Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit ( Book Notes)

 As part of the photography course I'm taking, I'm reading books recommended by the artist/instructor. Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit - Learn It and Use It for Life is one of many books he recommended. 

Below are some of the things I found interesting.

- Being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. Set a goal for yourself - write 1,500 words or stay at your desk until noon. But the real secret is that they do this every day. In other words, they are disciplined. 

- Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.

- Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was 28 years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. 

- If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge. 

- There is no one ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. 

- It's all been done before. Nothing's really original. 

- I'm often subtracting things from my life rather than adding them (e.g., movies, multitasking, background music).

- Ralph Waldo Emerson sought solitude and simplicity. Henry David Thoreau turned his back on the distractions of his life in pursuit of a better and clearer life. 

- What is the one tool that feeds your creativity and is so essential that without it you feel naked and unprepared? 

- You're never lonely when your mind is engaged.

- Alone is a fact, a condition where no one else is around. Lonely is how you feel about that. 

- Solitude is an unavoidable part of creativity. Self-reliance is a happy by-product.

- Every day you don't practice you're one day further from being good.

- You won't be of much value to others if you don't learn to value yourself and your efforts.

- Take inventory of your skills. Pick one of your skills from this list and remove it. What's left/ What can you accomplish without it? 

- Henri Matisse was bedridden in his home in the south of France with only the use of his arms and imagination in his final years. But he wasn't going to stop working. His mind wouldn't rest. So he came up with a new way of working: paper cutouts. These exquisitely pure creations, out of the most childlike materials, are...the essence of his art. 

- My heroes are the artists whose bodies of work are consistently surprising, consistently fresh: Mozart, Beethoven, Veldi, Dostoyevsky, Yeats, Cezanne, Kurosawa, and Balanchine. They all had stunning early triumphs, and they kept getting better through their middle and later years. 

My Favorite Photos - February 2019

As I look back on February, these photos and memories stand out for me:

Sophia, Olivia, and I took a hand-sewing leather course at the art center. The girls each made a purse.

I made a tote bag.

I visited my sister at the end of February and took some photos of her cat. This is Juliette. She's a Flamepoint Siamese cat.

This is Buttercup. Check out those blue eyes!

I saw the first robin of the year during February. The birds like the apples that have been on the tree all winter.

There's a White-Crowned Sparrow that's been hanging around our farm this winter. Normally we don't see them in the winter. So, this is a real treat!

We have a flock of pheasants that have been hanging around as well. There is a group of six of them. The one below is a male - he is more colorful and has a white ring of feathers around his neck. He also has some interesting eyebrows. It's always fun to find one of the long tail feathers in the Spring.

This is four of the six pheasants in the driveway. They use their feet to scratch up the snow and uncover seeds and grain. They are looking for corn that I put in the driveway for them.

This is a blue jay that's approaching the feeder. I wish it were a better photo. However, I like the wing span on the bird and its target: the seeds.

We've had so much snow in February this year...an excessive amount. It was the snowiest February ever recorded in the Twin Cities - in all of history!

Indoors, the pets are being patient until there is more area for them to run around outside. This is Aspen.

This is Scooby. He's getting bored with being inside so much.

Another class I took at the art center this month was papercutting. This is an example of Notan - a Japanese form of papercutting that explores negative and positive space. You start with a square piece of black paper and do free-form cutting from there. 

After doing that exercise, we worked on another papercutting project. All the parts have to touch one another (including the border), otherwise it is considered collage. The size is about 8 1/2" x 11" to give a size perspective.

During the month, Cooper has enjoyed watching the birds at the feeder. He likes the small ones, but - for whatever reason - does not like the big birds at the feeders, like the mourning doves, pheasants, and pileated woodpecker - all of whom have visited the feeder he's looking at in the photo below.

We've enjoyed visits by a large number of cardinals this year. We have multiple families here which is great!

This is a female. Her feathers on her head are standing tall meaning she is on alert.

This is a black-capped chickadee who chose a peanut to eat. She (or he) will fly off with whatever nut or seed is chosen and eat it in a tree.

We had a lot of challenges with icicles this month. This is not a good sign when they are this big since it shows that we have poor insulation between the ceiling and roof. These all were removed and the roof raked in mid-February. We have to do this again in early-March before it melts otherwise we could look at water damage in our home again, like we had a few years ago in three rooms.

Olivia and I drove out to Paynesville, Minnesota, in mid-February so she could do a 4-H retreat. It's for teens who are interested in nature, photography, and leadership. On our way back on Sunday morning, we stopped in Monticello, Minnesota, at Swan Park. There are thousands of trumpeter swans, Canada geese, and mallards on the Mississippi River. They are fed each day around 10:30 a.m., so we were able to see the tail-end of the feeding session.

We drove through a small blizzard to get to St. Kate's where Sophia was invited to attend a special reception and program for scholarship finalists. We found out later in the month that she won one of the top three awards!

For Valentine's Day this year, we celebrated it twice. Once was on the 14th when the girls and I had heart-shaped pizza and garlic bread plus red pop. Not terribly healthy, but it was a tasty treat.

