This past week hasn't included any art making for me. Instead, I've driven about 1,900 miles with my 16-year-old daughter to do the first 2/3 of our tour of colleges of interest to her. It's been great mom/daughter time, and I've seen more of the Ohio countryside than in the past 4+ decades of my life. Since we have such an early spring in the Midwest, it was also a wonderful treat to see flowers and flowering trees in bloom everywhere we went. (Who knew we'd be in shorts in March in Michigan?)
Yesterday we visited Denison University in Ohio and had the good fortune to sit in on a creative writing class taught by the gifted poet and teacher David Baker. I was moved by a lot of what he had to say to his students in the class. I also found this video online of him reading some of his work and talking about writing poetry. I found it very meaningful as a visual artist as well. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gcCluuEfUg). Just after minute 3:00 in the video he talks about the need in writing poetry to be both "extemely arrogant, enough to think you're going to sit down and say something of value to the world, and extremely humble and embarrassed by that very thing." He goes on to talk about gradually relinquishing yourself from the picture to "that other thing" that is the art you're making.
I immediately connected with these statements in thinking about my own visual art-making process. I, too, find myself hoping to say something of value to the world in each piece of art I make. And yet I also often find myself a bit embarrassed putting my work out there in the world and simply hoping that some people will connect with it or be moved or affected by it in a positive way.
Today I head out to do these very things--put my artwork and myself out there in the world. I'll be dropping off three pieces of my artwork at the Museum of Wisconsin Art this afternoon for the upcoming exhibition "Uncommon Threads: Contemporary Wisconsin Textiles"; then I'm headed to Oshkosh to spend two days teaching and lecturing about my work and techniques in bead and thread embroidery.
I always find myself saying a little wish/prayer before each class, hoping that my teaching will be a blessing, will be enriching, to the people who have chosen to spend their time working with me.