On experimentation

Update, September 30: The Dreaming Girl is finished. She is up in the gallery now, silver thread and all, if you want to see how it ended.

Or, as my wife would put it, here he goes again.

Anyone who knows me knows I cannot leave a hobby alone. Roughly every six months I pick up something new. I fall into it completely, learn its habits and its tools, and then some fresh thing catches my eye and I am off again. A couple of years ago it was gardening, and that one stuck. I have an active summer garden going right now. Five or six years back it was painting, and that one stuck too. It is still going.

So when I announce, with a straight face, that I want to try one more thing, my wife gives me the look. The rolling eyes. Oh my God, the man is taking up another hobby. We joke that I am working through a very long, very productive midlife crisis. She is not entirely wrong.

I should be honest, though. For every hobby that stuck, there is one that quietly did not. I picked up the guitar once, went to three classes, and that was the end of the guitar. Last year I wanted to try woodworking, never registered in time for the classes, and the whole idea just fizzled. I took up inline skating and fell on the road more times than I can count before I finally gave it up. Skiing is on the list too, and I have still never actually gone. So I am not perfect at this by any measure. I start a lot of things. I do not finish all of them.

But that is sort of the point, and it is what all this trying has taught me. Anything and everything worth doing needs patience. That is the number one ingredient, above talent or time or the right tools. And a little recognition helps more than people admit. Some appreciation for the work, even a small bit, can take you to the next level and keep you going through the part where you are still bad at it.

The newest thing began with mandalas. I posted a few of them here already. From there I moved into string art, which is really a mandala built from other materials: a wooden board, a field of nails, and thread pulled tight from point to point until a shape emerges. There is a butterfly on the site that came out of this. I love that piece because a butterfly is pure symmetry, the same pattern answering itself on both sides, and there is something quietly beautiful in a thing that balances that perfectly.

Lately I have been pushing further, into mixed media. This next one starts on a round wooden board with an acrylic painting worked straight onto it, and then I layer the other materials over the top. First the paint, then the nails driven in along every edge I want to trace, then the thread. Painting plus real objects plus string. I call this one the Dreaming Girl. She sits inside the curve of a crescent moon, knees drawn up, looking out at the dark, with the clouds gathered below her.

The two pictures here are the same piece at two moments. In the first the painting is done and the nails are set, but the string has not gone in yet.

In the second you can see where it stands now. The moon is threaded in white until it glows, and the clouds are built up in blue. That is the part I did not expect to love so much, watching a flat painting lift into something with texture and light once the string catches it.

It is not finished yet. I still want to fill the girl herself with thread, add stars to the dark sky around her, and work in a few more dimensions before I call it done. Tell me what you think so far.

The next piece I have in mind goes another dimension further. I want to make an Indian bride, wearing real ornaments, stringing herself into being. I am still working out how to actually pull it off. That is half the fun. I will share it here as it comes together.

So if you are a middle-aged husband, or a husband or wife of any age, itching to try something new, here is my small plea. Do what my wife does for me, even when she is rolling her eyes. Give the support and little appreciation of their effort. Let them try. And when it goes badly, as some of it will, approve it anyway, with grace.