Places as Creative Inspiration

Working, visiting, or living in a unique and beautiful space can enrich life as well as inspire creativity.

 

Recently I had the good fortune to be invited to tour a geodesic dome home in another city. It was an amazing experience.

Since then, it’s made me remember that I’ve been interested in distinctive architecture since I was in high school and did a report about the future using book and magazine images. One school library book was about Arcosanti, a community in Arizona, which had blueprints for a distinct city community. 

 

 

A few years later I started working full-time in a triangular, futuristic building. Although the insurance agency had a break room, I often ate lunch downstairs on the ground level atrium that had tables, chairs, and plants. I would happily read, write, or sketch in this special space. I tried to capture the interesting interior views but neither my drawings nor old photos could do it justice.

My second job was also in an interesting bank and office building. Inside was an open rectangular area lined with four floors of offices. The main level had a sitting area with plants and a small food establishment. I loved taking breaks and lunches there, also.

What’s interesting is that when both businesses re-located, I did not stay too long afterward before getting a new job. Back then, my creative focus was fiction writing and I frequently needed to escape from company lunch rooms and found the new structures somewhat ugly and uninspiring with no beautiful open areas,

 

My current position is situated on a beautiful, small campus. Working here over three decades, I’ve seen inspirational buildings and landscapes. But I have also witnessed many of them demolished. There was once a delightful walking trail with open skies, animals, wild flowers, trees, and shrubs. I would stroll the area in all seasons and all weather, often capturing memorable images. It was a nature break that gave my legs a stretch and my mind and spirit solace. It no longer exists.

In my travels, I have visited many beautiful structures.

Portmeirion in Wales holds many diverse buildings that were rescued and moved to form a unique little village. It has a hotel and cottages to rent.

 

New Mexico, a place where my husband and I dreamed of moving, holds beautiful Native American community pueblos. There is also the innovative Earthships in Taos, which we visited in 1998.

 

There are ascetic beehive huts in western Ireland that sheltered ancient monks. And the entrance to the Cliffs of Moher is built into the earth.

 

When our city built a large new main public library, I volunteered to lead tours through it on opening day. It’s a large, open, colorful space that celebrates books and learning. 

Before we moved, I was very interested in alternative housing and read various books about underground, adobe, dome, thick stone, and straw bale homes. Using a blank sketchbook, I created a New Home Book. Again, I clipped magazine and online images and created a dream book of ideas and inspiration. I even used an old photo from Life magazine showing the inside of a dome home.

Of course, my husband and I were not rich so we ended up getting a traditional house. But, it was not like anything either of us had lived in before. There were high ceilings with two clerestory windows in the living room. He dubbed our new digs “The Observatory” because we could watch sunlight move during the day and see the moon rise during the night. 

 

One bedroom was set up as my writing room. Back then, the area had not been built up yet. Outside the window was a field where I saw deer and wildflowers as well as beautiful oak tree that I named “Madame Oak.” I began photographing beautiful sunsets and aligning furniture to observe them.

I began reading newspaper listings for gallery and art exhibits and started viewing local as well as famous paintings. I took a simple continuing education class, an introduction to acrylic painting, which altered my ideas and perspectives.

 So, our dwelling began to affect me and shifted my creative outlet from writing to painting. Reading art blogs, I became curious about bookbinding, took classes, and learned to make journals to hold experiments in my expanding visual vocabulary. There is always something new to learn and I became interested in other expressions such as gel printmaking.

Marcel Proust said, “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

I understand what he’s saying. But for me, visiting new landscapes, living or working in beautiful and inspiring places has led to many new creative discoveries. Amazing places stir my imagination and revives my spirit. And has changed my life.

The Long Road Creating The Comfort Journal

 

In the hot and unbearable Summer of 2023, I thought of making a Comfort Journal using already painted papers and fabrics.

 

Instead of binding the book and then working in and on the pages, I left them loose and worked on each page spread at a time. This made for a lot of signatures of varying thicknesses. I had planned on using 6” x 6” canvas boards and using my usual sewn-over-tapes binding method. But as the pieces evolved, I thought of using a leather cover and doing a long stitch through the spine. So I cut a thick piece of leather and fused denim from an old pair of jeans inside. But the result felt too bulky and inflexible.

 

My next idea was to use upholstery leather and to leave it unlined. The color combination with the ---teal?—Irish linen thread looked beautiful but before adding a concho closure, it felt too floppy and unstable. Could I could save it by using a leather belt or strap to hold everything together? No, I didn’t like either the look or the feel.

 

So, back to my favorite binding method because the pages needed to be more rigid. Sewing the signatures together would also tighten and compress the spine. To keep the first and last pages as they were, I needed to add end papers [so I would not glue the first and last signatures to the covers]

 

Sewing up the signatures but before gluing the canvas boards, I realized I had forgotten the “tapes”! Would I have to cut away all the Irish linen thread, remove all 10 signatures, and re-sew the whole book again? Could I weave the canvas “tapes” up through the threads of outer spine? It took some doing--using a paint palette knife, jewelry pliers, and lots of patience--but I was able attach the tapes, finish the sewing, and then glue the covers on.

 

Two days of weighing it down, my book press consisting of two heavy volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary, I was happy to see the results. The book held together well.

 

The long and winding road to complete this book made me declare the book complete. But I may yet add a decorative cover of crochet around it, like a book dust jacket.