Rachel's Viewfinder

My friend, Sarah Swartz, has a passion for children.  More importantly, she has a heart for the children that live in Asha House.  Asha House is a children’s’ home in India.  This home for children provides 40 children a safe refuge from the slums, prostitution and poverty.   Sarah has served on two short-term mission trips at Asha, ministering to the children, loving them, helping them with their education, and caring for them.

Last summer, she began fundraising to help build a church in the area near Asha House.  A part of that fundraising happened through an art auction and music concert.

Knowing I am an artist, Sarah approached me about producing a piece of art for her to sell at the auction.  At that time, I had wanted to get involved with support for Asha House, but wasn’t sure how to do so beyond just prayer and finances.  When Sarah asked me to produce a piece for the auction, it seemed like a perfect fit!

The piece I created was entitled “Asha for India.” “Asha” like in the name of the children’s’ home, means “hope” in Hindi.  My painting featured the Taj Mahal and was meant to inspire thoughts of India whenever it was it was viewed, and prayers for hope to truly reign in the lives of the believers who would be blessed by the church.



The whole experience of being asked for a piece of my art, painting it, and watching as it sold at the auction was a very spiritual thing for me as an artist. With it, I realized that I could have a direct impact on the world through my art.  Not only did the art get to carry a message.  Sharing my art with another through it’s sale blessed not only the purchaser; it helped to bless my family of believers in India.

Since painting “Asha for India,” the Lord has begun to form some new ideas of how to use my art to bless others.  Some of those ideas include the formation (or joining) of a faith-based arts community in Charlotte, an exhibit of art produced by fellow believers, and blessing others through the sale my work by giving away a portion of the proceeds.  I’m excited to see what will happen in the near future with all of this!

For those of you interested in learning more about Asha House, log on here: http://www.ashahouse.net/wp/

If, as my co-worker Andy says, “creativity is not instant grits,” then how do you make time to let the creative kettle boil?  “Lack of time,” frequently ends up as my excuse for not getting things done.  Honest, it can be a legitimate excuse.  If you’re like me, and you work a 9-5, five days out of the week, plus need time to cook, clean, chill-out, and check Facebook, there’s not much time left for creativity.  Or is there?

A few months ago, I completed an interesting exercise: I listed out all the things I had to do, and all the things I wanted to do, and then assigned the amount of time it took to do each.  These lists included everything from making supper, to commuting to work, to watching TV.  After all was written out, I compared the lists and the time left over.  I found that I was left with about two hours or so a day to do whatever I wanted.  In reality, most of that extra time was probably frittered away with lolly-gagging on other things.  But after studying the lists a little while longer, I started to see what took up most of my time during the day.  The obvious ones were “work,” and “sleep.”  So was “commuting.”  But surprising, another big chunk of time was taken up with “cooking.”

Including everything from prep time, to eating, and clean up, daily meals took about four hours out of every day.  And it took almost half of that time to cook supper.  Good grief!  No wonder why I felt like my evenings were full!  My husband and ate late, and spent most of the evening working in the kitchen instead of relaxing. 

When I was a kid, my Mom, for a while, did the whole “once a month cooking” thing.  It involved an entire weekend, a hot kitchen, towers of Tupperware containers, and a huge bulk freezer.  We packed away cooked meals, ready to be thawed later in the month and eaten.  As a married woman, I live in a small efficiency apartment.  My freezer is about the size of a small cupboard, and though I’m not feeding a family of five, there’s only so much you can fit in that thing.  But instead of a month…I toyed with the idea of cooking all the meals ahead for a week.

I talked the idea over with Robo, and he agreed to help me do all the cooking.  We took a Sunday afternoon, and cooked and cooked.  In four hours, we cooked enough food to last us the week.  Now here’s the scary thing: cooking on week-nights would take us two, to two and a half hours to make supper.  Now, with meals all cooked, supper took only twenty minutes to make.  Talk about gaining time!  We were eating earlier, feeling healthier, and having more time in the evenings to do other things.

For the past two months, we’ve made Sunday afternoons our cooking day.  We plan our meals out for the week, and then fire up the kitchen.  Typically, big containers of food last us a few days, so we only have to cook three or four different things.  Big favorites are stir-fry, chicken and dumpling casserole, and pots of soup.  Then all we have to do is take out an evening’s portion, heat it up, and serve!  And if we end up having people over, we just heat up a little more.

As you pursue time to be creative, I encourage you to examine your day, and see where the biggest chunks of your time are taken.  You may not need to re-arrange your cooking schedule, perhaps.  But you may find an unexpected pocket of time lurking in between paying bills and feeding the dog.  Take advantage of it!  If we are to practice our creativity constantly, then we must make the time to be creative!

If you want to try your hand at the “cooking ahead of time” thing, but don’t want to try it for a whole week, just try it for one day.  Here’s a Caribbean recipe my husband and I cooked up over this past weekend.  It simmers on the stove for over an hour, leaving you some time to be creative before supper.

Caribbean Chicken in Coconut Milk

3 lbs. of portioned sized chicken (thighs and legs work great; I used boneless to save time)

¼ cup of canola or safflower oil (use coconut oil for more flavor)

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

¼ lb. chopped mushrooms (I skipped these; not a mushroom fan)

2 cups of coconut milk (I used So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk beverage and it’s also gluten-free!)

salt and pepper

oregano

cayenne pepper

thyme

Towel dry the chicken.  In a large skillet, heat the oil on medium heat and fry the chicken until brown on the outside.  No need to cook all the way through.  Remove chicken from oil, set aside.  In same pan, saute the onions, garlic, and the mushrooms (if using) for about three minutes or until translucent.  Return the chicken to the pan, and add the coconut milk.  Season with salt and pepper, oregano, cayenne pepper and thyme (I guess-imated my seasonings…use what you think is best).  Stir the pan to mix all the ingredients, and then lower the heat to a simmer.  Simmer the chicken until tender, about 1 ¼-1/2 hours.  The cooked coconut milk will be like gravy.  Serve over rice or mashed potatoes (though rice would be more authentic to the islands).

