Zoom! From Haystack, to school to one retreat after another

Quick note to fill in the blanks while I work on the "real" posts for these events.

Got back on Friday night, August 27 from the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (in Deer Isle, Maine) where I was the Technical Assistant to Cynthia Winika for the Hot Wax: Encaustic Painting Comprehensive Workshop.

The Haystack experience was amazing! I cannot say enough good things about it. I am doing a write up in more detail about this event.

Then school started for me on Tuesday, August 30th before I could even catch my breathe or really unpack my stuff (and life) from two weeks away at Haystack.

As I rush, rush hurry to class to work to class to home to blah blah blah... I am trying to get a solid hold of my schedule and make time for contemplation and writing about my events. But everything on my to do list marked priority! What is a girl to do?

So on that note, I am packing my bags to go teach Encaustic Collage at the San Diego Women's Caucus for Art Retreat, in Julian, CA. It will be the first time I am teaching just collage - which I think is the easiest way to begin to understand working in wax. I am excited to teach, and am looking forward to the event.

But another part of me is just looking forward to having a couple of days where someone cooks my meals again (thanks, Haystack for spoiling me for two weeks) and let's me have quiet time or social time at my own choosing.

I hope to have a great write up about both events within in next week. Then it is rush, rush off to the International Encaustic Artist Annual Advance (Retreat) in San Francisco, the week after that! I think I will need a retreat from all the retreats I am going to.

Until then! Happy art making (even in a rush!) ~ Jaime Lyerly

Movements of my soul -- Introduction to Family Constellations workshop - Sunday 6/27/2010 in Vista, CA.

First family constellation final healing, Oil pastel drawing, © 2009 Jaime Lyerly

I have been changing....

Changing what I am,
what I want,
how I live,
what I do,
what I need,
and how I deal with it all.

During my time of major flux (my partner moving to Berkeley, my son graduating from middle school, my job not being what it used it be, my high stress life taking a toll, researching graduate schools and more) , I usually turn to art-making as a way to cope.

However, it has been a desert of non-productiveness in my life recently.

A lull in creative expression for a week to "unwind" from classes ending has turned into month of no art making.

A few nights of just watching tv has turned into a sleepless nights playing video games.

A break from class work has turned into a break from living.

How does this happen? I am not sure.

But during this time of low productivity has come a huge blessing - a time for "soul work."

Through artist and healer Ellen "Ellie" Benfatti, I learned of Family Constellation work, which is based on social psychology, family dynamics and energy healing.

She calls the changes that occur because of this healing, "Movements of the Soul."

I won't go into too much detail about the constellations here, but I can say that they have changed my life.

Every aspect of it from how I make art, who I think I am, what do I want, how do I get it, and how do I deal with this thing called life.

And it is a lot to process! Which is why I my blog has been neglected and you see me less on the social networking sites. I'm still here.... just thinking, feeling and trying to understand it.

So please bear with me as I morph into this new person that is greater than the sum of her parts.

Want to know more about Family Constellation work?

Great! Check out the links above and the book called The Healing Power of the Past.

Live in San Diego area? Even better!


Ellie is having a three hour workshop this Sunday, June 27, 2010 from 10 am to 2 pm which is an Introduction to Family Constellations. 


Here is the info from the Facebook event: 


This is an introductory 3 hour workshop. If you've wanted to join Ellie to experience the transformational work of Family Constellations but haven't had the funds or the time now is your opportunity. Ellie asks that all participants contribute a donation of $25.00 to cover the expense of the conference room. Ellie will do 1 constellation chosen by lottery and 1 constellation as a group. Great opportunity for those of you who are wanting to experience more success in your personal finances, life's passion and or career. Ellie will be focusing on Money and the Heart. You must RSVP to attend. Please RSVP by email to: eangel11@gmail.com. If you don't RSVP you will not be admitted to the event. Sorry no exceptions space is limited. When you RSVP please provide name, phone number, and names of guests who are attending with you. 


Note: I will be attending this event!

It really is an awesome experience, and I felt compelled to share it with my friends and readers.

To your health and wellness and deep soul movements.. ~ Jaime Lyerly

Biting off more than I can chew

After two weeks with a bad cough and cold, I am back to work. So much has happened in the last two weeks that I cannot cram it all into one post.

Basically, I am in confession mode again.

I am frequently "biting off more than I can chew."

I hear an opportunity and say "YES!" before I figure out how it would fit into the balance of my life. And I am trying my best to get back to center with my time commitments. Here is my most recent example.

In January, I accepted the position as President of the San Diego Women's Caucus for Art. I have been a member for a couple of years, and started taking a more active role on the board this year as the Social Networking / Blogger.

Being the go-to person for all things Social Networking, this seemed like an easy task for me and add just a little more to my plate. I run the San Diego Women's Caucus for Art blog and our Facebook group.

