An Artist Date

by | Feb 25, 2018 | Art, books, Culture, Edmonds, Washington State, winter | 20 comments

Danny Pierce, 1958

 Last week because it was colder than usual, I spent way too much time inside at home. So yesterday, when the temperature jumped from the low thirties to the mid-forties, I decided it was time to get out and go for an artist date.

Actually Mindy Halleck put the idea in my head a few days earlier. She’d been asked by a student how writers can keep from being overwhelmed by how much work it takes to write a novel. And though she’d answered the student in class, afterwards she felt his question deserved a more complete answer. Hence her blog post. I urge you to read it. It’s very good.

The one point she made that hit home for me, especially after my stay-at-home week, was her mention of an artist date.

If you’re a writer or an artist, you may have read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. In the book, Ms Cameron discusses ideas and techniques to help the creative person thrive. Among other things, she recommends taking yourself on an artist date. It’s a simple idea. Creation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It grows out of our openness to and interaction with life and the world. She calls it “opening yourself to insight, inspiration, guidance … filling the well.”

According to Virginia Woolf, a writer benefits from having “a room of one’s own.” And yet, you can’t stay in that room all the time.

Yesterday I started my artist date at the Cascadia Art Museum, a museum in Edmonds, WA, that’s dedicated to showing Pacific Northwest mid-century art.

Their current exhibit is Northwest Design at Mid-Century.

Evert Sodergren, 1953

Before WWII, American furniture was heavy and square-ish. After the war, air travel became more common and gave Americans a chance to see the rest of the world. The Pacific Northwest, with its ties to both the Far East and to Scandinavian countries, was the logical place for a new, lighter kind of furniture design.

Bob Cram, Original advertising illustration for Frederick & Nelson’s Department Store

There’s no date on this illustration, but it has a definite mid-century look.

Tatiana M. Roats, circa 1955

Nothing says the Northwest like Native Americans smoking fish.

Ebba Rapp, circa 1938

This bronze was sculpted in about 1938. Some things never go out of fashion.


Walking through the museum by myself, I had lots of time to think. And the one impression that kept coming back to me was the sense of awe I felt at how much time and care the artists and artisans put into their work.

Why do they (we) do it? Why the passion for perfection and beauty? Why the desire to create something new, something all your own?

In monetary terms, it doesn’t make sense.

And yet, that creative spark stubbornly remains deep inside us.

And we just keep making art.

20 Comments

  1. Jennifer J. Chow

    An artist date? What a great idea! I love how seeing other people’s creative output inspires our own.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      An artist date feels like a waste of time before you do it. Usually for me, visiting a museum, for example, doubles as a social event. So it seems strange and maybe even self-indulgent to do it alone. And yet, when you do something like that alone, it’s a unique experience. You notice different things; the meaning changes. The same thing goes for walking through the woods alone in contrast to walking and talking to your companion.

      Reply
  2. Annika Perry

    Nicki, I love the idea of a artist date and can understand how easy it is to just burn out otherwise until empty! The museum visit looks wonderfully inspiring and just this morning I was researching the work of Carl Larsson – with his wife they helped revolutionise interior design, and one was a chair similar to this. Julia Cameron’s book has been recommended to me numerous times … it’s now in my wish list with Amazon. An interesting and informative post.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I was a pre-teen when my mom bought our first Scandinavian design furniture. I remember it being something special and very new, although it wasn’t as sleek and curvy as this one. I’m a big fan of curves, rounded edges, and lightness. Julia Cameron’s book is something you might want to work though slowly. I never adopted all her recommendations, but I remembered them, so I’m able to use them when needed.

      Reply
  3. restlessjo

    Great, isn’t it? I particularly like that piece of artwork that’s your lead photo. Visually striking but interesting too. 🙂 🙂 I haven’t read your links but will pop back to do so. Museums, new places… there is so much to stimulate out there.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I like that picture too. It has such beautiful bright colors. This museum is only five minutes away, so I like to visit it each time they change exhibits.

      Reply
  4. nrhatch

    Write on, Nicki! 😀

    Reply
  5. Mindy

    Hi Nicki, So glad the Artist Date resonated with you and you took action. What a great gift to yourself. We all need to do this more often in our lives. I’ll be teaching 6 weeks of The Artist Way fro Writers at Edmonds Community College in April, check out here https://mindyhalleck.com/2018/02/02/six-weeks-of-the-artists-way/
    Thanks again for the mention and keep up those inspiration dates. Cheers, Mindy

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I think it will be fun for your students to work their way through The Artist’s Way together. It’s the perfect book to do as a group.

