Evoking the muse, naming her and letting her fly!

The muse.

Recently, the concept of creating for one’s muse or with one’s muse has come up in several intriguing interviews I have heard and loved. Also, a few musical acts I have discovered recently have adopted an alter-ego for the purpose of creating music (Bat for Lashes, St. Vincent... you get the idea). The synchronicity of it all made me think it was high time for me to get in touch with my own muse and work with her to make beautiful things.

What is a muse?

The concept of a muse originated in ancient Greece and evolved through the telling of myths over time. Essentially, the muses are goddesses or spirits of sorts who inspire creation. The number of classical muses grew from three to nine, one for each of their respective disciplines: epic poetry, history, lyrical poetry, music, tragedy, choral poetry, dance, comedy, and astronomy.

This classical concept of the muse has changed over time to embody an artist’s source of inspiration or the ideal for whom an artist creates his or her masterpiece. I recall when Sofia Coppola was the muse for the brilliant fashion designer Marc Jacobs. I LOVED it.

Who is my muse?

Her name is Ruby Leona Oceanblue. Her hair is electric blond, brown, strawberry gold. She piles on jewelry and wears caftans over cut-offs. She works as a medium. A reader of the cards, the palms, the energy. She inhabits her senses. She lives out in the woods by the ocean in a geodesic dome where she meditates and makes music. Her clients visit her in a tipi on the edge of her property. She has a big, red dog and a husband who cooks. {Okay, that might be a bit of truth and wish from my own life!}

How to find the muse?

This is the fun part! There are all kinds of methods to getting in touch with the muse. I found mine by first taking a meditative seat, getting very quiet, and then visualizing this energy I wanted to create for. After meditating, I collaged and collaged, pulling colors and textures that drew me in. Honestly, there is no “wrong” way to find your muse and your muse will evolve just as you do. Next week or month I could be creating for a completely different character than Ruby Leona!

What to do with the muse?

Create for your muse.
Draw or paint the likeness of your muse in a style she would appreciate.
Dress for your muse.
Play music your muse would dig.
Do something that your muse would do.
The sky is truly the limit.

Have you a muse? Tell us!
All good things,
k

{photo credit: self-portrait by Courtney Brooke.}

More muse resources:
Craftcast interview with Susan Tuttle.
Susan Tuttle's blog: Ilka's Attic.
Tranquility du Jour interview with Jennifer Lee.
Jennifer Lee's website.

inspiration tuesday.

darlings,
i encourage you to explore the gems over at The Commons, a showcase of public photography archives on Flickr. right now, i am so drawn to writing history with the light, so to speak, looking into the eyes of our ancestors and seeing their stories spill out on to the paper.

{Rodman Wanamaker and Indian Chiefs. Via The Library of Congress.}

{Ruth St. Denis in first costume for Radha. Bust portrait. Via New York Public Library.}

{Dancer wearing Egyptian-look costume with wings reaching to the floor. Via George Eastman House.}

{ Joseph Turner's "The Moon aged 9 days" taken with the Great Melbourne Telescope, 1 September 1873, American & Australasian Photographic Company. Via State Library of New South Wales Collection.}

{Roya Geale on Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. January 1941. By George Caddy. Via State Library of New South Wales Collection.}

{General view, Ailsa Craig, Scotland. Via The Library of Congress.}

ALSO, i am feeling mega-inspired by a new project i have in the works. {more later, i promise.} AND i am in heaven right now. seattle is bathed in sunlight and light breezes. it is seventy-two degrees.

What is inspiring you today, my dears?

peace. & LOVE.

always.

inspiration tuesday.

you know.
it's everywhere.
the inspiration.
the little push one needs to dive into something perfect.
here is a peek at mine right now.

{click the links below to visit these amazing artists.}

{from left to right, top to bottom: 1. Family group with two spirits, 2. Page from "Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine", 3. Blast Off...only 10c, 4. Get those sunglasses out!!, 5. Quack Quack!, 6. Analogue Miniature 7, 7. This reminds me..., 8. Untitled, 9. fishyfishh, 10. Untitled, 11. Untitled, 12. catatonic, 13. doppelganger, 14. Untitled, 15. unbearable lightness, 16. -449, 17. yüzyirmialtı, 18. Untitled, 19. fairy light, 20. Vishnu and Lakshmi. India, 21. African American Flappers, 1920's, 22. a special rose for a special day, 23. thinking of you, grandma inga, 24. MSNTCE: Day 1, 25. Happy Friday!!!!!, 26. Lord Brahma, 27. pushkar, 28. brahma, hindu god, 29. Aaron, 30. i heart you, 31. 發散/層層疊疊, 32. white., 33. More Strings, 34. mushrooms, 35. Circle circle dot dot, 36. Untitled }

i love today.

