One particularly delightful discovery for me on Etsy has been the “Treasuries”. They’re collections of 16 images on any theme one decides to curate on, pulling together various makers on Etsy to present a coherent, inspiring visual mood board. It’s an interesting exercise to curate such collections. Whether they are colour-coordinated shopping guides or something else… Myself, I’m particularly fascinated by expressing a thematic tale with a collection of images. Each artist’s work contributes to the whole and layers of meaning can be read from the combination of selected imagery. There’s something very similar in that process as in creating an artist book… The beauty of course being that you’re also connecting with and promoting some top notch creative makers in the process. I can see this type of curating exercise would be excellent for art students too – as compiling an image collection like this brings together many different skills in visual literacy.

There is a long list of continuously changing treasuries you can browse on Etsy. Some of them appeal to my personal visual sensibilities more than others, and some curators seem to consistently find magical content for their treasuries which have kept me in awe and inspired for days!

To share my recent discoveries of what Etsy has on offer, I’ll show you here some of the Treasuries I’ve curated so far. I recommend you click through to the site and explore all these artists’ creations more closely.

I’ve also opened an Etsy shop for the talismanic crystal jewellery that I make nowadays, so feel free to have a peek of this link too:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/SpiritCarrier

I have shed many “shoulds” and “should nots” from my making, which is incredibly liberating. In many ways I have also returned to the beginning, to re-discover  why I used to like making books in the first place. Yet it’s an ongoing spiral upwards, now combined with some purposeful research and development. I’m currently playing with macrame bindings, where the knotting is integral to the book’s structure, as well as carrying on with more jewellery work. I’m fascinated by this direction. I sense this time is full of transitions and new beginnings, and I’m quite excited to see where it all ends up.

An angel came into this world
Trying for a while to hang onto his wings
But eventually having to let them go
So he could settle more fully into this world

Once again I was also reminded how certain limitations in materials and techniques open up new unexplored creative doorways which, if you agree to proceed through, will reward you with surprising discoveries. And these four certainly did, creating with focus and a sense of purpose, in my opinion, gallery ready work.

Imagination and creative vision certainly are wonderful tools, but what elevated yesterday’s results to another level, had to do with execution. Meticulous concentration and following through with in inner sense of integrity about the quality of one’s work. This group paid attention to the minutest detail of what they were making and carefully balanced those details in relation to the whole. And when I see that combination in someone’s work, especially in a workshop I’m facilitating, it makes me very excited indeed, to the same extent that shoddy workmanship annoys me.

I had compiled yesterday’s workshop as an experimental and experiential book art course, something that would deal with the whole process of creating an artist book. It wasn’t just about the materials and how to put them together, but rather a journey that started with various exercises in guided doodling and creative visualisation, initiating a connection to one’s inner resources. Even the results of the very first exercise amazed me. The group instilled their work with deep personal symbolism and turned a bare-bone exercise into a fully fledged artistic project.

I am utterly grateful for having had the chance to work with these people for a day, hoping to see what creative directions they will explore next. What a successful, memorable day!

Artist book scrolls in progress by Anne, David, Catherine and Diana:

Maybe I’ve completed too many intensive projects lately. The natural rhythm of creating, with its ebb and flow, has become rushed and forced. I know, I’ve been there before too. Right now, I should take a few hours, maybe even days, to just BE with the tools and materials – without a defined target. That would melt the block. But I know how this goes. I try to press on for productivity’s sake.

Yet today – sooner than usual, I find myself drawn to various bits and pieces around the studio, off-cuts, remnants, forgotten beginnings. Random ideas appear in my mind, I go off on a tangent, testing, researching, developing – someone certainly could call it procrastinating. But my right brain knows what my work needs while my left brain is stuck on a time-table of shoulds and musts. A glimmer of excitement returns…

And whilst I momentarily gasp at the enormity of the next task, the reassuring thing about experience is the fact that I know every step of the journey by now. I know the pattern. And that means: this is yet another beginning.

I explore, define, interpret, make sense of the world around me with my tools and materials. They take me further than thinking, they release me from linear, logically binding stream of reasoning, and in the process I discover deeper, vaster truths than my logical brain would be capable of.

Art as ‘alchemy of emotion’ is completely different from art as ‘therapy’. The former is concerned with product, the latter is concerned with process. I am concerned with the product, the end result, what is born out of the process. For me, if the process is successful, the end result – the product – shows it.

The process itself is in fact most often far from therapeutic for me. Very often it is the exact opposite, which sometimes makes me wonder why I put myself through such agonising process. But I’ve began and completed the alchemical journey of creating a piece so many times by now that I know the exact landscape I need to traverse.

There always comes a point in the journey, where it would be safest to stop, announce that particular point as the destination and pretend there is no unknown, nothing beyond the horizon to explore, no need to push myself further. And that is the crucial point, the reason why I embark on this process time and again: making a leap into the unknown means entering into a dynamic dialogue with the work at hand, questioning, balancing, being willing to try out directions that the work itself suggests to me.

The treasures beyond that horizon, the unknown that even my imagination doesn’t reach by itself is where the excitement is for me, because I have learned to trust that the work eventually comes together if I just listen to it and follow. I get to discover creative solutions with my tools and materials that are beyond my own imagination. For me, that’s magical.

Why then, would there be a need to show everything that goes on before the book is finally complete, the stages of making, handling the materials, making the templates, all structural aspects… If nothing else, it could help in understanding how long time it takes to make a bespoke book, which might be a revelation to some who are not involved in making bespoke books. Yet it’s clear to me how far removed single process snaps are from the final book they’re leading to. The measuring, cutting, gluing, measuring again… Someone said that “writing a novel is just re-arranging the words of a dictionary”. Similarly,  simply put, bookbinding is just cutting and gluing materials in various ways… But the thought process behind it all, or rather, the process of “feeling” my way through to a completed book, I haven’t found a way to take snaps of that. For any artist, that’s the invisible tool that in the end brings all the general measuring and cutting to life. I guess the ultimate process snap for me would be of that particular “process of feeling”. And that tool is as of yet, invisible.

Contributing artists post work that may or may not be connected with what has preceded it. Threads of meaning, style, associations etc. are thus suggested, grow, interweave, fade and die… only to be revived possibly later. Unintended connections and associations may also be suggested as the collective piece develops. It is up to the viewer to decide what and where such threads may reside within the resulting “matrix”. This could be termed “the beholder’s share”.

I have been part of Artless for a while now, and find it one of the most inspiring ways to quickly inject some creativity into each day. It keeps my artist brain ticking, and it’s fascinating to follow the visual “conversations” that form between images. Each image belongs to a thread on Artless, so here my images are out of the context in which they appear there – but I thought to include some of them and invite you over to see the whole project.