2008 NEWSLETTER #2
 
2008 Creative Action Newsletter number two INTENTION FIRST: Try these ideas for yourself. Email me with what you find. victoria@toryhughes.com I will read everything you send me, even if I don't respond individually. OLA FROM SANTA FE Well hello there, creative spark! INTENTION FOR ALL You can apply all of this to any project you want in life and art. I will talk mostly about art-making. Please write me with your comments and questions! INTENTION Clear intention is like having a great map. We see where we are now, we see where we are going to end up. And we now have good guidelines about how to get from Here to There We know what needs to happen along the way. We can take one step at a time, do what we need to do, get it done, and feel good about it. BASIC INTENTION, BULLETED - Clarify what you want - Trust the map you get - Take action - Follow through - Integrate your accomplishments -------------- You will notice I have changed the form of these newsletters. ( You are all so smart! ) My intention is to make them easier to read, and get them out more frequently Please respect my copyrights on the material here. ------------- OTHER NOTES AT THE END Upcoming Classes and Retreats, Podcasts and Blog, are listed at the end of the newsletter -------------- FIRST: Many of you wrote in to report excellent results from the information in the first newsletter! Keep writing me. I read everything you send with great appreciation, even if I may not have time to respond. victoria@toryhughes.com -------------- INTENTION Got intention? Intention is the key to getting what you want. Intention is the answer to why you aren't satisfied. SET YOUR INTENTION Ask yourself, when you go to do anything: what is so important about doing this thing, that you are going to spend this time doing it? TIME LIMITS You have a finite number of hours in your life, shocking but true. Why is this action how you want to spend these moments? Most people find this question gets to their intention quickly. LACK OF INTENTION IN LIFE AND ART Life example- I go to the grocery store, with a vague idea that I should shop. No written or mental list. I shop and come home. What have I got? A few things I needed, and a lot of things I didn't- Some useful things, some things that were a waste of money. A couple things I may be glad I have later, unless they go bad first or I forget where I put them. Did I like this shopping trip? No. Since I never identified what I wanted, I never got it. And more than that, I feel like I wasted my time and money. INTENTION IN LIFE: In going shopping, my unset intention was to prepare for a road trip: I needed specific things and needed not to get others that would spoil while I was gone. But I never really focused on my reason for shopping. SHOPPING INTENTION Art example- I sit down to make something, but I haven't decided what. Colors and textures get pushed around, nothing comes together. Eventually this gets really: unsatisfying / boring / tedious / discouraging / frustrating. I quit and go watch TV. Did I like this studio time? No. I spent time and energy. I didn't get much back at all. Even worse, I begin to doubt myself as an artist. Big sigh. INTENTION IN ART: In my studio, my unset intention was to make a collection of 3-6 pieces in a particular style. Further intention was to send images of them to a collector who wanted to choose one. After that to show and sell the rest on my website. Instead I kinda half-heartedly played with some colors, but did not commit or focus on finishing the pieces that day. ER, UH I knew both of these, vaguely. But I never consciously set my intention. So I never fulfilled it. [ ASIDE: DID YOU KNOW? Recent scientific data shows that deliberate action literally changes the shape of our brains to give more brain-power to whatever we do most. The clincher is that we have to be doing it on purpose. Then our brains rewire to do more of that thing. IT'S ALL INTENTION We set our intention, and our brains obligingly change. There's more to it, and it's all very cool. Neuroplasticity, it's called. Google it. The book I read was 'Train your Mind, Change your Brain" by Sharon Begley, about the intersection of neuroanatomy and Buddhist practice.] In either case above, WHAT HAPPENED? I never set my intention. I never figured out: - why I was taking action - what results would satisfy my reason for acting. So how could I feel satisfied, if I don't know what I am after? Or even shorter: If I don't know what I want, I won't know when I get it. In other words, There was no 'There' there. SEE THE PARADOX? How can the universe give us what we want, when we don't ask? BIG INTENTIONS Sleeping, eating, and other needs are like big intentions. They pre-exist for all of us. They are the Big Intentions set by your Big Tools. TAKE CARE OF YOUR TOOLS Take care of your Tools. Pay attention and honor these needs of body, heart, mind, and spirit. They must be fufilled one way or the other. Remember how it feels to push yourself past the moment when you should stop? The quality and efficiency of your work willl diminish until you take care of those. DRINK MORE WATER And get sleep when you need it. And go for a walk when you have been sitting too long. With Big Intentions, we already know what we need to do. We just need to do it. WHY AM I YAMMERING AT YOU ABOUT THIS? Because all of us forget to set our intentions from time to time, and we get so frustrated at ourselves for not getting much done. We want so much to make things that we put big pressure on ourselves to do everything at once. We can't. GRRR Yup, I hate this part too. But we can do one thing after another. If we try to do it all at once, we just feel bad about ourselves for failing. We set ourselves up for it, sorry but true. Linear time: nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. INTENTION IN THE STUDIO 1. Setting the intention of integrating what you learned in a recent class: A useful intention for one person might be to take two hours to play around with the ideas, following intuition, with no expectation of producing something specific. Or for another person, a useful intention may be to duplicate the exercise from class without the pressures of the classroom. INTEGRATION Integration is the synthesis of conscious action and subconscious rearrangement of your new knowledge. A GOOD MATH PROBLEM Remember this? Intention is your essential need. If A is your intention, the essence of what you need, then A = B Where B is the form your intention