Happy Holidays from Peggy & Michael

The holiday season is rapidly coming to a crescendo, with Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and of course, the Burning of the Clocks, all crowding into a two week period. But you might not realize that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other ethnic and in some cases, archaic observances that fall precisely in this same window of time. Amaterasu, Beiwe, Brumalia, Chawmos, Deygān, Maidyarem, Dōngzhì, Goru, Hogmanay, Inti Raymi, Junkanoo (John Canoe), Karachun, Koleda, Lá an Dreoilín (Wren day), Lenaia, Lucia, Makara Sankranti, Maruaroa o Takurua, Grianstad an Gheimhridh, Mōdraniht, Mummer's Day, Rozhanitsa, Shab-e Chelleh, Sanghamitta, Saturnalia, Şewy Yelda, Sol Invictus, Soyal, We Tripantu, Zagmuk, Ziemassvētki, to name a few. Whatever festivities and celebrations you have engaged yourself in this season, we hope you are making the most of it, and whatever you do, don't hold back! Many of you who are getting this note have a full subscription to Outside the Lines and will be receiving your regular installment, with Peggy's Progress, a quick preview of the January interview, a link to something special we have found on the web this month, and more on Christmas morning. For those of you who are hanging out in the free list, there is still time to get a full subscription started before the Christmas morning issue. Just go to the Subscribe button below. (There is a small processing delay, so if you wait until Saturday night you might not get the Sunday delivery on time.) And of course, there is still time to get a subscription for a creative person who is special to you before Christmas. A subscription is a very economical gift that keeps on coming every week. We don't have a dedicated way to do gift subscriptions on the Amazon Payments system, but we can easily get around that, so send us an email if you're interested and we'll make it happen. Get your copy of The Element by Sir Ken Robinson We want you to have your own copy of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson. We love this book, and think it will be a great addition to your library. In fact, we want to buy you a copy. There's more information here. In the mean time, here are links to a couple of wonderful TED talks by Sir Ken in case you are not familiar with his work: Schools Kill Creativity, Feb 2006, Monterey CA Bring On the Learning Revolution! Feb 2010, Long Beach CA

contact us Have you got an idea for Outside the lines, or question for us? Drop us a line! Peggy Sonoda peggy@windhook.net Michael Reddell michael@windhook.net PO Box 160 Cambria, CA 93428 See our website for more information about us. Subscribe Subscribe to Outside the Lines to get our interviews delivered to your email box on the first Sunday each month, along with additional emailed articles during the course of the month. Subscribers also get full access to our Member Resource directory. There you will find all of our interviews, articles, and other resources that we provide to subscribers.  Copyright © 2011 Windhook®. All Rights Reserved.

This Week in Outside the Lines

Both of today's articles were inspired by a comment that Randy Stromsoe made in his interview last week. Here's a brief excerpt from what came up in today's installment. Finding Your Audience When we interviewed Randy Stromsoe for last week's installment of OTL, we wrapped up with a question that we ask every time we interview an artist. What would you tell somebody that's just breaking in and trying to make an art career happen? We always get interesting answers to that question, and what Randy had to say was no exception. "I think I'd find what show fits your work. It's easy to get excited if you have an arena where they like your work and you're a celebrity. If I just tried to make it in Cambria or San Luis Obispo, I would have been so frustrated. If I never took a chance and went to the East Coast then my life wouldn't have worked out. You have to find these arenas and so much of it is word of mouth by talking to other artists and looking at their brochures and what work they've pushed before... Some areas sell a lot of what we do. If I go back to Philadelphia to the Museum of Art's Craft Show I have more buyers than anywhere else. They also promoted me more than anywhere else. That show has been really good to me and the people who go to those shows have bought a lot." The natural inclination of most of us is to start small, start local, and build up and out from there. That intuition works for a florist shop or a jeweler or a service business like swimming pool service, dry cleaning, or auto repair. But art is a little different from most other businesses. An artist is working with a product that has very specialized and intangible appeal. There are regional differences in taste and interest, and the general public in most towns has little understanding of the pricing and value of art. Add to this the fact that many of us as artists choose to live where our environment is conducive to our creativity rather than where our natural market is. Windhook, for example, is on the central coast of California in one of the most amazing geographies and climates that we know of. We located here because the creative energy of the place works for us. But San Luis Obispo County is not a major art center. We do have several good art organizations here, and a higher than average concentration of good artists than many places of comparable size. But this does not equate to a local art market strong enough to support all those good artists. Of course this is not to suggest that you ignore your local market... In addition to the rest of the article quoted above, there was a second article in today's installment about the role that galleries and artist's representatives can play in solving the puzzle of finding your natural market. You can get to both of these articles and all the rest of our member resources when you activate your full subscription. We hope you will join us soon! Peggy & Michael  See our website for more information about us.  Copyright © 2011 Windhook®. All Rights Reserved.