{vrksa, a new painting, is available in my etsy shop.}

dears, this week simply flew by. i started school, taught lots of fun yoga classes, made art & worked at my desk job. today, i had much time to work in my studio. this made me smile.

breathe, move, tear, sketch. a habit.

Sketches.

inspiration.

drawings done by the light of the scanner.


Here is what is in my brain right now.

As I have mentioned in the past, I LOVE podcasts. One of my favorite shows is CraftCast with Allison Lee. She has such a wonderful way with her guests, and really gets to the heart of the creative process with people from a broad array of creative endeavors. She interviewed her son Erich Bergen (he's an actor in the show Jersey Boys) on the show a few weeks back, and he talked about Twyla Tharp's wonderful book, The Creative Habit. Essentially, TCH reminds readers that channeling divine inspiration is only possible when you lay all of the ground-work. Part of the ground-work is the daily routine. Tharp's daily routine consists of starting each day with two hours of training at the gym. Without the routine, the magic can't happen-- and this is true for whatever you do in life. Without a daily practice, the soul of the work is just not there. Sure, you can still play the notes in a piece of music or make your sales pitch or whatever, but the spark-- that bit that makes what you do your life's purpose rather than just a job or a hobby or what-evs-- won't be there with you. For me, if I don't get my practice in, everything suffers. In recent weeks, I have written about how crazy busy I've been for the last month with one of my gigs and how that has affected me creatively. Last Tuesday, I recommitted myself to my creative habit, and I'll share it with you now. This is literally what it takes.

Movement first thing in the morning-- a walk everyday, strength training 2-3 times a week.
Tea.
Meditation followed by a bit of yoga.
Journal-work. (I write 10 things that inspire me right now or tear 10 images from magazines that express something that grabs me.)
Another bit of movement around 3-- a run or bike ride followed by yoga or just yoga.

What are your creative habits?

floating through the universe.

thursday is one of my favorite days of the week. donnerstag in german. it's a nice day to get some thinking done. this week, and last, have been filled with a lot of busy work. i have not even spent an hour *in* the studio. the drawing and painting i have done have been in the evening, sitting on the couch with my husband-- listening to music, talking about our days, and perhaps half-watching television (more on that later). the busy-ness is good, because it means food for the table. the busy-ness reminds me that i simply must practice yoga and meditate in order to stay grounded. the coffee-crazy-computer lifestyle makes me incapable of thinking on thought all the way through. so there you have it.

although the time has not been quite right for much painting, i am having a little love-affair with my camera right now. we are having a ball exploring all of the nooks and crannies of the century house. i am still in awe of this camera, and i love chasing the light around the house and hood.

I like looking at the world with new eyes, as though the lens of the camera were attached to my head. ... which brings me to the whole television-watching thing. You know I love nova, right? In my opinion, the only shows really worth watching are on pbs-- nova, nature, rick steves, austin city limits--but that is sort of beside the point. Tuesday night, I had a chance to sit down with my sketch book while watching nova. Holy awesome. The show was about the trip to one of Saturn's moons, Titan, by two spacecraft named Cassini & Huygens. Goodness sakes was it enchanting. I created a series of sketches based on the trip that are really still in the R&D phase, but I'll share a tid-bit or two with you now with the promise of more to come. I love space.

This drawing is called Huygens. I drew it in pencil and colored it digitally. (This is a new experiment for me, what do you think?)

Huygens was the spacecraft that launched from his mothership Cassini and actually landed (with a thud) on Titan's surface and recorded live while Cassini (who was meanwhile orbiting Saturn) transmitted the footage back to earth. Cassini stayed in orbit long after Huygens' light dimmed, sending back amazing footage of Saturn's rings and Jupiter. I'm mesmerized.

On a side note, the name Cassini reminds me of the phish song Carini, which has nothing to do with space (necessarily), but I thought you might like to know how my brain works through these things.

om. is where i want to be.

