Inspirations: Art and Vulnerability

Photography: Cole Thompson
Current Read: Everything That Can Happen In A Day
App Love: Image Blender
Current Read: How To Steal Like An Artist (Kindle Version)
Phototechnic Love: Shooting B&W in Raw Mode (it's like shooting the world in a vulnerable photographic state)

Music Love: Phosphorescent: Songs for Zula
Waterdeep: Old Stuff (Track: Galeana)

I am in a rather honest mood today.  Sharing my artwork has always made me highly uncomfortable.  Putting myself out there to cyber space 4-6 times a week creatively and artistically is one of the scariest things I do at this point in life.  Creating collages, experimenting with photo projects, telling my story has been an almost daily struggle of choosing to be uncomfortable.  At first this blog was just for people that I know personally, but the audience got wider in January when I networked it with Influence Network, Hellocotton, and Bloglovin.

Everyday I remind myself that vulnerability is the birth place of creativity.  Everyday before I hit that "publish" button, I ask myself, do you really want to do this?  But using this space as a place to practice taking daily risks on vulnerability and creativity, it re-enforces my love for all things beautiful and artful.  Putting myself out there creatively connects me to the other people's words that I read throughout the week through other spaces just like this. It also connects me to my best friends I talk to everyday and friends that live far away that I haven't talked to in years.  This space strangely connects me to every person I have ever had a connection with in every part of my life.  That's scary if you are someone like me.

I have to remind myself as I continue to generate more artwork, writing, and branding opportunities that every opportunity in my life that involved taking a huge risk has landed me so many blessings: meeting some of my best friends, showing my artwork in a big venues, buying a house, landing some great jobs, marrying the coolest person I know.  On the flip side, taking risks has also landed me some life lessons along the way. Failing through vulnerability has helped me find my creative voice. I have failed, failed, failed, failed so many times.  I am learning that the more risks that I take creatively, the more I open myself to failure and success.  But really what I am opening myself up to is finding God's grace in the midst of our creative process as we tell our stories--in the failures and the successes.  As Anne Lamott says "I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us."