creative pause---

remember, you do not have to know everything in each moment.
you can be still.
you do not have to run ahead.
you can breathe deeply and just stay right where you are.
you choose where to let your mind reside.
you can ask for help.
you can close your eyes until you see only quiet.
it is okay to pause.
you know what to do.
yes.
you do.
give yourself permission to listen.
give yourself permission to know.

- whispered reminders (to myself) – Liz Elayne Lamoreux,
Blog: be present, be here

Up until yesterday I had not worked on wire sculpture for a week. I felt like something was missing and yet I couldn’t touch my tools because I didn’t feel like I could. I needed time to refill, to think, idle time before jumping into something and I knew a week ago that I wanted to start a life size piece. Yet what do you do when you don’t know where you are going? What is there to do when you aren’t inspired? And while I work every single day and don’t give into that myth that you need to wait for inspiration to create, I do have to find that next dress, that object that I am moved to focus a creation around. Sure, I could have spent the last few days playing with wire and yet it seemed more necessary to just stop and sit in silence. I turned off the TV. I found myself just sitting doing nothing in particular. This is something that usually unnerves me and yet I felt I had no other choice. Today I saturated myself with information. I watched short videos of two artists whom I love and I listened to them speak about their creative process. The first woman caused me to question my own work and the second woman reminded me that we each have our own gifts to offer to the world and that we should focus on being as true to that vision as we can be. I stopped at some point in this search for inspiration and took a nap (another thing that I rarely do). I woke up with many ideas for sculptures although I don’t know if they were really mine, or my interpretation of what I should do after reading about art and feminism.

Here I am in that awkward place, that intermission, that pause before the next act begins.