Optimism, Productivity, and Dickinson

December for K&A Plasticwear's Twelve Project, 2011

Mixed media on paper, 6x12".

This is a recent work...further exploration with media, layers, and drawing.  This Twelve project was a collaborative project that Amanda Knauer Crismore and I did last year.  We took turns every month creating art based upon what the other one did the previous month.  It was like a conversation through artwork, and it was a blast!  This year we've opened it up to other artists and it's going to be so interesting to see the work throughout the year.  Since Amanda started the 2011 year, I'm kicking off the year this time around, and I've been working on it all day.  I decided to take a bit of a break and so here I am - happily writing.

So far this year, I feel really optimistic and productive.  The website is finished on wix now (go to www.wix.com/krystallbooth/art to check it out), complete with a rewritten bio, and all is well.  It felt great to get it all done, and I'm looking forward to adding more works to it as the year progresses.  The motivation for creating work hasn't been a struggle since November when I embarked on this year long experiment.  I would be lying if I said that I wasn't surprised by this.  Usually when I sign myself up for a year long anything, I lose my umpf after a few weeks...my weight-loss/health quest is a great example of this.  Yet this year feels different.  I don't know what it is, but perhaps it is the impending doom factor...?

I don't believe that the world will end at the end of this year in a sense of gloom and doom, but I do hope that perhaps it will be an global awakening of sorts throughout the year.  It feels as though we are going through some kind of philosophical wormhole and when we emerge on the other side, we will be better for having gone through it.  It's a sense of hope that has me thinking this way, especially at this time of year and on this particular day.

Hope

by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Thank you to Mrs. Powers for requiring me to memorize this poem (though of course I messed up when reciting it for the class).  It has stayed with me all of these years.