Creating a Lifeline to my Art

Do you remember when you would try to take a picture with the lens cap still on? I say remember because this probably doesn’t happen to you very much anymore if you are using a point and shoot camera. But if you recall back, in these long ago moments, you had everything you needed to take a picture except the one thing you could not do without, the light! Just like in trying to make a picture, creating a art-filled life also requires light. Eight weeks ago,  I popped my own lens cap off like a champagne cork and let the light come pouring in on my commitment to art making. After attending the annual Society of Photographic Education (SPE) Conference in San Francisco in March and talking to several instructors and artist friends I respect about the challenges of making art, I finally decided to experiment with designing a fresh path forward for making my own art.

For months I had doubts about the compatibility of an artistic life and a corporate job, but then it occurred to me that I was looking at the situation upside down. Perhaps my definition of a job needed to be redefined.  And then some words written  by David Bayles and Ted Orland, in the book, Art and Fear, really resonated with me: “Your job is to draw a line from your life to your art that straight and clear.” This simple idea of a line triggered something in me. The line for me would be learning how to design an artistic life. And suddenly this understanding made the idea of taking employment to support my art less of a big deal.  I realized that it did not matter how I made money as long as I maintained the line to my art, basically as long as I was making art. With this in mind, I realized that all that really mattered to me was that my potential choice in employment  needed to be as benign and positive as possible. Under no circumstances could the chosen job drain me or suck my creative energy. It would have to be a peaceful work environment, be supportive in my growth, and be absolutely drama free. And that’s when I realized these things were within my grasp.  So I put aside my judgments about corporate jobs, and found a stable and well run company with a positive work environment to spend 40 hours a week at to help me spend the rest of my 128 hours cultivating, maintaining, and building my lifeline to my art. Essentially, allowing me to continue my journey.

The first few weeks of employment have been interesting. Five weeks in, I’m producing lots more photographs than I was only two months ago. It feels so natural and good to be creating.  Just like operating a camera, maintaining this connection to my art doesn’t just involve making sure to take off the lens cap, it involves handing many other controls and functions, like getting good at differentiating what is supporting my art and what is not, identifying what is draining my energy and letting it go and allowing myself to move towards what is feeding my energy. By rotating the knob of my social engagements, I can happily carve out two or three more precious hours for me to recharge and plan my next photo shoot, take photos, or just relax and create more space for creativity.  There are endless options for adjustments in creating an artful life by playing and tweaking and experimenting. And this playfulness is sourced from a new plateau I’ve stumbled upon that removes the burden of the need to compete with others, or trying to climb the corporate ladder, and general feelings of entitlement.  On this point, David A. Cooper, author of God is a Verb, writes “ the position in which we find ourselves is not as important as how we feel about it. Although we may attempt to break down our self-importance, it is far more relevant for us to assess the degree to which we are concerned with our rank”. Letting go of this concern is unfamiliar and foreign. Instead I find myself surrounded by gratitude, gratitude for the leadership at my new company that creates a positive work environment, gratitude to myself for holding my line to my art and my purpose to create, and gratitude for my ability to know what I need to hold on to and what I need to let go of in order to continue nourishing my path.  I feel so humbled at this new plateau and looking forward to sharing more thoughts during this transition.

Wasting Time on the Rock – Or Was It?

Enjoying a view of Tortola and Sir Francis Drake channel from St.John

These days I’ve been writing about St.Thomas quite a lot. Out of nowhere stories are just flying out of me, such as the time I got in a car accident in a Suzuki Samurai when I was hit by a tourist who was driving on the wrong side of the road, or how about the fact that nobody uses coin change in the islands, just dollar bills, or the way that the West Indian women suck their teeth when they are frustrated, and let’s not forget the way the older men play dominos in front of their houses. I remember the sunlight and the way the energy changed during hurricane season, and the way the energy changed at the DMV when they ran out of plastic to laminate my USVI driver’s license. Or the experience I had when there was no way to get parts for my 1981 gold Mercedes, which I had just bought from my favorite Dominican taxi driver before he left island a few days before his upcoming court date. And then I remember the few days I tried to do substitute teaching for a private elementary school there and then realized how much more money I could make waitressing instead. Or how about the time my boyfriend (at the time) gave me a machete to place under my driver’s seat of my car, just in case I needed it. All these stories are just coming to the surface.

Waitressing at Tickles, Restaurant in Subbase, Stt.

