Stories & Soliloquies

Stories & Soliloquies
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  • Tag: creativity

    • The Forgotten Tales of the Sand Faeries

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on June 30, 2016

      Beach sand has a way of making sculptors of everyone. That’s because the beach is home to the sand faeries, the kind of faeries most concerned with telling stories. They’re some of the most prolific muses of the faerie world, comparable only to the ocean faeries who are known for inspiring shanties and tales of sea-faring adventures. The sand faeries are their wordless kin, who tell the stories of those who kept no written record of their lives, or for whom no written record survives. They inspire us to make sculptures in the sand as an ode those who have been washed away by the sea, whispering their stories in our ear.

      Most of the time, these stories catch on the wind and leave us as we complete our task, so we do not remember them in great detail. And always, because these are the stories of those who have washed away to sea, so too must our creations wash away, not just to keep the secrets of the sand faeries, but to complete the story.

      Sometimes they tell the tales of animals.

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      This sea turtle was less washed to sea than welcomed by it, but the sand faeries see little difference.

      They see rather a lot of these, and sometimes they get a little carried away with exaggeration and invention, or mix stories about people with animals, but it’s all in good fun. The thing about sand is that it moves around with the tides, and when grains of sand are displaced and regrouped with new grains of sand, they recombine their memories endlessly. Sometimes they get a little confused about what’s real and what’s not after beach readers leave their books on the sand.

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      Some one at this beach was reading Return of the King recently, else I’d never have inadvertently crafted Minas Tirith.

      And sometimes they even learn a few things from sculptors who come to the sand with their own designs in mind and their ears shut to inspiration. The sand faeries never mind this, as creativity and the visual expression of stories are really what they feed on most.

      But more often than not, they’re telling the story of a lost people, a forgotten fortress, or an unrecorded history. That is why so many of us, especially those of us who play in the sand without an agenda or design, end up building dwellings, and of those dwellings, most are castles and fortresses. And most of them creep upon us as we mold the sand, telling us what to do next with every new pile of sand.

      On my most recent trip to the beach, I let the sand faeries speak to me, and I learned of a rustic kingdom by the sea that was constantly under siege from a neighboring fortress.

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      I began with the inner wall of the city. I had intended to dig only a trench, but before I knew it, I was molding a wall. At first I thought to do something more sculpted, but I ended up with a softly rounded wall instead. Before I knew it I was building an inner castle and digging an outer trench. I felt that this castle belonged to a rustic, isolated people. I imagined that all of their homes would be within the trench, but I couldn’t figure out what they should look like, so I left the land in a state of ruin.

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      I imagined the people who lived here to be mainly agrarian, but filled with a strong sense of community pride, mixing some softer, more hobbit-like round earthen walls with a few sturdier and more stalwart forts and towers. Nothing too elaborately built, however, and nothing too high.

      IMG_3720

      At this point, the sand faeries began to whisper into my husband’s ear, prompting him to ask me what they were so afraid of – why did they need a protective trench and lookout towers at every corner? And so he was inspired to build a neighboring city which was far more militarily driven.

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      The result was craggy city on a hill, with rough fortresses built into the walls of a small mountain, their main road headed straight for my little rustic civilization.

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      Whatever happened between these two cities, in the end the same fate took them both. After most of the inhabitants moved to urban centers and towns further from the ocean, the sea levels rose and washed away the old ruins they left behind.

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      Leaving nothing but fragments of their story to be recalled by the sand faeries the next time they came along someone playing the sand, ready to listen to them.

      Posted in Stories | 2 Comments | Tagged beach, creativity, faeries, fairy-tales, sandcastles, stories
    • Cultivating Creative Space

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on May 25, 2016

      Recently I had the opportunity to tour Andrew Wyeth’s studio at the Brandywine Conservancy in southeastern Pennsylvania. I love the Brandywine River Museum; the exhibitions always show such an appreciation for the tie between nature and art, and the setting of the facility is itself worthy of a visit. They have tours of not just Andrew Wyeth’s studio, but also N. C. Wyeth’s, as well as the Kuerner Farm, which appeared in countless Wyeth paintings. It is one of my favorite museums, and it was inspiring to see where – and how – Andrew Wyeth worked.

