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http://www.norajean.com/New_Projects/Index.htm
The New Projects Index has been dedicated to the latest Newbie Box
Swap. So ideas and tutorial links for projects that could help with
making things for the Newbie Box Swap will be found there.
Right now it's devoted to cane ideas.
When we were doing a Newbie Swap for mini food the New Projects Index
was littered with mini food and I made pies until my eyes fell out.
Eyes on Pies, maybe I'll do a pie full of eyeballs for Halloween,
remind me should I forget, but I digress.
If you would like to see a collection of thumbnails and links that
are bound as a theme check the Review Index.
http://www.norajean.com/New_Projects/Review-Index.htm
Here are some titles of some of the reviews there:
Day of the Dead efforts from Past Years
Wood Grain Review
Juicy Mini Foods
Polymer Clay and how to make honey or marmalade and pots
Review of Mini Food in a Jar
Review of Faces and Figures
Sculpt What You Love
Each of these pages have a boatload of thumbnails and links to
tutorials and experiments that are based on a theme. It's a review to
gather the steps of a thing in one place.
We also have International Cultural Themes:
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Egypt/Group.htm
For Egypt is the cultural
mother of the western and eastern world. Doubt that and look at the
RX on Pharmacy walls and see the Eye of Horus. Wedget Eye.
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Japan/Index.htm
Ode to my mother's people
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Mexico/Index.htm
LOL why Mexico? I live in
California, therefore I'm Mexican historically. San Francisco, how
Spanish can we get already? Our Mission Deloras was dedicated the
same year as the singing of the Constitution of the United States.
http://www.norajean.com/Biz-Archive/Africa/Index.htm
This is also a funny
connection, I was raised in a foster home, from my first memories to
when I started Kindergarten. It was run by the First W.10th Methodist
Church of Oakland, CA and my foster parents were Afro-American. My
first speech patterns, food preferences, expressions of family love
and all that were stamped on my formative brain by Aunt Vern
and "Daddy". Who looked like Aunt Jimaima and Louis Armstrong. In my
head I'm a black girl from Oakland, I got my homies and we be kicking
it at the crib. LOL
There was this class I took at SFSU, "Problems in Contemporary
American Identity." and I told "Jimmers" our too casual
professor
that I resembled that remark.
What's the point? Art is a manifestation of your creative energies
filtered through your own sensibilities.
These inter cultural themes are just part of my sensibilities. The
major loops my brain goes through. Creating things guided by these
energies helps me see my world with more clarity. We are just going
about explaining ourselves to ourselves anyway with art.
I'm not expecting any of my ClayMates to love the same things I love.
There are those who are sick to death of chop, but I got them with
mini food. There are those who are not interested in jewelry but I
got them with sculpting. That's why I change the demo topics on a
regular basis so you don't get a steady diet of my obsessions. That's
why I do Short Order Claying in Demo.
"What shall we do now? Short Orders anyone?" I always ask
"Oh just do what you want to do." someone would always say.
"Oh I WANNA DANCE!!!!" and I'll turn the webcam on to myself dancing
about.
What do I want to do?.... That's not what the demos are for. I
ALREADY AM DOING WHAT I WANT TO DO. I got a thousand megabytes of
what I wanna do. LOL
What do I want to do? I want to see what your obsessions are. What
themes are important to YOU? What are your favorite colors? What are
your favorite ....everything? I'll help with technique:
a dozen colors
a dozen moves
a dozen rules not to break like "if it burns, don't inhale"
That's all I can do for you really. The rest is up to you. But how do
you motivate yourself to get a grip on your clay?
Make it a part of an obsession. Your practice will become labors of
love.
If you make effort to learn your clay skills making things you HATE,
in colors that make you GAG, then your practice for skills becomes a
chore. This is not fun, satisfying or true to you.
Take your choice. Choose to love yourself enough to totally indulge
yourself with being the most important person at your work table. Or
let the current fads, market trends, safe and inoffensive themes,
colors and topics be governed by someone else's sensibilities be your
guide.
Art is for what purpose? For sales... governed by other's
sensibilities? I don't think so. Or is ART for personal creative self
expression, which means you're the 900 pound gorilla in that dark
alley?
Find your secret dreams, visions hiding in your heart of hearts, give
it form and color that speak to you to your core. This is where art
is born, in the midnight quiet of you forgetting everything but
what's being formed by your hand and eye.
So the other part of my job here is to convince you to follow your
bliss. For if you go with these "true to you" guidelines, clay from
the heart, be sincere in the emotion you want to evoke from the
viewer of your mini scene, believe me, the money will follow.
Other folks will resonate with your expression and will not only want
to possess it but keep you as a friend for you said something in your
art that they felt but had no expression for.
That's our job in the long run, to be so true to ourselves it touches
other folks to their inner core. First place to start is with you
allowing yourself to go with your inner flow, trust your eye, trust
your choice of subject matter, don't let anyone rain on your parade.
If they do then we'll all just have to box, that's all there is to
it. LOL Put up yer dukes!
xoxo
Nora-giving the pep talk - Jean
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