I lived in St.Thomas for three years after graduating college. It was a very simple life. The island, better known as the “the rock” is only thirteen miles long by four miles wide. I swam in the ocean, worked in restaurants, probably drank too much sweet rum drinks, and soaked up the sun – basically, I just chilled out. I had no desire to pursue a career at that juncture in my life and I was content to experience the world that was so vastly different from my home. Everything happens slowly down there. It is just the way it is there. And there is a patience that I found there that was so profound and so hard to describe. People there don’t feel the urge to change and re-do things all the time, they want to just let things be for awhile. They are content. And they like to relax. And for a culture that came from a brutal slave history and continuous hurricanes still to this day, you can see where this cultural tendency to take a break might have come from. And for my part, I was called to live there for some reason unknown to me. And at the time, I found no reason to argue with it. I just took that time to enjoy that special island. But after my Dad passed away, I gradually moved away from the islands and found myself gravitating to my home state of California and my family.

But I noticed after I moved back, and had started my process of re-acclimating to the culture in California, there was a certain sense of shame in me that had started to develop about my time in the islands. I felt like it was kind of weird that I had “wasted” so much time down there not being productive and not starting a career. Apparently I was not measuring up to some idea of what I thought in my own head was “okay” and “right”. I slowly tucked my island stories away. They became my secret that only came out at certain times with certain people or certain friends that I felt comfortable with and I knew wouldn’t judge me. I associated coming home to California with building a professional life and I suppose when I made this change to come home, I started to wonder what value my time in the islands had been? What had it all meant? I couldn’t put it all together. I recalled, at times, when I lived in St.Thomas, I would wonder to myself, am I some kind of ex-patriot I’ve read about in James Michener novels? No, I thought, I’m too young for that and I love my country. All I knew at the time was that I wanted to be there and so I stayed.

Enjoying a Rum and coke at my studio apartment overlooking Secret Harbor, stt.

But the truth is that this shame that I felt was really just evidence of self-shaming. The only person judging me was me. It was all in my head. And as I’ve been writing these stories recently and watching them rise to the surface and come out into the open, I have realized how special it is that I had the experience to live in that special chain of islands and out of the country for that period of time (well technically it’s a US territory). There was no “wasting of time”, as I had thought. There is no such thing as wasting time in life. All time has value no matter where I am and no matter what I am doing. There was absolutely no reason to be so judgmental and harsh with myself. Sometimes I do things that I don’t understand but they are happening because they need to happen for me and it is not necessary for me to be measuring myself against some standard that is not even real. The reality is that I set the standards. And for me, exploring the world is valuable. The things I learned while I was there are irreplaceable. I learned about poverty, racism, and black Caribbean culture. I made friends with different kinds of people and I learned what it felt like to be a minority. And do you know what a bushwhacker is? Well, I do and I’m pretty proud of that. And writing about this has really helped recently. It has helped me rekindle my connection to St.Thomas and the people there and has helped me reflect on how these islands relate to the United States and the rest of the world. And in gratitude for my time there, I will be sharing some of my stories some day with the world to shed some light on that special part of the world and encourage people to travel to the Caribbean and delight in its ways.

Enjoying a day at the beach in St.John

Learning to Stare with Walker Evans

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”

– Walker Evans

You must run. The Cantor Museum at Stanford University is currently exhibiting the photography of documentary American photographer, Walker Evans. If you are not familiar with him, you may be surprised to learn that many of his images have influenced your visual memory of American life during the 30s and 40s without you even realizing it. Primarily known for his work as a street photographer, Evans made his impact by photographing commercial street signs, people on the New York subway with a hidden camera, revolution in Cuba against Machado, and Alabama tenant farmers, to name a few. He is probably best known for his project with the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Originally wanting to be a writer, he was a committed reader and connected with the works of James Joyce, Flaubert, and T.C. Eliot. He eventually discovered and accepted the camera as the medium to express his ideas which included direct emotions and vernacular language, and rejection of middle class attitudes, consumerism and puritanical morality.

Walker Evans inspires me not only to continue taking pictures but also to continue writing. It seems that these two art forms compliment eachother seamlessly. Like yin and yang, or the breath – one part sourcing the oxygen and the other part letting it out. As many good photographs are described as a poem in a picture, I look with respect to Walker Evans for examples of these visual poems to guide and stir my creativity. And, he was a man after my own love, Ovaltine, describing it in his own words, “Hot Ovaltine (nothing like it for exaltation).” His biography just keeps getting better. This exhibition will be open until April 8^th.

