What is Joy?

I have been living the life of a creative business owner for 3 years now. And it has been one of the most amazing things I have ever done. My life has used me up every day. But while I have enjoyed all the growing and stretching, I realized there was a deep sadness growing inside me as well. 

In order to get everything done, I had to commit to projects months in advance. I had to live by my schedule book every second of everyday. I had to pray that the Lord would help me to know "what to do when" over the course of my day so I could get it all in. And I almost always got it all in. And the days I didn't, that was OK too.

But there was no spontaneity. I would wake up with an idea I wanted to try and I'd have to write it down and hope I got to it sometime after the barn sale was over. If my kids wanted to pick apples during barn sale season, we had to give up a soccer game or something else on a Saturday to make it happen, and most of the time the opportunity cost was too great. There was no freedom. 

And for me, that is a problem.

I kept wondering where the joy was that everyone promises you comes when you start doing what you love. It reminded me of a time not so very long ago, when my children were small and needed a tremendous amount of my time and energy. I felt suffocated by their needs and my inability to be what I'm like. I felt very little joy then. 

These two periods of my life only have one thing in common. They left me very little freedom. They required a great deal of structure and self control on my part all day, every day. And that is not what I am like. It is the opposite of how I see myself. 

And yet, I feel full of gratitude that I was able to have both stages. "Full" is not a big enough word. I am completely overcome by the gratitude I feel for having been able to stay home and raise my children myself. And I am still astonished and filled with wonder that I am allowed to take my life on this course of barn sales and art and blogging. Yet both periods have been excruciatingly difficult for me. What is the source of the gratitude I feel now?

I have been thinking about that a lot lately. And I got my answer from the most delicious source. The most refined and delightful octogenarian I know, my sweet friend JM.

As you guys know from my trip to Groundhog Mecca last year, my birthday is Feb 2. Well this year, the party was a bit more toned down. In fact, with teacher work days and my kids home the two weekdays before my birthday, two parties for kids to get to stacked across Saturday (making it difficult to do anything exciting), and the first Sunday of the month being a day I fast for the first two meals of the day and Super Bowl Sunday to boot, I was pretty concerned I wouldn't be able to celebrate at all. But a week before The Day, I got smart. I asked JM to be my guide at the National Gallery of Art the Tuesday after my birthday. 

JM has spent her entire life filling her mind with beauty and excellence. She taught for years and years in the public system, preferring to be in areas where the kids had less at home and really needed her help lighting that candle of learning in their hearts. She has spent so much time in the best museums and galleries of the world, the masterworks have become her friends. As an aspiring artist, I would be a fool to not spend time listening to this woman. And I got to spend an entire day with her, geeking about about great art. It was quite the birthday gift.

As I was driving her home, I finally had the presence of mind to ask her the one question I had prepared in advance. "JM, what do you think joy is?" She thought for a minute, surprised by the question. I can't remember her exact words, as their meaning came across to me more in pictures and memories. 

As we talked about it, I saw the day I turned 40. Two girlfriends and I headed up to a charming town, a village really, to go antiquing with my then 3 year old daughter in tow. My friends had fallen in love with a shop selling vintage jewelry, so I left them there and took my Little to get a snack at the nearby convenience store.  As we walked along a small highway, snow neatly along the roadside, I was completely taken by the moment.  It was a perfect midwinter day, crisp and clear, but not uncomfortable in our cozy coats. The sky was that idealized sky blue from picture books and the sun shone merrily, glinting and sparkling off the snow. We walked past small houses made from the stones cleared from the land by the first people to live there and wondered about all the lives those houses had kept protected. I remember the warmth and fun of my daughters's small hand in mine as we walked, seeing the pleasure in her eyes of being included on a "big girl date" with mommy and mommy's friends. I can remember purposely memorizing that moment with my mind as I realized there was no where in the world I'd rather be than right there, right then. 

And I had 100 other moments just as glorious as I looked back across my life, in case this one wasn't enough to convince me.

What I learned from JM and my own memories is that I was looking for the wrong thing in the wrong way. Somewhere along the way, I had decided that "Joy" was earned by being a good person and that it came across as a constant feeling of happiness and well being. This distressed me, because I had been doing things that were very hard for me and making huge sacrifices for the good of those around me for a very long time and my well being seemed to come and go randomly. Surely I had earned "Joy" by now? (Don't you love the sense of entitlement there?)

But my friends, true joy is a gift of this life. It can be cultivated, but not earned. Anyone can feel it, regardless of who they are or what they've done.

True joy must simply be noticed. 

It is present so very often, if we will just see it and recognize it. It is those beautiful moments, both simple and full of wonder that make our heart beat fast and our eyes tear up with pride or amazement or wonder. It is a fleeting thing in time, but if recognized can live in your heart as a part of you. 

