Success!

In my last post I wrote about how to fail, but today I want to focus on succeeding. Of course you can't succeed at anything worthwhile without risking failure, so if you need a refresher go back and read that.

What is success?

The first step in being successful is knowing what success looks like to you. Some people consider a successful artist to be someone who makes a lot of money selling art, while others would consider a successful artist to be someone who makes good art. Everyone's ultimate goal is to be happy and so it is up to you to figure out what happiness looks like. What brings you joy: time with family? Travel? Inner peace? Not having to stress about getting to the next paycheck? Not having to spend an hour trying to find your keys? Would improving your golf swing or bowling score make you feel happy? Earning a higher degree? You get to decide for yourself.

Envision success

This is the fun part. Once you know what you want to happen, imagine it happening.  Daydream about what it will feel like when your agent calls and tells you that your book is going to be published. How are you going to celebrate after you run your first marathon? Imagine. And then write it down.  You can type up a list or write a goal in bold marker- anything that makes it a tangible reminder will work.

A lot of people create a dream board or a vision board to help them realize their goals. It can be a poster board collage of magazine images and computer printouts of things that represent what you want. Maybe yours would be pictures of house plans and paint swatches for when you finally buy a house. You could Photoshop a montage of you paying off student loans, losing 20 pounds, or learning how to salsa dance.

I draw a mind map in the front of my sketchbook and look at it several times a week. I put the most important thing at the center of my drawing: my balanced, happy, life.  Arrows extend from there with categories of my life written on each arrow: family, health, job, finances, fun.  Then arrows and pictures break off of that to include things like date nights, places I want to go, a goal for when to pay off the mortgage, when to finish my certificate add-on, and get a raise.


I am required, as a teacher, to make goals for what my students will learn. Likewise, as a mother, I include goals for my children on my mind map . My son isn't going to get his driver's license without me remembering to teach him to drive or gather the paper work, or take him downtown to take his test. I need to do my part to help my kids achieve. Kids don't just happen; they need mentoring. There's a reason, after all,  parents get special pins when their sons become Eagle scouts.

Sacrifice

No worthwhile success comes without sacrifice. The bigger the success, the bigger the sacrifice. One author told me that she had to give up reality TV to find time to write after her young daughters went to sleep. Last month there were three nights in a row that I gave up concerts and dance performance invitations to get my work handed in for a class I was taking. You may need to make financial sacrifices to add that studio on to your house, which may mean taking on extra work or not buying anything new for a long time. Successful people are willing to delay their gratification until they reach their worthwhile goal. (Remember the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment of the 1960s?)

My friend was a college graduate in his mid-thirties with a family, an established career, and a paid-off house. He had a dream to go into law, but felt like maybe he had missed the boat. If he applied to law school and got in, it would mean a 3 year commitment before he could start work as a lawyer. In a conversation with his dad, he expressed his reservations.
"I'll be 38 by the time I finish law school!" He said.
"You'll be 38 whether or not you go to law school." was his father's wise response. The choice between being a 38 year old with a law degree and without a law degree was clear. He's been practicing law for over a decade now.

Time marches forward, and it's up to us whether we want to use those days and hours and minutes to grow, or not.
Benjamin Franklin asked, "Doth thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."

Bear in mind that sacrifice usually means giving up something now for something much better, later. If you keep your eyes on the goal, it won't be so hard to give up the little things along the way.