However, when I was approached to run for President, I thought this was perfect timing. I have two more semesters until I get my BA in art, and I am not taking any classes that would interfere with my art. I did think about this decision for a while and talked it over with my partner.

I have such big goals for the SDWCA, and was eager to get started. In January, after the first board meeting I was so excited. Little did I know how much time this would take.

By the second board meeting, I had only completed a few tasks on my list and would have to sacrifice studio and/or family time to get anything else done.

I started getting resentful of the time that this was taking away from me. This was my own choosing, so I had no one to blame but myself.

By the third scheduled board meeting, I realized that I had to make a choice. Even though it tough to admit, I didn't have the time to add such a big commitment to my schedule. And the stress that not being able to fit it all in made it even worse.

So I resigned from the presidency. Luckily, VP Ellie Benfatti was ready and willing to step up into the position. Therefore, Ellie Benfatti is now the current President of the San Diego Women's Caucus for Art. Yay Ellie!

Ellie will do an amazing job with the SDWCA and I am so happy that she is taking the post. Stay tuned for more news about the improvements we have in store.

As for me, I have learned a hard lesson about a balanced life.

Your Turn:
Want to share your stories of "biting off more than you can chew?" Please feel free to comment. I would love to know that I am not alone.

Thanks for supporting me on this artistic journey! ~ Jaime Lyerly

Art and Fear - part one - You are not alone

My last two posts have been so different from my normal, perky blogging style. I'm so sorry you had to suffer for it.

I just started reading "Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland and it is amazing.

It is one Ah ha! moment after another. I am only 20 pages in to the book and I am ready to buy copies for all my artist friends so that they can experience this book.

The crankiness that I have been experiencing recently (and blogging about - see The Psychology of Collaboration and Casting a wide net) is all about self-doubt. The "Art and Fear" book tells me that I am not alone in this self-doubt, and that it probably never will go away. I just need to work with it.

Usually, I just avoid blogging (and contact with other people in general) when I am feeling confused or unsure of myself. However, I am beginning to realize that even these lows are part of my artistic journey, and that is what my blog is about. So I will question myself and hopefully, you will know that your are not alone on this either.

So from this low, I tell you my good news - Two of my newest encaustic pieces got into the juried San Diego State University Student Award Exhibition XII.

I am thrilled because these works are very new, and I think some of my best work. The irony is that is NOT my "student work." This is the work that I do outside of my assignments, although I do bring them into my sculpture class for critique sometimes.

One of the pieces is the 30x30x2" untitled encaustic painting from the Gatherings series which is in the blog post below. The other is called Collection (Fibrous Waximus) and is a wall installation fiber and encaustic sculpture. I need a good installation shot for the blog and I will get you one next week.

The show opens on March 15, 2010 at the San Diego State University Everett Gee Jackson Gallery and Flor y Canto Gallery, and is up until March 24, 2010 until 3 pm. I hope that if you are in the area, you can check it out.

Back to my art and fear - I am working through this.

Yesterday, I was working in some wax and nothing was feeling right, so I took out some boards and started drawing on them with charcoal. A few hours later, I had a triptych that is complete. Usually, I spend a long time thinking about my work, and making it, but it hardly ever feels done that quickly. These feel done and I am shocked! Am I learning to accept the inspiration? Maybe... no, scratch that - YES. That is just fear talking.

And until that inner critic decides to take a vacation, I will continue to crank when I am feeling uninspried and unconnected. But I am working through it. And you will too...

Art and Fear... what is stopping you?
~Jaime Lyerly

Casting a wide (and waxed) net. Another step in my artistic journey.

"Untitled (Gatherings Series)" Encaustic, Beeswax, oil stick and charcoal on 30"x30"x2" claybord. © 2010 Jaime Lyerly

One of the pieces that I entered today in the SDSU juried student art exhibition.

I find out tomorrow if it is chosen for the exhibition.

I think am finally earning my assumed title of emerging artist.

One of my goals for this year is to get my art work out of my house and into some local and national art shows.

I make and make and make stuff. Some could be called art. Some is not.
Sometimes I blog about it.
Sometimes I take pictures of it and post them.
Sometimes I bring them to my sculpture critiques.
.... But mostly, I make stuff because I am compelled to do it.

After all this creating, some of it is turns out to be something I want others to see.

Most of them are encaustic, and since that is my niche, that is what I want to show out.

A few weeks ago, I submitted work to: Luminous Layers: Exploring Contemporary Encaustic
which is an special encaustic only show curated by Embracing Encaustic author Linda Womack
and today at the San Diego State University Student Exhibition.

I have also applied for two scholarships: the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts "Encaustic Comprehensive workshop" and the Golden Key Visual Arts Scholarship. I have two more scholarships I am applying for, which are both due within the next two weeks.

Why am I listing this all here?