I have become a bit obsessed with documenting all of the things about our home that I love. (Perhaps this is apropos of the online course I'm taking.) And there are so many things I love about our centenarian of a house. Most of them, of course, are memories associated less with the physical space and more with the times we have shared in it. There are, however, a LOT of juicy, tangible aspects of our house that I love. For example, I love our collections of crystals, shells and crazy natural specimens.
And I love the curve of this Eva Zeisel sauce boat that sits atop the Mongolian Chest of awesomeness.
And. the. light. The light in this house is truly a thing of beauty.
And the prints and patterns that the wind makes on steamed-up windows.
Those are just the beginning. Trust me.

In other news, check out how this little lion is progressing. Do you even recognize her?

Later, kiddos.

k

At home in the Emerald City.

Dears, you know how I love school. Well, the drawing class I had planned to take this semester at Pratt didn't quite work out since it meets on the same night as my pro bono commitment to the Neighborhood Legal Clinic. No matter, though, because I signed up for Shimelle's online class called "There's no place like home." The class will play with one's notions and definitions of home and will include prompts for projects, big and small. I cannot wait. I plan to blog about my experiences, and I'd love to hear from any other readers who are also participating.

If you are reading this and want to sign up-- go for it! It is only $20!

xo kel

Custom Valentines.

Dears, I am so happy to be offering custom valentines in the shoppe. Here is how it works, after purchasing the valentine, email me a digital photo (or not, it's up to you) and I will craft a special valentine for your special someones.

Here are a few examples of what you could expect with this purchase.

Happy Monday!

On blogging

Whilst I was holiday-ing on Vancouver Island with my family, the lovely and talented Ambika of (Into) the Fray tagged me with some thought-provoking questions about my foray into blogging. Here's the dirt on this blog:

1. What's the story behind the name of your blog and your nickname?


Do you all remember the post I did about my daily lists of inspiration? Well, one day, early on in that experiment, I began brainstorming names for my blog. Since I have a true love and deep fascination for whales, kelly LOVES whales popped up very naturally during this exploration. I started going by kelly LOVES whales on flickr just to try it out and I ended up really digging it.

2. Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I began blogging as a way to manage my creative goals. I referenced my goals for 2OO7 in that first post: 1. keep making daily paintings;
2. begin to sell online (hopefully by opening an Etsy shop); and
3. loosen up my buttons a bit about my art and just let it happen.
I must say that the blogging has been a brilliant way to facilitate these (and newer) goals. Yay!
Also, blogging seemed a really organized way for me to begin to put my art out there for the universe to experience as well as a keen way to connect with other creative types online.

3. What has been your best blogging related experience? What about the worst?

The best blogging experience for me has been the outpouring of support for my art from total strangers and friends alike. Sometimes I just cannot even believe it!!

I have not really had any bad experiences blogging (yet). There were definitely days when I wondered if anyone was reading or would ever read my blog, but I think that worry has fallen by the wayside.



4. What do you think will happen to your blog in 2008?

Oh, dears, I am so excited for all of the fun times we will have in 2OO8! I plan to keep blogging daily, to begin expanding the coverage of the blog (suprises for you) and to keep this little blog vibrating as positively as possible!

What fun this was! Thanks for tagging me, Ambika! I am tossing this question out to a couple of fascinating bloggers,

Betty the Geek

Camp Indigo Soul

Elegant Musings

The Dream Sequence Continues: September Sky.

Dears, One more thing before I go: I have been meaning to post a photo (this piece is much to large for me to scan) of this piece from the Dream Sequence.

I love it. It is finished, but I haven't been able to list it in the shop yet. It is hanging in the studio where it inspires me every time I look at it.

Namaste.

These are a few of my favorite things.

I crafted myself a new calendar this week. Oh boy, is sewing on paper satisfying or what!? I love it. My last home-sewn calendar was quite a bit thinner, since I was not exactly sure how the needle would take to paper. This time, I used a thick stack of vanilla, manila paper that has been sitting around the studio for ages. The front cover is a little collage that I put together using Golden soft gloss gel medium (also known as the miracle product at my house).



My favorite calendars include both monthly and daily calendars. Here is the month of November - December. I like to use the monthly calendar to remind myself of the high-lights or high- points of the month and to use the daily calendar to keep track of everything else.

*really*

Kelly of Camp Indigo Soul posted another of her poignant and potent lists of Five Really Good Things, so I thought it was time for me to *publicly* count up some of my own blessings, too.

