Tag Archives: Mason Currey

Patterns of Practice

Do you also find yourself curious about how other people approach their work – the distinctive quirks of process that they have developed for themselves?

Before the holidays, a friend gave me the huge (in both size and content) book The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss. At a richly illustrated 400+ pages, it’s the sort of volume one dips in and out of rather than reading all in one go. It’s perfect for easing into when you have a spare 15 or 20 minutes.

The Work of Art

Moss features more than 40 of today’s most accomplished creators — painters, writers, cartoonists, filmmakers, musicians, composers, fashion designers, chefs, etc. They share generously as he digs deeply into their various practices, sifting through their thought processes, their doubts, their constraints and, ultimately, their breakthroughs. In other words, all the things we can relate to as part of a creative practice regardless of how proficient or well-known one may be.

Artists are a diverse crowd, but a tribe all the same. Personally, I find that sense of connection tremendously uplifting as I toil away in my remote corner. With all this in mind, I was intrigued lately to, somewhat coincidentally, happen upon a Substack post entitled “Know Your Creative Cycle”, written by Mason Currey, the author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

Strands of Wisdom (I’ve Seen A Lot, Not All Of It Good) ©2025 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and embroidery on paper, 8.5 x 8.5 inches This latest piece came together pretty quickly, which is the exception rather than the rule for me. My creative cycle usually involves a series of starts and stops. I get an idea and head out of the gates with a bang, but then something invariably crops up mid-stream to stop me in my tracks. Then I have to step away to figure out how to get around that stumbling block. Mostly, in-process decisions are a leap of faith which, thankfully, more times than not end up working out. That said, on-the-fly decisions directed this piece away from what I had originally planned. But the good news is, that just leaves me room to go back to my original idea in the future.

If you have a moment, try his exercise to identify how your individual practice ticks. I thought it was something of another tribal moment to discover that while the particular ups and downs of getting the work out of our heads and into the world may be somewhat different for everyone, we all have a pattern, and being aware of that pattern is power.

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Please join me and other exhibitors
this Saturday, February 1st from 4-5:30pm at Studio Place Arts
for an Artist Social celebrating

Where’s My Hat?
January 22 – March 1, 2025

Studio Place Arts
201 N. Main Street
Barre, VT 05641
802.479.7069 | info@studioplacearts.com

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One Very Simple Habit That Makes A Huge Difference

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.

The Anchor of Routine

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.

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