Monday Morning Musings - Art and Creativity

The weekend was really busy with an art fair on Saturday and a writers club meeting on Sunday. It has been a long time since I have been in a writers group that met face-to-face, and I had forgotten how good it was to be able to do that.

Online groups are terrific. I have met so many wonderful writers who freely share their talent and expertise, and that has helped me over the past ten years to improve my writing and my business skills. Still, there is something special about sitting in the same room and feeling that creative energy surround you. It is also great to be able to have discussions and critiques that happen right now, so you can immediately clarify a point or a comment.

The writers who have come together to form The Hacks of Winnsboro, are a varied lot. Some of us are published, others are not. There are a few visual artists who are blending that form of art with writing, as they develop books to encourage people to do creative journaling. I like that idea, as my mother and I have done a form of that in our letter writing through the years. All of our letters end with some kind of drawing - often reflecting the time of the year or a holiday. Christmas and Easter are always fun, as is autumn when there are pumpkins and colorful leaves.

These are pictures she sent last fall as the leaves were falling in my sister's yard.

There was a great deal of creative energy in the room on Saturday, too. The artists that participated were all gifted in their particular form of artistic expression, working in all kinds of mediums and materials from paints, to stained glass, to wood, to jewelry, and lots of clever hand-crafted items. It as a good thing I sold a number of books so I had money to do some shopping.

My daughter, who frequently goes with me to these art events, also did some shopping. She contacted her siblings and arranged to get a piece of stained glass for me.

This lovely owl was done by Rose Burgin, an artist I met about four years ago when she was only a year or two into doing stained glass. She has emerged from being a hobbyist and has become a true artist. I am so thrilled to have a piece by her. Now she just needs a website to showcase her work online.

A truly gifted photographer could have captured this image and done it justice, but I was just taking a picture to send to the kids to show them where I might hang the glass in one of my office windows. Since I spend so much of my time here, I thought this would be a good place to have the owl. Now I just have to get it hung. Since I didn't want to tempt fate by keeping it perched on the window sill, it is packed between two boxes on the floor so the cats cannot knock it over and break it.

How was your weekend? Did you do things just for fun and get energized for the work week ahead?

Catching Up

First of all, since I was out of town when the Blog Carnival ended on Feb 28th, I want to announce the winner of a copy of my book, Play It Again, Sam. The Carnival was held by Classic Romance Revival and each of the participating authors chose a winner from the visitors to her blog. I am happy to announce that the winner from my blog is Sara J. Her name was drawn in a random selection process. Congrats, Sara.

The Take 190 West Art Festival in Killeen was a wonderful experience. The facilities at the Killeen Civic and Conference Center are beautiful, well-managed, and very comfortable. The staff at the Center, as well as Killeen library staff were all gracious hosts and hostesses, and I truly felt pampered.

Friday evening there was a reception for the artists and authors with delicious food -- we're not talking chips and dips here - and stimulating company.

Half of the exhibit area was filled with artists' booths, and the other half held displays from art students in the Killeen schools. The work was really impressive and covered a variety of mediums from sculpture to weaving to painting and drawing. It was fun to watch the students point out their work to their parents and share in the excitement of seeing their creation on display.

The professional artists also had quite a variety of work displayed for sale, predominately paintings. Burl Washington had a wonderful assortment of paintings and prints that depict the history of the Buffalo Soldiers, black Cowboys, and Blacks in Aviation. What a wonderful way to get a history lesson.

Another interesting artist I met was Todd Alan, who is known as The Crayon Man. He does all his work with crayons -- regular old Crayola Crayons -- and the results are stunning. I do some sketching with colored pencils, mostly just for fun or to share pictures in letters to my mother, but I have never thought of using crayons. And I'm not sure that I could match his abilities even if I stopped writing right this minute and concentrated on art.

I think one of the reasons I enjoyed talking to Todd was the enthusiasm he had for his work, and it delighted him when people stopped to admire it. Not in an egotistical way, but much like those children sharing their art with their parents. Pure delight.

Todd told me that he really enjoys visiting schools and talking to young people about art, and I'm sure those classes are a lot of fun. Children love it when you engage them on a creative level.

The other authors at the Festival represented a number of genres and age groups, predominately children's books and young adult. I was quite impressed with Jazmine Swanson, who wrote and published a young adult novel, Avalon, during her sophomore year in high school. What a wonderful accomplishment for this Killeen teenager. For a story about how the book came to be click HERE

After I have participated in an event like this, people invariably ask me if it was successful, and in the next breath they ask if I sold a lot of books. For me, the success is not measured by how many books I sold. It is measured by the interesting people I meet and the fun I have. Not to mention how many books I can buy. So this was very successful.

How about you? If you are an author or artist, how do you measure the success of an event?