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?

Bits and Pieces

I noticed I have picked up a few more followers here on this blog, and I am happy to have you here. I hope you find my ramblings worth your time.

When I was a child, all I ever dreamed about was being a writer. When I grew up, I became a journalist. Not that there's a whole lot of difference between the two in spirit, only in definition.

We who put pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard, do so out of a driving need to say something. Thoughts, ideas, opinions, feelings stir around inside us seeking some sort of expression. For writers of fiction that expression comes through worlds they create.

For journalists it comes through worlds created for them to report on or to write commentary on.

And now we have this whole new world of blogging that is part journalism, part journal writing , and part commentary. We can find blogs on all kinds of topics and subjects and the wealth of information and expertise being shared is amazing.

I have enjoyed being involved in this new form of writing. It has been fun to meet new people through their comments on my posts, and I have reciprocated by visiting their blogs. I have learned a lot about writing through the expertise shared on so many author blogs, but I have also learned some things about gardening, cooking, simple home repairs and much more.

What about you.? What are some of the things you have learned by visiting blogs?