      I especially loved how the aesthetic of his studio matched the aesthetic of his art so closely.

      I only wished I could have timed my visit to coincide with a demonstration of how Wyeth mixed his tempera paints. I doubt I’ll be cracking open eggs for painting any time soon, but it would be very cool to see how it worked.

      While I don’t have my own artistic space, I find that I take a lot of care with the aesthetics in my home office, where I study and write philosophy, theology, poetry, and literature, and where I paint, sketch, and craft. I aim to keep it clean and organized, but in reality its mostly just piles of books and notes on the floor in semi-purposeful chaos, jars of paint brushes and pens, bits of memorabilia and photographs around me and on my book shelves, canvases leaned against things around the room, old birthday cards, junk mail, and the usual flotsam and jetsam.

      While I love that I can look around and see myself reflected in my work space, even when I clean it up it sometimes gets to be too much. In all the mess I get distracted from my primary projects, starting new ones before the old are complete. Sometimes I get too overwhelmed by the task of organizing my chaos, and pack my things up to work in a more focused environment, heading to the local library, campus study spaces, coffee shops, etc. I’ve tried normal methods of decluttering, but it never really lasts.

      When it comes down to it, I like my messes and my chaos more than the clarity of an empty desk. When I get too organized and pristine, it’s too blank and bland. For a long time, this made it difficult to understand what I was looking to achieve; if the office was too messy, I couldn’t concentrate, but if it was too clean, it was uninspiring. If it is too much of a hassle to find my old notes on Plato’s Republic, I’ll go on without them. And if my paints are buried in a closet, they won’t call me to create.

      After seeing Andrew Wyeth’s creative space, I decided take a different approach to spring cleaning. Everything in Wyeth’s studio caters to his creativity; everything serves a function or reflects his process, but there’s nothing artificially minimalistic or sterile about it. All of his paints and supplies are readily available and his sketches and studies are pinned all over the room. While I know that this is a bit of re-creation, curated by skilled museum employees, I find the the presented version inspiring. nothing in the room is excessive or pulls focus from the task at hand, but you can still see Wyeth and his creativity reflected in the space. It’s messy, but it’s productively messy.

      So in my spring cleaning, I pulled out every book that didn’t inspire me and completely reorganized my collection. My husband and I still have four tall bookshelves full, so it was probably time to thin things out a little. I decluttered my office supplies, moved my photos and memorabilia to other living spaces, reorganized all of my art supplies, and left myself with only my favorite writing supplies, my most useful notes, and most usedreference materials. But I also pulled stuff out of drawers and closets for display. I made sure my notebooks were all visible and that my sketch pads weren’t stuck on a high shelf I can’t reach and never see, but stored within arms reach of my desk chair. Now when it gets messy, it’ll be a mess I’ve created, and not just one that’s piled up around me.

      It’s still a work in progress, but I feel like I am on my way to cultivating a conducive creative space for myself. I’ll never have as cohesive a space as Wyeth, but I am alright with that. My office is where I work, study, write, read, paint, draw, take notes, wrap presents, blog, and more, so it has to be a bit more multi-purpose. But I will still keep Wyeth’s studio in my mind as something to which to aspire.

      Posted in Essays | 4 Comments | Tagged andrew wyeth, creativity, office, painting
    • Working With My Hands

      Posted at 1:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on February 2, 2015

      I’ve recently joined a makerspace, which is essentially an extensive workshop that you can subscribe to just as you would a gym or a library. I pay a monthly fee to have basically free range in a wood shop, a metal shop, a sewing room, an electronics lab, a laser printer, a 3d printer, and more (after taking the appropriate classes or getting checked out on specific machines). I’ve only been approved to work in the wood shop so far, and that’s enough for me for the time being. Although I’ve spent wonderful time using manual hand tools to assist my parents with home and furniture projects, it’s a very different thing to take on a project of your own – especially with unfamiliar machines.

      My first day was the scariest. I started off with an introductory class, where we got a bit of a tour, and then a brief overview of the sanders, saws, drills, and other things like that. The class finished with the instructor handing each student a little pile of wood slabs and telling us to make a shelf that was different from the finished sample he showed us.

