Helen Lehndorf

Tag: creative process

  • Another morning, full of hope

    Do you ever have movies that you love so much you watch them over and over?

    I am an obsessive re-watcher, re-reader, re-listener. When I really love something, I want to take it in over and over again, enjoying it manifold times and, in the process, getting new things from it. I’m not someone that needs endless novelty.

    One of those films I love to re-watch is a wonderfully odd documentary from 2013 called ‘Cutie and the Boxer’.

    It’s about two Japanese artists, Ushio Shinohara and Noriko Shinohara, living in New York City. They are a married couple and they are startlingly honest with one another. Their creative paths have caused them all sorts of suffering and tensions…and yet they can’t help but live for their art despite art being ‘a demon that drags you along’ as Ushio says at one point.

    Whenever I’m feeling a bit gloomy about my creative life…feeling fatigued from the endless tenacity it takes to keep writing on top of the endless demands of family/community life…I like to rewatch this film and it always lifts me back up and re-invigorates my love for the creative life.

    Both Ushio and Noriko are very dry, very blunt and very funny (maybe it’s a Japanese quality? I don’t know enough Japanese people to know.) Even though there are very sad elements to their story (poverty, alcoholism, domestic inequalities) …ultimately the film is a testament to never giving up your creative aspirations.

    Do you have any movies you like to watch over and over when you need a lift? Films that feed your creativity? Tell me in the comments – I’d love some recommendations. I especially love documentaries.

    Here’s one of my favourite Ushio moments from the film (I captured these by taking photographs of my TV screen so excuse their bad quality):

    *mic drop*

  • 52 and still stumbling over the ‘A’ word…

    (Above: journal word cards I make for my workshops.)

    Over the weekend, I was at a beach-side retreat for women so I was meeting some new people. I had just taught a journaling workshop (if you’re reading the blog because of foraging…you might not know my second book was about the practice of keeping a journal and I teach journal workshops) and a new acquaintance asked if I were an artist.

    I made some digressive, stumbling reply about how I loved to ‘mess about’ with art, had a visual element to my journal practice, love to play with art materials…mumble mumble… but ‘no, I am not a ‘proper’ artist.’

    My friend C, who was standing there, who is a visual artist, has been to art school, etc, interjected and said,

    ‘Helen, you are an artist. You are. You spend a lot of time doing art. You’re an artist!’

    I thanked her…the conversation moved on…but it left me reflecting.

    (Above: Mixed-media chamomile from a botanical sketchbook I’ve been working on.)

    I have taught creative writing for most of my working life (at university) and there I was, encouraging my undergrads to claim the ‘W’ word, ‘writer’ for themselves.

    ‘If you are passionate about writing, you spend your time writing, you are a writer!’ I said to them. I meant it, too. I felt there was power in the claiming of the word for themselves.

    And yet…and yet…here I am, old enough to know better, and still wiggling around doing the same thing for myself in another creative discipline. I studied creative writing at university and spend a great deal of time writing so it feels simple to claim ‘writer’ for myself. I still wobble around with claiming ‘artist’.

    Aren’t our brains fascinating, and odd, and annoying?

    (Above: Mixed-media red clover from a botanical sketchbook I’ve been working on.)

    I think part of it is where a passion intersects with an audience, or with capitalism. I find it easy to claim ‘writer’ because I have published things and had an audience respond to them. My words have earned me (a little!) money. I have been successful in selling books.

    (Above: art manifesto in the making. Sketchbook notes.)

    My art is mostly in the vein of play, experimentation and enjoyment of the creative process. I have exhibited art work and sold a few things. When my children were small, I supplemented my income with making self-designed and drafted textile crafts and paper goods. I love taking photographs. I feel I have a good visual eye.

    So how is it, I can, for years, have encouraged students to claim ‘writer’ for themselves and yet fail to take my own advice in another discipline?

    Do you have a creative practice noun -artist, writer, musician, singer, potter?-…..you yearn to claim and inhabit but struggle with? I’d love to hear about your blocks or advice for overcoming this odd phenomena.

    Love, Helen, (confident writer, tenuous artist.)