Shelley's Year of Affirmations

Those who followed my lovely and talented sister on Instagram in 2015 (@turleyshelley) or on Facebook may have seen her densely layered yet exuberant daily affirmations--small watercolors of hippie freaks, boundary crossers, truth seekers, paper figures in need of consciousness raising paired with often deliberately prosaic inspirational quotes. The project, which kicked off on Thanksgiving Day 2014, ended on Thanksgiving Day 2015. I interviewed Shelley about her year of affirmations on New Year's Day 2016. I'm finally posting the interview four days after Shelley's 50th birthday. I'm very lucky to be related to someone so talented and interesting. I mean, just look at Shelley's painting below:

This interview took place in the fabulous Rose Establishment in fashionable downtown Salt Lake City.

Here: 

How did this project get started?

I had all of these paper figures from other projects, paper dolls in bins. I wanted to do something with them. So I made cards. And then I thought, what if I posted the cards as daily affirmations? Posting a drawing a day is a thing some artists do. But I thought it would be more interesting as a project if there was a theme. 

What was the theme inspired by?

I had seen these affirmations--the text I used for each daily art piece--in a book. And they seemed to be connected to my work, which  has always been about the evolving spirituality of middle-class white Americans, and how spirituality inserts itself into mainstream American culture.

How did you start it logistically?

I started off the first da with a surplus of about 30 figures. And then once I ran out, I had to churn them out, often several days ahead of schedule. It felt good to have art be a grind, sometimes. I needed to just produce. It was beneficial for the project to really feel like work. It took the anxiety and preciousness out of art making. 

Tell me more about where the text for each day came from? 

I gathered some from affirmations from Pinterest actually. I tried to use text already in circulation. Then I started making up my own. 

What kind of feedback did you get?

People told me how much they looked forward to them. My friend said she had a really hard year and these affirmations really helped her. I felt like if I was putting this out there, I wanted to take it seriously myself. 

What's next?

I really want to do some paintings. Some of the ideas I generated over the past year, I'd like to make a lot larger. I feel like I have a big sketchbook now.

To see her affirmations (as I wasn't able to download any for this post), find Shelley on Instagram @turleyshelley and scroll back!

Tightness Rising

Were these Boohoo.com gals attached to fashion week?  I hope so.  Btw,  Boohoo has some seriously cute dresses, L.

I had every plan of swinging by NY Fashion Week before work today to get some shots, like I like to do (and possibly be interviewed again in a dowdy outfit), but I just ran out of time.  This has been a season of running.  I'm working more than twice as much as I did spring semester, and then racing home to assist children, and it's really wearing on me and makes me think I need to work with a personal trainer in order to build up my stamina--either that, or make my escape.  Maybe via balloon.  

Plus, every fall, we seem to be experiencing financial tightness, no doubt as a result of me working so little summers historically.  It's not a good time of year to feel that tightness, as we deal with a slew of birthdays, holidays (Jewish, Pagan, Christian, and Pagan/Christian), plus school expenses, etc etc.  

So I need to get over being so tired.  I need to play more is what I need, something I picked up from the AW this summer, Lara, and have already forgotten.  I need to find small spaces for play, just like I'm sure Obama has to.  I was just reading this article in the Katie Holmes/Tom Cruise/Scientology issue of Vanity Fair.

That said, I was excited to see the two straphangers below on my commute home.  The first gal was channeling Lolita (interesting as I had just been helping a student research the novel at work).  The second commuter--a buttoned-down business man--was reading Shel Silverstein!  L, do I need a dose of  balloons, hair ribbons, children's poetry and tights?

a micro/macro macro/micro breakthrough

filled up morning pages notebooks, my artist's shrine, and cameron's book.  some of the tools.

on june 11, 2012 i started julia cameron's artists' way--a twelve week program of writing morning pages every day, taking yourself on an artist date every week, and completing exercises to figure out why you might be a "blocked creative," or why you might not be living up to your full artistic potential.

when i started, i hoped to have some sort of huge break through where, finally, i would figure out what my "true" artist's calling was.  eventually, i realized this artist's way process felt a little like what i was taught to do as a religious young person in order to gain a sure knowledge of the gospel of jesus christ.  in my religious training, we were taught that if you read the word of god every day, had a sincere desire, prayed day and night, fasted, "went into the wilderness," either literally or figuratively, you would be given the gift of sure knowledge.