It was such a relief for me to realize I wasn't "Doing it Wrong."And I connected that the reason I feel such gratitude for those difficult parts of my life is because somehow I managed to notice some of the joy along the way. I showered my Littles with flowers as the petals dropped in the spring. I blew bubbles with them and watched the colors change from green to blue to purple to magenta as they floated through the air and popped. I watched their world grow as we made cookies together and as I helped them learn how to read and grew flowers and food in the garden. I got to see the excitement and sometimes the tears in the eyes of my artists as I handed them the first check they ever got selling things they made. I've stared at my barn sale all beautifully staged and hear the shoppers comment about how extraordinary it all is, validating all my effort to bring it into existence. I get to hear my customers tell me how looking at a piece of art I made makes them happy every. single. time. they see it, even after owning it for years.

These moments, my friend, are joy. Your life is filled with them now. And the more you look for them, especially the simple things like how much you want to embrace the person who invented the warm shower, the more you will find them. 

So look. 

They are hidden in the sky at sunset and in your child's "dirty from playing in the forest" hands and in the way your curtains blow just so in the sunlight and in the ice crystals hiding under your mulch. 

Joy is not constant. But it can be all around you, especially when you least expect it.

Joy is just there, no matter who you are, if you have the eyes to see it.

Fill yourself with moments. When you look back, it will feel like 

you have years and years of joy inside you. 

And remember, joy doesn't always make it easier, 

but it sure helps to make it worth it.

I hope this little connection helps you all. It has sure helped me. Thank Heavens for wise women willing to share light on their younger sisters in the world. And thank heavens for all of you, willing to read my ramblings. You too are a gift and I 'd love to hear about your joy.

Thank you all,

CM Shaw

What I'm Working On ... A Many Faceted Answer for February

People are always asking me what I'm working on. This is a complicated question for me to answer because I am usually doing about a billion different things, in different realms, most of which is not what they would consider "Art". There is usually at least one major organizing project going on. I have a home project "to do" list that's about 200 items long and mostly just waiting for the budget to do it. I am always thinking of new things I want to try in the studio, and I've been writing these down, as it's not really time for me to create right now. I am gathering ideas and energy right now. But that's doesn't mean I'm not going on a whole bunch of field trips to look at stuff and get inspired. I have been doing that almost once a week.

So in an effort to answer the question, "What are you working on?" I thought I'd just take you on a little tour of what I've been doing in February.

Hanging out at the National Gallery of Art

Winter is the best time of year to visit the museums on the National Mall. There are hardly any tourists, (due to our crappy winter weather) so you may be the only person in that entire section of the museum. It's heaven! When I have been going lately, I have worn my "Art Geek" hat. I've been looking for guidance from the Masters, be they Renaissance, Dutch, Modern, or other.

 The layered colors just killed me when I saw this huge piece, Ocean Park No.61,  by Richard Diebenkorn. I had seen it in a book, but I had no idea it was 10 ft by 8 ft! And it just glows, like a pearl. It gave me all sorts of ideas about layering different concoctions of chalk paint and glazes to get different effects; how I could mix pigments into wax to make a glaze become iridescent or pearlized. See what I mean about Art Geeking?

In the Dutch section, I was struck by how Jan Steen used different colors in lighter and darker shades to show the folds of the cloth in his merry painting, "The Dancing Couple." For some reason, that idea is completely revolutionary to me. And when I was telling my very science geeky 14 year old about it, she mentioned that one could take advantage of the Doppler effect and have things closer to you be redder and things farther be bluer to trick the eye into seeing depth. I love it when life just teaches you from random directions.

And then there's Andrew Wyeth. I don't know what it is about this man's paintings, but they have haunted me with their mystery and beauty since I was introduced to Christina's World in 8th grade. In this one, Wind From the Sea, I was looking at how he created the sheerness of the curtains. The more I looked for shading and color clues, (picture me leaning right up to the canvas as the security guard inches closer and closer nervously) the more I realized there weren't any. He simply painted the lines of the curtains and then left at at that. Remarkable effect, wouldn't you say? Transparent looking because there is no paint there? Brilliant! 

See? This is why I go look at other people's art. Because I would never think of this this stuff. Once you figure out what they've done, it seems obvious. But it's the thinking of it in the first place that's the trick. So I just file it all away in the Mental Cauldron and it swims around in there until it decides to combine with something else and emerge again as a loosely formed idea.

Making My Own Chalk Paint

I have been toying with this idea ever since reading this post from Cottage Instincts. So this week I actually tried it. I can't tell you my results, as I am teaching a class on it this coming April 5th (more on this soon. I am super excited about this class!), but I will say it made a mess, and that's always a good thing in my book. 

