Now the Joy

If there’s an art form out there I’ve tried it, or at least if I’ve had access to it I have. I was a dancer for years and I’ve been painting since before I could spell my name. Needless to say my art studio is full of countless different materials and mediums with which I can create with. For a while there I was quite enamoured with multi media art and so I have accumulated many tools and mediums. One such set of tools I own is the materials to needle felt; wool roving and plain processed wool, as well as the special needles required to felt. 

This week while on Pinterest, as is very typical, I was inspired by a picture of some needle felt. I hadn’t pulled out those supplies in years and said why not. So I dug out my wool and went in search of my needles. I sat there in my studio for probably an hour and made myself a mushroom that is half the height of my phone. It is far from impressive or clever. In fact it isn’t even well executed. But here’s the thing, I don’t work with textiles or sculpting half as often as I paint or draw. So my skills with the more hands-on forms of art are years behind my painting and drawing. And that’s totally okay. 

I don’t expect to be amazing the first try, or to even fully remember how to properly use the tools on the first go around. I can be a bit of a trial by fire type, I figure things out as I go rather than researching. I go until my own knowledge exhausts it’s self and then I seek out help as needed. It’s not a full proof process but that’s okay. 

This past year I have been working on painting as much as I can with the hope of selling my art as a way of making a living. So my creative process in someways has been taken over by the painting and I hadn’t left anytime of my own person projects. It is okay and good that I have been focused and goal driven this past year, but I lost some of my joy to it. 

So in the last few months I have taken to picking back up old hobbies, if you could call them that. I started knitting again, I picked up some clay so I could use that when I get the chance, and this week I pulled out my needle felting. I plan to continue with the felting, because as I was creating, some of the forgotten knowledge and technique started to come back. 

I remember speaking to a friend this past fall who is a fellow artist. She creates wood burnings that she sells on her etsy. And I remember asking her if she would change anything about how she set up her site ect. And one of the things she told me was that she missed the fun of it. She takes commissions and therefore ends up making a lot of pieces at the request of her costumers. Which she is happy to do but misses when she was free to create what ever her heart desired. 

In the process of staying focused and trying to have a focused series to sell I’ve gotten a bit overly focused. I took the joy of it out myself, which was just unnecessary. Nobody asked me to do that and there really wasn’t any circumstance that demanded it. So I’ve made it a point to have a side project on the go as well as “main” art. It is slowly but surly bringing back the joy into my creative process which is so needed. When you lose the joy of creating it makes creating itself very difficult. 

I’ve often used the excuse that if it isn’t specifically productive to my “work” than it isn’t valuable enough to spend time on. Which is truly a tragedy of society, that joy would not be seen as the need that it is. So kicking aside the lie that joy isn’t valuable, which is easier said than done, I’ve started to enjoy the creative process again. Rather than viewing it as a means to and ends, the process in-and-of-itself is now the joy.