doing more of what works, and new-old creative intentions

and what's in my travel art studio (aka zip pouches and tote bag)

Lately I’ve been doing more of what works: morning pages, bullet journal, yoga classes, eating soup. I scribbled out a reminder list of things that help me come back to myself, sort of like a winter happiness plan (which I also made recently), but for all seasons and more full of small things. What feels good? What to return to?

We spent time in Edison last weekend and ate at Tweets and bought artist publications at Book Shucker, a perfect outing. Quiche and salad continue to be a perfect meal; and making pasta fagioli with huge pasta is a very nice idea. Looking forward to returning soon.

Quiche, salad, melon, pasta fagioli at Tweets; the shelves and small press publications I bought at Book Shucker

I’m thinking about physical work-things a lot: These are my supplies, these are my tools.

Adam and I are in a travel era, and the full studio set of tools, which had gotten quite extensive in the last few years — a risograph machine, a booklet maker, a folding machine, sewing machine, serger, sewing tools, drawing tools, cameras, iPad, supplies for carving wood and marbling fabric and making sandals and drawing and painting — is for the moment put away.

My supplies are pared down to what fits in a bag: a couple notebooks, a long calendar tucked in one of them, pens, pencils, a roll of neon washi tape. All rather particular, of course. And a phone/camera and laptop, those are essential tools. Also a Kindle, certainly a tool given how much of my writing work and research is informed by my voluminous reading.

Some new artistic intentions, new as in returning to what’s worked in the past, but that I got distracted from regular practice: Keeping a sketchbook, but/and/also drawing in my morning pages and bullet journal notebooks more, not just writing. Keeping a gratitude journal, listing a few things at the end of each day.

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This shoulder season time of year is always a time of reflection for me, and I like to re-read some of what I was thinking in the past, both journals and old blog posts.

From top of mind in November 2022, about a year ago:

feels like a new era is starting, I have a big desire to reflect, finish, clean, organize, tidy. I re-read my 2012 short list of most important things; a decade later it feels truer than ever. (relationships: spending time with Adam, family & friends; printmaking: living as an artist; reading: always learning; being outdoors.)

From post from around new year’s last year:

I have the sense that part of the reset I’m in the midst of right now needs to involve a lot of things like making fire cider. Doing the small projects or activities or taking little adventures that are just for fun. Action! Permission! Abundance! Also, ritual and intention and pulling my attention back to the physical.

I’m still in the reset, the era-shift, a time of tidying finishing organizing, and fun, adventure, being outside.

I’m learning some new digital things: Arc (the browser), and Obsidian for organizing my notes and research. Mostly in 2024 I’m planning on working on some of the sprawling, long-term projects that have been brewing a long time, mostly the finances book and the cooking and eating book. (Using “book” as a placeholder for whatever shape these projects take.) Collecting text and photos and writing bits and references and seeing the shapes and finding how they should go out in the world.

READING: More Money than God, a book about the invention of hedge funds, and Michael Lewis’ Liars Poker about bond traders. (Kind of dark, dry reading.) Also Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity and Change, and Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and Chain Gang All Stars. And the Lyz Lenz essay Liberal women should not marry Republican men.

LOOKING:

1. Sweet Garleek seeds: “Have you ever wondered what would happen if a garlic and a leek made a baby?”

2. The Black Gold Tapestry “The 67 meter long ‘film on cloth’ took nine years to research, design and hand-embroider and tells a social history of fossil fuels that is a deep reflection on climate change and transition.”

3. Compiling Edge Effects: Notes on Publishing Ecologies

Should I write a guide for how to make your own Winter Happiness Plan?

—Amelia

P.S. — Seattle Art Book Fair is in May next year, and exhibitor applications are open through the end of December.