I’m not sure how many years I’ve been doing Art Every Day Month. I know at first I wasn’t sure how valid my participation was since I wasn’t a “real” artist and my art was performance more than anything else with a smattering of poetry and if I am correct, maybe photography every once in a while.
And naturally writing. There has always been writing and there will always be writing, I suppose. N
A daily practice of placing words on the page in my notebook is what I have been doing since 2002. The more than occasional sculpting of words into the form of a poem or an essay or a guide-to-this-or-that is what I have been doing since before I could write when I would dictate to my mother who would write my words on a paper and I would copy, diligently, with crayon.
I have rarely equated my writing with artistry, it’s more my form of meditation and an internal conversation that keeps me grounded even when I don’t necessarily feel grounded.
Now that we are back in November, Art Every Day Month, I get to pay attention to my creativity instead of taking it for granted.
During November I mindfully put what I create on display daily here in my blog. This is sort of like what I always do – only now I am paying attention to it. Perhaps it is a small spoonful of care more than the norm to recognize what progress I make in a day or at least how I continue to move forward. In the last two days this has been most apparent in my photography, twice pulling my car over to take a moment to shoot some photos due to the calling of the moment and the imagery that asked to be held onto via visual imagery.
I found this quote to attach to today’s creative blog show-and-tell.
“Paying attention requires no special equipment, no special training, no personal trainers. All you need is a body on this earth, willing to notice where it is, trusting that something as small as a hazelnut can become an altar in this world.”
Barbara Brown Taylor
Today’s creative adventures included taking photos of a ramshackle building, I think perhaps Calcot, a cotton marketing organization. There was something about the way the buildings were in shambles and the “no trespassing” and the swirls of the barbed wire that attracted my eye.
I had simply been paying attention and the pay-off was some effective photos taken while I was on my way to the post office. I didn’t have to put on my calendar, “photo taking from 11:30-12” though I knew I wanted to create art consciously today.
As often times happens, the art found me when my GPS took me down a street I never expected to go and showed me gritty views I had never seen before.
This is my favorite of the photos I took:
I also worked on an art journal page – here it is, in progress:
Tonight or tomorrow morning I will add a phrase. I know what I am going to use, just haven’t had a moment to write it yet.
And I wrote my morning pages also.
It has been a marvelous day, this only second of November, 2015 I will ever live.
There is still time to join Art Every Day Month. There is a daily link-up, a facebook group, a flickr group, and people also post images to Instagram. The founder, Leah Piken Kolidas is a gem. I keep thinking she will eventually stop hosting, but so far we've been blessed by her gentle and patient leadership. She is a remarkable artist herself and creates right alongside us.
=====
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in Fall, 2015 and beyond.
To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 
661.444.2735.
Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
Please stay in touch: Follow me on Twitter: and on Periscope for writing prompt, tips and inspiration daily created to ignite your artistic rebirth.
Be sure to "Like" WritingCampwithJJS on Facebook. (Thank you!)
Follow on Instagram And naturally, on Pinterest, too! © 2015
Recent Comments