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breakTHROUGHArts
 a free newsletter for visual artists

Thanks to all who have passed breakTHROUGHArts on to other artists! To share this newsletter with friends who want more creativity in their lives, use your e-mail Forward button. To subscribe or schedule your complimentary coaching hour click: connect@dianreardon.com.

November 2007 Contents

 I.  Framing and Reframing
II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room, and the Shrink’s Couch
III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
IV. Creative Links
V. Newsletter and Info: Share this newsletter, subscribe, or unsubscribe

I.  Framing and Reframing
Those of you who have been reading these newsletters for a while may have caught on that I get a bit obsessed about how visual art is presented. I love to notice how the framing and context of a piece can change its atmosphere and impact. Only recently have I come to see that the larger frame of life around our art-making also affects our creative work.

How the context of our life affects our work is often highlighted when we come up against difficulties. Take procrastination. This difficulty, which comes up from time to time (or perennially) with my coaching clients, looks quite different in the context of differing lives. Consider Jan, whose painting is her one area of self-expression in a life dedicated to supporting others. She is quite different from Alice, a full-time artist, whose life is full of artist friends, attending art events, and teaching the next generation of artists.

For Jan, procrastination about making art is part of her staying in her comfort zone of helping others. There are some shreds of self-criticism whenever she turns to self-expression so that it’s as if her art is surrounded by a mat, a very wide mat, to separate it from the rest of her life. Procrastination for her marks a raised threshold that she’s learning to step over in moving from her familiar role to the new one of self-expression. With practice, she’s coming to trust the joy that comes once she engages in her creative work and is developing reliable rituals (turning music on, turning the phone off) for transitioning to her new creative role.

Alice, who is already moving in the stream of creating on a regular basis, is finding that episodes of procrastination signal the need for a break. Art fills up her life like a canvas in a rounded plexiglass box. Not much room for anything else. Because her life is permeated with artist friends and their similar concerns, it’s been hard for her to consider ways of spending time that are totally disconnected from art and artists. Some of her explorations give the relief of a fresh breeze: radio talk shows from the opposite end of her political spectrum are providing a chance to rant and rave about non-art issues and her increasing skill in Indian cooking is delighting her family.

How does the frame of your life fit around and impact your art-making?
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II. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch
 Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier. 2007.

“There is a synergistic relationship between pleasure and meaning, between present and future benefit. When we derive a sense of purpose from what we do, our experience of pleasure in intensified; and taking pleasure in an activity can make our experience of it all the more meaningful.”  Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier. 2007. p 44.                                                                               

Can having Too Much Fun limit your happiness? Dr. Ben-Shahar says this actually could be thecase. He is a Harvard professor whose classes on happiness are highly popular. He concludes, from the relevant research, that having Too Much Fun is only a problem if it’s out of balance with the human need to also be part of something meaningful.

We very often fail to recognize the rich sources of pleasure and meaning that are right around us, but if it goes unnoticed – if our focus is elsewhere and we fail to perceive it – we risk losing it.” Ben-Shahar, Tal. Happier. 2007. p 107.

His approach suggests that arranging your creative work so that you have both present benefit (enjoyment) and future benefit (meaning) will make you happier. He considers the ‘rat race’ a case of suffering now for future benefit, offering many suggestions for increasing current enjoyment. He further cautions against mistaking the relief of completing a difficult task for happiness, but encourages spending time figuring out how to increase your day-to-day enjoyment beyond the relief of completing tasks.  
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III. Friends in Print: When you feel like reading
Heath, Chip and Heath, Dan.  Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. 2007.
 I’m recommending this book to those of you who focus on selling your work. It can help your efforts at having the public remember your message. The authors underline the power of setting a context so that your listeners are both interested in and retain what you’re about.

It is also a very enjoyable read that gives a new viewpoint about the social culture all around us. You will notice well-known ads in new ways (Shouldn’t we change ‘Got milk?’ to ‘Got art?’) If you connect to these ideas, you’ll enjoy Heath and Heath’s guidance of how to create messages with lots of ‘hooks’ to Velcro to the loops in our human minds.
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IV. Creative Links
http://www.goldenpaints.com/justpaint/jp17article1.php
 You might want to visit the Golden website for a “heretical” article on canvas stretching. James Bernstein, former Co-Director of Conservation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, gives detailed directions for stretching your canvases from the corners inward rather from the side midpoints out to the corners. Simply reading his comprehensive thinking about how flat surfaces respond under tension will have you re-thinking your methods, even if you don’t adapt his.

V. E-mail changes. To change your e-mail address, subscribe, or unsubscribe please e-mail connect@dianereardon.com. If you use a spam filter, please add this e-mail address to your list of approved senders. This material is included on the breakTHROUGH Creativity Coaching (website www.dianereardon.com) All material is copyrighted ©, 31 October 31 2007, Diane Reardon. All rights reserved. Visit the website for back issues and details on scheduling a complimentary one-hour coaching session.
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