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It is an honor to have an art mobile, Black Well, hanging in the Twin Oaks Branch Library. Working with the city of Austin for the past four years has been an experience to cherish. I am ready to do it again, but first, here is a news story on the Library -- Black Well makes an appearance.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/local_news/273561/south-austin-celebrates-opening-of-eco-friendly-library?ap=1&MP4

Twin Oaks Branch Library
Grand Opening
& Black Well Unveiled

The City of Austin Art in Public Places program invites you to the unveiling of its most recently-completed artwork at the Twin Oaks Branch Library.

JOIN US AUGUST 21st
Ceremony Commences at 10:00 A.M.
1800 S. Fifth Street. Austin, Texas

Artist STEPHANIE STRANGE was commissioned by the Art in Public Places program to create a mobile for the entrance tower of this new branch library. Comprised of forty repurposed typewriters, this hanging sculpture, titled Black Well, is an homage to the recorded word.

The artist used the punch and strike keys of out of commission typewriters to create a variety of forms and movements that give the effect of a waterfall as the viewer looks up. Several of the typewriters were donated by library patrons, who will now see them preserved and transformed as part of this suspended artwork. Stephanie Strange lives in Bastrop, Texas where she pursues her artwork which often includes typewriter key work on paper.



http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=145753162111450&ref=mf

photo credit: Karol Rice©

The Intention of Decision

Making a decision is deciding to make that decision over and over. I had passed by the fantastical and chosen that mysterious unknown world of creative energy. I chose the line and the line made me chose it again and again in the process of creating it. It decided where to start, what direction to type and how to stop and where. I had to listen, ask and yield by tuning my mind and body to it. The rhythm was focus and the path to the edge of the paper was effort. Looping the line back around to itself was a strain on my submission of logic. Its odd how I fight what I hear the paper saying, but when it is finished, it makes more sense than I could have made. And when the last period was typed, I loved the line, everything about it was right.

In Tension
Typewriter on Paper
Royal Futura 800 / Peach
{drawn with the period character}
1 5/8” x 38”
2010
private collection

Listening to the Length

I glanced at it often - the long frame, as I was working on other pieces. It was like the space between two notes, or a pause in a conversation. At each glance everything would go quiet. To stand before it on my worktable was more than quiet, it was blank, the nothing, all but the questions searching in my mind to make sense of why just this one frame? Why was I not able to begin the piece for this frame when I knew the story already?

It was the last moment, the last chance I would have to create the piece the night before I took the last group to the framers. If it didn’t happen this night I would miss the opportunity to show it. So I took it in my hands and placed it on the worktable. I stood facing it damning the pressure of time like holding back a great wave while pushing the story at the frame. The silence cracked as it pushed back and truth rushed into me.

This is what it revealed. The story, I wanted to tell, was a fantastical story, full of drama and sensation. It would wow with marvel. Tell the story but know that it comes at a fork in the road. If I tell it I choose a path of impressing with my work and with this comes two things. One, it is a way of security that will supply me with a market to work, but a narrow margin of freedom from which to detour with growth and exploration.

Bracing myself for the explanation of the other path was well needed as it came simple and strong as this, trust. Simple is not effortless to some who are not practiced at planning their livelihood in the fear of the unknown. I was frightened at this possibility of removing my reason and intellect from my work and trusting in something that did not come from the source of myself, which I could process with ideas and decisions.

Searching for a little more than the one word ‘trust’ I wanted to know what direction this path would develop the story for this frame. To my apprehension I was granted the additional information, more than expected, the whole of the piece - a line. How could a line stretched from the left to the right be so terrifying when I have drawn many lines? How, when I search for paper just to draw lines?

A single line in exchange for a fantastical mirage, single line for a vintage frame that I have watched over two years waiting to buy, checking on it over a dozen times, a unique frame I might not ever find again. A single line petitioned to be chosen when all odds would brush it aside for something better. Were I to decide on this path it would be one of truth, full of searching, meditations, explorations, fears, and acknowledgements, keeping my senses open and pliable. It would not be easy and there was not guarantee of reward. I might fill warehouses of unappreciated art and it would be troubled toil to process for it is not simple to trust.

I stood holding two decisions in my mind, the easy way or the unknown way. Back and forth from every angle I did not move. I began to realize that I make this decision continually. This venture had a different set of circumstances same risks. I have always chosen truth over market no matter the question of fears and in this situation I would chose again, the truth in my art. If I struggle, I do, not to let the fantastical mundane steal in. I could see the line on the paper and it was enough.

When Nothing Fades

The quiet nothing may have faded with my return to nature but it felt like that moment when the dark holds onto the rising morning sun, at some point the night lets go but drops down into the shadows to return later.

I left the studio and the office in the evenings to work in the garden. My hands planting green life in the dirt acclimated my connection to the earth. Watching the patterns of nature grow balanced my sense of doing with being. Restitution was soothing as creativity quickly returned to me. Business and stress dissolved into the cycle of nature leading to time in the studio where I was soon working once more.

