Continuum

Space-time

noun 

Also called the space-time continuum, the four-dimensional continuum, having three spatial coordinates and one temporal coordinate, in which all physical coordinates may be located.

Welcome to Creative Continuum.

My life is shifting radically. I think it's been happening ever since I began teaching, as I have opened myself to the realization that I can do this - but in the past month or so it has picked up speed. 

Then there was last week.

As my local friends know, the gallery I was associated with, Saccarappa, in Westbrook, closed its doors permanently at the end of 2014. 

I was fully aware that the space left by its exit would quickly fill with opportunities. I considered several, including the opportunity to go to ground this winter, quietly and happily working on projects I had put off while painting a new exhibit every six weeks for the last two and a half years. This possibility was particularly attractive!

Then a new opportunity arrived. The storefront in the same building as my studio, 863 Main Street, also vacant since the end of 2014, was presented to me last Monday (Thank you, Andy Curran) for consideration as a teaching and exhibiting space of my own. Then on Wednesday a landlord (Thank you, Chris Grimm) who would be perplexed and embarrassed to be called a radical visionary, but is one anyway, got on board with a very tempting offer. As in, rent I could perhaps actually afford.

The name came to me immediately: Continuum. Creative Continuum, really - so people get an idea from the signage. But Continuum for short. 

So have people also come, eager to partner and brainstorm. I love synergy. 

I want simplicity. What I envision is a room with tables where I can teach all my classes and exhibit and (sometimes!) sell my work and that of my students. Contained in this room is time and space. Time to create. Space to create. Space and time to meet other artists. Some supplies. All of which can be accessed by the community whenever I'm not teaching something there.

I do not intend to work any harder, or any more than I do now, because I am happy in what I am doing: painting and teaching some classes.

What do you need to do art? You need a space and time dedicated to the effort. If you don't have space and time at home, this space will be available to you for work for a fee that I want to be reasonable - maybe $10 per hour. You can arrange to come in whenever there's room - and there will pretty much always be room unless a group is using the space - or you can schedule a time slot which will be yours for the month. And you can renew the slot for as long as you like. We will keep the rent paid and keep going.

If you want to use the room to teach your own class, or to have a party or a meeting, let's talk.

I have to tell you: really funny, not-so-funny, stuff has been happening to me lately. 

One example: yesterday out of the blue a stranger called me. His mother, an artist, had passed away, and he wondered if he could find someone who would be interested in taking her supplies off his hands, and his friend (Thank you, Alice Persons) had given him my name. "It isn't paint or brushes," he explained deprecatingly. "I don't know if you could use it. You see, it's just a lot of easels and lights and things. "

I get tears in my eyes just typing this.

Thank you, angels. You know who you all are.

Art is Faith

Can I get an amen?

Creative courage

Reflected Glory, 20x20"

The other day in the studio I was listening to a Public Radio article on creativity while I painted. I'm sorry I can't credit the producer or any of the sources referred to in the article - I was in my painting brain, weighing colors and shapes, hearing the broadcast resonated through my own thoughts and intuitions about what I was doing. What I heard was that many CEOs nowadays seek employees who are not what we used to call "company people." Instead they realize that people who think and perform in ways outside the norm tend to have the ideas needed to propel their company forward through fast-changing times and technologies. Creative people. These people, they find, make lots of mistakes.  Who would have thought 30 years ago that people who do things in unusual ways and make a lot of mistakes would now be prized as corporate employees? Turns out, it's people who are OK taking risks, even if it means making mistakes now and then, are the same ones who innovate the billion-dollar ideas. And these smart CEOs are giving these creative people the license to invent new ways and risk making some mistakes without fear of being fired for it - and this is paying off. Think Zuckerberg, if you will.

That's why it's so vital to fund arts education in schools: it provides our children with multiple alternative approaches to life's problems. Frees them to search other parts of their brains besides the logical left lobe to look for new ways, and to experiment until something works.

Here's the thing: until we let go of our fear of failing - until we risk making a mistake, losing our way, having a great idea turn into a mess of soggy paper and a night of lost sleep, we aren't free to access our full creative power. Fear turns creative passion to icy sludge.

And I thought: That's what I've been telling my students. Well, maybe not in so many words - but it was what I was trying to give them: permission to listen to their creative intuition, and to try. And to fail. And to try again.

We've all been there. What creative people do - what you do - when faced with a problem, is look fear in the eye - and rock on.