Immediately after lunch at work today I completely zoned out – no doubt a side effect of the joyous over-caffeination I experienced in the morning. I've been in a funk lately anyway, so I asked myself, what would make me feel better? What would enable me to put my best effort into my work?

Rather than lay my sorry little head on my desk (I like to remain positive in the office whenever possible), I broke out my MP3 player and put on one of my favorite songs. Whenever I feel down, all I need to do to make everything right in the world is listen to a fabulous a cappella arrangement of Coldplay's Fix You by James Madison University's Exit 245. It's on BOCA 2007, but I'm sure you can look it up elsewhere, too.

After then listening to The Last Five Years, my afternoon had improved drastically – clearly a result of these cathartic music listening experiences. Sometimes I wonder if anyone else daydreams about their everyday life as if it were a music video or Broadway show. I have done this since childhood, and these daydreams are what made me think I wanted to write music someday.

Any silliness aside, music is my lifeblood, and it's what I turn to whenever I am feeling depressed or uninspired. This evening I feel so inspired to make plans with friends, get together a group of people to play music at my house, and set up the darkroom for goodness' sake.

Whenever I listen to music and start feeling like it's opening a gateway to inspiration for every corner of my life, I hope everyone else in the world has something that makes them feel the same way. I always draw on it for energy and use it to build a foundation for happiness and balance. Despite a seeming lack of connection, I know I would not be inspired to keep producing visual art without music in my life, both performed and heard.

Creative expressions feed one another. What feeds your inspiration, even in the darkest times? What puts a spark into your everyday life and keeps you creative/productive?

And if you also have wondered what life would be like if every minute were a musical, please feel free to let me know.

Next post: darkroom pictures, progress, and tips!

Ever have one of those weeks when you just can't seem to get ahead?  Unopened mail accumulates on the table, you're out of necessities before you go grocery shopping, dishes pile up, projects around the house go unfinished (or unstarted).  Before you know it, you're cranky all the time, you wake up in the morning feeling like you barely fell asleep, and even your morning coffee isn't satisfying anymore.

Needless to say, creative work suffers under these circumstances.

Last Monday, I finally placed my darkroom supply order.  When a shipping confirmation informed me my package would arrive at the office on Friday, I immediately reconfigured my goals: by the end of the weekend, I would be making prints.

Then the flu hit our house.  While I somehow remained immune to the debilitating fever, headache, and fatigue the virus delivers, I sure didn't miss out on assuming all the everyday household chores; picking up discarded blankets, clothes, and juice glasses all over the house; and caring for my sick husband for six days.  Not to mention a week's worth of restless sleep.  My dreams of a functioning darkroom evaporated long before the FedEx man arrived.

I managed a number of accomplishments over the weekend, including a trip out to Home Depot, but I should have realized earlier that it just was not happening.  What began as an exhilaratingly ambitious goal had become an absolute impossibility.  Just like getting this morning off to a positive start because let's face it: starting out a Monday morning dead tired after an unproductive weekend just doesn't bode well.

That brings me to this evening, and just not wanting to post an entry to this blog.  And you know what?  I think it's just fine to be real about it.  I'm done mourning my weekend as if something died because life got in the way of an already-unrealistic goal (yes, I can be dramatic, all the time).  It's time to go to bed at 9:00 and get up in the morning ready to pick it all up again and keep going.  After all, that's what it's about in the end: the picking up and going, not the everything getting done on schedule. 

Tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up and eat my egg and cheese sandwich and go to work with a smile.  Then I'm going to come home and work on light-proofing the darkroom and setting up an enlarger table, and maybe by the end of next weekend, I'll be making prints in the new darkroom. 

Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend Big Art Day, an annual event at Kutztown University that connects fine arts alumni with current and prospective students. As a recent graduate doing marginally cool things and eager to reconnect with my professors, I broke out of my reclusive shell and made the trip up to central Pennsylvania.

The whole day proved valuable for me in terms of networking, touring new facilities, visiting with old classmates and professors, and taking in presentations by fellow alumni. One of the kernels that got me thinking was the mantra we all hear as creative people: the most important thing you can do to help your craft is practice it every day. Write. Photograph. Sketch. Do something.

I really take issue with the image of The Artist as this bottomless vessel of inspiration, and It's important to acknowledge the struggles artists experience throughout their creative lives. We all go through times when we just have to keep doing it despite not exactly overflowing with pride at the work we're producing. It's this perseverance that sets successful artists apart.

By the end of Big Art Day, I knew I had to get back in gear. As a somewhat intellectual artist, I constantly have to fight the inclination to put the cart before the horse. Unlike folks who always keep busy in their sketchbooks and feel most comfortable experimenting visually, I like to produce art within the structure of An Idea. While I've created great end products, the in-between is often lacking. After all, no one can expect excellent ideas every single day.