I decorated the windows with some stars and heart-shaped cut-outs I had made.

We also celebrated it on the 15th when Paige was back in town from a business trip. I made a recipe I saw on Pinterest that I adapted. It used two types of tortellini/ravioli (cheese filled as well as meat filled), spinach, mozzarella cheese, and spaghetti sauce.

Another class that Olivia and I took at the art center was how to do peg loom weaving. The loom is small, yet you can weave rugs on it which is interesting. It took a bit to learn, but once I got the hang of it, weaving went quickly. This is Olivia's rug:

I'm participating in a Mystery Quilt project through Minnesota Quilters. Each month, you get a clue about how to sew together some pieces that you cut in January. These are the squares I made in February. I should have waited to see how people cut them because for the square on the left, the yellow should be half of the square; and the pink and purple the other half.

My only complaint about the directions are that they assume that people have a lot of experience with quilting and cutting squares. I don't, so it's a bit of a challenge.

Another sewing project that I coordinated was sewing diapers for newborns from t-shirts for Global Health Ministries. The diapers are used for incentives for women in developing countries to get prenatal care.

It was part of a larger service event that I coordinated on February 12th for our local Lions club. We had 21 people there - despite the snowy and icy roads.

We visited the girls' step-grandfather (Paige's step-father) in a transitional care unit. He is getting stronger now that he is getting 24/7 care. He will be moving to the nursing unit now that is part of the graduated-living community where he lives. It is an exceptional facility; and he is getting very good care.

One last photo that summarizes how the month felt.

Literally we feel buried in snow, it's so high we literally have to trudge through parts of non-shoveled parts. Cooper was looking for something in the snow...thus, his face is covered in snow. 

We are looking for Spring. Hopefully it comes soon.

Bringing Literature Alive: Breadcrumbs

During August, we read Breadcrumbs by Minnesota author Anne Ursu. Today, we met with a few other girls as part of a book club that we hosted during the summer.We did a variety of activities that tie into reading the book.

Painting

Sophia's trio of trees.

Since the majority of Breadcrumbs took place in the woods, the children created paintings using watercolors and crayons. The idea for the project came from this pin which leads to Art Projects for Kids. The pin and instructions said to divide the background into three sections. None of the girls wanted to do that - they all wanted to have one-color (rather than divided) skies.

We also didn't use paper-punch holes as snow. Rather, some of the girls used white or silver color crayons to make dots or snowflakes in the sky. This was a nice touch to their paintings.

The first step was to trace three different triangle shapes onto a piece of paper. Then, add a squiggly line at the bottom to represent the snow.

Olivia was painting the sky while 

another book club participant drew her design.

Next, add a line from the ground up through the tree to represent the trunk. Then, add "V" shapes to the trunk to represent branches.

Sophia rinsing out her brush 

as she painted her trees.

Now, it's time to paint. The girls used natural watercolors - some the color straight from the little circles and in other cases, they blended a couple colors to create their own shades.

Olivia painting the trees.

All of the girls painted the trees first and then the sky.

Sophia putting the finishing touches 

on her painting.

I'm always fascinated by watching children do art. Given the same art supplies, each comes up with such different images. It is a joy to watch them creatively express themselves.

Olivia's finished watercolor and crayon painting.

Origami/Paper Folding

On page 82 of Breadcrumbs, the author wrote about photographs of snowflakes taken by Wilson Bentley over a hundred years ago. They called him “Snowflake” Bentley, and he was the one who discovered that no two snowflakes are alike.

The children listened to the book Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin read to them. They also were able to see some of the snowflakes that Bentley photographed. The book, Snow Crystals by W.A. Bentley and W.J. Humphreys, has over 2,450+ illustrations of Bentley’s work.

After that, the children made an origami star/snowflake.

Olivia and another participant making a window star/snowflake

from German kite paper.

This is a simple and alternative version of paper snowflakes that some people hang in their windows in winter.

Sophia's trio of snowflakes.

To hang the star, the children will place a few loops of clear tape on the back of the star and press it onto your window. The light from the sun will illuminate the pattern.

Paper Cutting

Sophia making an origami snowflake and 

Olivia making a paper-cut snowflake.

Using origami paper in two different shapes (a square and circle), the children created two paper snowflakes by cutting shapes out of the folded paper.

Olivia's trio of snowflakes.

They found the square one easier to fold and cut while the circular one was more difficult to fold and conceptualize for cutting. Yet, the girls were almost equally split between preferring the square versus circular snowflakes.

Math

We played “Melt a Snowflake” – a dice/board game that involves shaking two dice, adding the total dots, and coloring in a part of a snowflake on a game board. The pin for this idea leads to Mrs. Samuelson's Swamp Frogs and has PDF game boards to use.

Playing "Melt a Snowflake."

The children took turns and whoever colored in the most spaces on the game board won the game.

Counting the dots on the dice and 

finding the space to color in on the game board.

There are different versions of the game - one that can be played with two dice and one with three dice (to result in smaller and larger sums respectively).

It was a fun way to squeeze some math into the summer...disguised as a game.

