I have always felt a need to create. However, I never felt like I had any particular talent to put art out into the world. I’m terrible at drawing and painting. Forget about sketching or making beautiful sculptures. My writing is long and rambling and undisciplined. And then there’s the time.

Often, making art is not seen as productive, it doesn’t pay the bills, there are always other needs to be met before creative time is allowed. However, despite my less than ideal outcomes, I enjoy the process of creating stuff, turning something boring into something pleasing to the eye and experimenting with different mediums. Even in business, I have always been more interested in building something new, doing it differently than others. I am more excited about the process of bringing something forward than managing what already exists. Despite all this, I never dared call myself an artist.

As I am working through this middle age thing and learning to fill the space created by my evermore independent son, I revisited a book I bought years ago but never got around to studying: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I’m in week three, far too early to tell if it will be a successful finish. However, I already feel a shift. I have willfully done my morning pages, three pages of freehand brain dump first thing (after coffee) each morning. I started this blog. I have gone on my artist dates. I made bracelets from old beads.

What it’s made me realize so far is that I have likely been living as a shadow artist. Basically someone who denies themselves their own creativity due to lack of time, energy, resources or some sort of mental block in expressing their creative side. You’ve heard that voice: you have no talent, people won’t like your work, who do you think you are taking time from family and work to make crap, I just need to get through this business expansion first, or this baseball season, or once I am caught up on laundry, or after the house is clean, etc.

But yet, I have always admired creative people and wanted to surround myself and support them. I appreciate their ability to create freely without fear of criticism and push back against more practical, but soul draining, activities. You might even say I am living vicariously through the artists around me. I really thought I would support my first husband creating art as his primary vocation. I was a founding member and the treasurer of the Red Rock Arts Alliance, supporting the artists as we held studio tours, featured musicians and kids projects on Saturday mornings in the park and raised money to bring international musical residencies to our small town through Arts Midwest WorldFest. At the brewery, I have never been a brewer or label designer, but often talk about how owning a brewery fuels my passion to be a patron of the arts. Brewers create and designers make art. I make sure it gets to market, is translated to the public, is offered up in a great experience, complies with government regulations and hopefully financially self-sustains itself. But alas, I am not an artist.

Still, squeezed in between all of this, I have tiptoed around the edges. I took pottery classes for a few years at the magical Dahlquist Studio, part of Art 316 in DSM. It was the first time I felt like I could create without judgment. Early on, as I was finishing a piece, my bowl started to get away from me on the wheel and the top splayed out with the bottom intact. It wasn’t the intention but it was kinda cool. The instructor happened by and said, just leave it: it’s art. That was revolutionary and such a change from art teachers or art friends (and myself) who historically placed lofty expectations of what art should be. Maybe I could be an artist?

I was hooked. Pottery is a medium that could be messy, unstructured, functional and has endless possibilities. I enjoyed the camaraderie in the studio classes. With practice I could see the progress in my skills and believed I could continue to improve. We built a studio at home, I got a wheel, and a kiln. And then I had a baby. And then I had a brewery. And then I got a divorce and a small apartment. An intensive pottery hobby just was not in the cards for the last 15 years. I did rekindle it a bit in our current house. It has space in the basement with a concrete floor and plumbing nearby but priorities of motherhood, being a good partner and a business that consumes me are currently winning my time.

During the pandemic, I bought a nice camera and took a virtual photography class both as a hobby and to gain some skills for work. I think it was a little too complex for me at the time as it was hard to get through the technical aspects of a digital SLR and Adobe photo editing. Plus, it was intimidating as I can see what good photography looks like, and my eye was not producing it. I will get back to it when the time is right. Yeah, I am not cut out to be an artist.

In between all this, I gave myself the gift of attending the first Pollinate Women’s Weekend a couple years ago hoping to get myself out of a mental rut. It was at the Boone Y Camp where I had gone to a couple of camps as a kid. The nostalgic feeling of being twelve again put me instantly in the right frame of mind to learn new things, let go of deep rooted stress, go on long solitary walks in the woods, and meet new people during the communal meals.

During free time one afternoon I wandered into the art room. One project was to cover an old prescription bottle in meaningful images and words using cut up magazines and Mod Podge. The second part was to go on nature walks and collect interesting mementos. Items to pull out later, take a deep breath and remember what it was like to have space, peace and quiet. I worked on it all afternoon and got lost in the flow of creating. Chatting casually with my table mate, not caring about anything else but finding the right little pieces to add to my bottle. It’s not perfect, but making it made me happy. At home, I was inspired to get some supplies to create variations on the theme. I was inspired to host a day at my house for a bunch of ladies to hang out and create a couple months later. And even now, noticing the paint coming off the rim, it gives me pause to take a deep breath, think about the symbols and the words and reset for whatever comes next.

Basic decoupage doesn’t take a lot of dexterity or skill other than cutting out images and tearing pages. Like clay, you can keep layering on until you have what you want. It’s imperfect, you can use whatever you have on hand and then turn the project into something useful, like little Easter basket boxes covered in flowers from a horticulture catalog, or a travel candle jar, or a pencil holder from a mug box. Finding the right magazines that have useful images for the projects is fun and inspiring in itself. It’s also a great way for me to use up little boxes and containers to make something whimsical or meaningful, purposeful or decorative from what would have otherwise hit the recycle bin. Like this Air Pod box that I repurposed into a holder for my phone while I follow along with yoga videos. Much more inspirational than leaning it on a patio brick!

This is a medium that works for me for now. I can spread out on my work table in the living room and be close to the action of my guys as they watch a Cubs game. I can pack it up quickly in to a manageable space when not in use. If I don’t have a lot of time, I can just cut out images or start a project, then let it sit until I am ready to get back to it.

The point is, it’s been rewarding to make things simply for the sake of creating. To do the activity, to be in the flow and let my brain relax. Plus, I end up with interesting little pieces that brighten otherwise mundane parts of my life (my next project is beautifying the box that holds the taco and dressing mixes in my pantry-oh yeah!). I can enjoy the process and if someone else likes it great. If not, that’s ok too…

But I will always have the gift of giving myself space to create and bring my inner artist into the light! So yeah, I guess I am an artist.

What are you creating today?