i know many people, in fact, many people who are the very most beloved humans in my life, who have a sureness and a belief that they would be willing to die for after completing the steps outlined in the religious training of my mormon faith tradition.

the book

i completed my checklist, the studying and prayer, fasting and meditation, but this kind of big, unshakeable truth, a burning in the bosom, to borrow a phrase, never manifested itself to me.

perhaps my idea of what should have happened, what should have been revealed to me, blinded me to what was learned instead.  since i was focused on one outcome, i may have failed to notice other equally good outcomes. 

i started feeling this same way about midway through the artist's way.  that there was a specific way i should be feeling, a specific kind of break through that a "good" artist would have in this process.  this is not necessarily anything to do with the book or the program itself.  i'm pretty sure it's my own context and mindset that produced this feeling, this obsession with other people's breakthrough stories:  so-and-so had a huge breakthrough in week 8, so-and-so discovered that she should _______ and she sold__________ and moved to________ and started a ________________.

i admit, i got fixated with other people's artist's way break throughs.  i also admit that i'm still really obsessed, and i'm dying to hear other people's stories about this.  but, in the end, i had a different sort of break through, one that's still in process, one that i'm still trying to understand.

i finished the twelve week program today, september 2, 2012.  i had a lot of micro-insights, and a few larger ones as well.  here's a short summary of some of the things that came from working through morning pages every day for three months:

today's big picture: sunday dinner old school.

1) micro/macro:  i learned that i need to continue focusing carefully on the micro.  i've written about this many times on my blog, and it's a realization that i started coming to a few years ago.  for me, a focus on small, daily, affirmative actions creates the greatest amount of artistic productivity in my life. when i have grandiose plans, when i try to control a project with grand plans and ideas with a capital "I", my projects tend to fail or burn out. i decided, at least for now, to continue with the mode of working in micro-bursts, as this will best enable #4 on this list.

farmer's market salad--again!  heirloom tomatoes, cukes, cilantro, avocado, feta & vinaigrette.

2) walking blind: the mountain i'm climbing is one of those depicted in a beautiful japanese scroll-- enshrouded in clouds.  i'm climbing in a mist, one step at a time, and i can't see the guru, the mountain peak, or how far it is to the top.  or even if there is a top, a guru, or a place worth climbing to.  it seems my path has something to do with faith, working one letter at a time, one footstep at a time, without knowing for sure what it's all for, except:

3) the deep breath in & the deep breath out:  i've learned i really have to pay attention to the moment i'm in, not the one that's coming, not the one that's already happened.  the literal deep cleansing breath is one i take many times a day to remind me to stay in the moment.  what does it mean to live a moment fully, beginning to end?  i don't really know, but it's something i'm working on, and it seems like it's important to continuing to get work done every day.

finishing salt and rosemary rolls.

4) multitudinousness:  i'm learning to be okay with a multitude of answers, paths, and outcomes. there doesn't have to be one.  i'm a little (sometimes a lot) jealous of people who have one clear path or obsession.  that has never been clear for me, i've always jumped around in my pursuits and had many, perhaps too many, interests.  now i'm working on figuring out what that means for the work i need and want to do while i'm on this earth.  i love poetry, cooking, music, film, performance & caring for my family.  i want to do all of those things in some capacity, and well.  i don't know what that will look like, finally, only that

tomorrow i'll do some yoga and meditation and morning pages, i'll work on a poem and read a poem, i'll practice some music and write some scenes for a film project, the meditative part of my day will start again with cooking dinner and sitting at the table with my family, as we do on most days.

the most caloric mashed potatoes in the world with mushroom gravy & roast beef.

this is what i'm starting to understand right now, after working daily to have more insight and to be more productive as an artist.

i can't wait to hear the wisdom of some other people out there.  how do other people keep their work moving forward, integrate worthy pursuits with daily life, get inspired?

hearing these stories what keeps me going.

xxoo

preparations: john cage 100

preparations

i don't know why i decided to attend the free concert of cage prepared piano pieces in the MOMA sculpture garden in the summer of '88.  

i had no one to go with, knew very little of cage or his music, and it was very hot out.  but i went anyway, heard this, and became a devoted fan.  and then attended the two other cage concerts in the sculpture garden series that summer.

i

i love the sound of prepared piano, and always hope that c. will have performances of his own very strong pieces with preparations.  alas, it's logistically difficult to program prepared piano music, so it's rare to hear it live.

