Post Panic or Lost and Found

How do you create? Do you stand in your creating space, finding bits and pieces that seem to want be part of a whole?

I do that.

Do you sketch ideas then shape your materials into a version of your initial vision?

I do that too.

If you sketch then you may understand the horrible feeling of losing your sketchbook. Part of the sadness comes from thinking how could I have forgotten something so important to me, almost like leaving the baby on the bus! This is exactly how I felt last week when I realized I had "lost" several sketchbooks.

Many of the ideas I sketch are just that, they may or may not lead to the making of an object. Plus I remember almost everything in these books. The ideas are still in their original brain file as it were. So lost is relative,  but still I don't like it.

Days felt like weeks as I turned my home inside out searching. Did I do the unthinkable and accidently throw them out? Sadness crept it, a sad acceptance, " I may never see them again". More days, more looking, then true acceptance, " Okay I'll just re-draw the ideas that are really important to me. I can live without the others". A few more days after the panic is gone when I am comfortable that my ideas and creations are always with me, a single image is unlocked from its file, the last unchecked place after full certainty that all places were checked...and there they are nestled in a backpack.

Not a life and death issue, but I did reconfirm that panic renders me useless while moving forward is its own reward.


Here is a sketch of a work in progress. The part on the left is made using wood, epoxy resin, acrylic paint, steel ball chain, & silk thread. The part on the left is wood, found plastic, acrylic paint, nickel silver & auto paint. The top is a cut section of cotton karate belt. I am not sure yet if the length will stay long enough to avoid a clasp.  Jewelry is when art meets the mechanics of wearability.