artwork – Page 5 – Tales of Creative Compassion

Judith Braun

Today I present to you Judith Braun, who makes lots of different types of art, but caught my eye with her wall “fingerings.” They are too simple, dramatic, and beautiful to be real, certainly to be charcoal or graphite fingerprints on a white wall. Still, there they are in all their magnificent glory, because an artist touched that wall.

Judith Braun is one of those artists that I admire because she is willing to say, do, and be things that I am too afraid to say, do, or be. One of her museum pieces is entitled, “Without Pleasure All We’d Have is a Bunch of Stuff Vibrating.” I love that.

My apologies for how my side bar interrupts this beautiful artwork. I’d continue to try to fix it, but I’d like to write some fiction today. You can click on the image to see it in its purer form.

Sebahat Cetinkaya

I’m always looking for new ideas for my crochet hats, and I stumbled into some of Sebahat Cetinkaya’s work and could not stop looking at it. Here is the image that first caught my eye.

Although this is nothing like what I do with crochet, I was struck with this overwhelming feeling that I want to do that. I do not usually feel that way about art, usually I’m so stunned that anyone can do that. This piece is no less stunning than the other things I’ve seen, rather it is so beautiful in a way that feels native to me. I want to learn to do that.

Sebahat Cetinkaya doesn’t have her own website, but she and her children have an amazing etsy store that you could check out here.

This is a great article on Cetinkaya’s creative process and history (super interesting stuff)

Finally, this is a short video of her and her daughter which makes me feel all warm and gooey inside. Pretty sure that’s what it’s trying to do, but I like it anyway.

Koto Bolofo

I have finally submitted to Pinterest, and it is even more amazing than I’d heard. Usually when I hear someone reference Pinterest, it has to do with some super-perfect Martha Stewart-y creation that I wouldn’t have spent time or thought on. They are usually very cool super-perfect things, but still. No one told me that there are immeasurable stores of mind-blowing artwork on Pinterest (or if they did I didn’t believe them). It is phenomenal, and I may never do any actual work again. After spending almost my entire weekend on Pinterest, here is one of my favorite finds.

This is a photograph taken by Koto Bolofo, a self-trained photographer from South Africa. He has many stunning images, but this is my favorite. Every time I look at it I’m struck by something different about it, and I have spent outrageous spans of time just staring at it. Enjoy.

Tug and Pull

Among the artists that I know who are trying to be professional (in the sense that we’d like to be paid for our work, not in the sense that we wear power suits or use words like “synergy”), there is a constant tug and pull between creating new work and marketing already created work. There are times when it is much easier to focus on “working on my work” (thank you, King Missile) in a dark room where no one can see me. Other times, I’d much rather putter away my working time sending e-mails, going to open mics, and furiously networking rather than start a long stare-down with a blank page.

Why is it that it always seems like the right thing to do is the thing I don’t want to do right now? Is that stoic-type thinking, or just work avoidance?