Goings on in the Night Sky

I'm going to let you follow my progress as I work on my second installment of the planets playing jazz in the night sky, entitled "Midnight at the Moonlight Lounge".

On the first set of 9 paintings, each planet is in its own 24 x 24 inch square. (See website.)

In this work in progress, there are 6 canvases that make up the 6' x 8-3/4' mural. The canvas sizes are based on the Fibanocci numerical sequence of 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc. My canvas sizes are (square) 9, 9, 18, 27, 45, 60 inches.

I had an artist-carpenter-canvas maker build the stretchers because they had to be precise. If the dimensions were off, they wouldn't fit together and I had to have the rectangle (the outside edges) perfect or it would look awful. Lucky for me, this guy is a perfectionist. He had to stretch the canvas around the stretchers so the corners didn't have any bulk. To get these all to fit together, he had to complete the two 9" squares, bolt them together and measure the exact dimension to get his measurement for the 18" square, then bolt the 9s and 18 together and measure to get the dimension for the 27" square and on and on. As these things were getting larger and larger, he took it upon himself to build me an adjustable easel so I can raise and lower the whole unit depending on where I'm painting. I'm glad he thought of that because I didn't and I was beginning to wonder how I was going to paint at the bottom edge.

It's difficult to see everything that is going on in the photo right now, but it will become clearer as I begin to fill it in. Not all of the planets have made an appearance on the canvase yet. Some of them are still deciding where they want to go and how they want to look. Prima donna planets -- who knew?

Idle Time

It's the end of the Labor Day Weekend and the end of "idle time" . . . for now.

Idle time is a necessary time not only for rejuvenation, but also for creativity, so says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. (Good book. He’s explaining creativity to me.)

And, I believe it. I certainly have experienced times of clearer understanding and have had flashes of enlightened thinking over creative problems when I have let go and allowed myself to relax. There is nothing that can compare to a “get-a-way” weekend when you can mentally get away, too.

One of my very favorite ways of enjoying idle time is to bathe my mind in the creativity of good music. Around here, jazz fests are popular over Labor Day Weekend. Man, I love sitting in a park with a couple hundred people having a good time watching a bandstand crammed with jazz musicians whose bodies are totally involved with the music they are making. The music is so unifying. We are all one. It glues our souls together.

I believe idle time, when you are fully focused on something other than your project, allows your problem-solving, rational-thinking, critical-analyzing thoughts to rest, to turn off for a while. It’s like in the movies when the story is building and building and then the violins begin to play and everyone relaxes and the scenery becomes greener, the sky bluer, the leading actors become even better looking and you in the audience feel your muscles, that you didn’t even know were tense, begin to relax. Relax and just be. Be there.

Then, pop, poppity pop. New neurons are firing. Or maybe it’s the old ones, but the corrosion cracked off. Whatever. You’ve got a solution or new path to get to a solution and you feel great.

I love idle time. Vital idle time.