Don't Compare Yourself to Others

You get to have your own style of drawing or writing. You get to have your own dreams and goals. You are supposed to be you, not someone else. It is a dangerous thing to focus on the fact that you are less smart, beautiful, fast, talented or worthy than someone else. It causes discouragement, which is an enemy to growth. It is equally dangerous to focus on being more of those things than others because that leads to complacency, which is also an enemy to growth. There will always be people who are better at something than you and worse at that thing than you. The focus must be on achieving your personal best! Once you stop comparing and competing, you are free to be able to reach down and lift others with their goals, which will inevitably bring personal growth to you. It allows you to not feel threatened by people who have mastered something you are striving to be good at. Which leads me to the next point:

Spend time with the Experts

I feel joy in the accomplishments of my friends and family who have done impressive things: played on Broadway, sung in Carnegie Hall, worked as a Supreme court clerk, won a Grammy award, and an Oscar. I don't need to do any of those things to be successful since those weren't my goals. Praising them doesn't diminish my personal best. In fact, rubbing elbows with accomplished people inspires me to get my own version of a gold medal. And by medal, I mean happiness.

The more you hang out with experts, the more you will gain expertise. I feel like I'm in heaven every time I go to a dinner party of top notch artists or writers.

My daughter has always gotten a kick out of being the head of her class in elementary school. I wondered how she would handle a new school that was packed with gifted, achievement-centered kids. I was so relieved when she came home the first week and said, "All these kids are smarter than me. I LOVE IT! I'm going to learn so much from them at this new school!" Comparing isn't such a big deal as long as you feel inspired instead of threatened or prideful. Your focus should be on personal improvement.

Keep a Growth Mindset

Over the years of teaching college art classes, I have had quite a few beginning students tell me on the first day, "I don't know how to draw!" to which I respond, "Yet. You don't know how to draw yet. I'll show you how."  When they tell me that they don't know anything about Art, I say, "The point in taking classes is to learn, not to show that you already know it all."

Statements like, "I'm not a math person," or "I'm not a morning person," imply permanent characteristic traits. They imply that you don't think you can change in that area and you CAN. Weak things can become strong; people can learn how to solve complex math problems and enjoy early mornings.

Stanford professor, Dr. Carol D. Dweck, in her book MINDSET, discusses the differences between fixed mindset people who think that you've either got it or you don't, and growth mindset people, who believe that if you don't "got it," you can get it.

Fixed mindset people try to prove that they're smarter or better by judging and criticizing others. They stick to small tasks, hang out with people less competent than themselves, and avoid challenges for fear of messing up. They blame someone or something else for their failures. Why apologize when you can point a finger? They are constantly praising themselves with words, rather than showing with actions and sharing ideas.

People with growth mindset are focused on improvement and not afraid of challenges or minor setbacks. They want to master skills, figure things out and don't mind putting in required effort to make it happen. They're not threatened by the success of other people and are willing to learn from those around them. Listen to the language that co-workers or political candidates use if you want to know which they are. The good news is that even if you've been a fixed mindset person up to this point, you can still change the way you see things and start growing!

Take baby steps

If a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then you'd better get out of the chair and take a step. When it comes to substantial goals, don't expect to have it all done in a day. It takes many tiny acts to make big things happen. That's what daily to do lists are for. Be as specific as possible. Work the 20 minutes of exercise into your daily schedule, if you are planning on losing the last 10 pounds after having a baby. Set a little goal to write a page each day, to get to your big goal of a 60,000 word Young Adult novel. Ultimately it is the little things that make the biggest difference.

See things in in perspective

Pick a hero. If you write down all of their setbacks and failures, and look at them alone, you'll feel like you are looking at the actions of a loser. In fact, Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, and the Beatles had lots of failure, more than their share.  We consider them to be successful, because they overcame lots of obstacles and worked through the failure to come out the other end on top.

We too often choose to focus on the negative and become oblivious to the positive. Local news stories will tell the same story over and over about a single tragedy and not report the thousand acts of goodness and triumph that happened that same day in the same neighborhood. There is good and bad in every person, situation, and journey. Sometimes we take the bad, but forget to embrace all the good that fills our lives and our efforts.

