Jack Kerouac seems to get the most attention of the Beat poets and writers. Allen Ginsberg is like the Paul McCartney to Jack’s John (or is it the other way around?). But Lawrence Ferlinghetti was always there. A presence. That’s how I perceived it anyway, though I never quite seemed Read more…
I write a few pages in a journal every morning. They’re what Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, calls morning pages and recommends as a creative tool to clear our minds as the start to each day. And I wonder if anyone else ever will read those hand-written pages Read more…
Failing our way to success is not a new idea. Counterintuitive for many of us, but not new. Tech and business and creative giants have touted it. Psychologists have studied it. Inspirational posters and Instagram memes quote our shiniest champions and thinkers who give credit to their failed attempts as Read more…
I’ve been creating work that feels all over the place. I have a lot of interests. And maybe I’m still trying to figure out who I am creatively; maybe I always will be. I appreciate the work of many others, and so I absorb many influences. I see threads I Read more…
I think there was a time I knew how to create just to create in a way that I sometimes forget now. To create for that something it gives you in the heart just to do it, no particular outcome in mind. No self-expectation of “success,” like, say, publishing or Read more…
From the time we’re kids, we’re taught that the rules of society serve harsh punishments for stealing, for plagiarizing, for being unoriginal. All while we’re being socially conditioned to conform and ultimately be … unoriginal. Should it be any wonder artists often are seen as non-conformists, as rebels, as different Read more…
I got a question from another artist after I posted something “from the #showyourwork file” this week on Instagram. (By the way, I wrote about “The #ShowYourWork Ethic” on this blog in July 2018.) And in the message exchange that followed, which I was grateful for because it prompted me Read more…
From the #showyourwork and #creativeprocess files … In my daily visual creative practice using the Procreate app on iPad, I’ve been exploring the simplicities of abstract line drawing. A lot of portraits. With blue eyes as the essential (and most obvious) thread that ties them all together. I’m exploring something Read more…
The United States seized more than 1.5 billion acres of land from Indigenous peoples between 1776 and 1887. That spans the land we call America from sea to shining sea. I live on stolen land. You most likely do too. Care to learn whose land you live on? There are Read more…
The U.S. flag is a loaded symbol. We — and I mean when taking into account the views of a truly collective, diverse “we” — can see all things in it: pride and shame, peace and violence, protection and destruction, opportunity and greed, freedom and imprisonment … on and on. Read more…