Cotton Candy

Cotton Candy amy freeth-rice 2024

#6

I am thinking today about ideas and where they originate. Several of the books I’ve read on the subject of creativity and art and ideas reference the concept of ‘source’. Source- as I understand it- is a universal soup that surrounds us and whose ingredients are all the stuff we might come up with as ‘ideas’. From source we could get bendy straws or lunar landing modules or sea salt dark chocolate or some great picture. Source is something from which you can harvest your ideas if you are in the right mindset to do so. Source seems to imply that ideas are just there waiting and if you don’t make yourself available to them they will languish or someone else will get them. On some levels I believe this, on some levels my sarcastic suspicious inner voice thinks nahhh how can it be? Mostly though I do like believing it and am happy to think that my next idea- good or bad- is just waiting for me to ladle it out of the cosmic soup and make something of it. I also like to think of ideas as cotton candy- just a mess of colorful sugar crystals that just need to be warmed up, spun around, pulled through a screen and then it will start to come together as something real and useable- if only for a momentary delightful burst of sweetness before it melts away to nothing again. -amy 5/31/24

Negative Space

Negative Space amy freeth-rice 2024

#5

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about process- artistic process- and how that can translate to a more fulfilling life. As I’ve gotten older I am more and more interested in withdrawing ever so slightly from the busy-ness of life. I am trying by degrees to shrink things so that I have more time and mental energy for my artistic process. I am lucky in that I have a ‘regular’ job that I love that provides the necessaries- money, insurance, paid vacation time, a good work environment and people that I genuinely enjoy spending my days with. And my job forces me not to be a complete and total broke-ass art hermit which if left to my own devices I might well become. I think, no… I BELIEVE (thank you Ted Lasso), that you have to have some ‘negative space’ in your life from which your art or creativity or craft can draw. I also think negative space is such an important visual construct because it allows room for your own ideas of what you are seeing to flourish- Wikipedia agrees. Per Wikipedia negative space is described thus: “This basic, but often overlooked, principle of design gives the eye a "place to rest," increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means.” Yes Yes and Yes again. I don’t love a crazy busy life and I don’t love looking at things that try to answer the questions for you. I like the questions to be posed and the ever changing answers to present themselves unconstrained. Anyway, thoughts for the day… -amy 5/22/24

The New Local

Happy Here by amy freeth-rice 2024

#4

I am very happy to be a part of the upcoming term at The New Local- a gallery in downtown Boulder, CO. I dropped off pieces today and it will be hung next week (Memorial Day weekend). It’s been a fun process- last year I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to sell my work again as I took a break from showing people the things I was making. I can’t fully account for this- I was in an art funk or something. But since then I created this website and started my art focused instagram (amyfreethrice) and then I applied to the New Local gallery when they were calling for submissions and was accepted. It kicked me into creativity high gear and I’ve been doing something creative almost every day now for months. I have many ideas about selling my work and plan to build a marketplace on my website asap. It feels good to become unstuck. I credit two books for this unsticking: The Creative Act by Rick Ruben and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Those two books helped to convince me that my work wants to get made and that it also wants to get sold to nice people who like it. This is one of the images being offered at the New Local as of next week. -amy 5/19/24

The Year of the Rabbit

#3

I love when I can carve out some creativity time when I am busy ‘doing other things’. Needless to say life is quite busy- family, work, chores…the various and sundry obligations of life that take up almost all of one’s time. But while I try to make time for my interests-and often succeed- it is also a delicious bonus when I can get a stolen moment piggy backed onto the doing of other things. Such was yesterday. I took my kid to go sit the SAT at a high school about an hour from home. He can drive but it was wickedly early so I drove him. I thought well now I have some time to kill. I knocked out my various errands and thought eh I guess I’ll go for a walk even though it threatened rain. But wait-The high school where my kid is taking the SAT is called Chatfield. Maybe that means the Chatfield Farms location of the Denver Botanic Gardens is near here? Yes! 11 minutes away and opening at that time as well. And it was perfection. Colorado is having a very rainy spring- and Chatfield was as green as green gets. It was overcast which intensifies that green feeling. Is there a word for the most saturated green a green can be? Maybe ultra-verdant. That was Chatfield yesterday. I had always wanted a chance to visit this part of the Denver Botanic which is located miles away from the downtown one that I love and have frequented over the years. And there is a sculpture there that I had hoped to see while it was still up-it shows up in all the literature and emails. The sculpture is called ‘One Fell Swoop' by Patrick Dougherty and has been up for a few years if I am recalling correctly. It is a naturally derived willow branch sculpture- aptly named for its swoopy ins and outs. It is interactive- you can walk into it and around it and you can sit in it- and I did. I felt like a little rabbit in my warren. Each part of it offered up a different shape and each opening a new window onto all that green. I was able to appreciate this lovely piece of environmental art without any other people for a while before moving on and walking a few miles through the wet lands and iris gardens. The sky started really pouring when I got to my car, soaked, flower drunk and thoroughly happy to have had that moment to myself. Back to life.

-amy 6/4/23

“Angelic Trouble Makers”

#2

This title comes from a piece of art I saw at the Denver Art Museum today (5/13/23) by Nari Ward. The new Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries opened yesterday and I visited the galleries today. I saw many fantastic works and I really love this piece by Ward- an artist based out of NY. I highly recommend, if modern art is your thing, to give the new galleries a look-see. It feels like it has been a while since the more modern part of the museum has been updated but now it has been and with great effect. They have replaced most of the older seen it a million times works with some tried and true pieces from the likes of Joan Mitchell, Elaine de Kooning, Keith Haring, Frank Stella, Dan Flavin and a pretty fantastic wall of small pieces by O’keefe, Picasso, Braque, Miró…you get the picture. There’s some real historical weight to the things on display- pieces that you might want to see again and again. I’m grateful that my local favorite museum- a place that excels at the thoughtfully curated special exhibitions- has put together a modern collection that really is a joy to peruse. https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/modern-and-contemporary-art-galleries

-amy 5/13/23

Visiting the Warhol

Blog Post Number 1- I honestly have no idea if writing a blog is either worthwhile (for me) or interesting (for anyone other than me). But I’m ok with giving it a shot. There is no thesis or plan. I think I’ll just highlight some things I like whenever I am up for it. One thing I really liked recently was visiting the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. while driving cross country with my mother. As I understand it the museum changes exhibits often so there is always something new from Warhol’s universe to see. I like a vibrant changing museum so that it is more like an organism fed and enlivened by the people who work and curate there. I had just finished the fantastic, exhaustively researched, and very long book Warhol by Blake Gopnik. Thus I was really happy to be physically immersed in a few of the things that had very recently been lighting up my brain as stories only. It was a funny little coincidence that I had worn my Keith Haring t-shirt to the museum only to find a Keith Haring sculpture that was painted in the same style as my t-shirt was printed. I had not necessarily expected a stand alone piece by an artist whose name was not on the building. It wasn’t a collaboration with Warhol- it was just a Keith Haring elephant in the room. Cool. -amy 4/22/23