      Now that it’s getting warmer, it will be enjoyable to go on more artist dates.

      Reply
  6. autumnashbough

    I’m of two minds about your quote from Cameron. I guess if a person is a a solitary writer, doing the iconic hut in the woods of New England thing, it would be useful to get out and add to one’s experiences. But very few writers make a living through their writing. Most have other jobs, whether it’s bartending, parenting, teaching, or something else entirely. I think perhaps their idea of an ideal writer’s date would be an empty room alone.

    Halleck touches on that in her blog post, though, which is quite good. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I think you’re right, Autumn. It’s all about balance. We need the right mix of alone time when no one is bothering us and we can concentrate on our work and time to get out and do something different where someone or something new stimulates or inspires us. Actually, Cameron suggests a weekly artist date. I think for most people that’s way too much.

      Reply
      • autumnashbough

        If I lived alone in he woods of New Hampshire, once a week would be fine! 🙂

        Reply
      • autumnashbough

        If I lived alone in the woods of New Hampshire, once a week would be fine! 🙂

        Reply
  7. L. Marie

    Loved this post, Nicki! And thank you for including the link to that blog post. So glad you headed to the museum for inspiration!

    A friend of mine told me that her current instructor suggested music as another way of gaining inspiration to write. She suggested this video on the musical themes of the Lord of the Rings soundtracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7BkmF8CJpQ

    When I’m stuck writing-wise, I crochet. Making something beautiful or whimsical inspires me to write.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I love the youtube video. The narrator says near the end, “I think that we hardly grasp the importance of music in film. It’s an invisible layer of pure emotion that guides us or challenges us or guides or challenges the drama itself.” If the music is doing its job, that invisible layer of emotion engages us and brings the story to life. In Donald Maas’s book, The Emotional Craft of Fiction he contends that it’s that hidden layer of emotion that either engages the reader or doesn’t.

      I think it’s worthwhile buying soundtracks from movies that made you feel deeply. I play the soundtrack from Hidden Tiger, Crouching Dragon. along with a mix of instrumental music when I write. I also have the soundtrack from The Great Gatsby, but that’s more for dancing and exercising.

      I found it smile-worthy that the narrator on the youtube video took such an academic approach to explaining the precise mechanism for surreptitiously stirring our emotions.

      Reply
  8. Jill Weatherholt

    I’ve read Julia’s book it’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing your outing to the museum, Nicki. What a great way to get the creative juicy flowing. Our weather has been beautiful the past several days. With temperatures near 80 everything is blooming. Sadly, I know there is still a great deal of winter coming our way and I fear the blooms won’t survive.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I was surprised to read that The Artist’s Way was first published in 1992. They already have a 25th anniversary issue out.

      Only three-and-a-half weeks until spring. I’m betting that your blooms will make it. Nature is so hardy.

      Reply
  9. Mabel Kwong

    I like the idea of an artist date, of taking yourself out to a place where you might get inspired for your own art. As much as I thrive on staying in one place and that helps me get a story together, sometimes I just get stuck. I might have all these ideas in my head and have no idea where to place them. After a bit of a walk or maybe a trip to the city, I usually come back having forgotten about my confusing mind and coming back with more of an empty mind ready to start looking at the pieces of the puzzle again.

    It must have felt quite surreal to be walking among artifacts that were preserved from so long ago. That’s how I feel when I walk through a museum or a similar kind of exhibit. Stop, reflect, ponder of what was and what is the art, and this can be such a deep experience – and maybe you realise that art can stand the test of time 🙂

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I often get ideas in the shower. Last week, though, I spent too much time in my own house. I needed a change of scenery, and an artist date seemed like the best way to do it. Also, going out alone is a different experience from going out with friends.

      Since I’m older than you, I probably looked at mid-century artifacts in a different way that you would have. Some of the styles looked very familiar, and I thought, wow! Is it really that old? I heard another museum goer say that he still had a lamp just like the one on display. Having dates on things gives you the sense of the passage of time. Some designs met the test of time; others didn’t.

      Reply

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