Studio Friday: Seven Deadly Sins (Pride)

Number 7: What feeds your desire to feel that you are more important or attractive or better or more special than others? How does this excessive feeling of pride feed your Ego and distort your reality? How does its shadow become your downfall? Is there a way that you see towards a healthier way of being?

My first thought was that Pride is not a big issue for me. I take pride in my work, so I try to do a good job. I'm proud of my accomplishments, but I try not to brag about them too much.

I think where my pride really injures me is when it comes to asking for help. I've always been proud of my independence. Since I never met "Mr. Right", I learned to do many of the things my friends always had their husbands do, and felt really proud of that. The unfortunate consequence was that when I met with something that was too much for me to do it was nearly impossible for me to humble myself and ask for help from my friends. I thought it would puncture my aura of the-woman-who-can-do-it-all. I've mellowed a bit over the years, and now that I have a tricky back, I have the ideal excuse to ask for help.

I want to thank Tine for coming up with this Deadly Sins series. Even though I came in at the third or fourth one it's been a worthwhile project for me to re-examine my motives for some of the things I do. It coincided nicely with my reading of "Hooked!", the collection of Buddhist writings on greed and desire. I read something yesterday which is worth considering: The Seven Deadly Sins only become deadly when they become indulgences.

Studio Friday: Seven Deadly Sins (Envy)

Challenge #6: What do you desire that you are lacking and someone else has? If you could have it would you really want it or is it just a notion? How come you want to have it? What can you do to still that desire so that there is no need to be envious of any thing or anybody?

How do I envy? Let me count the ways....

This is a hard one to write about. I could do a humorous take-off on greed and sloth, but I can't find a way to mitigate the deadliness of envy.

The enviousness I see myself feeling repeatedly and most often have to do with health and time. I don't think a day goes by without me thinking about someone who is in better straits in these areas and wishing I was not in the shape I'm in. My health issues are twofold: physical and mental. I have severe anemia, which limits the amount of energy I have to expend on projects; and a bad back, which limits the length of time I can spend standing or sitting in certain positions. Mentally, I suffer from lifelong chronic depression. The medication I take to alleviate the symptoms tends to block my creativity. I so often wish I could be like "normal" people, that I could work ten hours instead of six without feeling exhausted, that I didn't have to fight medication as well as the usual mental blocks to creativity. As for time, it seems there's never enough of it. I spend almost two hours a day commuting to work, which seems like such a waste. Of course when I have the time I don't have enough energy to fully take advantage of it. If I had the energy I probably wouldn't appreciate it.

In Buddhist thought, desire is often tied to the suffering we experience in life, and desire is one of the key words of the definition of envy. I've been reading Hooked!, a collection of essays on desire and the urge to consume, and the solution proscribed to combat desire is to just let go of it. One writer calls it "Freedom through Non-clinging." If you cling to your desire, or to your envy, you'll inevitably be unhappy. I'm trying to apply the idea to my own urge to consume, and now to my envy.

Greed Revisited

I think I spoke much too lightly about Greed on Studio Friday a few weeks back. I got two new books from Amazon the other day and they are wreaking havoc with my psyche.

The first book was this glorious Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin that is fully of scrumptious ATC's and is making me crave a bunch of new art supplies so I can try out some of the techniques she describes. This has made me realize some new things about Greed. I don't just like to hoard my little stamp collection; I like to hoard all kinds of things. I love to pore over books, especially how-to and art books, and I love to buy new art supplies. So today I'm here at work, all alone, just me and my Greed. There wasn't much for me to do today when I clocked in, but I feel like I should stay at least long enough to pay for the gas that got me here. After I finished my few projects, I spent a little time searching for some supplies mentioned in this book. I had been wanting to add a little luminescence to some of my pieces and the Lumiere metallic paints by Jacquard and a Krylon metallic leafing pen seemed like good possibilities. I found both items at ArtSuppliesOnline. The price isn't the lowest but they are offering Free Shipping to new customers until May 31, 2007, which makes their supplies a good deal. I just had to place an order.


Here's the ugly side of this lovely story. The other book I got last week was Hooked!, a collection of Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume. It was easy to be greedy far far away from the cover of this book, but I know it will be staring me in the face when I get home. The bits I've read are so logical, so Sensible, I don't know why I want to choose to ignore them. The best I can say to myself right now is that I will do my best to use the supplies I purchase, much as I use the nails or drywall compound or trowel I bought to work on repairs for the house. The greed seems to come from my internal gushing over lovely supplies and imagining a roomful of them at my beck and call. It's not the purchase of the items that's greed; it's the overwhelming desire to possess them. The idea that struck me most in the chapter I was reading was that Freedom in your life comes from Not Clinging - to things, to people, to ideas. I wonder how it can help me with my art?