      Since my husband had taken this class a few months ago, I knew this was coming and yet still, I was stumped. I grabbed a pencil and started to sketch out some shapes. I had barely finished when I realized several other students were already on the saws and the sanders, working like experts. I later learned that a few were actually professionals – one was a shop teacher, another a contractor, another a construction worker, and another a jewelry designer familiar with tools. I took a deep breath, and headed over to the saw.

      These professionals walked up to the saw and shoved the wood through, looked at it once, and then went on working. I, on the other hand, immediately messed up my first cut. I started to panic a little, which of course made it all worse, and then I gave up and walked away, completely unsure what to do. The instructor came over to see what I was up to, because obviously I looked lost, and gave me some pointers about spacing my exit cuts more effectively, and saying a few other things that – once he said them – were suddenly incredibly obvious. I redrew my shapes to work around my terrible first attempt at the saw, and went back to the saw a few more times.

      Of course, I messed up again. My shelf was growing smaller and smaller as I ran out of wood to reshape. Occasionally I would pretend to be finished when there was a line queuing up behind me. In between turns, I hid at a back bench and pretended to measure things while I watched the others. One of my classmates made a shelf that looked like a surfer riding a wave. Another made a whale. I was desperately trying to make something vaguely symmetrical.

      The instructor noticed my shrinking shelf pieces, and very kindly advised me to sand out the curves instead of cutting them, which seemed, once again, so obvious once he mentioned it. I blushed, mumbled something incoherent that I hoped sounded like a thank you, and then headed to the radial sander. I put down my slabs of wood, and looked for the on/off button. After about 20 seconds of watching me panic in silence, the instructor took pity on me and nudged my shelf pieces an inch to the right, revealing the large, brightly colored switch.

      There were several other moments like this during the assembly portion, but eventually my plain materials became a shelf that now hangs by my desk.

      shelf

      I’m not typically someone who is easily shaken by learning new things. I don’t mind messing up, asking base-level questions, requesting demonstrations, or taking notes. I’m typically happy to admit when I’m having trouble with a concept or a dance step in class, or to request a break when I’m struggling up a hill on a hike. But this was just so foreign. It felt like there was an insurmountable wall between what I wanted to do and what would actually happen when I touched the material to the machine. I was so disconnected to my external aim.

      Writing is a bit like making, but there’s a marked difference. Obviously, one is a mostly mental and emotional exercise while the other is explicitly physical, but what is truly different is the focus. With writing, my focus is internal. I make the rules, set my parameters, and define my scope. With woodworking, I’m navigating my own intentions, the materials in front of me, and the machines – my focus is primarily external, at least in the execution of a design. There’s no delete button, no undo or redo buttons, and no adding back material once it’s been sanded away. In my other physical activities – mainly dancing and hiking – I’m really only battling my own body and working immanently, focusing on myself as an object of my own intention. In the wood shop, I have to connect not just to another object, but do so through large and dangerous machines.

      So the next time I went in, I decided to just play, with no aim in mind. I grabbed some scraps from the discard pile, and just did whatever I felt like doing. I spent some time at the band saw, just cutting straight lines until I got the feel for the machine, and then spent some time on curves and angles. I played on the various sanders too, smoothing out my curves and tackling trickier shapes. Slowly, I was getting control of things, and finding a way to shift my focus outward.

      To finish off my day of playing, I decided to make another shelf. Since I was using scraps, this was going to be a very tiny shelf. I drew shapes at random, measured my pieces against each other, and just sort of let it come together based on what I knew I could actually accomplish – I had no design in mind. I calmed down, I asked the instructor (who is always on hand in the shop) questions, and by the end, I came up with a neat little shelf of glued-together scrap wood.

      photo 3

      And then, for good measure, I headed into the spray lab and slopped on some paint. I wanted to end the day in my comfort zone.

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      While I still obviously have a lot to learn, I feel like I’m now past that initial fear (for the most part – I’m sure it’ll come back again at some point) which held me back. I think that continuing to play and develop this external focus will open up possibilities not just in making, but in my other art forms as well. I can’t say how, exactly, but I think it will give me a different perspective in writing and painting, perhaps to help me get outside of my own head see my projects through to completion.

      And maybe I’ll even develop enough skills to craft the farmhouse table of my dreams.

      Posted in Essays | 15 Comments | Tagged creativity, maker, tools, wood shop, woodworking
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