Midsummer Creative Retreat: Day 3
The "enchanting nothingness" of blue, Polaroids, and other analog methods.
Welcome to the Isles of Curiosity and Wonder for our special digital midsummer creative retreat running June 20-24. The archives can be found here. This retreat is offered to all subscribers, but as a thank you for helping to make it happen, paid subscribers have access to the audio version. Thank you to all of you for being here!
Hello friends,
We’re on day three of our creative midsummer retreat. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on Day 1 and Day 2. So far we have celebrated the summer solstice, honored the pause of tranquility, taken a ferry, and explored Letgo Island. I hope that after these first couple of days you’re already feeling a little more of a creative flow.
Let’s dive in for another day. We’re going to start by talking about color (which really is just a matter of light).
The Isles of Curiosity and Wonder are known for their many shades of blue. In fact, blue is the unofficial color of the archipelago. If you’re still unsure of the creative impact of a visit to the isles, keep in mind that Yves Klein once visited, and we all know how well that turned out.
As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, blue is “enchanting nothingness.”1 Blue is vast and infinite, as deep as the seas, as endless as the skies. In the garden near Impermanence Sound, we actually grow our own indigo plants for natural dyeing. Try out some of the ink at the artist studio near the ferry dock.
Many visitors to the archipelago have noted that, no matter what island they’re on, or what time of day it is, all of their photos have a very blue tinge to them. Plan as you might, the photo will not offer up exactly what you see. This happens with all digital cameras, which are notorious for malfunctioning here. We would argue that the malfunction is in fact an unexpected outcome that should be celebrated!
Why don’t those digital cameras work as you expect them to? Perhaps this is because the geography, climate, and layout of the Isles of Curiosity and Wonder are not a permanent fixture. We can travel and attempt to chart them, but they are always shifting. Trying to document any part of the isles with clear, precise means simply isn’t suited to a landscape that’s constantly in movement, defined more by its hazy edges than its absolutes.
The only way to really capture this place is through color and words. While this may be to the chagrin of modern photographers, you’ll be happy to know that near Mornings of the Unexpected Bay, there is a cabin stocked with more analog methods of capturing a moment. Here you can borrow a Polaroid for the day, or even use some cyanotype supplies. There is also watercolor paper and washi tape available if you would like to make a handmade Polaroid.
For the more adventurous souls, we’ve built a transportable camera obscura that you’re welcome to use. This modern-flatpack version made from sustainably and locally grown fir takes its inspiration from historical versions. Two people can easily set one up anywhere that there’s a moderately flat surface. Once set up, it’s perfect for capturing an island scene. Project your scene onto the wall, tape up some paper, and draw or paint.
Golden hour lasts a particularly long time in the archipelago, so be sure to plan in some extra time around sunrise and sunset if you’re working at capturing a scene. If it’s your first time visiting the island, you may want to start by creating a color palette to capture the mood and better understand your local surroundings.
We’re certain that you’ll find plenty of blues, and some other magic shades and hues as well.
“Of all the things I wondered about on this land, I wondered the hardest about the seduction of certain geographies that feel like home — not by story or blood but merely by their forms and colors. How our perceptions are our only internal map of the world, how there are places that claim you and places that warn you away. How you can fall in love with the light.”
- Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise
We’re back to Anne Lamott for inspiration today, who compares writing a first draft to taking a Polaroid and watching it develop.
“You can’t—and in fact, you’re not supposed to—know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing. First, you just point your attention and take the picture.”
You don’t have to be a writer to understand this feeling. It holds for all creative mediums. How often are we frustrated because we don’t know how something is going to end up? What if we were able to embrace that as an inevitable part of the process instead?
While once the “instant” medium (Edwin Land invented the technology after his daughter asked why she couldn’t see a photo right after it was taken), in today’s landscape, Polaroids feel much more analog in nature. They require time for the end result to appear.
It’s not just photos. Emails and texts make communication essentially instantaneous too, digital art tools ensure we can skip over a multitude of steps. Waiting even a few minutes—whether it’s for a photo to develop, a swatch of paint to dry, or a letter to arrive—feels revolutionary in our era of instant gratification.
If you’re of a certain age, you may remember the feeling of getting a roll of film developed (and if you’re not of that age, just imagine it for a second). You spent time taking pictures, entirely unsure of what the end result would be. After the final click, you removed the roll of film, dropped it off at a store, or even mailed it in, to be developed. Then you waited.
When you finally had the print photos in your hand, usually enough time had passed that you had forgotten exactly what was on the roll. You may have had an idea, but there was always an element of surprise, a throwback to the moment you had taken the photo. A snippet of a memory held in your hand.
Now of course our photos—like so much else in our digital lives—are instantaneous. We click and we assess the result. It’s why there’s a bit of a thrill to the kind of creative mediums where you just have to wait a bit to see what happens. Polaroids and cyanotypes come to mind, and more collaborative endeavors like the art of letter correspondence. Even watching a sketchbook develop over time, or how an essay takes shape, can remind us of the power in uncertainty of what will take place, and the raw pleasure when you look back and track your steps of how you got to wherever you ended up.
Time is the key player in this alchemical process. Gratification is delayed.
Even our own work benefits from the gift of time. A seemingly unremarkable drawing or painting in a sketchbook might elicit the harsh judgement of your current self, but stash it away and come back to it six months from now and you might just be surprised at what your former self came up with.
Resist instant gratification. Point your attention and cultivate patience to allow your work to develop.
A few questions to reflect on today:
What needs more time to develop?
Can you work in a way that delays the end result?
What can you put to the side and return to later?
What creative work has already developed, and what can you learn from it?
And please please please make some color palettes while you’re at it.
Blue, or otherwise.
-Anna
ps: you can address any Isles of Curiosity and Wonder musings to hello@creativefuelcollective.com
pps: because people always ask, if you’re intrigued by cyanotypes, you can start with pre-treated sheets of paper like these or any of these and there’s also Nature Print Paper.
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