To Cache or Not to Cache

 

 

 

“If you’re like most creative people, you thrive on a steady diet of stimuli.  So, keep the ingredients close at hand – make yourself a cookbook of inspiration.  Attach to its pages newspaper articles, postcards, quotations, and song lyrics that summon your muse out of hiding.  Don’t forget the lock of hair you saved from your highly productive, magenta Mohawk era, and the photo of the admired one whose accomplishments encourage your own.  Then, the next time your imagination gauge is hovering near empty, pull out your special recipe book and fill up on rich and enriching feast of images and ideas. “

– Lynn Gordon

I do not do the clippings, etc, but I do get journaling magazines, art idea books, and friends give me inspiring magazines and send ideas through Facebook, to me.  I have a master word document where I put links to quotes and creative ideas and prompts so that I can slide down the page and find something, some them, to do an art piece from.   I tend to get a magazine and work through the inspiration I find there, page by page.  

I, also, have a photo album that has bits and pieces of little, smaller, collage bits that I can draw from.  I have a folder of portraits from vogue and other slick good pages so that I can follow a portrait on a magazine if inspiration slips.  And, I am constantly inspired by things I see and might have taken a photo of, that can become inspiration for me.  There is not much that does not inspire me, really. 

I never have an excuse not to be creating unless I hit a day where I decide I am not doing any art at all.  That does not happen often unless I am away from all my cache of different supplies, tools, paints, crayons, and anything new that comes out to use in arting.  It could be said I am a hoarder, of sorts, as my art supplies and projects have moved back and forth from my gazebo art studio to beneath the dining room table, to drawers lined up against the wall.  I tend to clean up those areas once a month to at least keep it organized and ready for use.  I do a cache-cleaning and discard things that I know I will not use and that, what once was meant for use, is no longer a reason to keep it.  I do enjoy having every kind of mark making tools, paints of every kind, and tubes and brushes and charcoals and water brushes and….  I am ready to do a project at any moment and have all the supplies on hand.

I am not in love with the end of this project, to springboard from an inspiration piece by Pam Bray in Just Mixed Media  Vol 3.  But, I did it, so I am satisfied for now.  I may come back and do more.

Are you a collector of ‘stuff’?  How do you organize it?  How do you decide what inspires you?

©Carol Desjarlais 8.15.22

 Magazine page inspration:  "Cat Canvs: - Pam Bray, "Just Mixed Media, Volume 32018.