I am in the process of reading the Old Testament with my children. The goal is to read 3 or 4 pages every night so we can get through 100 a month, and finish it in a 12 month time frame. (Notice the baby steps/plan to get through 1200 pages as a family). Sometimes we miss a day. Instead of feeling like a loser of a mother, I remember the six days that week we did read, and then I make a plan to get back on track and catch up. If you eat a doughnut in the break room and mess up your diet, it's not the end of the world. You are not a disgusting person with no self control. It was a doughnut. Get back on track right away and get on with accomplishing your goal.

Rose colored glasses and an inflated sense of self isn't the answer either, however. I hear kids talk about being in the Olympics someday, but they arrive late to practices, leave early, and complain the whole time they're playing. A view at reality means seeing yourself as you really are, weaknesses and strengths together, and knowing what it takes to get where you want to be.

If we learn to see things as they really are, we will be able to see ourselves for who we are: people with great potential to do and experience amazing things.

The Art of Failure

One of my art students once told me she wanted to paint a desert scene, but was afraid she might mess up.
"What's wrong with messing up?" I asked. "Messing up is what needs to happen from time to time if you want to make art. You are allowed to make mistakes here."
"Really?" she asked.
"Sure!"
"Me too?" another student asked with an incredulous giggle.
"You too. If you're too afraid to make mistakes, you won't make much of anything."
"Yay!" the second student exclaimed.

It is a daily battle, trying to help my students understand that the process for learning requires an occasional fail. No baby learns to walk without lots of falls. It's "par for the course." Babies don't quit and refuse to try again. At what age do we become afraid to mess up? Why do we become afraid? Is it a result of constant correcting, public shaming, lowered grades or high stakes testing? I don't know. What I do know is that a crayon mark outside a line will not result in humanity's doom.

Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind if you want to learn how to make mistakes, and make the mistakes count.

1. Forgive quickly, especially yourself.

Growing up, I'd often hear my mom sing, "Oops! I made a mistake that's all." I knew that she'd never make a big deal out of my spilled juice or tube of lipstick run through the laundry. It's part of life. You clean it up and move on. I have learned to forgive myself and others and move on quickly as a result. When a blind student drops a ceramic piece and it breaks, I say, "Looks like we're going to need to clean this up. Would you like me to help you get the broom?"

The first pancake in the batch will probably be runny, the first word written with a new calligraphy pen will be shaky. Even the best of print-makers know that they'll have to toss some of their etchings because the ink wasn't consistent. No big whoop. They always keep extra paper on hand for that very reason.

2. Fail harder!  

When my students let fear prevent them from taking the risks needed to make good art, I tell them that they're not failing hard enough.  It's my rebranded version of "If perchance you don't succeed, try, try again." 

Ira Glass explained it this way, "Nobody tells this to beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work get into it because we have good taste. But there is a gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it's just not that good, it's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing we want it to have. We all go through this and if you are just starting out or are still in this phase you gotta know it's normal. And the most important thing you can do is a lot of work." (Italics added).

The book ART AND FEAR discusses a ceramic classroom, in which half the class was to be graded on quality and the other half was to be graded by quantity (weight). Surprisingly, those who were graded by the amount of objects made, ended up with a higher quality product. It takes lots of practice to get good at ceramics. With each piece, they were improving until the end result was better skill and a better product than those who had just spent their time fussing over the quality of a single piece.

2. Rebound (with humor)

Once you see mistakes as part of the process, then you don't need to waste time having a pity party or doubting your ability to ultimately succeed. This allows you to make more work and get to the success part faster. It's call emotional resilience.

In my early twenties, I was a missionary in Japan, and when I'd approach people on the street, they'd almost always wave me away and tell me they were busy.  Instead of throwing in the towel after hours and days and weeks of rejection, I found myself laughing about it. I'd think of myself as part of John Lovitz and Tom Hanks Saturday Night Live skit. Rejection is easier when you don't take yourself too seriously.  Ultimately I tried harder to get through as many rejections as I could, and of course, found many people with sincere interest, during the process.