right now i'm immersed in cage.  studying him for exams, studying him to enhance my inner work & spiritual practices, studying him as i prepare to teach again in the fall, and, (this is the best part) getting ready for a special 100th birthday celebration for cage on september 5th at the locust salon.

some really cool people have agreed to perform so far.

here are some of cage's ideas about teaching and studying that i'm thinking about as school preparations ensue:

john cage: some rules for students and teachers

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student - pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher - pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: be self-disciplined - this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: "We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities." (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything - it might come in handy later. 

quantification & a shrine

shrine under construction:  a stem of fresia, a tiny bowl of water,  ashley mae hoiland's mormon sisters watercolor, crystal necklace from grandma eva in her glass & mirror box, hand written letter from grandma beth with her mother's sewing card.  what does one put in a shrine?  i need candles.

it's nice sometimes to put a number on things. 

1 new poem edited

12 manuscripts submitted

5 loads of laundry washed and dried, not folded

4 one-dollar tickets to the pirates (so good!  darwin a main character.  very funny & entertaining.)

1 shrine under construction/ assemblage (what's in your shrine?)

really hot day supper.  the simplicity of black beans and white rice.

1 pot of black beans, 1 pot of rice, 1 plate of cold vegetables, 6 fresh sparkling limeades (2 fingers of fresh lime juice to 8 oz. cherry 7-up)

17 emails responded to for online class

1 kitchen cleaned

4 poems from my emily dickinson-inspired manuscript edited

3 morning pages written

1 violin lesson chaperoned

1 kid dropped at lifeguarding camp

1 kid dropped at summer adventure camp

4 hours of very languid micro bursts of work through a 100 degree afternoon

2 kids dropped at yoga

1 kid's travel arrangements made for visit to cousins' house next week

1 package of peanut butter m&m's consumed

sparkling fresh limeade

transformation update

freeing myself of distraction in the mountains

did i tell you i'm attempting a transformation?

i'm trying to live a life that will leave me, at the end of it, like at the end of a beautiful, transcendent meal, feeling satisfied but not over-full, wanting a just a little more, in a good way, and with some beautiful flavors that linger and waft into. . . . wherever it is i'm going.

(these are almost the exact instructions i give my students about how to write a good conclusion.)

i feel i need to make certain changes to live that life, but i don't know what they are, so i'm trying to figure that out right now by doing work prescribed by the artist's way.  julie and i have both mentioned that, in talking about this process, one might feel like person who has joined a cult, someone who is convinced of the veracity of the secret (remember this craze from the zeroes? people would say cryptic things to you like:  "if you think you are already prosperous, you will be." and you would know they were reading the secret.)

so i hesitate to say too much, lest i sound cultish, but cameron really does point out a lot of things that make so much sense to me.  she's like my perfect therapist.  i feel like i'm in intensive therapy right now.

do you, julie?

here are two things that are going on right now:

1)  reading deprivation.  cameron wants me not to read for a whole week.  i've decided, since i have to do some reading and writing for my job every day, that i'll do all that in the mornings and then go on a reading fast every day starting at 1 p.m. and lasting until i wake up the following morning.  here's one of her reasons for undergoing reading deprivation.  it's a good one:  "for most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction.  we gobble words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own."

2)  last week i began purging my house.  yesterday i took two big black hefty garbage bags of clothes, toys and shoes, and two ikea shopping bags full of books to the deseret industries for donation.  i had an obsession with getting rid of things, and have plans to do more purging in the coming week.  this morning, i read that this is predicted behavior in week four of the process: "one of the clearest signals that something healthy is afoot is the impulse to weed out, sort through, and discard old clothes, papers, and belongings.

this feels promising to me.

i wonder if anyone else is feeling transformation right now?

 hope you don't think i've become a multi-level marketer or something.  i promise i won't try to sell you any seminars, essential oils, or tahitian noni juice in the near future

looking forward: to yoga tomorrow and a dinner with my entire family minus my four nephews tomorrow night

inspiration: de-cluttering

talking about race/eating more vegetables

what do vegetables and race have to do with each other?

asparagus with lemon zest & cold creek farm artisan butter

a question i have, and it's not really rhetorical:  when you want to get healthier you eat more vegetables, or drink more water, or exercise more, etc. according to concrete, scientifically proven methods.  when you want to become less racist & contribute to a more racially just world, what actions do you take?

