Plant, tend, harvest, repeat. This mantra was going through my head recently as I tore out the last of our summer beans, which were so prolific this year I had to spend a day canning dilly beans back in July, or face being totally overwhelmed by more beans than me or all of my friends could eat. I'm just learning how to garden in the past couple of seasons. After years of planting a bunch of stuff in my yard that quickly died of neglect, I finally figured out how plants thrived with a bit of attention and consistent watering. It's become my habit to check in on the garden daily and make sure everything is coming along, and I'm rewarded with flowers and good things to eat. In the winter, when the garden is basically fallow and rains take care of the plants that are there, I make plans for next year's garden, and always hope for better results.
Gardening is really not much different than being an artist and running a studio. You come up with your ideas, you run with them for a while and make work, you (hopefully) sell it off or place it in loving homes, and then you start all over again. Plant, tend, harvest, repeat.
Of course there is the fallow period, the time where you are ready for new things, new ideas, new work, but it's not quite there yet. If you're like me, and I tend to think I'm like most artists, I get a bit anxious when I'm in that fallow time. I start copying myself for lack of anything better to do, I question why I'm even an artist, and I have dark thoughts about my longevity as a creator. It's can be a challenging period of time, and I have no quick fixes. I try to feed my brain with inspiring art, get lots of sleep, and don't get too invested in any one thing I may be working on in the studio, but treat it all as practice until I find that vein of gold again. Practice is all we're doing anyway, nothing is really done or final in our work until we can simply no longer make it. What do you think?
Happy Fall!
Whitney