I am so thankful I learned to be rejected by those few guys (whose names I won't mention here) at Jr. High dances. What a gift to know that rejection or mistakes aren't something from which I can't rebound!

3. Learn from your mistakes.

Sometimes a mistake will end up being a glorious end to itself. The inventions of cornflakes and fudge were results of failed recipes of something else. More often than not, however, our failed recipes end up inedible. My cousin's chickens died as a result of being fed cookies made with cups of salt instead of sugar. When mistakes make a project unsalvageable, don't look at is as a waste of time, look at it as an education. Label the sugar canisters and don't feed the chickens salt.

There is a stark contrast in quality of life between people who seize opportunities to learn from their mistakes and those who do not. If the manuscript turns out to be a dud, determine what made it so lousy (under-developed characters, confusing transitions, lack of description) and be sure to address those issues in the next story you write. Accept reasonable advice from people who know more than you.

Gesso over the failed painting and start fresh with new-found knowledge.

4.  Allow yourself to change course. 

When I left high school I knew I wanted to be an Art major, but I had no idea I'd focus my degrees on printmaking. In fact, I had no idea that printmaking was a thing. One required class is all it took to hook me. This led me to the man who would become my husband and whose job, as a printmaking professor, would bring me to Georgia. I never would have guessed I'd be living in the deep south. It also never occurred to me that I would be teaching art full time at the Academy for the Blind. Why would it? Even though the school had existed for over 150 years, the job of art teacher has only existed there for about five. Every phase of life is a stepping stone to the next phase. Enjoy the journey and don't be too rigid to change directions when an opportunity arises.

Anne Sullivan, the "miracle worker" who taught Hellen Keller said, "Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose-not the one you began with (perhaps) but one you'll be glad to remember."

If you want to try something, try it! There are possibilities to follow that you never realized existed.

5. Fake it until you make it. 

Every time I've had to shift gears and change my course, there has been a learning curve. The only way to learn how to be a mother of three is to be a mother of three. The only way you can learn to be organized is to organize. And even when you've mastered something, you may still feel like you are winging it from time to time. That's not completely unusual.

David Bowie, legendary rock star who died recently said, "I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star. I always felt a little bit out of my element."

The same student who was afraid to paint a desert scene uses the word "can't" way more than I am comfortable hearing.
"Can you draw this circle for me? I can't draw circles very well," she begged.
"Do you know why I got to be so good at drawing circles?" I ask her. "Because my teacher would't draw them for me. You don't get better at doing something by having someone else do it for you."

Pretend you already know how, and then do it. If it's not perfect, do another one. It's OK. We've got lots of paper.

Dream Catchers Craft

Dream catchers were originally used by the Ojibwa people before they were adopted by other Native American Nations. This woven hoop is to be hung over the bed to catch the bad dreams like a spider catches a fly in her web. The good dreams trickle down through the ribbons and feathers to gently land on the head of the sleeper.

One of my students requested that I assign this project, and i was happy to oblige. i didn't have time to order metal hoops, so we just used some basket weaving supplies, and made our hoops out of reed, wrapping yarn around the outside, and occasionally gluing to make a circle.

We used twine or yarn to tie on the side of the circle and then make stretch it loosely 1/8 of the way around the hoop and loop it around again. After 8 loops, you've got a circle, with an octagon of string. Without cutting and tying, continue around, looping in the middle of each side of the octagon. As the string is pulled snuggly, the straight sides point in. Continue looping inward layer after layer until you reach almost the center. A bead can be added before knotting the end of the string. This is symbolic of the spider in the web.

Three or Four long ribbons can each be folded in half on one side of the hoop, and the ends of each ribbon wrap around and go through the half way fold to make a little hitch. Ribbons can be beaded and then feathers glued onto the end. The beads should pull down over the glued ends for a nicer finish.

Here's to catching the best of dreams and making them come true in this new year!

Student Art Sale Success!

