At the Intersection of Fiction & Reality

This past weekend was devoted to enjoying myself artistically.

I spent much of my life thinking of myself as a writer, not an artist. I did study photography as a kid, because my dad had a dark room where he developed his own pictures, and he taught me to do it, too. I remember the time that a neighbor showed me a picture he had taken of his daughter, and he later told me that I had definitely startled him when I commented about how the line of the garden fencing drew the eye to the photograph's subject. He had not expected a ten-year old to understand much about compositional design or lines of sight.

But still, of course, I understood that I couldn't possibly be an artist. I tried learning how to sketch as a child quite seriously for several years, but I never got good enough to satisfy my own taste. I couldn't paint, or sculpt, or make beautiful clothes or anything like that.

I wrote. Until I couldn't write anymore, and I then suffered for years because of my writer's block. One of the books I read when I was struggling with my blocked creativity was Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way, which suggests that if you are a creator, you give yourself an artist's date each week. Go to a yarn shop and plunge your hands into the yarn to experience the textures. Go to a bead shop and admire the colors and shimmers.

The thing that finally started to pull me out of a very dark period of blocked creativity was when a friend suggested that I try Soulcollage (thanks, anam_cara).

So I started cutting pictures out of magazines and assembling them into pictures, and I eventually slowly realized that I was good at it. Maybe I couldn't write at the moment. Whatever part of my brain that was the font of my writing may have gone to sleep or was paralyzed at the moment. Or it just needed to rest and heal.

But I still had creativity. I still had a discerning eye, and that was such a revelation as well as a relief.

I eventually switched to digital collage and taught myself all sorts of tips and tricks to improve my images. I got so good that eventually a friend of mine, Pat Wrede, hired me as a graphic artist to create icons for her writing blog each week.

I am getting paid to do art.

Pat has mentioned to me that she has always recognized the strong visual sense that underpins my writing. But it is only in the last year or so that I have finally begun to describe myself as an artist. At first, I said it almost reluctantly, but now I say it proudly. I gave a friend lessons on how I do what I do with digital collage in exchange for the lessons she gave me in Japanese flower arranging. I have developed skills that people are definitely recognizing.

I'm a collage artist.

I went to the Stone Arch Bridge Art Festival this past weekend and ended up chatting with a collage artist who had a booth there. I pulled out my phone and showed her my gallery of these weekly collages, and she was definitely impressed.

Yes. I am an artist.

I saw an ad a month or two ago for a Tiles Workshop, and I invited my dear friend minnehaha to join me. We paid the fee and spent a fun afternoon last Sunday sitting at a table, drinking Turkish coffee, eating baklava, and chatting with other women as we assembled colored tiles into patterns which we glued onto the surface of the glass bulb of a Turkish lamp.

Of course, I wasn't entirely satisfied with my creation. Perhaps I didn't pick quite the right colors, and perhaps my patterns were not ornate as I would have liked. Whatever, it was my first attempt! I brought it home and followed the instructions to add the grout and assemble the lamp. I put it on my dresser and turned on the switch.

I was ravished with delight by the sight.




I am an artist. I am still learning. But if I keep at it, I know I will get better all the time. And I'm certainly having fun as I do.

Image description: Background: shallow cups of colored glass tiles. Lower half: a table with the cups of colored glass tiles arranged in rows in the center, with trays around the perimeter (used to sort the tiles into patterns). Lower right corner: a cup of Turkish coffee and several pieces of baklava. Right: a swan-necked lit Turkish lamp with a mosaic tile pattern of cobalt blue and green glass.

Art



Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.