the blue muse

Our etsy shop is now open! Forgive my excitement, but I am…excited!
I haven’t quite figured out how to add a widget for it yet but here is the link: www.etsy.com/shop/BlueMuseJewelry

I will be adding more pieces over the next month, so check back often.

And here is my first attempt at playing along with abby…
and Five Senses Friday after the biggest snowstorm of the year:

Seeing:
-snow, everywhere snow.

Hearing:
-the silence of snow. the crunch of snow.

Tasting:
-snowflakes on my tongue. morning tea.

Smelling:
-that fresh smell of…snow

Feeling:
-warm inside my smartwool socks and wellies. cold on the tip of my nose.

I often find myself folding laundry at midnight. Seriously. You would think that since I work at home I could get it done earlier in the day, but it rarely seems to work out that way.

It’s not that I plan to be matching socks as the clock strikes twelve. In fact I usually put the load in the washer early in the evening. I plan to have it dried and folded well before midnight, really I do. But then I get… distracted.

I once heard a line in a movie (a long time ago–can’t remember its name) that went something like: “She was partly distracted by the possibilities of life.” Well, that’s me. I am constantly distracted, mainly by creative pursuits, but sometimes by less-than-glamorous ones like straightening the junk drawer, too. But…back to the creative part. Being creative is what I want to spend my time on. What I would spend all of my time on if I could.

But it’s time that gets me down. I am always running out of it. Where does it all go? Like sands through the hour glass…

So I try to come up with more creative ways to manage my time, or more time to manage my creativity. It isn’t always easy. I’m trying to learn to work more efficiently, watch less television, and focus on one task at a time. Trying to be more organized in general (which is hard since I am not hard-wired that way) so I can spend less time looking for things and getting ready to work, and more time actually creating.

I’ve also been using the fifteen minute rule. For example, my jewelry making table has been an absolute mess since the end of December. Every day I would say to myself “I really need to clean that up,” but it was one of those projects that seemed too overwhelming to begin. So instead, I scheduled (in my handy dandy blackberry that is going to change my life forever) a fifteen minute appointment every day. And then spent those fifteen minutes doing nothing but cleaning and organizing. And before I knew it, voila! clean bead table! It’s amazing what you can get done in fifteen minutes.

There are things we all have to do. We have to work, care for our families, clean, exercise, and keep it all together in general. And we have to do laundry. Never ending laundry. No matter how many things I choose to give up, laundry just isn’t one of them. But I can’t promise that I won’t get distracted during the wash cycle and start making that new bracelet I’ve been planning, or writing a blog post, or reading that fabulous novel. No, I can’t promise that.

I guess in the end, I just choose laundry last.

But it’s okay, folding laundry actually makes me sleepy.

I’m very new to blogland. A few months ago I had never even visited a blog. I was at Barnes and Noble one day and came across a publication called Artful Blogging. As a graphic artist, I immediately fell in love with its beauty…and then I became intrigued by what I saw and read.

Since then I have spent a lot of time surfing through blogland, and it’s like a whole new world has opened up for me! I’m sure I’m not the first one to feel this way, in fact I am probably way behind the times.

But I am awed by this incredible community of artists, writers, photographers, all opening themselves up, sharing their work, their lives, their artfulness. I feel like my world has just increased in size exponentially, yet at the same time it has become much, much smaller.

I can read about the day-to-day lives of artists in California, Oregon, Sweden, Germany. And marvel at the way we all have so much in common, even as we pursue the ultimate form of individuality.

I am humbled. I am entranced. And above all, I am grateful.

Hello world. It is so very nice to meet you.

At our jewelry shows people often trip over our name…Blue Mouse? Blue Moose? Blue Muse, what’s a muse? How do you spell it?

When I arrived at the name (after much trial and error and after choosing several that were already taken) I thought it seemed just right. But I also thought that muse was a commonly used, commonly recognized word. Isn’t it?

Well, whether it is or not, I’ve been thinking: what/who is my muse? Do I have one? If not, do I need to find one? What if I can’t? Can you be an artist without one?

Can you choose your own muse? Doesn’t it have to choose you?

So what or who would I choose to be my muse? There are artists and writers that have inspired me throughout my life: Van Gogh, Hemmingway, O’Keefe, Maugham, Wyeth, Modigliani, Gibran, cummings. And lots of others, lesser known. But is inspiring the same as being a muse?

I love swallows. They are blue. Does that work?

What about the collective muse? The spirits of all those who came before us? Can we tune in to their presence? Should we?

That’s the thing about art. It makes us ask questions.

Sometimes it gives us an answer.

And sometimes the question is all there is.

It all started about six years ago when my niece showed me how to make a memory wire bracelet. I was hooked, and immediately went out and started what has since become an extensive (way too extensive) bead collection.

I love beads. I have lots of them—I mean lots. Sometimes I think I should sort through them and sell the ones I don’t use. But when I try to do that I always find one reason or another to keep those and then those, and oh, I might need those! and then I am right back where I started…too many beads.

I am especially fond of artisan lampwork, and while my original plan was to learn that craft, things ended up going in a bit of a different direction. I still love and work with artisan lampwork—so many amazing artists out there!—and I am constantly perusing sites like ebay and etsy for fabulous beads. I love playing with color, finding that perfect combination.

Several years ago I actually did take a beginner’s lampwork class and managed to make one, just one, solid color bead that was not wonky. (The other twelve were decidedly so). But okay, I made one. And I planned to go back and learn more, truly I did.

But somewhere in between there and here, I took a precious metal clay class. My life, and my jewelry, haven’t been the same since! Now I divide my jewelry-making time between beautiful art glass bracelets and precious metal clay, and more precious metal clay and more well, you get the picture.

It is messy work. There is dust everywhere. My fingernails will never be the same. But hey, it’s all for the cause.

Because who doesn’t love beautiful, shiny things? Especially when they start out as a little lump of clay. It’s kind of like watching a caterpillar turn into a butterfly… right before my eyes.

Beautiful. And really, really cool.

These are the tools of my trade. I make my living with them.

They’ve looked better, They’ve also looked worse. They create, draw, type, shape, craft. All day long they make something from nothing. I work them hard, poor things.

I design. I craft. I write. I draw. I envision. This is what I do, this is who I am.

Yet it occured to me very recently that rarely do I think of myself as an Artist.

I work full-time as a graphic artist, almost full-time as a jewelry designer, I write poetry, I garden. In short, I live a life filled with creativity. So why don’t I call myself an artist? I think that’s the question I am here to explore.

I love my job(s). As jobs go, they are both, well, fun. I am lucky in that respect. It is hard to find work you enjoy. But I seem to have reached a place in my life where I need something more. I need inspiration. Community. Room to grow. I need to allow myself to think more like an artist so that I can allow myself to be an artist. I need to live an artful life.

You would think that since I make my living creating things that I would already be living an artful life. But it hasn’t felt that way in a while. I feel like I have just been… going about my business. Running a business takes a lot of energy. There is stress. And sometimes these things get in the way of what I need—time, space, and spirit—to create. To breathe art in. Not just spew it out. To absorb life. To spend time each day on my passion.

Balance. I need balance. I have two hands. They’ve brought me this far.

I hope they’ll catch me if I fall.