This calls to mind an entry in my paper journal from my first VISTA year. Coming out of college, my VISTA program felt like the hugest challenge I'd ever accepted. Despite my insecurities and wonderings – “what if I don't do enough, can't do enough?” -- I came out of my year of service far more confident than I had arrived. As time went on, I realized the value of remaining. Most endeavors don't require you to be a superstar, they require perseverance and consistent hard work.

For my work, this means accepting the ebb and flow of creative inspiration. More specifically, it means committing to updating this blog on a schedule rather than fussing about people potentially discovering it during a down time. It means taking photographs every day even if I don't have a strong idea for a project. Maybe it even means selling some of those “every day” photos to support my increased production.

None of this is particularly difficult, it just requires daily attention, something we may at times be hard pressed to provide even to our significant others. But it's the most important part of the creative process – not selling work, getting gallery representation, being awarded grants, nor thinking of the Best Idea Ever. Nope. The true success, the sole path to all that other stuff, is keeping the momentum going even when things aren't great.

Photo from expired 110 cartridge film.  I try to take photos with my Focal Micro 110 every day.

I got to thinking a lot about our house during my week away from home in a condo in Vermont. It felt wonderful to exist in a space populated only by the things we needed. My mind was clear, my ambitions strong, my optimism fully out of its shell.

Maybe I could attribute some of these feelings to spending every day skiing and enjoying fantastic scenery instead of showing up at the office. Who knows, but I came home with plans: hold on to your hats, folks, I'm cleaning out my basement.

Once I returned home I immediately realized why I haven't purged the whole house before: it's hard, it's intimidating, it's overwhelming. For someone with ADD like myself, it's impossible to know where to begin. Not to mention the basement is downright cold and dank this time of year. I voluntarily face these realities now not just because my parents will soon drop off a truckload of my childhood possessions, but also because there is another possibility in the works. There is a reward, a dedicated art space at the end of this tunnel.

Freed from the shackles of clutter, I can focus on populating my space with only the things I need. And at this point I've come to realize I do need a place to store, display, and create art. Everyone does. Imagine going to work in an office every day and not actually having your own desk. Or imagine your desk chock full of junk that's never going to help you get the job done. Our creative space is just as important to developing good work.

More on this to come as the project develops, but for now...before pictures, anyone?

On Thursday evening I'll get into my specific plans/wants for the space, so keep following along. If you have a basement, you can do this too! Already have a fabulous art space in your home? Please share!

This weekend we spent a three-day weekend in Brigantine, NJ for some well-deserved beach and family time.  I debated taking my whole camera bag, supposing that my purse-sized Lumix would do the trick.  In the end, though, I almost always end up packing all my gear in case I should be overcome by a sudden urge to take pictures that require Camera Raw, 10 megapixels, off-camera lighting, or a tripod.

Nothing like a relaxing weekend at the beach, enjoying the company of six people crammed into a two-bedroom bungalow.  Oh, and some ambitious photography projects on the side.

Predictably, I was somewhat disappointed in myself when I returned home with no pictures, but I'm left to wonder: do I beat up on myself too much?  Like in every other aspect of my life, do my high standards hinder me more than they help?

In college, I had a professor who firmly believed visual art -- and painting in particular -- should be our whole lives.  Unless we walked/ate/slept/dreamed painting, we could not call ourselves true artists.  This mentality dealt the final blow to my enthusiasm for a visual arts degree in large part because I gave up on some big dreams earlier in life because I couldn't bear the thought of that fierce intellectual monogamy.  Now someone was trying to force it on me, something I just couldn't swallow.

The bottom line is photography will never be my whole life.  Nor will writing or music or sewing curtains for the spare bedroom.  Sometimes a walk on the Atlantic City boardwalk is just that, a walk on the boardwalk.  No analysis, no careful and particular observation, no being left behind because no one wanted to wait for me to create the perfect shot.  There will be weekends for that.  I can plan a whole series of work around the Jersey Shore, allot entire weekends to my images.

Maybe it's also okay for me to come home from a weekend at the beach with no photography to show for it.  Maybe, for this weekend, I was defined by my place in my family as opposed to my place behind the camera.  While I sometimes envy people whose cameras are a permanent part of them, even they go through dry spells.  I'll never be shooting constantly, but I hit a pretty good rhythm with consistency.   Some days other pursuits just take precedence, and that's an important part of how I live and work.

This isn't something I should feel guilty about.  I am not a single-minded person with a perfectly crystallized identity and direction to my life.  I am a grazer who wanders through and past just about everything.  I used to beat myself up over this part of myself, but I've come to know its unique pleasures and advantages as well.

Even if to the outside world it looks like I'll never get my act together.