Friday, February 18, 2011

Creativity and a clear head

 The first time I heard the phrase "Craft for health" I admit, I thought it was a little silly.  How could "crafting" be good enough for me to be a part of a healthy lifestyle? But then I started visiting a few different crafting blogs and realized that if I could take the opportunity to do something creative each day, it could be a beautiful way to clear my head.  I love to work with paper, there's something about the texture, patterns, feel, ability to layer, etc that I just really enjoy, plus, its inexpensive, easy to acquire, and easy to combine various other medias to create things totally unique.  I wish I had a better image of this piece I created for my dad's 60th birthday.  Its my own interpretation of a photo taken during last year's trip to Australia that he and my mother, and my sister and her husband took to honor some of my grandmother's last wishes.  The photography from that trip came back incredibly beautiful, and I loved the colors and shadows of the original photo.  This piece is paper and pen on wood.  Its not perfect, and its not meant to be.  That's what's beautiful about art, it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to represent your intentions.  My intention here was to produce a piece of art inspired by the original photo, but not to be an exact replica.  I loved getting lost in the colors and geometric shapes for the 3 or 4 hours it took to complete.

I've made a goal to create a little something most every day.  It won't always be "art" so to speak.  Maybe it will be food, or a blog entry.  Maybe it will be a new arrangement of the animals on a child's bed.  Maybe rearranged pictures on the wall. The purpose is to get lost for a few minutes in something happy, and to let that spill over into all the rest.

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