Sports

Several times in the book, the author writes about Joe Mauer and the baseball that Jack gave Hazel. We looked at The World’s Greatest Baseball Players by Matt Doeden, and read a little about Joe Mauer.

The reason why he is such a great baseball player was lost on the girls. However, more interesting for them was the fact that he is 6 feet 5 inches tall!

Dance

The children were able to touch and try on (if they wanted to) a pair of pointe shoes that were mine when I was in junior high school.

Examining the pointe shoes.

This tied into the part of the book (on page 171) that was about the red “dancing shoes – real ballet slippers” that Hazel found in the woods. The shoes make reference to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale called Red Shoes.

Trying to stand on her toes.

We looked at some photos from the book Ballet for Beginners – Featuring the School of American Ballet by Mary Kate Mellow and Stephanie Troeller. The girls tried doing each of the basic positions (first, second, third, fourth, and fifth).

Learning the different positions.

This one is second position.

Music

Since the story makes many references to snow, ice, and winter, I thought about one of the common ballets performed in December: The Nutcracker.

The Washington County Library has CDs available of different orchestras playing Tchaikovsky’s music. We listened to the CDs while the children worked on their activities. Two pieces that directly tied into the book were: Nutcracker and Marie Depart of the Pine Forest and Waltz of the Snowflakes.

Food

We sampled two different types of food today: Turkish Delight and Meringue Snowflakes. In the book, there were references to The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.

In one part, the White Witch asks Jack if he wants some Turkish Delight. This is a recipe the children tasted. It’s from Aslan - Adapted from The Chronicles of Narnia by Frederic Thomas.

Turkish Delight

Turkish delight.

3 envelopes unflavored gelatin
½ cup cold water
½ cup hot water
2 ½ cups granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon lemon extract
About ½ cup confectioners’ sugar

Soften the gelatin in the cold water. Set aside. In a saucepan, bring the hot water and granulated sugar to a boil, stirring all the while. Lower heat. Add the salt, and stir in the softened gelatin until completely dissolved. Cook at a simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for 10 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and lemon extract. Rinse a 6 inch square pan with cold water. The pan should be wet but not have standing water. Pour the mixture into the pan. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap and allow to stand in a cold place overnight.

Sift some of the confectioners’ sugar onto a plate. Moisten a knife in very hot water and run it around the edges of the pan to loosen the candy. Invert the pan over the plate. It may be necessary to work on the edges a little to loosen them enough to turn the candy out on top of the sugar.

Cut the square into equal-width strips. Roll each strip in sugar; and then cut into cubes. Roll each cube in additional sugar to coat well.

The girls ready to taste the Turkish delight 

at the same time.

The children also tried meringue snowflakes that were flavored with mint extract. They were a hit! The girls all asked for seconds...and thirds. The pin for the recipe leads to a lovely image of a meringue snowflake. None of ours turned out as well visually. Oh well...the children didn't mind.

Meringue Snowflakes

Meringue snowflake that Sophia made.

2 large egg whites, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1/4 teaspoon flavored extract, such as lemon, peppermint, orange, or almond
2 tablespoons colored sugar or edible glitter

Heat the oven to 200º. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until frothy, about 3 minutes. Set the mixer speed to high and beat another 3 minutes or so until the eggs whites are fluffy.

Add the confectioners’ sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, and continue beating until the egg whites are stiff and glossy, about 5 minutes. Then beat in the extract.

Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Use a pencil to draw snowflake patterns on the paper. The meringues will not spread, so they can be drawn fairly close together. Turn the papers printed-side down and stick them to the baking sheets by dabbing a little meringue in each corner.


Spoon the meringue into a large pastry bag fitted with a 1/4-inch round tip and pipe it, erring on the thick side so the snowflakes will be less fragile, onto the paper-lined sheets following the patterns. Sprinkle the meringues with colored sugar or edible glitter.

A meringue snowflake.

Bake the snowflakes until dry but not browned, about 1 hour. Carefully slide the parchment paper from the baking sheets to wire racks and let the meringues cool completely.

Using scissors, cut the paper between the meringues to separate them. Then gently peel away the paper from each one, keeping one hand under the snowflake to support the edges. The meringues will stay crisp for up to 2 weeks if stored in an airtight container at room temperature (do not refrigerate them). Makes about 20.

Olivia checking out the meringue snowflake.

Theater/Play

Breadcrumbs referred to many fairy tales in the story as well as has one part in which Hazel and her friend are creating their own fairy tale.

The girls in costumes.

So, today the children were able to try on a variety of costumes and have fun creating their own story based on Breadcrumbs as well as any other ideas they came up with.

Enjoying an impromptu play.

This was the last book club meeting of the summer, so having a chance to dress up and play together was a highlight of the morning for the girls.

Having lots of fun with the costumes and 

play they are making up as they go along.

To hear and see how quickly they could come up with a story and act it out was fun to watch.

Sophia the fairy queen holding 

a fairy princess.

Thinking back to the first book club meeting we had in June, the girls were so quiet and reserved since they didn't know one another. Seeing the smiles on the girls faces this morning made me realize how much they had enjoyed spending time together this summer learning and doing activities with one another.