“Coffee and Milk,” (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008   

The weeks have passed quickly and as I have been focused on getting my art out of the studio and into the experiment of having it be bought by real people, the task of putting together blog entries has fallen off the list.

The simple act of drawing, sketching, searching for inspiration, and playing with colored pastels has been inundated with business plans and annual budget projections and meeting with bankers and merchant vendors and weekly market managers. In the beginning, I became impatient with these “business” chores, as they seemed like distractions, disengaging me from the act of actually pursuing art.

And yet the mere act of attempting to plan out the next year, the act of calling bankers (who are not stiff or unapproachable at all, by the way), and the act of interacting with other businesses has allowed me to begin to tweak my own business plan. The simple act of exchanging ideas, of being forced to talk to people about what I do, and what I’m thinking of doing, has allowed me to bloom as an artist.

I am realizing that this journey of attaining my own creativity is taking me through a complete, circular revamp of myself. It is showing me pieces of who I may yet become, of who I was and have lost, and of whom I am today. It is showing me not to be afraid, or to be afraid for a minute and then push forward. It is pushing me to attempt to drop in on chamber of commerce network mixers (I’m still working on my fear of that one).

And every day, it is forcing me to identify and respect myself, as I sell my creations to the world. It is giving me the confidence to allow my customers to see my art through their own eyes, to interpret it through their own experiences. It is a quiet interchange, between these customers and myself. I have stood quietly, seeing men and women look through my stack of greeting cards, and look again, and pull cards out and think, put them aside, and keep looking. Sometimes these customers are kind enough to share with me the reason for their choices. These conversations have become part of a thread that adds to my own art, my own journey.

And I find myself craving these days when I drive to the weekly markets, set up my booth, and await these customers. I eagerly await a new face that will share with me a story that I have never heard before, a story that will inspire me to keep going, to keep creating. Their stories will become part of my story, and it keeps going and going, in a path that will survive for years, for generations.

This is something I never planned to achieve, this comfort in facing potential customers. I have grown comfortable in the fact that people will keep walking by my booth without a second look. That is okay. I have grown confident in my own work, and realize that my history, my memories, my interpretation of the details of life, have found compatriots. This is okay too.

It is with that confidence, small as it may be at the beginning of this journey, that I tackle all the other harsher realities of being in business. Yet I am beginning to learn and feel comfortable in the fact that I will always be standing on shifting sand, if only a little more comfortable than I was a month ago.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 3:48 am and is filed under Attaining creativity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

“Coffee and Milk,” (conte, and pastel drawing), Copyright © Attaining Creativity 2008   

The weeks have passed quickly and as I have been focused on getting my art out of the studio and into the experiment of having it be bought by real people, the task of putting together blog entries has fallen off the list.

The simple act of drawing, sketching, searching for inspiration, and playing with colored pastels has been inundated with business plans and annual budget projections and meeting with bankers and merchant vendors and weekly market managers. In the beginning, I became impatient with these “business” chores, as they seemed like distractions, disengaging me from the act of actually pursuing art.

And yet the mere act of attempting to plan out the next year, the act of calling bankers (who are not stiff or unapproachable at all, by the way), and the act of interacting with other businesses has allowed me to begin to tweak my own business plan. The simple act of exchanging ideas, of being forced to talk to people about what I do, and what I’m thinking of doing, has allowed me to bloom as an artist.

I am realizing that this journey of attaining my own creativity is taking me through a complete, circular revamp of myself. It is showing me pieces of who I may yet become, of who I was and have lost, and of whom I am today. It is showing me not to be afraid, or to be afraid for a minute and then push forward. It is pushing me to attempt to drop in on chamber of commerce network mixers (I’m still working on my fear of that one).

And every day, it is forcing me to identify and respect myself, as I sell my creations to the world. It is giving me the confidence to allow my customers to see my art through their own eyes, to interpret it through their own experiences. It is a quiet interchange, between these customers and myself. I have stood quietly, seeing men and women look through my stack of greeting cards, and look again, and pull cards out and think, put them aside, and keep looking. Sometimes these customers are kind enough to share with me the reason for their choices. These conversations have become part of a thread that adds to my own art, my own journey.

And I find myself craving these days when I drive to the weekly markets, set up my booth, and await these customers. I eagerly await a new face that will share with me a story that I have never heard before, a story that will inspire me to keep going, to keep creating. Their stories will become part of my story, and it keeps going and going, in a path that will survive for years, for generations.

This is something I never planned to achieve, this comfort in facing potential customers. I have grown comfortable in the fact that people will keep walking by my booth without a second look. That is okay. I have grown confident in my own work, and realize that my history, my memories, my interpretation of the details of life, have found compatriots. This is okay too.

It is with that confidence, small as it may be at the beginning of this journey, that I tackle all the other harsher realities of being in business. Yet I am beginning to learn and feel comfortable in the fact that I will always be standing on shifting sand, if only a little more comfortable than I was a month ago.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 3:48 am and is filed under Attaining creativity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.