It is to remind myself (and my readers who may have forgotten) that it takes effort to get art work into the world and to find creative ways to fund our education.

Sure, I would love someone just to throw some money my way, or to come to my house and buy art from me there, but I am not going to hold my breath.

But I am making the effort now. Add this to my regular school, work, family and volunteer activities, my under-eye circles may be a little darker than usual.

Will I get into the shows?
Win the scholarships?
Will more people be interested in my work?
Will I get some solid sleep?

Maybe all of the above. Maybe none of the above.

But I am casting a wide net to try to capture opportunities before they pass.

And that is another step along my journey towards living an artful life. ~Jaime Lyerly

The Psychology of Collaboration

Collaboration.

Working together with another artist(s) to produce something that is part of you both (all).

Sounds like a good thing, right?

Maybe; but I am not sure it is for me. Here is why:

Last year, I tried to be a part of a collaborative mail art group. I failed miserably at this collaboration.

The idea :
Start a small art work that can be shipped in a 8X5 padded envelope. You could have up to 5 pieces and then send them out to members your group. They would have one week to work on it and pass it along to another artist. You would eventually get it back when it has gone through about 4 people. You also work on whatever comes in the mail for you, and send it on to the next person. Simple enough, right?

Well, not for me. I started three pieces and sent them out. I never received anything in the mail until a month later when I was in the apex of the semester and getting ready to go in May on a two-week study tour to China and Japan.

But it isn't the fact that I received the pieces later that made me fail at this. It was that I never thought about the psychology of collaboration. Here is my definition:

The psychology of collaboration is all the questions and inner struggles that you face when you are working a piece of art was started and belongs to another artist.

I'll admit, I procrastinated a bit on getting my own pieces started. I wanted them to be perfect - but that will never happen.

Finally, I sent them off into the world to be worked on by other artists that I didn't know well. It was just when I received other artists' work that became a procrastination nightmare.

These thoughts went through my head when I received the mail art:

Wow, these are so cool.
I could do this, this, and this...
Maybe I can add this to the piece and take this out...
Wait, what if I do this, and she hates it...
Maybe I shouldn't be doing this...
I wish this was my piece...
What if I "ruin" it?
What if I make bad art...
These are professional artists - what the heck am I doing with them...
Maybe this is a bad idea...
How could I have thought that I could do this...
I have so little time now, I will work on this later when I have more time...
I cannot "deal" with this now...

Then the piece gets put aside until I can "deal with it," which is never.

Then the embarrassment and self-consciousness of holding onto the pieces too long (and not working on them at all because of fear) becomes so great that I start making myself less available. The pieces never get sent back either. I "lose" them in my other mail for months.

Collaboration falls apart and I have let everyone down - including myself.

At the time, I never thought that this would be the end result of my first attempt at collaboration. Everyone looked like they were having so much fun!

For someone who is obsessed with process, the idea of documenting a piece of art work at each stage of development is very exciting. I loved seeing what everyone else in the mail art groups (there were 2 others) was posting up on Facebook. It was amazing to see the transformations.

Yet, I hesitated and do what is very familiar to me now, "choosing by not choosing."

If you wait long enough, your choices of what can happen are limited. Wait too long on a scholarship/grant deadline, you will miss it. Forget to pay your bills, you get a late fee. Decide not to enter an art completion, you will never get in.

I know all these things, but I still do them.

And this time, my procrastination and self-doubt robbed me of an opportunity to participate in something special. I was not only hurting myself by procrastinating, but letting my group down.

So, through this mail art experience, I realized that I was not ready for collaboration.

Almost a year has gone by since that experience. And I am taking a small step into the realm of collaboration - this time with new rules and new eyes.

An artist friend from my advanced sculpture class, Sunshine, mentioned on the first day of the semester that she was looking to do an art collaboration with someone. She said that she wanted to exchange a piece with an artist, and we both work with the pieces for two weeks then exchange back again.

Sunshine is an amazing artist who has a BA in metalsmithing. She attends my advanced sculpture class for the critiques and to continue her mentee relationship with the instructor Richard Keely.

I am a great admirer of her work and her dedication to exploring her own process. So when she mentioned collaboration, my first instinct was "YES, I want to do this!"

But then my self-doubt compelled me to admit my hesitancy. I explained to her my previous failure at collaboration. She was understanding and still interested in working with me.

Here is what makes this collaboration different (and I hope more likely to succeed):
I know the artist that I am working with
I know her current work
She knows my current work
I see her every Friday, therefore cannot "avoid her" as easily
She is very friendly, and understanding
We are peers
She is interested in process
She has a similar aesthetic interest as myself

We started our collaboration three weeks ago. She brought me this amazing rubber and fiber piece to work on. Sunshine said that it was a piece that she had been working on for a while and still wasn't happy with it. She wanted to see if I could work on it, which would let her look at it again with fresh eyes. I loved the piece from the start, which is a good and bad thing. I also had ideas right away of what I wanted to do with it.

