creative block

Maybe she exaggerates just a tad. :)

Last night I actually left the house for fun, to go to the book signing party for my friend Danielle, a.k.a. The Jealous Curator. I had followed Danielle's blog and been a big fan for several months before attending her San Francisco Girl Crush workshop in early 2012. Hearing both Danielle's and Lisa Congdon's stories of how they work and how they had arrived where they were at that time in their careers was a huge inspiration. I hadn't put "pen to paper" in quite a while before that workshop, and was sincerely frustrated. Now I'm much more frustrated by lack of time to execute ideas than trying to come up with them, but that workshop really was a turning around point for me, as far as trying to reinvent and refocus my creative tendencies.

Danielle's book, Creative Block, is a collection of advice and ideas from 50 artists. SO MUCH GREAT INFORMATION is in this book. Each artist provides an unblocking exercise, somewhat reminiscent of the exercises I did when I did The Artist's Way years ago, but not. The unblocking ideas in this book are beyond unique and fun. I'm not feeling blocked at all right now, but I still want to try a bunch of them.

What I like best about the book after just quickly scanning it over coffee this morning is that the interviews of the 50 artists provide great role modeling. I've learned over the last year or so that role models can be so very helpful when you are starting to put yourself out there with your artistic work, providing both practical road maps AND sheer inspiration, too. I'm excited to devour Creative Block, but I have a little interview of my own coming up in a few weeks (WOOT!) and I want to be sure I'm not regurgitating answers other people have given in the book, so I'll have to wait. 

Congratulations to Danielle, she is totally on fire, and like I said to her at ALT Summit last year when we both spoke there (she, as a panelist and me with my roundtable), I attribute so much of what I've been able to get done in the last two years to having met her. So, thanks again, Danielle! And if you are looking for a fantastic read about contemporary artists practicing in a variety of media and at varying levels of success, go grab a copy of her book!

Goofing around last year in SLC (with Danny and Danielle).