Conscious Living Series: Waking up to my Daily Surroundings

How easy it is to forget how beautiful our daily surroundings and environment truly are. I feel so fortunate to live in a country and state where the public values the preservation of public lands and the beautification of shared spaces. What type of environments and surroundings do you find yourself called to? Is it nature? Is it your favorite bookstore? Today I’d like to share my gratitude for the beauty of my daily surroundings at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. I’ve been so fortunate to be able to experience this amazing school’s architecture, beautiful landscaping, and great teachers and students. I hope this photo series encourages you to walk outside and connect with those special places of your own that you experience everyday or every week - you know the places I’m talking about, the walk you like to go on when you get a break from work, or your favorite coffee shop where you like to unwind, or a special view that only you know about, all those unique and habitual environments that we see everyday but sometimes simply forget to really “see”.

This is a view from the fountain towards the campus.

The beautiful lighting at night allows for wonderful botanical night shooting opportunities.

This tree is located next to the photography dark room and gets a lot of attention from photography students at Foothill. I like to visit it from time to time.

Evening classes and events create a natural energy on campus at night.

Art is a Way of Being

As time speeds forward and lunges me into the unfolding present moments, my old ways of thinking are fading away in my wake. As if a ship at sea, I rely on my chart of intuition and inner guidance to steer me forward. I can’t see land, but I can detect its scent off in the distance. Up on deck with my guide last week, she whispered to me, “Time to get out there and find a job.” So I went out and purchased, What Color is Your Parachute, and started delving into where I want to go with my passions, creative interests, and skills. After seven months of giving myself a break from working and actively acquiring new creative skills in photography, writing, and web site design, I found it surprising that I was only beginning to really start the process of finding a new job. I thought to myself, isn’t my blog about my career change after all? Well yes, it is. But I realized that my job change is just one really small element to the bigger picture of what this blog is really about. This blog is about a change into a new way of being and a new identity that isn’t encapsulated by only what I do to make money. The career change is just a small part of the puzzle. This became clear to me when I read this quote my writing teacher sent to our class last month,

“Art is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a Way of Being.” –Frederick Franck

After reading this, I realized that no matter what I do to put dinner on the table and put a roof over my head, nobody can ever take my newly found artist away from me. I think sometimes I get wrapped up in this silly idea that everything that is good will disappear one day and be taken away from me, but this is simply not true. I am the only one that I should be afraid will take it away from me. It’s up to me to decide to honor my artist and nobody else has a real say in that. I had gotten into this black and white thinking that you are either an artist or corporate. You are either artistic or technical. But these extremes are not true. Life is paradox, and as unsettling as that feels, we can be all of these things at the same time, or at different times, because all these arenas are interconnected. And so it is that I begin my job search with the intention to enjoy the adventure of discovering an opportunity where I can share my natural talents and grow. And with that, I step up the helm, with all my charts and tools ready to go, and steer into the direction that the wind is carrying me.

Meeting My Future Self

About six months ago, I did a visualization to meet my future self. I closed my eyes and I drifted until I found myself in front of her house in the late afternoon. It was a beautiful split level wooded home in a lush green forest. Nearby there was a quarry. I knocked on the door lightly and she answered the tall wooden door rising in front of me. As she opened the door, I noticed she was simply dressed and appeared to be in her seventies. Her hair was gray and went down to her shoulders. She looked like someone else. It couldn’t be me. But then I saw her hands, one on her hip and the other dangling by her side. I instantly recognized them as my own long and bony fingers, only wiser in their appearance. She didn’t say anything at first but led me down a few stairs into her living room.

I looked around in this new room and instantly felt inspired. Filtered light was coming in gently where we sat. She sat down on a couch opposite of me with a small glass table between us. Floor to ceiling windows outlined the perimeter of the courtyard behind the house. The living room, other connecting rooms, and the hallways, all seemed to wrap around the courtyard in a large undulating circle. The stone in the courtyard was dark obsidian stone, almost black. And featured in the center of the courtyard was a dark, deep pool, made out of the same dark black rock. Behind from where she sat, I was given a beautiful view of the pool, the ferns and greenery, and a beautiful wall of green rocks in the distance. After we were seated comfortably, she told me now was my time to ask her anything I wished to know and she would tell me.

I hadn’t come with a question in mind but then I asked her, “Where do I go when I die?”

“Oh, you like to ask the easy questions,” she laughed. Her warm smile resonated through her whole face. Her strained neck muscles even seemed to smile in that instant. Her face seemed to rush with blood and the color of her skin changed for a brief moment. All of her seemed to radiate.

I then asked her, “What is the one thing I need to know so I can get to where you are?”

She didn’t smile this time, but with her soft eyes she looked directly into my own, and said, “Let go of pleasing other people, and worrying about other people.”

That was all she said, and then she led me down a carpeted hallway next to windows of glass. The courtyard permeated the glass with its peace. I realized this was a sacred place, and then I realized, this was my home. This was my future home. The hallway opened up into a massive irregularly shaped room filled with light. The room was covered with paintings and books, and stacks of paper. There were large comfortable chairs and little lamps next to them. It was brighter in this room.