Serves 6

Adapted from “Island Cooking, Recipes from the Caribbean” by Dunstan A. Harris, The Crossing Press, 1988.

Happy cooking, and happy creating!

Metamorphic rocks are rocks that have been transformed from one type of rock into another.  Shale into slate, for example.  What it takes, is heat and pressure.  The metamorphic process transforms other rocks and minerals into something else.  Something stronger.  Something beautiful.  For the artist, it is no different.  Heat and pressure can make for better art.

The past month and a half, most of my time has been spent editing a wedding video for some friends of mine.  Already having a 9-5 job producing videos, it can be difficult to pick up another video project after coming home for the night.  But my friends’ video was eight months late.  After saying, “Oh it will be done by [insert date]” too many times, I finally had to put my foot down.  It was time to make and stick to a deadline.

Deadlines, despite all outward appearances, are a form of discipline.  Just as practice times at regularly planned intervals increases creativity, a deadline for a project forces creativity.  There’s something about a deadline that demands the mind to do something to make it happen.  The increased pressure “ups the ante” on the project.  You have to focus, or you’ll never make your deadline. 

Focusing on a project to the exclusion of other things is not always fun.  For the past month and a half, I haven’t touched much else and it’s been frustrating.  I want to do the “other stuff” that’s rambling around in my head.  Instead, my deadline forces the project to get finished.  Now, for the first time in eight months, I can tell my friends, “Hey! It’s done!”  How many unfinished projects are lying around your art space/craft room/house?  If you’re like me, far too many.  Deadlines can keep you from saying to yourself, “But I never seem to get anything finished.”

Having a deadline does not mean that if you don’t make it, you’ve failed and that’s all there is to it.  That you’re no longer an artist.  Meeting deadlines provide discipline, but should never be a measurement of success.  Only a finished project should define who you are as an artist.  I finished one part of the wedding video by my deadline.  The second half is nearly done.  Instead of stressing over a few extra days, extend the deadline.  But don’t make extending deadlines a habit.  That leads to procrastination, and the pile of unfinished projects.

Heat and pressure are not always fun to work under.  But they can produce stunning results.  For the artist, it transforms a pile of unfinished projects into completed works of art.  For rocks, it transforms coal into diamonds.

Over the past few months, I spent time pondering what God would have me do with this passion for Art, Faith and Inspiration.  As I thought, researched and talked with other creative people, I also tried to take the time to creatively “practice.” These little forays into creative expression aren’t meant to be spectacular.  They’re meant to give the brain some fodder to chew on in between bigger projects.

Back in May, these words caught me on www.writerlylife.com: “Optimism has a funny way of encouraging more optimism; creativity often works that way. The more you make space for a creative mood in your daily life, the more you’ll find that creative mood popping up in the course of a day.” (http://www.writerlylife.com/2011/05/how-to-grab-a-creative-mood-when-it-passes-by/)

The concept struck a chord in me.  I was stressed from getting married, moving, work, etc.  My health took a dive (see April 11 post).  All my energy was gone.  My schedule had no room in it for a creative mood. But my job is a creative one.  Everyday, I use creative storytelling through visual mediums, primarily through video producing.  For example, a 45-minute interview becomes a 3-minute video with music, pictures, graphics…whatever.  Every aspect of the production requires creativity.  Over the past year, my projects piled up, and work became drudgery.  How can you be creative on a schedule if you’re out of juice?  As I thought about being creative, I realized I couldn’t afford to skip recharging my creative batteries.  If creativity begets creativity, then I needed to do some extra-curricular creation. I started thinking of other ways to be creative that were not work-related.

So began a binge of gluten-free baking.  First on the list were eclairs. Next came cheesecake.  Because that was so rewarding, I started work again on a piece of science fiction.  And then came my friend’s wedding and her bachelorette party…after squeezing the creative lemon for my previous projects, it was a delight to make her some hand-painted underware.

Now what does any of that have to with being creatively better at video-production?  Well…not much…on the surface.  Gluten-free eclairs, writing and underware don’t seem to have much in common.  But as a means of letting my creative brain “do something else,” it was invaluable.  I  found that creativity on a schedule is demanding and draining.  Giving my brain the time to “goof-off” and just “practice” being creative meant that creating on the schedule was not so taxing. And that meant regaining a level of enthusiasm that was missing at my day job.

Some things I’ve learned from my “practice” sessions:

1). Do something where the hands make something: cupcakes, curtains, a new doodle for the fridge…the goal is to have the hands moving with the creative brain.

2). Think, but not too much.  Start with a general idea and let your mistakes guide the finished product.  Remember, this is practice, not masterpiece.

3). Work in short bursts.  It’s practice.  Who cares if it’s finished (if ever?).

4).  Avoid passive “inspiration”; no TV watching, Internet surfing, magazine browsing.  The goal is to practice doing your own thing, not copy another’s work.

5). If there’s no creative tools, or you can’t think of what else to try, give reading fiction a whirl.  It engages the imagination, the creative “muscle” to stretch and develop.

One of my co-workers, Andy Caldwell, had this to say in one of our department meetings: “Creativity is not instant grits.” He couldn’t be more right.  It takes time…and practice.  How do you practice being creative?

(Pt. 5 in a sometimes occasional series on Art, Faith and Inspiration)

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