The Red Velvet Lawyer

Working on Your Craft This week, I began discussing some of the ideas in Elizabeth Gilbert's new book:  Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear  (2015). Today, I want to summarize some of her suggestions about doing creative work.  She says: Make things. Then share them with an open heart. You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. Thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence. Simply vow to the Universe to write forever, regardless of the result. Be brave. Grateful. Uncomplaining. Never ask writing to be easy. Ask only that it be interesting. Sneak off and have an affair with your most creative self. Curiosity is the secret.  Curiosity is the is the truth and the way of creative living. Curiosity is the beginning and the end. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of inquisitiveness.

As I read Seth Godin's new book, The Icarus Deception , I kept asking myself: What is my art?  What do I create joyously, diligently, passionately, and with increasingly greater skill and insight? In the early 1970s, my high school  -- University City High -- had one of the most REMARKABLE art departments in all of St. Louis County.  Staffed by three teachers, the program taught painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, and fiber arts. Thirty years later, I still have pieces of art I created at that time: pencil drawings of my boyfriend and the male rhinoceros at the zoo; a bronze cast sculpture of a heavy-bottomed woman; a huge hookah pipe, made of coiled clay, I now use as a deck ornament; a silk screened T-shirt imprinted with an original design; and watercolor landscapes. The program also introduced me to many techniques and materials that I have used fearlessly throughout my life. The course made me a better problem-solver.  About a week ago, I needed to create a "vis