Stepping Outside the Lines

Go to Outside the Lines now

At Windhook we are launching a new project that we want you to know about!

Outside the lines is Windhook's email journal about living the creative life. In the first issue each month, we feature an in-depth conversation with someone who's following their creative calling. We talk about the rewards and the challenges, the hurdles they've overcome, and that they still face. We talk to creative people in lots of disciplines with unique personal experiences. These conversations are a great learning tool, illustrating how unique, and also how common to us all the issues are. On the remaining Sundays, we send you articles about various issues common to living the creative life.

Here are just a few of the topics we cover:

• Making the leap from traditional job security to a freelance creative life
• Motivation and resistance—what makes you go and what holds you back
• Making time and space for your work
• Marketing and showing your work
• The business side of the creative life
• Creative ways to make ends meet
• Resources for creativity that we have found on the web and in the world

For starters, take a look at the October and November editions here. And if you subscribe right away you will get all the new postings starting with our interview with silversmith Randy Stromsoe on December 4. Or at least sign up for the free updates to follow our progress.

Report from the back 40

Windhook literally has a back 40 acres, and I took my first hike up there this summer. (I've been pretty busy with the front 18) Here's what I found today.

• Two large trees down across the jeep trail, and numerous smaller branches, all from winter storms. Also a medium small tree down in the fairy circle.
• A bee tree I didn't know about. It has one of the downed trees leaning up against it, and will probably need to have the bees moved to a hive before I start cutting. The bee tree is bringing in bright yellow pollen, whereas the hive I am managing is bringing in greyish pollen. They are within 1500 feet of each other, so this is curious. These two hives must be foraging from extremely localized sources.
• Several new patches of distaff, a noxious thistle that tends to invade and choke grazing land. I clear up whatever I find every year in July before it sets seeds.
• More Italian thistle and bull thistle than ever before. These are not considered problem weeds by ranchers but I would prefer less rather than more. The solution is to get cows on the hills.
• The high spring is running as always. low volume but steady. It will supply a water trough when the cows go in.

So my work is cut out for me. time to tune up the chain saws, take the backhoe off the tractor, find the choke chain and cables and head up the hill to do a little logging. (We get more firewood than we can use just from clearing winter storm damage.)

The Personal Cost of Making Art

A good friend of mine recently asked me this question:
"...do you think that true art (if it could be defined) is only created at great personal cost to the artist? Is a decent into madness usually required? In which case, perhaps Windhook may need an asylum!"

Here, unedited, is the response I gave her. I might have more to say on this later, but this is a pretty good launching point for the subject.

"Madness is not required, but is not uncommon. That's all I will say directly on that, although it might pop up again in the discussion of personal cost.

Suffering and personal cost are a little more complicated. The great personal cost to the artist has many components. Art cannot be reduced to economics. One cannot place a per-hour dollar value on the effort involved in making art. One cannot base one's commitment to make art on how well it will be received, or whether or not the effort will be adequately compensated to justify it. Those who actually practice as artists will almost uniformly agree that it is an obsession. That it is absolutely necessary, whether it pays or not. Most will tell you that they work for pennies per hour. Most do not make a living. Most have endured cold and calculating responses, insults, either intended or otherwise, and have had times when it seemed that no one saw the value in their work. Artists who "make it" are the tip of the iceberg and typically have paid their dues. Often even the successful artist doesn't make a living wage.

All of this is because art does not belong in commerce and cannot be evaluated there. And yet there is no mechanism in this culture to insulate and protect artists from the fact that commerce is the only tangible measure of success, and the only mechanism for survival. If you can't sell it you won't get by.

This situation separates potential artists into several categories. 1.) Those with talent who are not driven enough to walk away from economic stability to do the work. 2.) Those who have the financial means not to have to make that decision. Many of these cannot overcome the other hurdle, which is rejection by the art world. Rejection is usually based as much on unfamiliarity as on lack of merit. 3.) Those who are driven to art no matter what. They will live in poverty and work when no one cares. It is only these who "make it" ... sometimes posthumously.

The high art auction market speaks to the issue of familiarity, as well as to the artificial measure of art that comes from applying the template of commerce to it. Rent the movie "Incognito" or "Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?" or watch this video http://videosift.com/video/The-Mona-Lisa-Curse-Documentary to get a sense of how toxic the infiltration of investment capital into the art market has become.

I could talk about this subject for a lot longer, but I'll come up for air here and wait for your response. The Mona Lisa Curse video is a good place to start, and should be seen before the others probably, which is convenient since it is viewable online."

