Creating and Gathering
On making art the object of our lives.
.
Creative Fuel is made possible by paid subscribers. If you enjoy getting this newsletter, please consider supporting.
A couple of weeks ago, a brown envelope showed up in the mail.
I waited to open it, so that I could savor it. Sitting down later that evening, I pulled the flap off of the backside of the envelope where it had been sealed. I reached my hand inside, my fingers grasping at what felt like a block of paper. I wasn’t rummaging in there for a surprise—I had seen the artist post about it beforehand, so I knew what I was getting. Pulling it out of the envelope and seeing it in person was another thing entirely.
It was a mocked up National Geographic, the classic yellow cover replaced with many layers of semi-translucent vellum paper. The nature of the paper made the whole object almost ghostlike, substantial in its weight and thickness but with a sense of the ethereal. “Simulating a landscape with trees” it said on the spine. June 2416. Volume 126, No. 1.
I opened the magazine. On the first page was an inscription: “Through the misty forests of planet earth.” Inside this vellum collection was page after page of black ink drawings of trees and other foliage, as if you were walking through a forest.
It felt like the most creatively inspiring object I had held in my hands in a long time.
The magazine was from artist, interactive designer, and paper engineer Kelli Anderson. In January, I had signed up for a month of her Good Mail club, mostly because I was so tempted by the Project Impasse Toolkit that she had made. This amazingly creative collection of things was made to help with deciding on whether to keep going with a project or to let it go. It included a gold pen that functioned as a dice, with Oblique Strategies-esque prompts, and permission slips to fill out for oneself if, in fact, a project did need to be released. When you have permission, pretty much everything is easier.
I signed up, thinking it would just be for the month, but then when she shared that she had been working on this magazine/forest project, I stuck around. I think that seeing the world through the eyes of other artists, and learning about how they creatively interpret their surroundings and ideas, is some of the best creative inspiration. Here’s what Anderson had to say about the inspiration for these translucent pages: “Renaissance artists called this effect 'sfumato'—an atmospheric haziness that creates the illusion of real space. This one can be read forward or backward to remix the layering. The premise of the book is that it is from a dystopian future—where simulations of trees are created in media.”
Holding an object like this in my hand is what immediately makes me think, “I want to make stuff like this.” Not from a product standpoint, but from a joy standpoint. From a place of being so enchanted with the world around you that you just can’t help but to bring a piece of art to life.
Certain creations are like this: you can tell they are made from a place of pure delight and curiosity. They carry that energy with them, transported from the artist to the recipient. It’s an exchange, a celebration not of what the object can do for you, or what purpose it serves, but of the care, intention, and excitement that was required in order to bring it into the world in the first place.
It’s like holding a creative flame in the palm of your hand.
I want to be surrounded by energy like this all of the time.
How do we determine the value of the objects in our lives?
I think about this a lot in the context of art, but it goes for essentially everything that we surround ourselves with, from our coffee cups to the toilet brush to a record player to bed sheets. Is value merely a question of usefulness—that we seek out objects that perform a certain job, our choices driven by function and function only? What then of the things that are made with more than function in mind? Does it become a monetary question, a matter of hours of work put in and the cost of materials for production? Or do we take a broader—and less money-oriented—approach and say that the value lies in the emotion, the connection, how the object makes us feel?
These questions may arise as we ponder the purchase or procurement of something new, but money doesn’t necessarily have to be involved. We take an active role in not just assessing, but also creating value. We imbue certain objects with meaning. This often comes through the act of gathering, collecting, and choosing. A brandname vase can hold an expensive bundle of flowers from a designer florist, and a glass jar found in a free box can be filled with foraged blooms. Is one of more value than the other when it comes to bringing joy and beauty into our everyday?
Objet d’art is the French term often used to define artistic creations that are something other than a painting or a drawing. They are traditionally ornamental, their purpose isn’t to do anything, it’s solely to exist. They are usually small, and 3-dimensional, and can be anything from a wild brooch to an odd little gilded sculpture. “An article of some artistic value,” says Merriam-Webster, “an object of artistic worth or curiosity, especially a small object,” responds Collins.
Simply translated, an art object. It’s essentially the exact opposite of the concept of “form and function,” the umbrella term for things that serve a purpose and look nice doing it. Here, the function is in fact the form—it’s an object for the sake of art. Note even the term “artistic value.” The value is in the art. Held within the term objet d’art, there’s almost a sense of frivolity and levity, allowing us to drop our expectations that the object do anything. “Useless” some might say. “Essential,” respond others.
While it doesn’t cook dinner, or help with organizing our schedule, or clean the bathroom, or get us from point A to point B, art does all kinds of things. It can make us think and it can make us feel. It can bring beauty and it can challenge. It can be real or it can be fantastical. It has the power to educate, the power to inspire. It can transport us, put us in someone else’s shoes.
It's not just the art on walls or pedestals, or the art that’s in the formation of sentences or lyrics. There’s the art of the way we move through the world, how we infuse a sense of curiosity and creativity into what we gather, how we interact, how we perceive. Art can be the object of our lives.
