My friend Robin Vada and I will be teaching our Opening the Creative Mind Workshop Saturday, May 16th at the virtual Compose Creative Writing Conference.

In our workshop, we practice meditation techniques combined with writing prompts to break through creative blocks and find new perspective. It’s serious work with powerful results, but we end up laughing quite a lot too. Robin is a delight to teach with, and we always manage to find lightness and joy in our workshop.

The conference was supposed to be in-person, but the faculty boldly shifted it to online and made it free! Here is the link to register.

Kim Stafford, who recently concluded his tenure as Oregon Poet Laureate, will be giving the keynote. I can tell you from personal experience: he never disappoints, and it seems no matter what the subject or what state the world is in, you leave a conversation or reading with him feeling capable, uplifted, and full of a grounded, realistic hope.

I hope to see you there, in this digital space where we’ll come together from our individual homes or offices and connect, create, and compose.

Thanks for following my creative journey at Carrot Condo,
–TRISTA

It’s a new year, a new decade, and although I feel apprehensive about new year’s resolutions, I made a few for 2020.

For Carrot Condo, I’m committing to 2 hours of creative work Monday-Friday. It’s week three of this, and proving much harder than it sounds. I am sticking with it nevertheless.

I’m learning to push through resistance: yesterday’s sketches seemed to be going nowhere, but I was also nowhere near the end of two hours. I kept going, and by the end, three projects started to take shape.

I’m learning that two creative hours pushes all other work and obligations to different spaces in the week: admirably, I found myself prepping Tuesday’s dinner late Monday night, but that made room for some creative work (not two hours, but some) the next day.

I’m learning that two disciplined hours can accomplish more than I’d imagined, but: I have to ignore hunger pangs (pretty sure they’re just my brain trying to distract me), the compulsion to check my phone–when it dings but even when it’s silent and staying out of my way, and the weird pull of my mind to go do something else…anything else…brains fear creation for some reason. Or fear expression. Or discovery. I dunno. I guess it’s just fear. That brings me to another resolution:

Another resolution for my life in general that applies to creative work is about fear. I experience it in all kinds of variety: dread, hesitation, worry, anxiety, fret. Fear is so familiar to me that its absence is actually unsettling. I think, “Oh no, I feel great, that’s bad, something bad might happen and I won’t be ready.” As if worrying is at all the same thing as being “ready,” and as if one can ever be ready for the unknown.

There’s no getting rid of fear, it’s kind of who I am. But I can give it a counterbalance. So, when fear shows up in one of its many forms, I balance it out with an openness to opportunity.

It’s simple, and kind of a mind trick, but it makes room in my brain for imagining how things might work out well, even great. It broadens my perspective.

So, when my sketches weren’t going well, I stayed with it because my two hours weren’t up, but I also gave myself a pep-talk, telling myself it was good to be at the desk giving it a go, and maybe these sketches aren’t what I expected but what else might they be? That was enough openness to other possibility that I changed one sketch in a way I liked, in a way that surprised me. Whether I do more with it, I don’t know yet, but it resulted in one more possibility for a theme I’m working on, and it felt kind of exciting.

I’m back at it today. So, at least for 2020, I’ll stick with these two resolutions and see how they play out.

I hope the new year is starting out well for you, whether you made resolutions or not. I have much more planned for you to see eventually. Until then, thank you for your support of my creative endeavors!

–TRISTA

UPDATE:  last show for 2019 is Jolabokaflod. It’s in a beautiful building, there will be live music, good food, and an impressive array of books, books, books with the authors and illustrators right there to sign copies. See you there!

Saturday, December 28th
PDX Jolabokaflod (Yule Book Flood: Cozy, literary, Icelandic tradition brought to Portland.) Visit the link to read organizer Margaret Pinard’s lovely description.

If you live in the Portland area, please come by and see me at one of these five shows!

I’ll be doing the super-cool “Jolabokaflod”–a cozy, book-lover’s celebration of the new year brought to Portland from Iceland. I’m also doing The Procrastinator’s Market for the first time. It’s organized by the farmers market, so I’m assuming that means: produce and jams and salsas along with the handmade creations.

 

In spite of all the excitement of summer ending and school starting, I’m proud to say that creative work marched, crawled, and occasionally raced along. I’ve got new creations in my shop. The one that surprised me the most is a coloring book.

My Domestic Artifacts coloring book is a collection of line drawings revealing the beauty, function, and even stature of everyday household objects.

As I collected the drawings into pages and then a book, a story started to write itself. First, it was notes on the margins of my sketches. But then, as I inked the final pages, my permanent marker landed itself on a fresh page of paper and wrote.

I’d been thinking a lot about the quotations and the story that ended up coming out in this book, but I had not planned on sharing it with anyone. I’m glad my creative mind took over and added words. The book feels complete, even before it’s colored.

The story is about finding my sense of self as a homemaker away from “the world” and a career, and discovering the powerful role a home plays in creating resilient, positive people.

More pictures and details available here.

I also have more cat creations coming!! An enamel pin and a sticker sized for water bottles are in the works. I should be able to show you those next month.

In November and December, I’ll be selling my work in person at some winter craft shows in Portland. I’ll share details soon. Until then, I hope you enjoy the fall, and thank you — as always — for your support of my creative life.

-TRISTA

Things are moving along slowly but steadily here at Carrot Condo. I’m starting to accept this snail’s pace because I’m noticing that a little effort every day builds faster and faster the longer I stay with it.

In other words–exciting stuff is happening, but I have nothing–yet–to show you. Four projects are in the works, and I’m excited about each of them, but also, each of them have held challenges and complexities I didn’t anticipate. Then again, each of those challenges led to something great: new people helping me, new skills, better ideas than the initial ones, and more resilience.

That’s the thing about this creative path…I might be creating tiny cats, a coloring book to help you feel good about life, and monsters, but what I’m gaining from the effort is resilience, determination, problem-solving skills, patience, and a little toughness.

Actually, a lot of determination and toughness. Life outside of art-making, you know, the other 99% of my life, remains unpredictable and surprising. It recently gave me a big shift in my role, in my routine, in my time and energy. I discovered that on the hardest days, I was the most driven to fit in a few minutes of drawing. I kept thinking about a writer I admire, Karen Karbo, and her decision to move to France. As I followed her posts about this big change, I learned: it’s not “now or never” when it comes to doing what you want to do with your life, maybe especially art. Instead, it’s: if not now, when?

The #100 Days Of Practice teaches me again this year that even a tiny bit of effort daily can be started any time, like now, as in: go do it! And staying with it long enough, let’s say, oh, maybe 100 days? Can start to build the path for your life that you’ve been longing for; it just takes patience at the beginning, and some kindness to yourself along the way, because it doesn’t always look pretty, but it’s a path!!

Well, as always, thank you for reading. By the next blog post, I should have at least two projects to show you. They are soooooo close, but not quite finished.

–TRISTA