Inspiration
Marcy Petrini
5/9/2016
I have completed another handout for Convergence®, so I decided that I should reward myself with a short trip to Laurel, MS, a couple of hours southeast of Jackson, where a gem of a small museum, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, is hosting a gorgeous exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s work, called Venetians, glass vessels inspired by the famed work from Venice. That was his source of inspiration; his colors, that covered the gamut of the rainbow, are mine.
The trip got me thinking about inspiration and how we may use it.
I have decided that there are two kinds of inspiration: the looking and the doing. Both can lead to a change in path.
In the case of looking, seeing art objects, especially colorful ones, affects me pretty much as nature does: this time, I didn’t come home and weave Chihuly’s colors right away, as I have done in the past (Blog #2, Colors in Nature, November 30, 2015), but I know that they will find their way in my weaving sometime in the future, especially since I bought the book! That happened with this shawl, inspired by the purple irises with their gold middle that grow in our front yard. The shawl is woven in huck with silk and gold stripes as well as some gold in-lay. I didn’t even know that those iris colors had sneaked into my weaving!
The “doing” for inspiration occurs when I take a class outside my field. I have woven long enough that I can learn new techniques by reading about them and then trying them. But just as looking at color in glass inspires my weaving, so doing other art forms feeds my art. At this upcoming Convergence® I will be taking a super seminar by Judy Dominic called Soft Paperless Books. Judy is a terrific artist and teacher with incredible creativity. Do I want to start making paperless books? Not my intention, but it could happen. I just think that “creating outside the box” – or is it inside the book? – is good for one’s inspiration. Although I must admit that I once took a spinning class just because as a weaver I thought I should know more about how yarn is made and, twenty-eight years later, I am still spinning!
Convergence® offers a wonderful opportunity to “create outside the box”; I have taken many seminars with technique I haven’t used since, but I know that, just as the iris colors sneaked into my shawl, new techniques sneak into my creativity.
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