A week ago my Advanced Design class gathered and shared their experiences based on the general research and homework assignment outcomes. A clear realization emerged as each person openly presented their individual material. Each person had fully embraced the challenges presented and were clearly making great progress in designing for future work.

The pictures I made and subsequently accidentally erased could not have told the story that follows. Thank you to Wendy Parsons of Parsons-Dietrich Pottery in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. for sharing her insights and process as a guest blogger today.

Up Against it by Wendy Parsons

I know I am not the only one to suffer an artist’s block. But it took me by surprise. For a year I have had eight clay life size sculptural heads sitting in my studio half finished. I just could not figure out how I was going to complete and present them. And so they sat. I turned to my usual books for inspiration. I talked to fellow artists and still I was stuck.

A solution came from an unexpected source. I have been taking Anna’s advanced design class for my production pottery work. (And by the way it has been fantastic for that area of my practice too.) But it was this class that presented the breakthrough in my sculptural pieces.

In the class we were to choose an artist or architect whose work we admired and use him/her as our primary source as we worked through the home work assignments.  What things excited us about our inspirational source?  Was it the color, the use of symbolism, the strong organic lines? Each home work assignment built upon the last one as we moved through the process. Homing in on small areas of our artists work we created triskeles, color studies, and drawings. What similarities did we notice about the areas that attracted us? Why?

My architect of choice was Antoni Gaudi. But after working with him for awhile I decided to include three more artists to explore. Why was I attracted to them? What was speaking to me about their work?  They seemed so diverse how was this exploration ever going to get me where I wanted to go?  I followed Anna’s exercises with each artist and then drew a circle in the center of a large sheet of paper. In that circle I put my name. I made four more circles around my central one.  Within each of the circles I put the name of one of the four artists. Then I added spokes from the artist circles and wrote in words on each spoke that described what excited me about that artist while keeping the portraits in mind. Then I drew spokes from my central circle to the words that I felt really represented me and my portrait work.  Voila, a list of key words describing my aspirations in my sculptures.  From one artist I got the colors I wanted use, from another I got the lines I had in mind, from another I got the mood and from the fourth I got the texture.

This was a great way for me to figure out exactly who I am as an artist and where I wanted to take the portraits. I am so excited that I am going full tilt and should soon have the pieces ready to go. But even more exciting for me is that I now have a means of moving through blocks. I like to keep working and not just sit there waiting for inspiration. Now I can. Thanks Anna!

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Thank you, Wendy for sharing your personal approach of mind mapping to work through a creative block.

09 Mar This entry was published on March 9, 2014 at 7:40 pm. It’s filed under Art, Creativity Update, Design, Guest Blogger, Journaling, Nature photography and tagged Advanced design clases from my studio, Advanced Design Classes from my studio, close up photography, mind-mapping to break through artist's block, overcoming creative blocks, Parsons-Dietrich Pottery, Wendy Parsons. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.