The Good in 2010: A Year in Review

Before 2011 begins tonight, I thought it was a good idea to see what I've learned or accomplished through the year...

*  Matt and I moved to Portland, Oregon (our dream city), by miraculously driving my Ford Escort across the country without dying.

*  Applied for six juried shows, made it into three of them and had my first solo exhibition.

*  Launched my website- krystalbooth.com- and began this blog with December being the best month yet.  Thank you for taking time out to visit "blank canvas"!

*  Made Thanksgiving turkey for the first time- nevermind the fact that it tasted like tuna.

*  Matt and I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time in our lives.

*  Discovered the bliss that is the bread pudding at the Beaverton Bakery.

*  Learned that Skype negates the miles that separate.

*  Made bread for the first time from scratch in my own kitchen...Samm, Matt and I began dreaming of owning a bakery until we made a batch of sourdough.  Stinktastic!!!!

*  We adopted little Ivan (kitten) and our other cat, Olive, has been blissfully thankful ever since!  (It should also be noted here that we have managed to keep two living beings alive and well for a year...).

*  Had an amazing end of the year while I was teaching- had the best year with the best students!

*  Gained three blessings through separate sets of friends having children for the first time- three newborn baby boys who are so loved already and have been graced with the best parents imaginable!

Happy New Year to all of you, and I hope that you take the time to reflect about your accomplishments this year.  Cheers to you and your families in 2011!  May this year be better than the last!

A Good Night's Rest

Two days ago I was assessing one of the series I had plans of making and decided that it was no longer a fabulous idea....it was the series of self-portraits I was going to do dealing with facebook and advertising.  The idea died.  What was once brilliant in my head turned into a path that was no longer fascinating to me.  It suddenly felt like the wrong direction.

So I was hit with the puzzlement of what to do next.  I knew that I had the drawing series to work on in the meantime, but I had primed and prepped collaged boards waiting for my attention. 

By the time I woke up yesterday morning, after a good night's rest, a solution was found!  I had a major breakthrough with a brainstorming session and ended up with two pages of possible paintings that I would include in the series. 

I am constantly amazed how much a good night's sleep or a hot bath will suddenly bless us with solutions time and time again.  It's in periods of when we quiet our minds that we can recieve these blessings from above.  Our questions get answered, solutions are planted in our heads, and we can move forward with our paths.  It's nothing short of a miracle and such a relief to know that a death of one thing is a birth of another- afterall, the energy has to go somewhere (Thank you, Mr. Einstein for bringing it to our attention that energy cannot be created or destroyed).

Creating Your Life

Time for creating.  Time for exercising.  Time for bathing.  Time for eating.  Time for fun.  Time for loved ones.  Time for looking for opportunities.  Time for catching up.  Time for RESOLUTIONS.

...and while writing this I just think I felt a little earthquake...a 3 second tremor.  Maybe the Creator's way of pointing out how this Earth continues to change and shift, and we need to do the same.

It's the week between Christmas and New Year's, my favorite week of the year, and it's filled with reflection and new plans for the upcoming year.  It's filled with assessment and hope.  Creating grand plans for a metamorphosis. 

In order to do this, I need a strategy of time- the ultimate schedule that will help me accomplish these new goals...without a strategy, I will look similar to the picture above.  I'm trying desperately to get organized and create a schedule that truly reflects the way I want to live.  This is not an easy task for me, because I am quite moody about time- I resist wearing a watch because I hate to see the minutes of my life flying away without meaning.  Yet, maybe I need to be reminded about time in order to get to where I want to be.  I definitely have plenty to accomplish this year.  My resolutions have yet to be nailed down, but here's a sample of what I'm looking at for 2011, which may be similar to yours:

1. Spend at least 30 hours in the studio creating (writing, painting, drawing) per week (on top of work week of job which I will find!).
2. Lose 25 pounds...not exactly pleased to see this burden return to my life...have gained some weight recently that I'm not proud of.  Need to think health, health, health!
3. Approach galleries in formal manner of appointments- I have never done this, and this is the year!
4. Show my work as often as possible!  Apply to more shows than I did in 2010, which was a great start!
5. Improve the quality of all of my relationships by being in the moment, remembering birthdays, and connecting more often through writing letters, or phone calls (not just quick emails and facebooking).
6. Put myself in more uncomfortable situations to get over fears, and get out of my comfort zone of living. "The Amazing Race" would definitely help me in this manner (would be a major catalyst for this goal), so Samm and I will definitely apply this year!  Whether or not we get a spot on the show, I know that I could accomplish this goal on a local scale as well...the show would just be a fast forward on accomplishing this.