The stories we tell ourselves

I spent nearly 40 of my nearly 59 years not doing much art. From the age of 14 I knew I was an artist, and that there was no other true path for me to follow. And for all of those years when I was doing not much art, I still knew this thing that was so obvious to me from early adolescence.

So what happened? How did I spend so many good productive years in the prime of my life not doing the thing that was known to me to be my core intention and calling? I spend a little time on this question from time to time, but not too much. I know that I cannot recall those years, and I know that they have shaped who I am, and inform the nature of the art that I am doing today. It's all good.

But a little reflection on the path I have taken, and the choices I have made can be useful. As I have looked back into these artistically sparse periods of my life, I notice that there was a lot of the voice in my head at those times...the voice that tells stories about why things are not possible. And I notice that the stories are not very unique, and not very imaginative.

The stories provide cover for procrastination. I need more money. I don't have enough time. No one appreciates my art (which of course they have not seen because it's still in my head.) I'm too tired at the end of a long day, or a long week. I have to keep this job, which takes up all my time and energy. I have jury duty. The dog ate my ...

These stories have a way of weaseling into our lives even when we think we are making progress. It amazes me to consider that for most of the past 7 years that we have been working on Windhook, I made the excuse that creating Windhook justified not making art. How crazy is that! It has only been in the past year and a half that I have called that little bluff and begun to make and show art in earnest.

There is, of course, a singular reason for all of these stories and devices, but it is a reason we don't like to look at. It is the fear that action will lead to failure. If I put it off, it will not be my downfall. If I keep it in the future, it cannot bring me disappointment. What if I put myself out there and no one appreciates my work? What if no one even notices? Procrastination combines this fear with anticipation to create a rather peculiar little monster, obsessed with a goal but paralyzed against taking steps to achieve it.

The reality is that none of these stories are capable to prevent one from making art. They are sometimes true, but never compelling. If you are clear and conscious about the fears and uncertainties that haunt the creative life, and commit yourself to face these demons head on, art will happen in defiance of all the contrary circumstances.

I know this is true from the experience of the past few years. It takes stepping off the locomotive of future-focus storytelling. It means walking every moment in present conscious action...dealing with what comes, as it comes, rather than telling and listening to stories about what might beset an imaginary future.

Studio 33 revisited

The day I thought I was getting my final inspection, the inspector decided to require some changes to the landings at the doors. He has been walking over these landings since I put them in in November, but I guess it just caught his attention. Oh well. I'm building decks anyway and will just bump my schedule forward to meet his requirements. The only other thing is the fire department final inspection. Studio 33 will be done by the end of May or early June if all goes well.

Studio 33

The modular classroom has been named "Studio 33" because the original door has the number 33 on it. We have basically finished the work under the building permit. The county is requiring that we remove the HVAC unit from the building, since it is permitted as a shop. I guess they were afraid that if it was too comfortable, we would want to live in it. We cannot get the final permit sign-off until the heat pump is removed, and I am trying to find a new home for the HVAC before I take it off the building. Once that is done, we will call for final inspection.

The upgrades to Studio 33 include a half bath, a studio sink, a pair of new windows and a 7' x 7' opening covered by an 8' x 8' barn slider. This big door is to let over-sized items in and out of the studio. We put a 4' wide sliding glass door into the slider so we wouldn't always have to open the big door.

Right now we are working on getting a decent shop floor in the building. Once that is done. we will be ready to set it up for a workshop. We are hoping to have our first workshop over a weekend sometime in the Spring. Watch this space for more on that.

July 2009 udate

We have nearly finished the modifications to the modular building that we got from Cayucos Elementary School. A little more plumbing work, rain gutters, and a paint job are the main things left to do. Once we complete this work, we plan to conduct a workshop there with some of our key supporters and advisers to try to iron out how to get the main construction project back on track.

Currently, the main building project languishes half done without a clear path to financing. We plan to make inquiries with a local bank over the next couple of weeks to see what is possible in this abysmal market. We are not sure at this point if there is a workable path through the maze of traditional options, so we are also trying to find a more creative solution. We have been stuck on high center with this problem for over a year now, and are a little too close to it to see clearly. This weekend we showed the project to friends, one of whom suggested that we should go away for a couple of weeks to clear our heads. Clear, fresh thinking is definitely in order, so if you have any ideas, we are all ears.

Progress!

Earlier this week we got approval from the county to add a 1/2 bath, windows, and an 8 foot door to the modular.

And today PG&E connected the power at Windhook!

We are looking at alternative construction methods for the main building, and the one that has piqued our interest is this one. This is a system approved for use in San Luis Obispo County, and it would be a simple matter to submit the change from conventional framing to the county. The overall cost of this system is significantly lower and the insulating qualities are outstanding. Installation is relatively simple and requires a minimal amount of skilled labor. This is not a done deal yet, but looks very promising.

