I
couldn't decide what to write about for this month's Art Bead Scene Carnival post. Originally, I thought that I'd write about beadweaving and how I combined it with some favorite lampworked art beads, since beadweaving is a much bigger time commitment than stringing. Then I thought I'd write about my favorite bead artists and their years of commitment to their craft. And then I thought I'd write about commitment to a design idea, how sometimes staying true to an original sketch is not necessarily the best course of action.
Obviously, I have some commitment issues.
In her book Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg calls this "monkey mind." Here's her description:
You've always wanted to be a writer but instead you decide you should become a health care worker. You go to school for four years. You get a degree in social work. You are at your first day of your new job, listening to an orientation, and you realize you really did want to be a writer. You quit your job, go to the library with a notebook and begin page one of the great American novel. You are halfway through page one when you decide it is too hard to be a writer. You want to open a café so writers can come in . . .
Does that sound familiar? I realized that I've been playing "monkey mind" with beadmaking, dabbling in every new technique that comes out. PMC (precious metal clay) has been the one constant. I took my first PMC class back in the late 1990s or early 2000s and loved it. Every year or so since, I've taken another class that has some PMC connection: image transfer and PMC, dichroic glass and PMC, resin and PMC . . .
I love working with PMC, but I can't seem to commit to it. I have never used this material outside of a class and I can easily come up with a number of reasons why I haven't pursued it wholeheartedly: It's too expensive. I don't own a kiln. I don't have time. What if nothing I make turns out?
I finally realized that none of these excuses matter. If I'm ever going to get good at using this material, I need to make a commitment to working with it. So I placed an order for PMC to play with on my own and found a local place that will fire my pieces for a fee. I have a page of sketches of possible designs so I can't use "I don't know what to make" as an excuse once the clay arrives.
It may not be a commitment, but it's a start.
About the Photos: The rabbit pendant was created in my recent image transfer class with Sherri Haab. The purple dichroic pendant was my first experience using PMC in a syringe. The seashell pendant was my first PMC project. There was no assignment for that class, other than "make something."