i read "a complete guide to 'hipster' racism"  in jezebel today by lindy west (i'm in love with this woman!)  , and she articulated so well the problem with denying racism, with accepting the benefits of belonging to a dominant racial group in a racist society without acknowledging or taking any actions to rectify the situation.

one thing that really struck me was when west said she works every day to be less racist.  since i'm spending this year focusing on small daily practices, i had the thought what daily practices make a person less racist, or contribute to the creation of greater equality in the world?  

that is not a rhetorical question.

here's what lindy west says:


When people are trying to be sensitive about race but they don't know what to say, they usually go with, "Well, race is a complicated issue." Except, no, it's not. Race is one of the least complicated issues that there is, because it's made up. It's arbitrary. It's as complicated as goddamn Santa Claus. Oh, that guy's mom was half-black, which makes his skin slightly more pigmented than mine, which therefore means that he's inherently 12.5% lazier than me? Science! Um, no. What's actually complicated is our country's relationship with race, and our utter ineptitude at talking about it. We suck. I mean, I work on it every day, and I'm still a total fuck-up*. But this new scheme someone came up with—where we prove we're not racist by acting as casually racist as possible? Not our best, white people. Not our best.

so read the whole article. it's great--very incisive and saying some things that need to be said, and then tell me what you think about the whole daily practice thing.  for me to make changes i have to

mushrooms, cabbage, spring onions & chicken over yukon asiago mashed potatoes served in pottery made by lula

a) believe there's a problem that needs to be fixed, b) have a plan of action that i will actually adhere to (not too overwhelming or discouraging, in other words) and c) believe that my actions will be efficacious.

*it's been a week of posts containing the f-word.  in totally necessary ways.  we can talk about it some time if you want.  if you haven't already, please read guest blogger natanya ann pulley's post from monday--it goes with the theme of the week.  also--

**read something that proves there's still racism, in case you're doubting, from this week's news.  rad writer ana castillo was banned from a visit to a tuscon high school.  surely not because she's a chicana, right?

Unperfect

This day had lots of promise, a lot of hours in which to get some grading and writing done, but one small oversight seemed to derail it all:  I forgot to charge my computer before leaving the house and then couldn't find a cafe that would let me plug in.  Housing Works had an outlet that had no power flowing to it.  Psych!  The volunteer counter gal told me she goes to Starbucks, doesn't buy anything, and plugs in.  Starbucks felt too far to go.

I sat and used the power I had.

Then, one of my bondings that I had put on my chipped front teeth years ago, fell off, which increased my feeling of being out of control.   So now I look something like this.  Not a good look for job hunting:

This is not my mouth.

I do envy your perfect teeth, if you have them.  (I chipped my teeth when I was eight on a Payson, UT playground, and they weren't fixed until '04.)

Then at home our wifi wasn't working.  I couldn't unlock the locked desktop keyboard, and my perfet minutes rushed by, dwindling.

Now I'm trying to rescue the shards of the day by finding a poem for my pocket tomorrow.  Like Simon and Garfunkle say:  "I've got my books and my poetry to protect me." Wish poetry could do something about my tooth.

And I'm also trying not to feel like the day was a bust.  Actually, after all this happened, I ran into a  friend, who told me she's doing really well lately, that things were getting more perfect for her.  I liked how happy hearing that made me.  No envy at all.

(And Lara, that should be my one of my daily practices:  refusing envy)

everyday

i don't know if i can write something good every day.

i actually don't know if i can write something good any day. some days i write something that feels good, and seems good, and then i send it out into the world only to have it kicked back again. once in awhile, someone else embraces it.

but a friend told me today that neither of those things is the point of sitting in your studio and working.

i haven't had any studio days lately, and sometimes when a long time passes without approbation, payment, or feedback, i lose my motivation to work. even though i've had a million small epiphanies that none of those things is the point.

also, the more days that pass without a day in the studio, the weaker my faith.

so i guess today is about maintaining faith in continuing to do work against whatever forces, good or bad, prevail.

it's a kind of prayer i pray.

and yesterday ingrid said, "with 365 posts, some of them are bound not to be bad." that's my girl.

(in lieu of wearing tights, i'm googling julie's uniqlo tights so i can be jealous of them instead. i saw on facebook today that a woman i know with great style wore prussian blue tights today. wish i'd been there. it's probably not kosher to steal this pic from this website, but at least i'm attributing it. i think i need red tights next.)