Sylviebead Journal

It's Friday.... and I'm a teary mess.

I use the analogy a lot of times that I am a Dairy Queen Dip Cone... and I'm truly feeling like it today. I was feeling like it yesterday too... and the day before.... and the day before...

but it seems that the inner ice-cream is getting meltier and the chance of the cracks happening causing a big mess is getting more likely. I'll survive... I always do, but BOY am I a mess today.


I NEED to make beads.... but don't want to.... and I can't really say why because I don't KNOW why.

Art and emotion are such screwy things. I was saying to someone the other day (and I can't remember who... it might have been Holly... hi Holly) that this blog has been sort of on auto-pilot for the past few months because I couldn't REALLY say when things were good or bad... and that goes with being an artist.

ANYWAYS... I avoided any sort of emotional talk here for the last few years and that's been hard because emotions are SO attached to art... when it's really art and not craft. And this being a blog about art without being able to talk about anything emotional has really been tough for me. Sometimes, even in the way-way past I sometimes danced around the emotional and didn't "bare all" here, but the emotions and how I felt about stuff in life usually made its way into my blog... because it has a real effect on my work... for the good and for the bad.

SO..just because I'm laying it all out there.... something emotional is paralyzing me and keeping me away from my studio. I have no idea what... but maybe it's that I truly fear I've lost the ART part of what my hands know how to do. That I know how to make hand-crafted objects, but I don't have any ART to make.

I've got the emotion... so that part is covered... but how do I pull this emotion into my work is the question. And how do I get past the paralyzation that I'm feeling about all this??

I know that in the past my art came through in my work unintentionally. The mood of the things I made always depended on what I was seeking in life. Usually they weren't conveying MY mood, but rather what I was seeking. My first beads... the very serene mermaids and fairies had this beauty and serenity that I as a new mom did not have. It continued to be something I didn't have as I went through the chaotic times of supporting a family on beads.

My work changed into the real whimsical beads with fun little faces when I was in one of my very darkest times ever. Looking at that work, you'd think that I was happy happy happy... and the truth was the farthest from that as it could possibly be. After that work was developed and I was a bit happier... I was more a manufacturer of it and no longer doing the ART part of making beads, so it wasn't really my emotion coming through... it was just me making beads I'd already moved through the ART stage (I have NO idea if this makes sense to anyone but me... but even here... especially here... it's MY blog and I'm the only one I have to make sense to). ANWAYS... It's when my work morphs into something new that I'm usually bringing emotion into it. The between times are the craft (which is not a bad thing... it's just a different thing)

THEN my work moved into the angel faces I made (similar to the one on the vessel, but a little softer and prettier) that became the Halo Neckpiece. My life was chaotic again and I wanted peace. It's so obvious now, but at the time, it was just what I felt like making.... it was emotion coming back into my work again making art instead of just making beads.

And then I tried to make the whimsical stuff again... my Splish Splash mermaids (boy... this is all just hitting me as I write it) which were that same happy-faced stuff mixed with the serene beauty of my original mermaids... sort of morphing them together..... and then my hands just stopped.

They wouldn't let me make beads anymore. They shook so hard that I couldn't hold a mandrel. They knew all the things that were going on in life around me that I didn't know.... or wouldn't admit that I knew..... and I couldn't find a way to make the things that production was requiring me to. WOW... this is a total epiphany moment for me.... that it was those beads... the Splish Splash beads, that my hands wouldn't let me make.... and STILL won't let me make.

It took a while, but I know now why my hands shake and I hate that emotion has that kind of physical power over me, but it does and it shows itself through shaking hands.... which kills my medium of expression. It's pretty difficult to hold a mandrel in the flame when my hands are flying all over the place.... so I don't even try. So.. what was it, is it, about those beads that's shutting me down... because I know as I write this that it is THOSE beads that are messing with me.

Because when I go to the studio, intending to make those beads... I make safe happy little mermaids or boring spacer beads.... and I don't get anything ELSE made because I'm so wrapped up in why I can't make those Splish Splash pieces.

SO...what am I supposed to be making? What does my heart want to be making??? I don't know. I NEED to make something.... I just don't know what. I need to be able to bring the emotion to the "canvas" of the glass, without letting my subconscious tell my hands what to do.... because right now that subconscious is saying DON'T MAKE BEADS.

and that's a bad bad thing for it to be saying one and a half months before Bead and Button.

(boy... I didn't intend to say all that here! I might erase it later.... not sure.... aren't you glad you subscribed??? LOL)


so... time for the tiny blah blah blah.....

Coffee - oh yeah! Cinnamon Dolce Latte, a gift from Holly (www.hollysfolly.com) Thank you Holly!!!

Music - Trying to get myself in a Friday mood, so it's the playlist called New Groove - right now it's Outkast - The Way You Move.... and NOW it's Mika's Grace Kelly which is such a FUN song. It might feel like Friday by the end of the song. :)

Have a great Friday everyone! I promise to be a little more together by Monday!! (ok... maybe I shouldn't PROMISE... I'll TRY.)