Creative Inspiration

Advance your Art

June 14, 2016June 17, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Unlikely Artistic Inspiration in a Business Publication

There is a professional publication that arrives every month in my mailbox – Healthcare Business Monthly. It comes as part of a professional membership I have in the healthcare industry.

I appreciate all the work that goes into this publication but many times the articles are fairly dry and technical; however an article by Tara Cole in the June 2016 issue (page 58), really caught my attention.

The title of the article is “Advance to the Career You Want”. In this article the author provides tips on how to develop yourself professionally and move into the career you want.

I thought the author’s tips in this article could translate into how to “Advance to Where You Want to Go with Your Art”, “Artist Development”, “Advance Your Creative Journey” or something like that.

Here is a listing of the author’s eight (8) tips which I am going to apply to advancing my creative journey:

Get comfortable with being uncomfortable
Be open to change
Be curious
Stay connected
Get technical
Challenge yourself
Be honest
Use your time wisely

I embrace all these tips! Lately I have been working on #5 – Get technical: taking classes, talking to mentors, reading up on new quilting techniques, etc. I have definitely been challenging myself (the secret quilt I am finishing for the by invitation exhibit – I have been quilting this quilt myself – gasp!)

Time for a Random Photo

And now here is a random photo: Recently I returned from a long weekend visiting a friend in the Denver, CO area (see post Creative Inspiration: Travel). During on weekend together, we went on lovely walks on nature trails. One of the trails had many gopher or prairie dog holes along the path and I was fascinated looking at the prairie dogs popping up and talking to one another.

I was not fast enough with my smartphone camera to capture the adorable prairie dog that was popped up from its hole, but here is a photo of one of the holes, right after the prairie dog seeing my camera disappeared into:

But wait – I will connect this photo to this post:

Sometimes on your creative journey you have to retreat into a metaphorical hole and focus alone on your art.
Sometimes on your creative journey you have to venture into an unknown hole to move forward in your art.
Sometimes on your creative journey, you have to follow someone into a hole and see where it leads (but I was too big to follow after the prairie dog!)

Please share any thoughts you have on how this photo could relate to an artist’s creative journey (or how you are concerned that I obviously need my “special medication” adjusted! Ha!)