Studio Friday: Seven Deadly Sins (Wrath)

Challenge #5: Wrath. Anger. Hatred. Prejudice. Discrim- ination. Not...good. How does it show up every now and then in your studio? Do you break things just because you are in its grip? Why? Do you smash your last creation and destroy it? How do you deal with it?

I'm rarely angry because of my art. Maybe it's because my studio is my "happy" place.

I think anger mostly appears in my studio after it has lost its brute force. In its aftermath I'm able to think through matters more clearly: to masticate my thoughts before spitting them out. I may rant about my dissatisfaction with politics, or social situations, or corporate stupidity in my blog, but I try to couple my anger with humor. It helps keep me sane.

I don't usually bring anger into the studio because my anger doesn't usually foster a creative atmosphere. I remember the outrage I felt at the treatment of the New Orleans citizens stranded in the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina. I tried to channel my anger into a collage and became frustrated because it didn't do much to alleviate my outrage. I felt less anger but more hopelessness.

The photo above is one of the few times a satisfactory creation came from the midst of anger. About five years ago my office was working ten hours a day seven days a week trying to meet impossible deadlines. After six weeks without a day off most of us were very tired and very angry. A co-worker suggested we all create a piece of art express our feelings. I created a digital collage with a scene from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" to depict our daily drudgery and used Jose Guadalupe Posada's portrayal of the infamous General Huerta as a representation of our company's CEO, who seemed to be the only one profiting from our labors. That one felt really good.

Studio Friday: Seven Deadly Sins (Sloth)

Challenge #4: "How do you fail to utilize your gift and talents? How do you feel at those moments? Are you unwilling to act? Is it that you are afraid? What is really going on? How can a few simple steps change you? What do you need for that to happen?"

I am woman: hear me snore! Yes, it's the deadly sound of sloth at my house. I'm guilty of slacking more often than I like to think about.

Look at this corner of my workspace. It's a fair representation of what seems like my whole life these days. My desk, where I delayed doing my taxes, and tend to put off paying bills, doesn't look much better than this. Stacks of art stuff have crept onto the kitchen table and into my bedroom and sitting area. We've packed a few boxes of extras to donate to charity, but they are likewise scattered about. I like to use the excuse that it's because we moved into a smaller house, that I haven't unpacked and found everything yet, or that things are continually shifting locations because we're renovating. Those things are all true, but it's been four months and it hardly seems things are any better now than they were in December.

I'm overwhelmed by projects pulling me in all directions. I'll walk in, look at the mess, and stand transfixed until I throw my hands up in despair and walk away; or I'll rummage through the piles until I find enough interesting pieces to create "accidental" art. The act of rummaging results in more stuff piling up and the mess gets worse.

I think the trick is not to let myself become overwhelmed. Something I read a while back said if you looked at a pile of food, which was all the food you were going to be eating for the rest of your life, you'd go crazy trying to figure out how you were going to eat it all; but you don't have to eat it all at once. You're going to be eating it one bite at a time, one meal at a time. I'm trying to apply that parable to my messy house. One paper at a time, one pile at a time. I tried this yesterday and was amazed at how far just a little bit of organizing and rearranging went to clear up our living space.

My own workspace still has a ways to go.

new project

I decided that participating in some challenges from other bloggers might be a good way to spark my creativity. I found Studio Friday from tine sparkles which is a weekly challenge related to your personal workspace. The topic this week is "Greed."

Here's my take on Greed. I love the miniature art of stamps and matchbox covers. I think it stems from a childhood phase of stamp collecting. I have kraft envelopes full of stamps that I've been acquiring for many many years and a while back I started acquiring matchbox art. I love looking through my collection which I usually do on the pretense that I'm going to use some stamps in a collage. (Stamps are copyright free, after all.) Then I decide the stamps are too pretty to be taken out of their "natural" environment (my desk drawer). Lately I've managed to use a few stamps in projects and it hasn't hurt, so I hope to continue the trend.




Here's the third and last page I did with my "little princess" pic. This time I covered the stark black and white Asian written characters with a thin coat of white gesso, which softened them but still let them show through. It also added some substance to the page I used a few pieces of fabric in addition to the paper cutouts to add a different kind of texture. I was really happy with the fabric bits although the scan doesn't reproduce the texture very well.

After doing 3 pages with this image I ran out of ideas for it. That was one of the things that prompted me to start looking for some challenges from other bloggers. I sometimes do better when I have a deadline!