Lyn Bishop : Sharing Secrets

Poco a Poco, it’s an everyday Spanish phrase for little by little. That’s the best way to describe my process for the past two years while this blog sat quietly, patiently awaiting my return to the creative process. Life changes do that to you – make you quite for awhile.

It’s been almost two years since I left the comfort of my Bay Area lifestyle, with so many friends and creative opportunities all around me. I moved first to Costa Rica, and then began spending my time between Costa Rica and Panama, and now, I’m living full time in Panama, in a mountain community where the air is fresh and the hills are always green.

I’ve had small periods of creativity and artmaking, but lacking a studio space it was difficult to spread out and enjoy the process. That was only an excuse. The reality was I just wasn’t ready to let myself luxuriate in the beauty of art. Instead, I embraced nature and the wonders of the tropical rainforest jungle, exploring a world that was totally new to me.

But these days I’m feeling the pull of my creative spirit, and feel the deep need to embrace my process again. My materials are changing, as I don’t have all the high tech goodies to play with here, but the fundamental current of my creative spirit remains, and is calling me to come out and play again.

As I recreate my art and my life here in Panama, I am embracing the fact that I have always been a Creative Entrepreneur. I want to thank @VenessaMiemis for sharing her plans to attend a Creative Entrepreneur workshop in Mexico, and giving me the courage to visit Lisa Sonora Beam’s blog site which gave me the kick in the pants I needed to begin writing again and sharing my creative life with you once more.

Last week I wrote about inspiration. It’s always there, and finding it takes looking around at our surroundings with fresh eyes. Whether it be the urban grit of a city, the organic forms of nature, or whatever it may be that catches your fancy, it’s there for us to tap into at any given time.

I’m always on the lookout for the simple, unsophisticated details of life. I am often drawn to the elements that most people will overlook. I collect them through photographic documentation or by physically gathering any interesting objects I find.

I’m in the studio this week, sorting through these found treasures and scanning them for future use. Each object is attached with a memory, the place it was found, the weather on the day I collected it, the people I was with, etc. Each discarded scrap that I saved holds the hidden story of it’s past life now tied together with my new relationship to it.

(more…)

Look around. Do you see the inspiration? It’s right there, in front of you.

Sometimes I lose sight of this, and dive into the struggle of searching for the perfect spark, overlooking all the other sparks that are going off around me. This can describe my state for the last couple of weeks, searching, searching for the next perfect inspiration.

I got to journaling yesterday, and found that I was indeed excited about a spark I’d previously had, but put on the back burner because I was searching for the better one. Silly me. As I wrote about my desire for clear, flowing inspiration, I found myself tapping into this previous inspiration. As I continued to write about it, I realized that I was excited and motivated to take it beyond a thought and feeling, and into reality. (more…)