New Year, New Stuff

All the Feels (encaustic painting, copper wire)

It is 2024. That shouldn't surprise anyone. We've had a few weeks to prepare for it, and many of us even celebrated its arrival. Nonetheless, for many, the start of a new year is a time of reflection and, sometimes, new direction. 

Last year was a hot mess for my creativity. As pandemic craziness came to a close in early 2023, the world began to open up again. I felt like I was undergoing some sort of metamorphosis, but not necessarily in a good way. The year started with a quiescent egg stage during which I thought about what kind of art I wanted to make short- and long term. However, because I had an exhibit deadline looming, quiescence lasted about a week. When I couldn't get my head around what I wanted to make, I threw myself into the larval stage. It wasn't pretty. I turned into the ugliest, most neurotic little caterpillar ever seen -- grasping first at this idea and then that one, trying to outdo my own imagination by pushing myself with weird materials and unfamiliar approaches until at some point in early summer, my brain and body just said, "Enough." 

I had just driven about 1500 miles in five days on a solo road trip through the rather desolate Four Corners region in the Southwest and then connected with a friend in Albuquerque for a second road trip to Tucson. We had rented a lovely casita situated in the back yard of a quiet house in a quiet neighborhood north of downtown. It was morning. The sun was just starting to peek over the privacy fence to greet us while we sat on the front porch drinking our coffee. My friend went back into the casita for a moment. I stayed on the porch and listened to the city. In the distance was the faint whoosh of traffic on the freeway. Nearer, there was the sad/sweet cooing of doves and the anxious twittering of a small flock of sparrows in a shrub across the way. The hum of the swamp cooler next door filled in the spaces between the birdsong. A dog barked in the yard on the other side of the privacy fence, and then things went silent for several seconds. In that moment of stillness, peace descended on the porch. I let everything go. Everything I had been carrying mentally, emotionally for half a year -- I set it down. I let that neurotic little caterpillar self crawl off to whatever place things like that crawl off to, and I just sat and listened to the quiet. After a moment the doves began to coo and call to one another again. 

Things were different after that. I was transforming into a pupa, cocooning whatever I had been so I could become whatever I am supposed to be. Another quiescent stage. I understood that the approach I had taken as a caterpillar hadn't worked. This time I needed to think about what it was I was actually trying to do, what I actually wanted to do moving forward. Was I going to spend the next years of my life imitating people I admired in the hope that they might learn to like me for being like them, or was I going to be me and do and create things in the hope that I would learn to like myself? One of the first things I had to understand was that the lessons we learn as young children never really go away; they linger like stains, reminding us to do the same thing again until we replace them with something new and fresh. My parents had taught me to be like the other kids so that the other kids would like me. Like equals like had never worked very well, and at some point it stopped working altogether. But I didn't have another plan, so I kept trying. Until I stopped. On that porch in Tucson on that June morning. 

Ditching the ineffective behaviors opened up my time to further introspection. When I returned home, I looked around my studio, which was filled with stuff and things that seemed to be closing in on me. Pandemic leftovers, mostly. There was literally no room to think. To give myself more space physically and mentally, I packed and donated about 20 boxes of stuff to area thrift stores. I boxed up another fifty boxes of art supplies and moved them to a storage unit so they would not distract me.

Once I created open space, I began to envision possibilities. I took painting classes. I read painting books. I watched painting videos. I started experimenting with watercolors and acrylics. I shoved out of my head the stupid notion I had told myself about 10 years ago that holding a paintbrush reminded me of grading papers, and I started looking at what I was doing as a form of expression instead of a reason for judgment. I told my inner critic to step off. "So what if it's not perfect? It just is, and that's enough. And it'll get better as I practice. So just shut up and leave me alone." Pupation, phase 3.

Once I started experimenting and feeling more comfortable with new media, I recognized that many of  those boxes of stuff might be weighing me down. At this stage life is short. I will never use up the contents of 50 boxes of art supplies. So, I have started thinking about what to do with all of the excess. Do I really want to make that much stuff? If not, what do I do with it? And why? I'm in this phase now. I've joked that I will sell things by the boxful on eBay. Or just donate random boxes of art supplies to thrift stores along the roads I travel during 2024 -- a box here, a box there, until I shed all of the ones I don't want. I'm working on a plan. 

In the meantime, I'm still in the mushy pupa stage. I have not yet emerged as some magnificent creature, but I am more comfortable these days in the skin I'm in. 2024 looks promising. New year, new stuff. We shall see. 

Copyright 2024 ksFerguson