takes. THE MATH TEACHER Always gives you the answer: The Universe will solve the equation for you, and give you B, the form best suited right now to satisfy your need. You have to set A. Set your intention clearly. MORE INTENTION IN THE STUDIO 2. A story: I was invited to show my artists' books at a gallery here in Santa Fe. Thing was, I only had a few with me anymore. Rats! I had to make at least one or two exciting ones very quickly. I could not fuss around, but had to work quick. So my intention = I will make a very cool book quickly. I have done this before, and I know this process works. I trusted whatever B was would show up quick. After all, that was part of A. TITLE AS STEPPING STONE On my way into my studio, I saw my collection of dirt samples from all over the world. A book title came to me right away: "Several Inches of Earth". With the book title came the specifics. COSMIC HANDOUT All I had to do was trust, and follow the specifics like stones on a path. No big wrenching esthetic decisions: it had all been given to me. Kinda like having a project handout from the Universe. PROJECT DETAILS I made pages from translucent polymer, and used earth from outside my studio door to color and texture the polymer. Each page had a small clear package of dirt from somewhere, with the location's coordinates lightly carved onto the polymer page. SOMETHING ELSE HELPED MAKE THIS In the layers of Earth that the closed book creates, earth from my New Mexico studio, black sand beaches of Bora Bora, fine gravels of the Gobi Desert, red earth from Arizona, beach sand from Maui all are resting intermingled. Oooh, cool. WELL LOOKEE THERE The idea came quick, the specifics were obvious. The book was cool and took little time to make. No fuss. A = B HA! My favorite part? it sounds wierd but it is true. I kept laughing as I made my book. It was such a very cool book. It felt so good to make it. SAFELY ALOFT Remember that feeling when you were a little kid, and a grown-up swung you way up in the air, and you were weightless, laughing, flying? That's what this feels like. You know you have already experienced this. It would have taken a lot longer to sit and try different ideas, push concepts around, yada yada yada, then it did to just Set My Intention, receive the Handout, and make my book. FORM AND ESSENCE We will talk more about Form and Essence in future newsletters. Useful stuff. For now: When you set your intention, you ask the universe for a particular Essence. The Universe hooks you up with the best Form for that Essence for you right now. This is why we have to tell it what we want. The universe has an infinity of things to hook us up to. WILL WORK FOR FORM If it is easier, use your 'will' as you state your intention. For instance; I will make jewelry that sells well at the annual local craft fair next month. I will make a sculpture that expresses my love of animals for the museum invitational show this fall. I will have three new galleries representing me by the end of June. As you move towards these intentions, B will become more and more clear. UNEXPECTED DETOURS Sometimes people start along the path, on the stones, then in their enthusiasm for how good this feels, they get detoured or lost. Once you start along your path, keep following your path. Just for now. Till you get to the end. You can come back and explore the sidetracks later. REFER TO YOUR MAP IF LOST If you get lost or confused, go back to your original intention. Don't panic or start to feel bad about yourself, okay? If like me, you get overstimulated easily, or if you are new to these ideas, when we feel the rush of possibilities moving our way, we can get distracted. INSPIRATION ARRIVES TO MEET OUR INTENTION Our conscious choice gets us an invitation to the universe of possiblities. Our lives teach us about making choices. We are here to decide, refine and act on our choices, deliberately. Then to integrate the results of our choices and learn to do something different next time. This is true on art and life. ONE LAST YAMMER Intention is a conscious, specific decision. Ask: what result do I want from a given action? OTHER BUMPS NOT ON THE MAP BUMP ONE Sometimes when I don't get what I want done, and I thought I set my intention, turns out I wasn't honest with myself about what I reeeeelly wanted. Later I realize I really wanted something else, a lot sometimes, but since I wasn't honest, and didn't set the intention of my heart, I didn't get what I wanted. BUMP TWO Sometimes I was never really comitted to any particular intention, I just pretended to myself. SWOOPY Setting your intention is a learning curve, too. Be patient and keep practicing. LOVE YOUR NEW LITTLE WINGS Practice small simple things especially if you worry that this doesn't come naturally to you. Everyone does this in different ways, already. You'll be surprised. Try these ideas at a scale that works for you. ------------- UPCOMING CLASSES click on the pictures to take you to the Teaching page or email me for more info May 19+20, Englewood, New Jersey HInged Mixed Media Pendants May 22, Gambrills, Maryland Yeowza! 10 Beads in One Day (just one or two places left) May 23+24, Damascus Maryland at the ArtWay Pietra Dura - A Brand New Imitative Technique! May 25+26, Damascus Maryland at the ArtWay Hinged Pendants in Ivory! June 1-6, Snow Farm, Williamsburg, Massachusetts A Cornucopia of Polymer Clay Techniques September 22-29, La Cascade, Provence, France Retreat in Pietra Dura and French Country Life ---------- I am extending the introductory DVD special until June 1 (since this newsletter notice went out late) All DVDs are $25 each, complete set is $325. They will go up to $28 each July 1. ------------- Podcast: Alison Lee, at www.craftcast.com. interviewed me; we had an enthusiastic chat about the creative process! You can hear our chat on her website, as well as many other inspirational artists. Blog: Eric Maisel has set up a group blog: writers from all over the world will be musing on "The Joy of Living Creatively". I will be writing about finding inspiration everywhere. You can assume I will cover other topics as well.... I will let you know when that starts up officially. ------------- THANKS FOR READING! Let me know if you have questions, and keep in touch, victoria@toryhughes.com and remember there are no mistakes. (this last image is a rattle that says ‘Rhubarb”) mailto:victoria@toryhughes.commailto:victoria@toryhughes.commailto:victoria@toryhughes.comshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2