1. Almost nine months into our life here in Seattle, I'm finally starting to feel like we are *home*. I know that we won't be here forever, but I am a nest-er by nature and like having my local community, family of friends, and routine. This week, between new friends and professional networks, I feel like I'm hitting my Seattle stride.

2. My family and I have never been closer. And this has never meant more to me.

3. My husband is supportive of my life as a creative entrepreneur. I think he has always known that "the law" would never be enough for me on its own, but he really shows me that he is all for the artist-yogini-attorney (AYA, i like it!) trifecta! Shucks, I'm a lucky gal.

4. The HANDMADE CHALLENGE. How awesome is this?! Check it out.

5. Yesterday, at a seminar I had to take before getting sworn in as a multi-state lawyer, I met an amazing, grounded, funny attorney who reminded me why I simply must keep part of myself in that world, too.

Oh, and number six: the LAUNCH!

Svadhisthana.

This piece has only just begun to take flight and form. The svadhisthana chakra resides in the astral plane and is associated with the element of water. I will share more shots of Svadhisthana as she grows.

After an out-of-sorts week away from my practice, I returned to my running at 3 followed by yoga and meditation routine today. Oh my goodness does it make a difference. The yoga is probably the best thing to have ever happened to me. (Incidentally, I have been listening to this swell podcast for teachers called Mudra Moments, which is lead by Hillary Rubin & Elsie Escobar. It is such a fabulous, community-building resource for teachers. AND, they turned me on to Dave's Lounge, and exquisite podcast, which lead me to the Alan Watts Podcast---totally get-out-of-town genius!) Ooh, I did have a point: I now listen to the Dave's Lounge podcast while painting & practicing yoga. It is MAGIC.

Namaste, dear hearts!

Material girl.

One of my favorite fall activities has always been shopping for school supplies. Shiny new notebooks and un-bitten pencils are tops in my book. Now that I'm done with school-ish school, I miss the big school supply spree. However, I was in dire need of some new art supplies. I drove my car (I know, can you believe it) to this lovely shop called Artist & Craftsman Supply in the University District. They had gobs of high-quality materials at seriously reasonable prices. Here are the highlights of my trip.

First, a NEW PENCIL. Very important.


Golden soft gel gloss medium. Yum.
India ink.


Rubber cement.
Paint wells.

Watercolors in yellow and red.


Golden acrylic paints in turquoise & magenta.
Nibs.

Brush. 10-round. Synthetic, natch.

Not a purchase, but the box the nibs and watercolors traveled home inside.


Big, fatty mop.

Super fantastic awesomeness.

Digging Deep

This week, I am back in the *thick* of it at work-- deadlines, colleagues, tele-conferences, and what-not. Rather than finding myself in a place where I resent the work that presently pays the bills, however, I am approaching it with a bit more gratitude. For now, while my life as an artist is still in somewhat of a gestational period, it is this work that allows me the peace of mind to be creative just for the sake of creating. This fills me with great joy.

This reminds me of something else I read in the wonderful book Jivamukti Yoga, when Sharon Gannon and David Life speak about opening their yoga studio in the midst of a hustling-bustling-loud-crazy-hot New York City and how important it is to find your peace, your yoga, your practice (whatever that may be) in real life. In the context of yoga and meditation, it is *easy* (trust me, its all relative) to find stillness and space to devote to the practice when you are living in an ashram, and the real challenge is adapting your real life to accommodate the practice and finding your practice within real life.

Of course, they were speaking about learning to meditate, to find stillness and one-pointed concentration, with trucks roaring outside the window, but I think this is as easily applied to the life of an artist: yes, it was *easy* for me to make space for art while I was on hiatus, and now I am learning to embrace the challenges presented in making space in my life for my art (which I need to do to live fully, to live authentically, to cultivate one-pointed focus) until I can make it my full(er)-time gig.

I am struggling to reconcile these thoughts with something else I listened to this week that really spoke to me. I listened to this podcast from Marisa (Creative Thursday) on trusting that everything will work out and having faith in one's ability to make it with art. Although I really admire her for having reached this kind of peace, I am not there yet. I hope to reach that point, but here's where I am right now and I'm just going to go with it. Just like that lotus, I'm giving it my all to make something beautiful where my roots find themselves.

This beautiful lotus photograph was taken by RBG Photo.