She stood next to me and said, “This is my work area.”

It was all so private. Off the side of the room, a little door was slightly ajar that led out to the pool. I glanced out the door again and peered out at the pool. It was dark and clean. She told me she swims there. She said she spends most of her time alone, and she was ok with that.

She then told me she had something to give me. She went out of the room for the moment and I settled into the closest comfy armchair I could find. I remember the way the light fell across the room as I sat there.I felt peace. When she returned, she sat down next to me, and handed me a necklace. It was a dark stone hung on a chain. She said it was for me.

A few minutes later, I stood up to leave. She wasn’t with me anymore. She was gone. I opened the big wooden door, clutching the necklace in hand, and I let myself out.

Discovering Meditation

The first time I tried meditation was for five minutes last year. I found the experience excruciating. Time barely moved. And my mind was wandering all over. I could hardly sit still and I immediately wanted to abandon my ridiculous idea of meditation. Who was I kidding? I felt kind of silly at first, and I just felt like I was acting more than actually meditating. But despite the pain of it and the lack of understanding of it, I noticed that there was something mysteriously valuable to sitting with myself for five minutes. I felt like it was a new way to hang out and get to know myself. It was a way to learn about the speed and randomness of my thoughts and it felt like a way to help disassociate with the fleeting thoughts that crowd my brain all day. And there are definitely a lot.

So a week later, I tried to make it to about seven minutes. And I found that the first few minutes were horrible again but then I was surprised that the next few minutes were less painful. I didn’t force myself to do it but over time I have found myself continually returning to it, like a challenge I needed to overcome. I observed that the days that I would meditate, even for ten minutes, would be the calmest and most peaceful days of my week. There was a certain sense of spaciousness growing in my life. It was subtle but it was starting to blossom. It had to be the meditation.  Before long I discovered that I could sit with myself for much longer than ten minutes. Now I can do thirty minutes and I hope to try doing it for an hour at a time soon.

Only four months ago I never would have expected that I would actually enjoy meditation and be interested in doing more of it. It reminds me of an experience I had on the yoga retreat I went to last October. On our first night, we did an exercise where each woman chose a rock out of a basket with a word written on the underneath side of it. When it came to my turn, I reached into the basket and chose a small grey rock with the word PRESENCE written on it. Others got words like DARING, LOVING, and CONNECTION. At the time, I felt that I had picked the one word and concept that seemed most difficult for me to accomplish.

Back then and still now, when I think of presence, I think of being really aware with what is happening in the moment. For me, it is the act of giving intention to being fully engaged and listening. But what I didn’t know then that I do know now is that presence comes about naturally only when we actually practice it first. And so came about my introduction to meditation. So I wanted to share a little bit about the way I like to practice it and if you are ever interested, you can try it too. There is no right or wrong way to do this and I’m sure I’ll learn new ways in the future but for now this is my practice.

I usually meditate early in the mornings after eating breakfast and showering. Then I sit down on the carpet in my living room and cross my legs. I just simply sit there. I grab a blanket if I need it. I keep my eyes open and put my hands on my thighs and slowly start to breathe in regularly. I take my focus and turn it to my breath. I find my timer and set it to whatever amount of time I have decided on. Then I just surrender to the space I’m in. I keep my eyes open. And when a thought comes into my head, I just simply label it as thinking, and then I clear the thought away and just return my focus to my breath again. I hear noises around me but I just observe without dwelling on any one particular sound.  Sometimes, I might hear a kid yell across the street. I get the urge to jump up and open the blinds to check out the action outside. But then before I get up or change my position, I simply and calmly label it as “thinking”, clear my head, and go back to my breath. Air rushes in. Air rushes out. A train goes by. I hear it but release it and return my focus again to my breath. After a few minutes, I start to surrender to the calmness and spaciousness of my meditation. I start to breathe more deeply now and calmly. I don’t feel as restless. Out of nowhere, an exchange of words from a conversation I had the previous night starts replaying in my mind. I notice this and gently just label this as “thinking” and let it go. I refocus on my breath. I feel an itch on my neck. I scratch it. I then start thinking about my posture. “Thinking”, I say. I gently return my focus back to my breath. In and out. Over and over. The light changes in the room, a bird is outside the window. There is dust on the cover of the book I’m looking at. “Thinking”, I repeat. I return to breath. And then as if out of nowhere, the timer beeps. In the next breath, I close my eyes and thank myself for creating peace with myself for the day. I am done. My day begins.