I have put most of these on a Vision Board- it's still in the works-  I'll post a picture of it when I'm done.

The truth is I hope that 2011 will completely be the most meaningful year of all of our lives!  Cheers to filling it with laughter, love, hope, renewal, and living life in a way that reflects who we are and not what others want us to be!  Happy Holidays, and Happy 2011!  What are you planning?

The Artist's Way- Week One's Delectable Purge

Week One in One Word:  PURGE!

Good Things about this Week:      Morning Pages
                                                    Old Madonna Videos
                                                    Task #5:  Letter to the Editor


Bad Things about this Week:        Morning Pages
                                                   Trying to Resist Going to Chapter 2 before I completed wk 1 tasks!!!




Morning pages, morning pages, and more morning pages.  They were fun, they were boring, they were satisfying, they were meaningless.  I established the morning pages writing activity as a friendly way to celebrate the beginning of each new day.  I turned on my Beethoven station on Pandora, filled a cup of coffee and wrote out three pages.  Some days I greeted it with zest, but let's face it- I'm truly NOT a morning person.  Some days were better than others.  I think the trick is to not overthink the words that are manifesting themselves on the paper.  It's almost like a morning purge of old thoughts and gaining some space for the new.  I noticed that I seemed to have a pattern:  the first page was neutral, the second page was a bit negative, and the third page was positive in tone and attitude.  Very strange.  Did anyone else sense a pattern in their morning pages?


As for the tasks this week, I absolutely adored the fifth one- writing a Letter to the Editor and mailing it to yourself.  It was entertaining and extremely therapeutic.  I felt as if I had feng shui-ed my brain and ridded it of some rubbish I had held onto for years.  It felt amazing.  I sent it off in the mail, but I haven't recieved it yet.  I'm wondering what it will be like when I read it again.


Cheers to reading Chapter Two today!


I'm wondering how Week One went for you?  What were the good points or the bad points?

The Artist's Way

Back in the day, I only read a few excerpts from this book, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and then put it aside.  It refuses to be ignored any longer.  I was researching artist groups in Portland and I noticed that there were groups focused upon this book, and then when I was referred to it by a friend (Thank you Kendra!) the next day, I knew that I was supposed to read it.  NOW.  I bought my copy that night, and so it begins...

I have signed a contract with myself to complete the twelve-week course in the book.  I have officially started as of today, and will be posting about any progress or awfulness I find over the next twelve weeks on Sundays. 

I will say that while reading chapter one, I did have somewhat of a revelation about my critic-(that jerk of a negative voice inside our heads that tells us that we suck regardless of proof otherwise).  It was just a simple exercise of writing "I, ________ , am a brilliant and prolific _(whatever you do)_"  ten times and to listen to what the critic says while you are writing this simple sentence.  Write down what the critic says and then think about where that came from- sibling/parent/teacher/friend/etc..  Once finished, turn the critic's statement into an affirmation by making it positive.  I have to admit it's cheesy, but I'll try anything for the sake of building up some confidence with my work.

The surprising part for me- I didn't know that I have let one person in particular have so much power over me that their statements are still playing in my head...and it's been a long time!  Three out of the five where from the same source, and I found it shocking that I have those statements so ingrained into my head that they popped up during this short exercise!  I'll be happy to let them go!  I'm hoping that the affirmations work.

Anyway, if you have time, try this exercise no matter your occupation or interests- I'm wondering if you'll find it as eye opening as I did-  Feel free to post!  Also, if you're interested in reading this book along with me for this twelve week journey(or if you've already read it), I'd love to hear what you think of it too!

BF Skinner and Conditioning

"BF Skinner and Conditioning" 2010

Graphite on Paper.

8.5x5.5"

This is the newest drawing in the Twentieth Century Psychological Tests Series.  I have areas to touch up still, but I just couldn't stand not sharing it yet!