I hesitated to start, though. And I hesitated even more to bring her something of my own to have her work on. Nothing I had seemed "worthy" of her time.

Finally, I started heating up my beeswax to give the tufts a thin coat of wax. This would change it into something that I could understand - fiber and wax.

Here is what was going on in my head again, while working on Sunshine's piece:
This piece is so cool...
I wish it was mine...
I am going to give it a coat of wax and see how that looks.
But what if she hates it?
What if I ruin it?
Maybe I can take the rubber apart and shape it.
But then it would never go back to its' shape.
What if that is what she liked about the piece.
I wish this piece was mine so that I wouldn't have this pressure.
Okay, lets put it in the wax.
Hmm, that looks interesting. How about the red wax.
Oh no! I am not sure about that one. Why didn't I test it out first?
Is it ruined now?
I am confident that Sunshine is improving my piece, and what am I doing here...
Maybe this was a bad idea.
Maybe I am just not meant to collaborate.
How can I be so bold with my own experimentation and so timid with this piece?
I wish this piece was mine.
I will let it dry and then see how that looks.
Looks cool, now for some embroidery on it.
Oh, the needle puts a hole in the fabric that cannot be hidden!
Did I just ruin it?
Just finish this embroidery, Jaime, and stop thinking about this so much.

Even more questions than before! I knew I needed to work out some of these issues, so it was time for the journal. I wrote in my journal about ten pages about how I didn't expect this collaboration to be such a thought-provoking process. I thought it would be more about working with new materials and making it a part of me.

Instead it has been a process of not only making art, but also examining my own artistic self-doubt and worthiness as an artist. Powerful work, to say the least.

This collaboration is not done. Sunshine was not in class last Friday so that I could give her the piece. So my doubts are still crackling in the air.

But I am now aware of the psychology of collaboration. And will continue to explore these mental processes while working with the physical materials.

My hope is that this collaboration with Sunshine will help me redeem myself as someone who is able to collaborate.

I will continue to explore my own inner landscape of doubt, while pushing forward to create.

Your Turn:

Collaboration: Friend or Foe? Have you collaborated with other artists? Was your inner critic on high volume while working on the piece? Anyone else have more struggles with your own inner voice more than the material before you? I would love to hear your stories.

Thanks for letting me share my process with you! ~ Jaime Lyerly

Lessons from Failure

I start this new college semester with a better understanding of myself.

After whining for the last few days (okay weeks....maybe a month....) about not wanting to start classes again because it will cut into my creative time, I am actually excited to start today.

This semester will be a focus on what is important to me, which is a big change from my attempt at learning the Japanese language last semester so that I could study abroad in Japan. I ended up failing Japanese I, because of many reasons which included no time to study, a difficult studio class, illness and my memory not being as good as it was 10 years ago. Since I identify myself as an overachiever (and yes it is very true) this was a hard blow to my ego. I still have a difficult time to identify myself as more than just an academic, so failing a class is a heavy burden to bear. As I was clearing out my Japanese binder last night, I heard each paper yell "FAILURE!" as I shuffled them into the recycle bin. However this failure has taught me more about who I am now than all the scholarships and honor society awards that I won within the last year.

What I learned from failing:

1. Learning a language at 32 is harder than at 22.
2. My self worth should not be judged by my grades or GPA.
3. The world will not end if I fail a class.
4. Stress makes you sick. Sickness makes you miss class. Missing class makes you stressed. Cycle repeats and repeats.

and most importantly:
5. BALANCE is the more important than anything.

So this semester, I am going to seek BALANCE more than academic achievement. As the semester starts today, I vow to keep this sense of balance by taking time to exercise my body, eat healthy foods, write and enjoy life and make time for my family and myself.

Even though I have no choice but to take full time classes (12 units) or work part time to pay my bills, I can chose my classes carefully, and budget my time better. I am going to say NO more often for things that don't serve me, and carefully evaluate the wonderful opportunities that present themselves to see they fit into the time I have now.

Therefore, I hope that my readers will kindly understand if there is less content on this blog, and know that while I am silent here, I am creating somewhere else. I still plan to document my process and share art and art marketing tips I find, but there may be less. And as the newness and excitement of my classes turns to work and stress, I plan to come here to blog about my failures in addition to my successes. Viewed as a whole, this will show the real me - flaws and perfection at the same time.

If you are starting classes now (teaching or learning), I applaud you and hope you will help me on my journey towards balance. And in turn, I wish share my world of creativity and artistic expression with you. We will both win. If you are not starting classes, I still hope you will seek out balance and share with me your lessons from an unapologetically creative life.

Forever seeking Balance! ~ Jaime Lyerly