Last Thursday night we had an (aforementioned) mini-tornado and then the power went out. I was forced away from my computer, my sewing machine and the tv. There was no baking to be done as our stove is electric and there wasn’t enough light to paint, so instead I sat down in the twilight, strained my already abused eyes and read Jeffrey Yamaguchi’s book 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity, from cover to almost cover, but then the light disappeared completely. It is such a beautifully written book, full of wisdom and inspiration. The ideas themselves are good and a lot are quirky and unexpected, which is a nice discovery in this thought-of-everything-before world. Many even had someone too busy for anyone’s own good (me) contemplating taking on new projects as I turned the pages. But mostly I liked the writing around the projects – the anecdotes and the introductions and the end notes. It’s such a readable little book.

I was listening to Craftypod #13 which features an interview with Jeffrey Yamaguchi, where he talks about his book, his website and the importance of project making – and one thing that he said that stuck in my mind was something about how he approaches tasks or events in his life as projects to be researched, experimented with and ultimately completed and how this inspires him. And it got me thinking about how much I love projects. I always have – and when I think about it I approach life in exactly the same way as Jeffrey explained.

All through my childhood I organised a neighbourhood club (“The Allsorts Club”) which I threw myself into with gusto and everyone else kind of tagged along, some with less enthusiasm than others (we had rules about how many times you were allowed to quit per week, and kids would turn up to club meetings on the strength of my mum’s chocolate cake alone which was always supplied). Club activities were rampant. We held Lego shows in front gardens which were open to the public where we made incredibly detailed dioramas including live recorded sound (of traffic for a cityscape, animals sounds of our own invention for country scenes) that was played out of old mono tape recorder. We had puppet shows, restaurants, circuses, our own currency and postal system, a series of merit badges not unlike the girl guide or scout badges awarded for minor achievements and an annual magazine of puzzles, fiction, poetry and illustration. Not only was there club organisation, but for a time I would write out project sheets for my friends. We called them “contracts” as in “you sign it therefore you complete it”. I think we had a similar thing going at school for homework and so on, so we echoed it with our own version. They were usually a list of things that had to be completed within a week and they were things like “collect a snippet of hair from each of your family members” or “write a poem about figs” etc. There was nothing terribly interesting about the things that had to be completed, it was the creating of the task list and then the checking off of items which was the bit that was cherished.

Somewhere in high school I started to loose my interest in projects. There were probably some anti-enthusiasm hormones kicking in as well as the equation project = deadline = work = hassle etc.

But then it kind of came back again in my 20s. Project Get a Job, Project Find a Perfect Mate, Project find the Perfect Share House (every year it seemed), Project Become an Illustrator (which included Project Artist’s Way). And lately there have craft projects, and online projects – swaps, softies, etc. – exhibition projects, baking projects and of course that big one, the Motherhood Project.

After reading Julie and Julia and seeing how her year-long cooking project was in many ways fueled by her documentation on her blog, and her sense of responsibility to her readers, I realised that my blog is one of the single most motivating factors in my life right now. It keeps me thinking about my projects, however big or small they are, and how I can document them daily and share them with others undertaking similar projects (tasks, challenges, joys) or with others who are just happy to read along and how I feel a sense of community and accountability and all the inspiration that comes from that. And it’s like having the Allsorts Club all over again, but it’s looser and more fun and without chocolate cake to bribe anyone to take part.

** Update – I had to republish this entry but unfortunately I had lost all the comments. Thank you if you previously left a comment.**

Marshmallow rabbit, by lamp light.

I have been working on little purple face today and it’s really good to get back to something I am just almost entirely content producing after spending so much energy on the paintings. All I wanna do is stitch.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the paintings and how I have been feeling about putting brush to canvas. A couple of nights ago I was lying awake at 2am pondering the “what on earth am I doing?” question. Working digitally for so long has been incredibly easy for me… I can work with Photoshop quickly and repetitively – I know my own shortcuts and tricks. I can make things look pretty good. But another little thing is that I can hide away behind my print outs and comfortably wear the “illustrator” or “digital artist” label, both which I feel have always summed me up perfectly. I have never felt any need to compare myself with “real” fine artists who show their work in high-end galleries, have “careers” and agents and openings. I don’t feel threatened, perhaps because that’s not what I am trying to do. I know that friends who are “real” artists or friends of my parents who have “real” artist children, can look at my work as cute, quaint and illustrational. And that’s fine. Easy. No problem. I have been totally happy with that.

As soon as I decided to try something “off screen” and get back to the basics which I left behind in art school so long ago and even have a show or two, I have started to freak out. Suddenly I feel exposed again – as if I am trying too hard to be something I’m not. As soon as it’s about brushstrokes I feel as if I am going to be compared, poo-pooed as amateurish and ultimately it will ruin my some-kind-of reputation (hello inner-critic). Some of this may be true. Some of it may be not. But I am finding it really hard to try something new and scary, and down-right difficult – something I can’t just whiz up and print off.

I was flicking through the Good Weekend this morning and came across one of the little filler pieces in the front Weekender section called “fyi – a beginner’s guide to the modern world” – and today’s topic was “Lowbrow” – as in Pop Surrealism – as in Mark Ryden, Tim Biskup and Juxtapoz Magazine et al. The column is a little piece that outlines the ideas that Lowbrow art is “representational not conceptual, mercantile not political”, rarely if at all embraced by the contemporary fine art world for this reason, and that it is “more suited to a teenager’s bedroom wall than a gallery, that it might be competent design or illustration, but not good art”.

Then the column goes on to explain the term “Unibrow” which was new to me (in this context. far too familiar in another! and p.2, p.3, p.4). Here we are told that this is the term that the Lowbrow artists themselves use for the extension of the movement which has become about Tiki Art, big-eye cute and, as Robert Williams is quoted saying, “just a bunch of illustrators looking for a new place for their stuff because they lost their job to computers.” Ouch! So while I have been minutely comforted by the idea that perhaps my cute bunnies might somehow fit into this Lowbrow art movement, today I am left feeling even more challenged… which is perhaps a good thing. Challenge = good, right? But I am left asking a) why I even care b) why I feel the need to be validated and c) why I even care??

But hey, I do like stitching bunnies.

Some other resources and stuff about this:
Interesting (and somewhat comforting) interview with Tim Biskup from mid last year.
Mark Ryden’s Artist’s Statement from Wondertool.
about.com’s Art History 101 : The Lowbrow Movement

** Update – I had to republish this entry but unfortunately I had lost all the comments. Thank you if you previously left a comment.**