The Truth About Homemade Gifts

'Tis the Christmas Season and with the lack of funds available this holiday to spend on loved ones I do not know what to do.  My artistic instinct wants to create homemade gifts but then the Ghost of Christmas Past enters my studio...

"Remember the year that you made a painting for a family member?  It was huge, and took a lot of long hours to create.  You thought it was perfect for that person.  A gift that would be loved immediately and treasured forever?  Instead, the painting was stared at in silence for a half hour with the person not understanding what it was exactly.  Then after the thirty minutes finally a response- 'Oh, I see it now!'  It was painful, awkward, and embarrassing."

"Do you remember the year when you learned how to knit?  You thought it would be a great idea to make scarves for all of those near and dear.  Instead of spending a nice cozy Christmas Eve snuggled up with your boyfriend, you were both knitting until 3:00 in the morning.  Your fingers hurt, your hands were shaking, but you managed to get all of them done.  What a proud accomplishment!  You thought that this gift was especially warm with love.  Instead, the scarves were greeted with a wide range of 'thank you's that all read 'Kind of you, but this will never be put on my body- '.  You never saw those scarves again and know that they are buried in the back of closets or on a table at Goodwill."

"And do not forget the altered books that you made that took months to create.  They are collecting dust and probably have not been looked at since Christmas."

Not everyone has poo-pooed my handmade gifts, but I have learned my lesson.  (...Kind of-  I'm making handmade distasteful funny Christmas cards for friends.)  I am seriously thinking about having an anti-Christmas Christmas.  It shouldn't be about gifts anyways.  I want it to be about love, and communication.  Laughing together.  Being thankful for eachother.  But then of course, I will be considered 'cheap' by not spending, or they will think I do not appreciate them in my life.  Have I become a poor version of Scrooge this year?

Harry Harlow and The Nature of Love

"Harlow and The Nature of Love" 2010

Graphite on Paper.  8.5x5.5"

This is the first of a drawing series I just started based on psychological tests of the Twentieth Century.  I'm still not sure if I will title this drawing that way, but for now it will do.

"Opening Skinner's Box: Great psychological experiments of the Twentieth Century" (2004) by Lauren Slater is the muse of this series- I highly suggest this read!  I'm going to do one drawing per chapter/psychological test which will end up being ten drawings total.  I'm hoping to get the entire series done by the beginning of January or before that.

I'm hearing the Biography channel say "Krystal Booth was a prolific artist by creating different series of work at the same time." ha!  The truth is I feel I need the practice THAT BAD!  If I want to get better, I cannot go at the pace that I did while I was teaching...which was seriously one painting per four months.  At that rate, I found that I lost some of the progress I was making when I first graduated college.  I wasn't getting better. 

Let's face it- we only so much time on this Earth and it's up to us to accomplish how much we want to accomplish.  The time is not slowing.  I am frantically trying to keep up...maybe not as amazing as fancy pants Vincent van Gogh with his showoff of 200 paintings in a year, but I'm pushing ahead of where I was.

Recent Sketches...

This sketch was made from a wierd webcam photo of my best friend- It's definitely a weird rendition, but it adds a lot of life to my sketchbook!

Just a quick landscape from my mind.

Quick line rendering of mi amore.


Getting a new sketchbook really motivates me to fill it up with new ideas and quick sketches.  There's definitely nothing better than a fresh sheet of paper-

I've had this wierd belief though since I was a child about paper and predisposition.  It knows what it wants to be.  It knows what marks will bring it to life before we do.  Our job is to unravel the mystery by setting our pens and pencils in motion.  This is similar to my beliefs on life, but my mind wasn't mature enough to understand that yet...though I'm still having a debate with myself on life and to what degree it is predestined...or not.  What do you think?

LIFE

Have stumbled upon a transition period in my life...no, it's not menopause yet. I'm really happy about it, but also equally stressed about what's to come. The mysterious. The unknown. It can be exhilerating, overwhelming,and frightening at times, but I'm glad to be at this point. I keep telling myself there has to be a reason why things haven't quite been as easy as I thought they would be. There's a reason why that job I was perfect for is not calling me back. There's a reason why I'm drawn to paint things that aren't exactly what I would place at a Christmas bizarre. There's a reason why I haven't lost hope.

I found this great video that was posted on facebook, and I feel that I have to share it. It's brilliant, and a good reminder to follow that drive within us despite the challenges.