A plaited basket and some encouragement

You can use just about any pliable material to weave baskets. Here, I've folded strips of funny papers for a colorful low-cost, recycled-materials vessel. This basket appears in my book Time to Weave where I've given instructions on how to weave plaited baskets.

As creators, I think we sometimes get stymied by fear: we're not good enough, we think we don't have any ideas, we don't know if our designs will work... I want to encourage you to just keep going, try to push self-doubt away. The only way to improve and get to the place you want to go is to keep working. I try to keep this Maslow quote in mind when I feel uncertain.

“If you are afraid of making (a) crazy mistake, then you’ll never get any of the bright ideas either.”
-A.H. Maslow

Rebecca Bluestone

Today I took off a couple of hours from work to go hear Rebecca Bluestone talk on the subject of “Intuition and the Process of Creative Expression”. I was interested in her talk both because I admire her work and because her topic is something that I lecture about too.

Rebecca Bluestone is a contemporary tapestry weaver living in Santa Fe. Her tapestries are contemplative color studies woven in her own hand dyed silk and according to Bluestone evolve intuitively. Her work is included in an impressive roster of collections, including the Denver Art Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, and the private collection of Robert Redford. To view her work and learn more about her: www.rebeccabluestone.com

Here are some of the nuggets I came away with that are important to think about.

“Imagination is the link between our internal world and our external world.”

“You don’t think up creativity, you access it.”

“When you can link the conscious with the unconscious, life gets very interesting.”

“When you are connected you are fully alive.”

It was Ms Bluestone’s comments about the importance of engagement that spoke to me. That is, it is the level of your engagement that is the judge of whether you are on the right path. Your system (the unconscious) knows if what you are doing is what you should be doing long before your conscious self catches up. Paying attention to your engagement is key to finding your intended path. When fully engaged, we are fully connected and alive. I believe she is right about this. And as creative beings, this is a recipe for all parts of our lives. I thank Ms Bluestone for this insight.

BTW: Rebecca weaves all of her pieces on a 6 ft 4-shaft Cranbrook Loom. I felt humble and proud to have this legacy in common.

The illustration above is an outtake from my book Time to Weave. It is a Turks head knot holding a pine needle bundle. I include it with this entry because it was one of the pieces I did for my book that seemed particularly contemplative.