The anonymous little cartoon, above, made the rounds on Facebook a while ago. Then recently I saw a post by my friend, Bernard Klevickas, which contained the image you see below (and which I reproduce with his permission). Both feature a desirable area separated from where the viewer is. What I love about Klevickas's third schematic is that he has created a bridge. See how he ripped up a little flap from the visual chaos and used it to cross over to success? Sure it's a metaphor, but the self reliance it expresses is very real.
Since I’ve been producing some rather long posts for Marketing Mondays lately, I thought I’d let these twin images get the point across with a minimum of words and then ask you to comment on these ideas:
1. Professionally speaking, what do you want that’s outside your comfort zone?
2. How are you going get it?
2. How are you going get it?
15 comments:
I recognized the cartoon immediately! I have it starred in my Google REader for inspiration. :) This looks copied or an alternate version from Jessica Hagy http://thisisindexed.com/2010/11/stretching-is-good-stuff/ (oddly it still looks like her handwriting).
Just the challenge I needed to hear this morning, Joanne.
Thanks.
Tina: Thanks for identifying the source of the cartoon. I like it even more knowing who made it.
Ken: So, what's ourside your comfort zone? And how are you going to get it?
I'm not quite ready to articulate it, but I'm thinking about it very seriously...
Sorry for seeming mysterious-- that's not my intention-- I just wanted to thank you for your post, sorry if I'm not contributing my own answer right now.
i love your blog, Joanna!!
Gosh Joanne, you are asking us to expose our vulnerabilities! It's hard to know where to begin. . . . the challenge of getting the work out there or the anguish of reaching for new places in the work itself.
Not feeling so courageous today, so I'll limit my comments to what goes on in the studio. One thing that is consistently difficult is letting myself take the kind of risks that lead to breakthroughs in the work--the magic. When I do arrive at those wonderful moments, it has often been an emotionally destructive process. I keep telling myself I have to find a better way to get there. . . .
How am I going to get there? By scheduling in more playtime in the studio. And not running away from playing when the magic doesn't happen quickly. So my plan is to be more disciplined about allowing for open-ended bumbling around. I'll keep you posted on my efforts.
Joanne: I find that the bigger the mess I make, the farther from the comfort zone I have gone. Of course, when I stop to consider the mess, I am back in the comfort zone. I have found this to be particularly true in recent work in monoprinting following the fabulous class I took with David A Clark.
I need to go waaay outside my comfort zone. Went to school, got my MFA in painting. I did narrative paintings. Expressionistic with a touch of Surrealism. Taught painting. Then I fell in love with assemblage and showed only one time. I felt like I had to re-emerge because I was known as a painter (regionally). Now, I want to get back into painting but entirely non-representationally. I still love assemblage and want to continue with that, too. I"m not a young emerging artist. I feel like people may consider me a flake but all of the art that is coming is far from the art of a decade ago. So I make my art but am not pushing to show it. The economy and also the "re-emergence". Definitely outside of my comfort zone!
A very timely post. This year I'm working on finding ways to support myself without a day job: looking for more freelance work; doing more networking and self promotion; applying for more grants and trying to find commercial opportunities for sale. But that's not what I really consider "stepping out of my comfort zone"--it's rethinking my definition of success, and that is very uncomfortable indeed.
I've been thinking about this post since yesterday and it occurs to me that it's more complicated for me than I thought at first. I don't search out areas outside my comfort zone: I find that most of my life and art practice seem uncomfortable a lot of the time. I think that sometimes I actually am looking consciously for comfort so that I have the "juice" to then take up whatever challenges come my way. In my studio, I work best out of a feeling of confidence, in order to go into unknown territory. In my career, I seem to see what comes up and then try and rise to the occasion. Something that combines the two is a project in the summer that fell in my lap. It will entail creating a room-size installation, and so making a model for the first time and then allowing myself the open-mind to play in it is new and uncomfortable. Great post, Joanne!
Thanks, everyone, for responding. Since you have bared some, if not all, allow me to do the same. The leap required to get from the Comfort Zone to the magic is the thing, whether it's a leap to working larger, showing more widely, taking my painting in a new direction.
That's why I like Bernard's bridge so much. With that little gesture--it's a conceptual bridge, after all--I'm reminded that you just have to cross it conceptually. It's not a leap. It's just a crossing to see what's on the other side--reconnaissance--to see if you like it there, and if in fact that's where the magic, or success, really does happen. Because it's a conceptual crossing, you can always go back to the comfort zone if you want to. Or cross a different conceptual bridge to somewhere else.
But you know, I think, at least for me, it's not a conceptual leap as much as an intuitive one - it's a mysterious place that you get to before the leap, that opens up through surrender. I have to let go of things that I might have clutched at before, and only then is there some magic. I might have to work really hard up till that point, with nothing much exciting to show for it. Then sometimes I push through to the other side, but I never can control it.
This is all re studio process...
To paint full time--allow this, live my life as my own, my time as my own--even if I choose to hit deadlines every day.
To unstintingly reach in the work, which would mean face failures and advances with equinamity and enough discernment to recognize both for what they are.
The conceptual bridge is crossing fears about lack that lead to over control, whether it's too firm an idea about what things should look like, or overzealousness about the career at the expense of the work. Easier said than done but necessary.
Focus, in a word.
This is a prayer. Thank you for making the space.
Sorry if this offends, but to me it is very graphic and looks to me like you have to have balls. Not literally, of course, because I am a girl, But I'm sure you know what I mean. Sort of a multi-gender empowerment message.
I agree with Karen Schifano that when it comes to making artwork, the conceptual bridge for me is made at least in equal parts conscious thought and intuition. Sometimes it's almost all intuition.
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