Papers moving, typewriter keys tapping, piece after piece I produced with an urgency to keep up with the ideas clicking. I was happy to be creating prolifically again but there was still that sense of something unsettled. Being in nature brought restoration to my spirit but it was the walks along the river where the shadow of unsettlement followed me. Perhaps the trail in comparison to my garden was less doing and more being. It allowed my mind to explore the notions of why this nothing had come upon me. Sure the easy reply was that I was too busy but I needed to analyze the subconscious of why if there was one. The river trail was like being surrounded by dappled questions of mysterious noises of no seen sources and a quiet river to the side, wide moving with her secrets along the deep.

Back in the studio even with the nagging of the something of nothing, stress and workloads were manageable relative to approaching show dates. I felt revived working with a steady progress towards my goals. All goals but one – the long frame, the frame was 5.5” x 40” x .5" and the paper size was prepared and cut at 1.63” x 38”. Every time I held the paper for this frame the nothing would slip over my mind. There would be an odd blankness; odd for the story for this unique frame was determined even before the frame left the antique store. Something was holding the story back and it was for this particular frame.

The vintage frame had a history of being on its on time. I saw it in an antique store and instantly connected to it. I knew I was to create a special piece to be framed in it. I picked it up, held it, inspected it, admired it, felt the excitement of my find but then a strange thing occurred, I found myself placing it back on the wall hook. Something held me back from the purchase. This hold lasted two years wanting to purchase it but sensing a block. Two years I watched the merchandiser move it from place to place, watched it go on and off sale, even watched the original price fluctuate. Each trip to the antique store I would find it, admire it but leave without it.

It did not make much sense to me why I felt the refrain from purchase when I was so connected to the idea of the frame nor did it make any sense to me during a recent visit to the antique store when I wondered what had changed as I put my truck in park knowing it was the day to buy. The senseless quandary did not occupy my mind long for I was anxious to finally purchase it, take it to the studio, clean it and begin the work for it. Once in the store I found the frame pushed off almost out of sight and real estate sale space. I smiled at the idea of the story it would frame as the attendant retrieved a ladder to reach it.

The metaphorical ladder lasted longer than my smile. The long frame arrived at the studio about the same time as the two-week nothing phase began. Progress halted as it sat in a fretting pile with everything else in the studio. The difference with the long frame was that it continued in the nothing phase when all other creative energy was cured by reconnecting with nature. I was beginning to wonder if the long frame was not connected to the nothing phase but something unrelated with similar symptoms. I needed a ladder to reach for answers; it was time to walk along the river.

When Starting in the Middle is Nothing

At First I thought it was stage fright with all the glowing white light filling the endless space to my sight. I sat and stared at the computer screen until the brightness went out. It went out like a door too long left open of too much coming and too much going. The screen was dark and my mind was the color of loss as I wondered what had happened. Have my creative lights really gone out? Have I really no thoughts, no words? How can this be, it is as common as never for my mind to have no ideas, no perspective - no story.

My first reaction was alarm for I am comfortable with the constant stream of thoughts layering in my mind. I enjoy the challenge of organizing the deluge of creative chaos, of making harmony with the endless multiplication of ideas. I even find comfort in such things as the necessity of a laborious switching off of my thoughts every night just to convince myself to sleep. But there was no comfort in staring at a computer screen to have but only one response - nothing.

Yes, I might have thought it was stage fright, a bit of anxiety of sharing insight of the private thoughts of creating art to a blog, but it followed me out of the office and into my studio even so that my mind mimicked my worktable as it glowed of nothing This was deeper than a nervous reaction, deeper than a shyness. Something this wide spread required serious business more than usual. I reported to the studio at longer disciplined hours, kept appointments, and continued phone calls and emails. I cleaned the studio, organized clutter, and completed procrastinated filing. Sketchbooks were opened, papers placed all about, pencils between my fingers, fingertips on typewriters, but nothing.

Alarm escalated to panic, as my tenacity and perseverance seemed to wade me nowhere out of the vast ocean of nothing. The added stresses of deadlines were approaching. Day after day of coming to the studio to work only to produce nothing was squeezing my confidence in a vice as warding off the fears and doubts of this strange quiet was exhausting my efforts. I was tired and worried.

It was about midnight one night that my thoughts were of the blankness, my obligations, due dates. I wondered if my life had changed just like that? Had I woken one day to not being myself? What do I do now? There was really only one thing to do, try a new approach - stop doing.

So I curled on the sofa with a pint of dutch chocolate ice cream determined not to fret over the loss of my creativity and decided to do nothing. This is when something happened. I forgot about the fretting and the ice cream as I began to think of my garden and how long it had been since the last good walk in it, the last time I walked the trail along the river, been among the trees, the last time I was connected to nature. I realized how I missed the wind and longed for leaves, earth and the sound of water. Of course! I was too busy and this caused the disconnection. I looked down at the ice cream to congratulate me on the realization only to see that with my fork I had created a drawing in its soft and malleable texture. What a relief; someone newly void of all creativity does not mindlessly draw elaborate patterns in her ice cream. I would sleep better that night, relieved but not fully settled. There was now the question of why did I fill my time so full? What was I trying to avoid by being too busy?