Thursday, February 24, 2011

Three Gardeners with Good Intentions

My mother is an artist. One of my earliest memories are going to weavers guild meetings and keeping quietly busy while she worked her shift at Woman Craft, a cooperative gallery on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I cannot count the artist groups she has belonged to since.

Creativity needs company but, as with all things there are pluses and minuses to being in a group. Writers suffer from anxiety of influence. Artists see completed works and stifle their ideas because its all been done before.

I have shied away from writers groups. I blame the busy schedule of a stay at home mom, but really, I'm just kind of shy. So I laugh when I realize that my sister Catherine and I have formed an ad hoc artist group with our friend Lisa Sowers. They are my fellow gardeners: A painter, a writer and a potter.

Three women, three different genres. No cannibalism. No jealousies. No cross overs. Just support.

Every mom knows that three is a terrible number for play dates. But creatively we are like an over caffeinated perpetual motion machine. One of us is always giving the others that spark to get back in there and keep working.

One of the purposes for this blog is to serve as my contribution to the group. My goal is to share our process and progress and hopefully other creative minds will get inspired along the way. 
 

Visually, it is easier to share the processes of my fellow gardeners.  This is one of Catherine's latest paintings.  You can find more of her work on flikr: 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/piment0n
 
 
 Last summer, I got to watch this tea set come to life starting with early peas growing in Lisa's garden, to an idea in wet clay, to fired bisque and then the final product emerging from a hot kiln.  Very exciting stuff.   You can find more from Lisa Sowers at etsy and on facebook.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/65451811/pastel-blue-pansy-rain-catcher


http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=347880474621&sk=basic#!/pages/LAS-Pottery/347880474621
 

1 comment:

Joe G said...

Very nice format, great idea.