As a part of my class, the good people at Websters sent me wax and mix in samples for all the students in the class! They are the best! Check them out here. And I promise to do a full review of their products as soon as I have a chance to use them. What's not to love about new brands of art supplies?

Making Things Out of Other Things

Neither of these is a great photo, but they give you an idea of what 

my inner up-cycling bug has been up to lately.

I (well, DK and I. He helped me a lot on this one) made a curtain rod out of pipe conduit. 

I couldn't stand the vertical blinds in my basement any more, both because they were ugly and mostly because my kids never shut them the right way and they were breaking. So DK and I took them down and replaced them with a pipe conduit curtain rod inspired by this hilarious post from Lynne Knowlton's blog Design the Way You Want to Live and some Ikea cotton drapes. 

And don't worry. I have full tutorials in the works for building the curtain rod (you get to use the pipe cutter at Home Depot!), hemming the super long drapes, and adding big fabric stripes to the drapes. Obviously, that last one hasn't happened yet, due to a disagreement with my sewing machine. It needs to go see the sewing machine doctor and then we will resume our merry course together.

I also stripped a tree stump I saved from my friend Rodney's 

wood pile and made it into a plant stand.

I got this idea from my dear friend Brandi's excellent blog, Don't Disturb This Groove. Check the awesome tutorial out here. Brandi's tutorial is so good,  I don't need to write another one here. 

She and I are Instagram buddies and I was completely taken when she posted her awesome "after" pics of this project. I had the stump in my studio, curing. I tripped on it one day and decided the time had come. So off came the bark, and out came the bleach. "Worth it, but nasty" is all I have to say about the process, especially after cleaning out my tub. I also ended up sanding the stump quite a bit after it was dry, which she doesn't cover in her tutorial. I prefer the lighter inner wood to show, as opposed to the darker wood near the bark. And her stumps had no bark to begin with. Lucky!

Painting Things Really Bright Colors

This was one of my birthday presents. My sister always sends me the things that I can't really justify buying, but that I can't live without. This print was just calling to me (It's by Vin Zzep. I like all of his stuff. You can see it here) I knew exactly where I was going to put it; to the left of my desk, so I could stare at it when I got writers block and could pretend to frolic in the grassy fields under the giant fish with a crown. Totally normal, right?

I ran right out and bought a frame at Walmart and got it home and framed it up. And all I could think was "I like this, but the frame needs to be red." So back to Walmart I go, to the blessed spray paint aisle. A little primer, a little spray paint, and Voila! The perfect frame for a flying fish!

And the other day, I was sitting in my chair in the living room looking at my front door. I just KNEW it needed to be electric orange red. So up the paint chips went. DK was leaving town for the week and he made me promise I wouldn't paint it until he got back. So I agreed to just mess with paint chips in various locations until he got back. 

Let's just say 4 coats of paint were on the door and dry within 2 days of his return. And I LOVE it! It makes me feel like it really is MY house. (Tomato Red by Benjamin Moore Aura paint, for those interested.) 

It looked like ketsup on top of the can, and DK said it reminded him of tomato soup, so now our door has been named "Campbell." Gotta love my kids. Who names the front door?

While all this paint chipping was going on, I brought home some aqua chips as well, just in the name of being thorough. I had become entranced by Sherry and John's new entry way from Young House Love here. (Do you think I read enough blogs?) And yes, I have total Moravian Star light envy, but that's another story.

Long story short, I hated the aqua for the front door, but loved it for the laundry room/garage door. DK hadn't extracted any laundry room "no painting" promises, (it's the laundry room for heaven's sake) so I painted a few base coats with paint I had and ran to Benjamin Moore to get a sample of Fairy Tale Blue the day after he left. And I told him he'd have to figure out what I had painted when he came home.With me, that could have been anything. 

I am in love with it, but I can't decide what to do with the wall color, as the many paint swatches indicate. The existing taupe is pretty trashed. And while it looks nice and all, I'm just not a taupe girl.

So that's the rundown. It sounds so much more exciting telling you guys about it than it actually was. 

The funny thing is, the project I am most happy about was 

sorting through all the out-grown, hand me down clothes!

Notice the clear labeling and the uniform containers. It is ridiculous how happy I am about this.

I went through nine big boxes or bins of clothing and trashed or donated 4 bags of stuff, sent some to my sister, labeled and binned the rest for my younger kids as they grow. I have wanted to do this for a YEAR. And now it's done. 

There is such joy in "Done".

What have you guys been doing?

Talk to you soon,

CM Shaw

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