Motivation and Creativity
My life tends to go through these phases. Sometimes I feel like nothing is going on, and then other times it’s full speed ahead and it all feels exciting but a bit blurry as it’s zooming by. I think I’m moving into a more zoomy phase.
Work is picking up–not that it was slow before, but I have some big projects that are starting to really happen, and one or two others than I’ve added to the pile. This is a good thing in many ways, one of which is that Ez and I will probably need a little more money coming in to pay the rent on our new studio space. Rainy Planet Press and other Terri and Ezra Show individual and joint creative endeavors will soon have a new home at the Joy Street Studios in Somerville. We just put down a deposit on a studio yesterday, and I for one am very excited. Now we have to figure out the moving of the monster (the 1800 pound Chandler and Price letterpress that is currently residing in our garage).
Last weekend we participated in the Printing Arts Fair at the Museum of Printing in North Andover. It was a lot of fun to be surrounded by fellow printers, and it was a kick in the pants in many ways. We tried very basic bookbinding, and now I’d like to take a workshop. We got to chat with some very nice fellow letterpress printers, and it gave us the get-up-and-go to get the studio space mentioned above. It wasn’t nearly as hot as last year, either.
As some of you may know, I used to spend a lot more time making “art.” I took a lot of classes and spent a lot of my free time drawing, painting, and generally messing around. Somewhere along the line I stopped doing it so much–I can think of a few reasons why, but none of them are good reasons. Finding studio space has me very excited about doing more art again. Today I even got my old box of acrylic paints out and played around with them. I’m so out of practice with drawing and painting that whatever skills I had developed are basically dormant, but it felt fantastic to paint. Now my fingers have happy little black and green splotches on them. Yay splotches!
