10.11.06
Posted in art nun, jewelrymaking, shiny at 8:16 pm by Hanne Blank
I finished a project today, my first foray into self-taught jewelrymaking. I wanted a necklace for La Dia de los Muertos, but couldn’t find anything I both liked and could afford. So I figured I’d just have to learn how to make myself something suitably noisy and skull-festooned.
So I did.
It’s called Santa Muerte (click here for an explanation of what Santa Muerte is); the materials are copper-core silver wire, base metal wire, and beads made out of plastic, carved lacquer, glass, bone, and ceramic.
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10.09.06
Posted in art nun, writing at 8:16 pm by Hanne Blank
One of the key lessons of the last 10 years of my life has been to learn this:
If you don’t — yet, or still, or ever — possess the skills to do an elegantly refined, utterly seamless, effortlessly virtuosic job of something or other, choose projects whose aesthetics will benefit from the enthusiastic, glad-hearted workmanlike clunkitude of which you are capable. You will be far happier and feel much more successful if you are not trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, when in fact it may be a very serviceable and attractive sow’s ear.
Possibly you are devastated to discover that you are not a natural-born silk purser, but merely a sow’s earmeister. There is no use crying over it. If sow’s ears are what you’re good at, then do the best sow’s ears you possibly can. Perhaps you can learn silk pursery, perhaps not. There’s no reason you shouldn’t try. With talent and application maybe one day you will be able to do silk purses as beautifully and gracefully as you can do sow’s ears right now. But if you can do sow’s ears wonderfully right this very minute, then do them, by God, and if you can do them with a glad heart, so much the better for you and for them.
Furthermore, if you have done your sow’s ears — whatever they may be — to the absolute top of your bent, and done the very best you could do with what you had to work with at the time, the worst thing that anyone can tell you is that they didn’t like the way you did it. But that’s just an opinion, whereas what you have is a fait accompli. Having opinions about how the job could have been done differently is fine, but actually getting it done? That’s priceless.
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10.01.06
Posted in art nun, writing at 8:09 am by Hanne Blank
It’s been in the works for a while: I’m an Art Nun this month. Supposed to be getting a draft of a book done by Halloween, basically. I’ve got 6 pages so far, plus some sketches and some notes.
Wish me luck, in other words.
And for those of you who will be observing Yom Kippur: may you have an easy fast and may you be inscribed in the Book of Life in indelible ink.
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