The other day my husband had the audacity to tell me that I was not ever going to be world famous for my recycle-art. I bristled at those words. I mean I have already accepted the fact that I’m more than likely never going to learn to play the violin, take voice lessons so I can finally nail a song or two on Karaoke Night at The Peking North, co-produce my own show called “this fucking house” where Grant and I pretend we are actually making progress on remodeling our very tired money pit of a home (this is calling for it’s own blog post), design and sew my own clothing, or become a veterinarian so I can be a good steward running my dog rescue.
How many more dreams must I give up?
Pretend that there is a ‘needle scratching across a record’ sound here.
What he REALLY said, very gently I might add, with some vague weird reference to the golf he was getting into more and perhaps improving upon in the process, was that maybe I should pick one thing to focus on in my ‘spare time’ and that perhaps writing was more my JAM.
Fucking writing.
It’s a love-hate relationship: me and writing. Sometimes I will do ANYTHING to avoid sitting down to the page where I have to face the fact that it’s time to shit or get off the pot with this one dream that I have kept with me my entire life.
Writing is hard.
Making recycle-art is easy.
In 2020 I got more heavily than normal into making art from things that would otherwise be thrown away. I also wrote a lot. But sitting down with booze bottle caps and cutting them and gluing them to a styrofoam manikin bust that my son Daniel rescued from a dumpster for me was incredibly cathartic. It helped me clear my head and allowed new ideas to come in. The writing never flowed better that year. I got twenty thousand words written on a fictional novel I’ve been caressing; I wrote a lot on this blog site; I wrote soothing and comical letters to my work clients; I wrote poetry. When I finished “Cap Off 2020” there was a sadness that it was over, so I started making quirky copper wire trees with broken, polished booze bottle glass and then set up an Etsy sell account named ‘Red Star Confetti’ which was based on a poem I wrote about breaking up with my writing muse. There I posted three items: two copper wire trees and my manikin, which I put a $1000 price tag on so that he would NEVER sell.
Because I love him.
I like to think that this is how God feels about us.
I have always loved the act of making. My fondest memories as a young child are when I was in a state of make, which was almost all the time. I still have a picture of a lion I drew for my mom when I was ten or so. She coached me to keep working on it until I felt finished and then she framed it. I spent hours drawing with my high school bestie. We drew for the sake of drawing and nothing more. I also spent hours upon hours tinkering at the piano, making sounds. In my grade-school years I directed and starred in several musical productions for our parents, my sister going along willingly as the co-star. I sewed dresses. I made macrame wall sculptures. I crocheted afghans and long flowing vests. I refinished furniture pieces. I painted toilet seats. I carved soapstone. All for the “sake of make”. Nothing more.
Some writing happened in the middle of all that but making tangible things was so concretely satisfying.
Words are so ethereal, abstract, untouchable, misunderstood…and often elusive.
My favorite classes in college were the electives where I always chose art.
Most of the writing classes I enrolled in for my intended degree of creative writing were HORRIBLE. The professors were brutal and dismissive and not in any way encouraging, at least from my sophomoric and overly sensitive perspective. The only one I remember being inspiring was my technical writing professor. And that kind of writing felt soul sucking, with all the rules. Of course now I know that in order to break the rules, you need to have a clear understanding of what the rules are. Needless to say, I was not at that time strong enough to push through the criticism and changed my degree from creative writing to political science with a minor in English, French and math: all somewhat torturing subjects that seemed to shut the door to all things creative.
But the making always shoved itself back to the front of my psyche.
We as humans are designed to make. There is not a single person on this planet that doesn’t make SOMETHING. We make toast, we make love, we make money, we make babies, we make houses, we make peace, we make hope, we make experiences. I could go on and on.
We were put here on this earth to be co-creators. And when we do not listen to the whispers that tell us what we are supposed to make and then do the making, we can get cranky and agitated.
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to make a copper wire tree as a birthday present for one of her friends. I eagerly agreed, always looking for an excuse to make something, especially with copper wire, my most favorite medium as of late. Not knowing what to charge her, I got on to my Etsy Sell account, which I literally had forgotten about for almost a year, to see what price I had listed for my copper trees for and to my surprise, I had a full price offer on my “Cap Off 2020”!
Oh. My. Goodness.
I was tickled to death.
So tickled that I immediately pulled the pieces off Etsy Sell, turning Red Star Confetti into a completely blank slate.
I was not about to let a complete stranger have “Cap Off 2020”.
Making is an intimate thing. How can one put a price tag on intimacy? I handed over the little copper tree to my friend last week and the look of delight on her face was my payment. It contained a sardonyx sphere in the center which I acquired from another friend exactly when I needed it, a tiny, cool miracle. The stone is associated with courage, happiness and communication and apparently was a perfect choice for her friend. She agreed to keep a search out for pretty one inch spheres for my future pieces as a trade. How cool is THAT?
So, in a sense my husband is right. I probably won’t ever be world famous for my recycle-art. I’m not sure I crave or desire that. I only tell my family that I will be when they smirk at my crazy corner in the basement filled with a lot of gross and creepy stuff I have ‘rescued’ to someday use in the make process. I’m not an artist, I’m a maker.
Red Star Confetti, A Celebration of Make, will eventually be a thing that I help bring into the world, because the whispers have not stopped. It will be a place of joyful and cool thoughts and ideas, of things made and appreciated. But it will evolve at exactly the pace it needs to. Makers do not have pressure, rules or the desire to be famous. They just make for the sake of it and bask in the warmth of an internal flame.
peaceof8 