I am constantly looking for ways to motivate my Art students. They don't seem to care very much about grades, in fact, the threat of a bad grade almost always backfires; it makes them feel like I'm an authority figure trying to judge and control them, rather than a teacher trying to help them succeed. I've noticed that they all care about friends and family members, however.

I have some students who will spend twice the effort on a project if they have someone in mind for whom to make their art. An upcoming niece's birthday will give an assignment enough added purpose, in the mind of a student, to make the pieces a superior. Most students will put forth more effort if there's food involved, and almost all are motivated by money.

So I decided this year, we should have a Christmas art sale.

Matt Forrest, a new printmaking professor at Georgia College and State University showed up at my classroom doorstep one day with talent and a desire to volunteer. I mentioned an art sale and he immediately got busy taking pictures of my student's paintings and printing them out. I mounted them onto foam board and shrink wrapped  (AKA plastic wrapped) them for a professional touch.





Matt also printed some copies onto a special paper. He taught my students how to soak their images in water, peal off the plastic portion of the paper and place it on mugs that I had ordered from Crate and Barrel. It takes a little effort to keep the image smooth as it dries, but we managed to keep most in tact, and then we baked them in the oven at about 300 until it became glossy, like the rest of the mug.

We also sold ceramic ornaments displayed on a Christmas tree. Students worked collaboratively glazing and painting ornaments that they didn't necessarily make.

We kept the pricing simple and reasonable. Mugs and prints sold for $10 each and each student got to pocket the money for his/her product while still holding onto the original artwork! The ornaments sold for $2.00 a piece and we earned just enough for a pizza party. Helping students make products they can be proud to display and comfortable marketing is so rewarding for me, as a teacher.

Christmas Set Design

My students, all of whom are visually impaired or blind, have an Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) added to their academic curriculum. One of the nine areas of the ECC is Career Exploration. For the last two months of Friday mornings, I have been able to teach set design as a possible career. Some students worked with another teacher learning to build panels. Each of these panels was built from 3-8 foot 2X4s: one for each side and one cut in half for the top and the bottom. A  4ftX8ft birch panel was nailed to the front and back of the frame. Then 2X4 scraps were used to built a stand at the bottom with 4 coasters on each to move with ease. This gave my class 4 large panels, with two sides each to use as a canvas for our images.

The chorus teacher wanted to use the panels in our upcoming winter concert and requested an outdoor snow scene and indoor Christmas scene. As a class we researched source material on the internet and decided the best parts of each image to incorporate into our own images. I drew the final scene which they copied onto a piece of overhead plastic and then we projected it onto the panels and traced them. 

Because my students are visually impaired, I had them paint mostly the large, flat areas of color. 

They did stones for the fireplace. No one noticed any imperfections from the audience.

And tape works well to keep students in the lines. Any mistakes were fixable since I kept enough paint mixed to go back over stray marks.

There wasn't enough time in our brief Friday classes to finish, so some of my regular art students pitched in during the week.

Trees and wreathes had a black underpainting to give richness and shadows to the forms.

Then we added details such as green branches topped with snow. Candles, berries, stockings and fire in the fireplace. It was fun feeling like we were having art inside a toasty home decked with holly, or out in a snowy landscape. But the ultimate pay off was seeing a performance brought to life through quality sets. I am so glad my students had the luxury of working on such a large scale and know they will never forget the experience.

Wax Paper Stain Glass

Stained glass window crafts are always a winner with kids. I've had my students sandwich colored tissue between two pieces of clear contact paper or color with sharpies on scraps of laminator plastic, but this time I took the melted crayon craft from my childhood.

I always start my lessons talking about how this project fits into the art world. There are beautiful stained glass windows in the European cathedrals of the 13th and 14th century that are still bathing its viewers with intense colors. Tiffany lamps illuminate front he inside out. Frank Lloyd Wright windows with geometric shapes to go in his buildings.