Utilities, etc.

Here are the latest developments at Windhook.

• We have passed all our inspections to get electricity connected, and are waiting for the PG&E line crew to schedule installation of the meter. That should happen within the next two or three weeks.
• The modular came with a complete wiring system and only needs to be connected at the breaker panel, once we get a meter.
• We are currently working on plans to submit to the county to add a window, a door, and a half bath to the modular. Once all this work is done, we will have a functional wood shop and art studio at Windhook!
• Construction on the primary structures, both house and studio, are on hold while we wait for the market and our construction fund to recover.
• We have planted a dozen assorted varieties of citrus trees in memory of Michael's mother, Joni Reddell, who died of cancer and Alzheimer's complications on October 12. Included are:

Bergamot Orange
Moro Blood Orange
Austrailian Finger Lime
Kafir Lime
Yuzu
Improved Meyers Lemon
Eureka Lemon
Satsuma Mandarin
Clementine Mandarin

• The weather has been unseasonably warm and dry. We have only had about 8 inches of rain so far, which is about 1/3-1/4 of normal. We are expecting rain toward the end of this week, but not enough to catch up. It is shaping up to be a serious drought.
  

baby steps

Little by little, progress continues. The roof of the modular building is sealed up and weather tight, just in time for the inch of rain that came over the weekend. The building is securely attached to its foundation, with seismic hold-downs in place. I have turned my attention to getting electrical service from PG&E. We're hoping to have this done by the time the rains start in earnest. Tasks remaining for the modular are paint, plumbing a utility sink, rain gutters, and a deck. All this should be done before spring.

The foundation for the main house and studios is prepped to withstand weather and prolonged sun, and we have succeeded in getting the county to extend the permits out to June 15, 2010.

Mom is gone

We lost Michael's mom the night of October 12th. She died of cancer but was spared much of the difficulty of that by advanced Alzheimer's disease. This ends a very long chapter of suffering for her and her family, and begins a new chapter of grieving and healing for us all. She was a remarkable woman and will be missed. Her brain was donated to the UCSF Alzheimer's research group.

October update - long over-due!

This update, and our arrival in the blogosphere, are both long overdue.

First, about the blog. This will be our normal method of communication from now on. For now, we are using one of Google's generic formats, but as I get acquainted with it, I'll try to get it looking a little more like the Windhook web site. For now I will continue sending out notes pointing to the latest update, but I suggest that you subscribe to the RSS feed to stay in touch. (there's a link on this page where you can subscribe.)

Now for the update.
It's been a tough summer. To start with, my (Michael) mom was diagnosed with terminal metastatic breast cancer in her spine. This diagnosis is compounded by her advanced Alzheimer's disease. We moved her from Paso Robles to a skilled nursing facility(SNF) with hospice care in Morro Bay, which is about 40 minutes closer to us than the old place. At the same time, we moved my dad into an assisted living place next door to the SNF.

Mom was given less than 6 months back in June. So far, the cancer has not noticably progressed, and her pain is under control. However, her Alzheimer's symptoms have progressed dramatically, and she has reached a place where she cannot complete a sentence and often cannot form intelligible words. Thankfully, she has no frustrations, fears, or discernible levels of pain.

Dad is ok, but distraught over what is happening to his partner of 60 years. Now that they are 5 minutes from where we live, I get to hang out with him a lot. It's a treasure.

As you might have guessed, this development has not exactly sped up the pace of construction at Windhook. But the reality is that it hasn't slowed things down so much either. Two other developments have taken care of that.

On the positive side, construction paused this spring when we got word that one of the local grade schools was planning to dispose of a 960 sf modular classroom in June. We got this building for the cost of the move! But first, we had to get permits, prepare the site, and schedule a building mover, so I dropped everything else and got on it. All that took up the spring months. Once the building arrived, I put it on it's new foundation. We are now one inspection away from completing the modular installation.

On the negative side, the entire world economy came to a grinding halt, dragging our funding into the ditch along with it. We are petitioning the county Supervisors this month to provide a standardized permit extension that would allow us and others in our predicament to keep our construction permits intact while we work our way through this crisis. Without such an extension, our permits would expire in December.

So on the advice of our building inspector, and assuming that the extension will be granted, I am wrapping the plumbing in tar paper to ensure that it doesn't deteriorate in the sunlight while we wait.

Well, that pretty much crams the current status of Windhook development into a nut shell.
I'll be back soon with some thoughts on what all this means.

getting started

Hi everybody. This is the first entry in our new blog. I'll get to meaningful content as soon as I figure out how to make this thing work.
Michael