a creative reset: lessons from a month of art

Jul 31

I've been experiencing a bit of a creative roadblock lately. I've struggled to prioritize time to make art, instead filling my days with administrative tasks or finishing projects for others. When I did carve out time to create, I felt out of practice and awkward doing something that usually feels so effortless. When I pushed through those feelings and actually made something, I saw everything I created as an echo of something I’ve already made. Was I out of ideas? This opened the floodgates of doubt and discomfort, and eventually, I avoided making anything altogether.

I want to be clear—I still love creating things with my hands. This isn't about losing my passion for art. I also believe it's common to go through different creative seasons. Some seasons are less productive outwardly but are rich with internal activity. This hasn't been one of those times. This roadblock feels self-imposed, but I haven’t been able to identify its source.

So, I decided to make art anyway. So what if I repeated myself or disliked the outcome? I wanted to reconnect with the joy of making, separate from financial pressures or the need to produce a "meaningful" body of work.

June is a slower month for me, so I intentionally protected that time from last-minute projects. Initially, I doubted I had enough ideas for a full month, so I aimed to create every day for a week, even if just for an hour. I also wanted accountability, so I shared my progress on Instagram, finished or not, successful or not. Here are the pieces I made. Click on the images to learn more about the process or materials. Read on to see what I learned from this experience.

Early in the process, I made a batch of my production jewelry to “complete” making something for the day, but halfway through, I questioned if it counted. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did it meet the spirit of the challenge? No. What was the difference then?

I realized the sense of satisfaction from productivity and the excitement of a new creative idea are confusingly similar for me. The differences are subtle. This realization led to a sub-challenge: expand my emotional vocabulary for joyful making. Notice when something stops feeling fun and be curious why.

Inspiration:

I feared I had a finite amount of ideas and was quickly approaching, if not already past, my last idea. Despite it feeling silly, I found I was "saving" ideas for when I had better skills or more time. These saved ideas weren’t helping and instead were creating a bit of a bottleneck. It was challenging for me to think of new ideas when there were so many I was putting on hold. Once I pushed myself to make them (or in some cases discard them) I found more ideas!

Authenticity:

I felt I could only share work online that had a cohesive look, material, or concept. While creating a cohesive body of work can help communicate a collection’s story or meaning, especially for galleries or new jewelry collections, sharing online can be different. Like a gallery, social media can be a place where you showcase your finished pieces to people who you may never meet. That said, it can also be a place where you gather and save inspiration, document progress and failures, commiserate, get feedback from peers, and socialize. It was confusing what role I was showing up as. Interestingly, as I shared more frequently, the pressure to be one or the other relaxed.

Decisions:

I prematurely stopped working on a piece because I feared I would mess it up irrevocably and waste all the time I’ve put in. Logically, I know some of my favorite techniques came from mistakes or the decisions made after a mistake was made. But the fear of doing something wrong can still be paralyzing. (To note: There are two kinds of “fear of messing up” moments. The helpful kind reminds you to eat and take breaks, the unhelpful kind tells you you aren’t good enough to take the next step.) I feel like I’ve learned this one before, but I think I was due for a re-up.

Pressure:

I felt I needed to top my last piece or else, what’s the point? Occasionally, I recognize I’ve made something better than I thought I was capable of. For a split second, I can see what I’ve made as if I didn’t make it. I don’t see what it could have been or the mistakes. When that happens, it's a brief but shining moment. However, it then raises the bar unrealistically high for the next piece. My worst competitor is myself.

Sustainability:

I sometimes dream of an "Artist’s life" where I only make art. In this fantasy, I don’t have to worry about money inflow and someone else does my bookkeeping and responds to emails. After two weeks of living my fantasy, my hands were tired, and I craved a day of mindless admin tasks. I love making art, but I also love working on curriculum. I also love teaching. I also love popping on a TV series and making my production jewelry all day. I also am starting to love the administrative side of running my own business. I think the fantasy was there to remind me that I was out of balance and not making enough art.

I’m excited about this challenge and hope to integrate many of its lessons into my daily practice. Inevitably, I'll need to relearn some or face new challenges, so I plan to make this a summer tradition to see how things evolve.

If you're considering a similar challenge, set yourself up for success.

Time:

I could make once a day work, but I took the weekends off. Some days I could only work for 30 minutes, some days I had the whole day. Sometimes things came up, and I couldn’t make anything. It didn’t ruin anything, I just started back up the next day. Embrace your constraints and work within them. Feeling pressure can stifle creativity. Think of ways to remove pressure.

Duration:

I set out to make for a week. It was fun, so I added another week. I could have stopped there, but I wanted to see what a more sustainable routine would look like and kept it going with a more relaxed routine.

Documenting:

I highly recommend documenting every day that you make. You don’t have to share it publicly unless you think it could help with accountability. Even sharing it with one person can be motivating. I think this is the biggest tool I will bring forward from this experience. I found so much value in the thoughts that came up after looking at an image of what I just made. It really helped me see what I worked on objectively. It doesn’t have to be the best camera; I used my phone and my notes app.