On a beach walk on an early spring afternoon, the sun helps to point me in the direction of several bones. There’s one that’s long and flat. A leg bone of some sort? It’s bleached by the sun and softened by the sand, incredibly smooth as I hold it in my hand. Further along on the walk, I spot part of a jawbone, the teeth still stuck to it as if they were ready to bite, to grind. I’m a gatherer by nature, a person who slips stones, chestnuts, bones, and interesting objects into my pockets, an attempt at storing memories, holding a place close to my body. But this jawbone is too animal, too close to the living for me to want to touch it. I leave it amongst the rocks and the barnacles and the broken shells.
I walk along the beach carrying a handful of small bones, and when I return to the house, I place them on the windowsill. It’s not even my windowsill, just borrowed for a week. This isn’t my own house, but one that I get to inhabit for a few days, thanks to friends. Even when I am a passing visitor, I find myself incapable of not bringing in objects. I feel like a bird trying to build a nest, reminiscent of the Bowerbird nests that I once saw in Australia: decorative, full of flair.
I am pulled to a certain energy and flow that is found in welcoming in everyday findings, using a simple act of intention to turn them into art objects. I scan a room and see what might be rearranged. The placement of an object, the moving of a chair. It’s not necessarily a conscious way of being, it just happens. I reach into an old coat pocket I haven’t worn in years and there’s chestnut. At the depths of a backpack, a few rocks from who-knows-where. Remnants of a life spent grasping onto meaning and connection through anything that can be placed in my hand, anything that feels like that flame.
“Objects make us do a plethora of things simply by their existence…” writes
in Cacophony of Bone, with a beautiful reflection on our relationship to objects. “Mostly, though, we choose to hold them. To keep them. To clasp them and the keep them close. We choose the objects of our lives—and in this choosing we offer something of ourselves to these things with which we share our days.”On my little borrowed windowsill, I add to the collection of bones over the days: a broken white shell decorated in tiny barnacles, one of the scraps of paper I’ve been marking up with watercolor as I try to work through block of a creative project. The windowsill display grows into its own kind of art object. Like an array of ferns on a dinner table, like a crown of flowers placed on a head, like a chair turned so that it faces the morning sun just so.
I’ll take it all down at the week’s end, undoing what was created. Perhaps pocketing the items and taking them home, or maybe instead returning them to where they came from. The collection doesn’t need to be permanent or perfect. Its value lies in the moment. The flame turning to ash, to be carried by the wind.
Talismans of beauty, of enchantment.
Exactly what I want to welcome in.
Exactly what I want to surround myself with.
-Anna
Upcoming Creative Fuel Workshops + Events
The next Creative Fuel Studio Session will be Sunday April 14, 10-11am PT, hosted on Zoom. This one will be a little different than last month, as I am collaborating with special guest
. You’ll get a session of music and creativity. Sign up here.Next Create+Engage workshop is April 17, 2024, 5-6:30pm PT. We’ll be announcing speakers soon, but you can register now and get it on your calendar. Full schedule is here. All of this programming is free, made possible by paid subscribers and other supporters. Thank you!
There are only a couple of spots left for the spring session of DIVE, the seasonal Creative Fuel writing group facilitated by
. It kicks off in just a couple of weeks and is a cozy and supportive place, so if you want to make spring a season of writing, snag a spot.
Unfurling: A (Digital) Creative Retreat for Spring
This seasonal offering starts next week, and I hope that you’re joining us!
UNFURLING is a digital creative retreat for spring, taking place right here in Creative Fuel April 3-7, 2024. There will be daily prompts and reflections, and I’m adding in a fun analog component with printable PDFs. This is an offering for paid subscribers. If you want to take part, all you have to do is upgrade your subscription.
Richard Serra’s Verb List, a series of “actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process.” Serra died this week at the age of 85. I’ve been fascinated by his work for many years, and I love this list, so I thought it was worth sharing this weekend, even though I am pretty sure I have linked to it before.
- writes beautiful poetry, but I particularly loved this behind-the-scenes look at the process behind one of her poems.
Thank you to
for interviewing me in her newsletter . It’s the most honest I’ve been about art, money, and business lately, so if that sounds like your jam you can read here.“It puts me out of temper to have to drink from it, this mug; it reminds me that life is stern and life is earnest, and for this reason, if no other, I do not get rid of it.” On embracing bad coffee mugs. (Thank you Brendan!)
Do you enjoy Creative Fuel? You can support this work by becoming a paid subscriber. You can also order something in my shop, attend one of my workshops or retreats, or buy one of my books. Or simply share this newsletter with a friend!
“It’s like holding a creative flame in the palm of your hand. I want to be surrounded by energy like this all of the time.” So much yes 💙💙
Reading about treasures reminded me that yesterday while I was vacuuming, I sucked up a tiny piece of wool that I know lives in my swimming fleece pocket. I plucked it from a barbed wire fence in Iceland. I’m glad you wrote this so now I remember to go fish it out of the vacuum cleaner dust bag.