Is Your Brain Abby-Normal?
The genesis of imagination
Credit: Redbubble
Design inspiration strikes me like the lightening used to enliven many versions of Mary Shelley’s famous monster, Frankenstein. Recently
described this lightening best in her post referencing poet Sylvia Plath, which I quote here:Any artist knows that when these downloads or works come to us, they are not coming from anything we have generated. They often hit us as if a lightning bolt or current, happening at unsuspecting times, and if we do not capture them right away, they leave as fast as they come. We are channels.
Sylvia Plath said this about her poetry. She said she would have to “catch the poems” as they would move through her. There was a reference to her being outside and it’d move through her like the wind, and she’d have to run inside and write it down. THAT right there - instant recognition and relate.
That’s what it is like. Exactly what it is like.
Her words struck like arrows to my heart. They’re so deeply intuitive and precisely describe how I feel about the myriad ideas exploding inside my brain, like a kaleidoscope, day and night. Ideas that float away like dandelion seeds if I don’t get them down on paper. Those I miss are gone forever, apparently not for the here and now. But more and more arrive to take their place. I’ve had 23 ideas in the last couple weeks, challenging my ability to effectively perform mundane tasks like sleeping, eating, working, or socializing. It may be how I embody the ‘tortured artist’ sobriquet. I just want to scream “Leave me alone to create! Why can’t you just leave me alone?!”
Credit: Pixabay
Writing is but one of many outlets I have to satisfy my crowded, creative imagination. I design, I decorate, I make textiles with hand tools and with both manual and semi-automated looms. I’m into photography and I immerse myself in nature - the creator’s artwork. I reengineer everything I touch at work to simplify or eliminate effort. This brain don’t quit for nuttin or nobody. Earlier in my career, I satisfied my creative drive by changing jobs often and building a reputation as a fixer. While my career is no longer the focus of my energies, most close family and friends have heard me exclaim “I love this. I could (design a room around) (make a blanket with ultra-soft yarn like) (get a perfect photo if I had my phone for) this.” For years there was little to no sleep for my overactive imagination, but a rigid preparation routine and meditation on a handful of memorized Bible verses before bed have succeeded in pausing the assembly line of ideas so I can adequately rest.
My creative process is the extraction of an idea, stuck in my brain like a burr. The process is organic, having evolved to include three foundational elements.
Color
My son, Killian, says I’m a tetrachromat. Tetrachromacy is thought to exist in about 12% of women (less in men) and is defined as an ability to see more colors than the average human, possibly perceiving up to 100 million color variations using a 4th type of cone cell in the eyes. I’ve never been formally tested for this, but I frequently and consistently see more color variety than the people around me. I also combine colors in non-typical ways surprising others by how pleasing those ‘weird’ combinations are - like violet and burnt orange. This skill does, however, lead to frequent frustration in textile design because blending colors with yarn is much more elaborate than with mediums such as paint - leading me to my second foundational element:
Texture
Within my art I use either traditional, tactile texture variations, or a combination of material thickness and color to trick the eye through light and shadow. For example, I see something like a woven basket in a big box store such as Home Goods. I think to myself, I want to make something like this with big, fat, soft yarn. Then, I find a YouTube video to follow to make a similar-looking basket to the Home Goods version. Then, I change the pattern to suit what I envisioned in the first place, using yarns that look AND feel like the vision and using different stitches to increase or decrease textural elements, create shadows, etc. Vision-driven color and texture genesis is also integral to my room design. I’ll see a pillow or a picture or a painting and my brain melts with glee while I think “I need to build a room around this.” An excellent, recent example of this lightening strike is my response to this watercolor by
.
Credit: K.L. Rockwell
I MUST design a room around this picture. I’ve already had a dozen ideas for a Japanese-style, minimalist design which makes her watercolor the star of the show. I would use pale, dove gray walls with sage green ultra-soft carpeting, the dusky blue of the sky in velvet curtains, and berry accents like velour pillows on plush white furniture with zero knick knacks or clutter of ANY kind. One eccentric touch would be use of the same brushed gold lamp I have in my bedroom with a circle of white feathers for a shade. In this room, the tactile sensations of the velvet, the velour, and the feathers evoke the natural velvety ‘feel’ of the petals on the ground and the plush hint of frothiness in the small stream, and finally the moss-like ‘feel’ of the foreground upon which the trees are growing. See, I can’t help it and I just can’t stop these visions until I act upon them.
The final element of my design process is:
Industry
I have a more recent drive to use only what I have on hand for my creations. I challenge myself to make textiles from leftover yarn and to make rooms from items I already have around the house. Sometimes, in room design, I must find the quintessential last piece of the visual puzzle at a flea market or home store but more often than not I can shop in my basement, reusing something instead. This final piece tends to be the pièce de ré·sis·tance, catching the eye of viewers and creating a focal point. From a practical standpoint, it is NEVER a knick knack, always useful. Sometimes it’s simply a charming surprise like the hat Killian and I loom-knit for my sister Sally, inspired by Amazon’s Wednesday series, which we made reversible from solid “Wednesday” black to rainbow “Enid” pastels with matching (or contrasting) black and pink pom-poms as the mood strikes . Or, the ponytail hat I we knit for my sister Beth with 2 pom-poms, reminiscent of hats with animal ears on board. These industrious surprises put the unique sparkle of our spirits into the finished product.
When all is said and done, each lightening strike is a ‘masterpiece’ of ingenuity that scrapes the creative vision away until another one takes its place. Such brainstorms are commonly referred to in our home as “excess intellectual capacity” or “intellectual overhead”, which must be properly exhausted for us to live in peace. I’m not abby-normal. You’re not abby-normal. We each have a stoke of genius within us, put there by our creator for the pleasure of the universe and uniquely ours. When we follow our dreams (using our talents), we never work a day in our lives - best said by
in her “Be a Dreamer” post.I plan to write a short design-along series about my most recent brainstorm, a king-sized ‘art piece’ blanket from a sunset scene, about which I dreamt recently. I’ll keep each post short for easy consumption. Like the amazing work of
, who connects the world to art, and mentioned above, I hope you find the process behind some of my creations worth your time.
I would gobble up a series about you designing rooms around pieces of art. That checked so many boxes for me 😍
this resonates with me absolutely and underlines the last 50 years of my life as a dissident artist marginalised in South Africa. I think, mostly, I am considered OFF THE EDGE by any and all frameworks in this sad country. Except for the fabric wallets I innovated and sold at flea markets in order to keep myself alive. I have OFTEN tested myself with these 'flashes of insight' as a snuggle into bed and repeat the insights over and over and over....rather than write them down (which I have obviously previously obviously done...) in an attempt to see...but even in repetition a word somehow goes wrong....and the repeats becomes impossible to recapture. Gone gone gone.