Mason Currey | Elizabeth Fram

In Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals, one of the commonalities he uncovers is that many artists, past and present, factor(ed) a daily walk in their regular routine.

As hard as it can sometimes be to interrupt what I’m working on to answer Quinn’s insistent mid-day call to get out to stretch our legs, I’m always glad we went. Aside from the obvious: enjoying our beautiful surroundings and witnessing the never-static changes of the seasons, I’ve also found that many of my best ideas, solutions, and conceptual connections have surfaced as I hang onto the back end of the leash. No doubt that’s part of what Currey’s subjects experienced as well.

A knotted field of stitching on top of two layers of shibori patterning. The underlayer is raw silk, the one on top is translucent silk organza (which allows the lower pattern to show through).

In order to add another layer of texture to the piece I’ve been working on this week, while simultaneously suggesting the confining nature of a net (digging back to my Maine roots and lobster traps), I have been attaching short lengths of thread to an underlying foundation of stitches. Perhaps it was just a matter of getting more blood to the brain, but the proverbial lightbulb went on as we made our way up the hill on Tuesday. Beyond being a reference to netting, I recognized the dozens of knots I was tying as a metaphor for my general frame of mind while anxiously waiting for the election’s results.

Shorter threads knotted where the horizontal and vertical lines meet are reminiscent of netting.

Overall, does it really matter to the finished work that I made that connection? Maybe…maybe not, but it does serve to underline the emotional intent of this piece as an expression of this tense point in history.

Moving onward, we have a lot of work ahead of us in this country if we are going to find our way past the divide. As it always has, art will have a role to play in defining the current circumstances and in forging a way forward. However, artist or not, maybe getting out to take a walk is the simplest first step to finding solutions.

Have you read Mason Currey’s 2013 book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work? It outlines the daily routines and habits that enable/d and enhance/d the work of well-known artists, past and present. If you haven’t seen it, check your library — not only is it a treat to read about both the serious and the quirky habits of artistic icons, but it’s worth thinking about how their methods may relate to the way you set up your own day. It is the type of book that can be read from front to back in the usual fashion, or just as successfully opened to any page to read from at random.

Dreaming ©Dennis Edwards, Pastel, 33 x 48.5 inches The images in this week’s post are from the current exhibit Body Beautiful that will be up through October 12, 2019 at the Grange Hall Cultural Center. Viewing is by event, chance or appointment. grangehallcc@gmail.com or 802.244.4168

Although it’s been several years since I’ve read it in its entirety, every so often I will pick it up to read about an artist or two, finding reassurance in the reminder that even legends of the art world have, or had, a repetitive rhythm to their workday that incorporated other activities alongside their creative work.

And in thinking more deeply about it, I realized that there is a bridge between self-created “breaks” during the day (a luxury many of the artists written about enjoyed that now seems quaintly anachronistic), and fitting in the necessary chores of daily living. Certainly many male artists of a time were not concerning themselves with 2nd jobs, laundry, meal planning/preparation, or child care and schedules, but the big picture is it’s pretty universal to rely on a rhythm of start-and-stop-and-start-again. Perhaps what may appear to us as interruptions in our studio time are what actually keep the juices flowing.

Diana Takes A Brake ©John Opulski, Oil, 30 x 40inches

An intentional routine may be one of the better friends we have; it is what keeps us productive.
And it’s worth bearing in mind that this isn’t a phenomenon that only relates to artists, rather it impacts all creative work, regardless of arena. I was interested recently to hear Girl, Stop Apologizing author Rachel Hollis say that every high achiever she’s ever met has some type of morning routine. She noted that those individual routines vary widely, but to a person, every go-getter has one. Hollis herself has developed a solid, non-negotiable morning routine that includes the same 4 basic components: moving her body, doing something where she learns, laying out her intentions for the day, and practicing gratitude. For her it’s a 2 hour commitment, which means she gets up way earlier than most of us would choose, but it’s how she makes it happen and I totally get it when she says this system makes everything else possible during the rest of her busy day.

For me, working out first thing and knocking off a few household chores before breakfast gets my brain in gear and leaves me feeling free to get down to the more important (and rewarding) business ahead in the studio. And I’ve come to recognize the numerous benefits of my afternoon walk at the insistence of my 4-legged pal, Quinn. It’s taken reading some of this research to fully realize that, yes, organizing my work days in a loosely predictable way around everything else that needs doing definitely serves as an anchor, keeping me on track while setting me up to be more productive artistically.

If you’re interested in this idea, here are a few more articles to support the theory. And I wonder, have you too settled into a regular routine that serves your studio work to best advantage?

I’ve Interviewed 300 High-Achievers About Their Morning Routines. Here’s What I Learned. by Benjamin Spall
Writing Tips: Why Is A Creative Routine So Important For Authors? by Joanna Penn
10 Famous Writers And Their Daily Creative Routines by Koty Neelis

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

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