With real stained glass, some of the coloring is anti-intuitive. copper oxide produces a turquoise and gold makes the glass red. When it comes to melting crayons however, what you see is what you get.

We used a hand-held pencil sharpener to sharpen crayons. The colored shavings were arranged on a piece of wax paper, and then covered with another piece of wax paper. It's important not to get the shavings too close to the edges or the crayon may leak out. 

We discuss how crayons melt in hot cars and dryers, but this can can work to our advantage if we want to them to change their state to create an image with a technique other than coloring. An old towel or sheet can be placed under and over the wax paper-crayon sandwich, and rubbed gently with an iron. I used a medium setting. The fabric did get stained quite a bit.

After the colors melt, we created contraction paper frame. This was done by putting two pieces of paper together, folding them in half, and cutting out half a shape starting and ending on the fold side. The edges can be cut to the desired shape as well. The "glass" part is glued between the front and back of the paper frame and taped to a window to let the light shine through. This can also have a ribbon added and hang from a branch of a Christmas tree. As long as there is a light source it will glow. Color can't exist without light after all. And art can't exist without someone making it…so what are you waiting for?

Homemade Christmas Gifts

Christmas has always been a favorite time of the year for me. It gives me an excuse to make things and let people know how much they mean to me through personalized gifts.

This month I accomplished my goal of 20 consecutive years of homemade Christmas cards. I got the idea for this year's card by having my Art students stitch yarn into burlap. Often I'll do a demonstration, and end up liking the product enough that I run out and buy the materials for my personal projects. Another example of this are little wooden ornaments made from cross cuts of small trees or branches. These are great for wood burning tools, but markers are a safer medium for my blind students. A brown Sharpie gives a similar affect to a wood burning tool, but it is easier and less expensive to use.

Last year I made a lot of rice bags. I cut 2 pieces of fabric a little bigger than 18" by 6", and sewed them together like a long bag. I turned it inside out, filled it with enough rice to fill 1/3 at the end, then I used pins to hold the rice in its place while I sewed that section closed. I did the same for the middle section and then sewed the end closed after inserting the 3rd division of rice. I made a paper funnel to get the rice inside. I think I used 2 or 3 cups of rice for the whole thing. A few drops of lavendar oil on the bag, and directions to heat it in the mircrowave for 1-2 minutes is all that is needed. I kept a rice bag for myself and I often use it to wrap around my neck and shoulders after a hard, muscle tension, kind of day.

This year I made ornament wreaths. It takes about 50 ornaments, so if you wait until the clearance sales in January, you may be able to do the project for about $6.50.

You'll need a metal hanger to open up, bend into a circle and use to string the ornaments. A wide wire bow will help fill in the gap at the top after bending the wire to seal it off and loop into a hanger.

Clay ornaments are fun too. Here are some of my students' projects that they, in progress. They hope to sell some and give some away.

Consumable gifts are best for people who already have everything they need. 

I have a cookie "exchange" at my house each year for a handful of parents whose children are in the same school program as my son. If participants each bring 3 dozen cookies we can divide them up into 20 tins for the teachers of the program. This saves us from having to buy a gift for each individual teacher. Many hands make light work.

By the way, the picture with my teacher-cookie stack, has an advent calendar in the background. Many years ago, I made a fabric advent calendar just like this one for each of my siblings so their children could track the days. My daughter still races downstairs each morning to add a little snowflake to the tree.

For my husband's colleagues and some neighbors I usually make goodies like those pictured above, but this year I tried to work ahead with gifts in a jar. The chili mix sells for $11.00 in stores, but can be made for much less. Hot chocolate and cookie mixes are also winners. And for non-food jar gifts, sugar scrubs are easy and inexpensive. It's just sugar and olive oil. This one has crushed peppermint sticks, but the smell is hard to detect without adding several drops of essential oils. It's a great bath gift idea, or keep one for yourself to exfoliate and and moisturize.