For the past two months, I’ve been absorbed in an art project.
The creative process (+ medium I’m working with, digital collage) is reminding me that art isn’t so much about creating something from nothing. It’s about tinkering with what we have, bringing pieces together, exploring the edges and spaces between, overlaying different visions, ideas, and possibilities, and being resourceful with our raw materials.
Art is not a thing that’s separate from where I am or what I have.
And what I have is more than enough to get started.
This makes me think of activism too (another theme of the summer) and all the ways art + activism -- as practice, strategy, and being -- are linked.
Both evoke visions of beauty + call forward possibility. Both disrupt + subvert the status quo. Both summon our deep humanity. Both are projects in story-telling + meaning-making. Both are about creation at their core.
And the more I see this art-activism connection, the more I recognize that what keeps me stuck, frozen, and not moving forward in my art often parallels what keeps me stuck, frozen, and not moving forward in my attempts at activism: perfectionism, fear of failure + mistakes + discomfort, disconnection from embodied knowing, and self-doubt around my capacity to create beauty + do things that matter in the world.
In that mode, I’m missing what we’re actually doing in both projects: Starting where we are. Working with what we have. Holding the vision. Taking small but steady steps in that direction.
The path forward isn’t perfection; it’s devotion. It’s not about burning all our fuel to jump over the chasm between Here + There, bypassing everything in between. It’s about building a bridge, one stone at a time.
Whether it's a painting, a movement, or a better world, we create by bringing together what works better together than alone: our raw materials + resources, our visions + voices, our power + our imaginations.
How might you make good + creative + life-affirming use of yours?