paintings pottery journal calendar candles gifts

January Blues: Chase Them away with Art

paintings pottery journal calendar candles gifts

Two- and three-dimensional art inspires us to slow down, contemplate, and think — and January is the perfect time to focus on such an activity.

For many, January is not an easy month.

Type “January Blues” in an Internet search engine and you’ll get digital pages on the subject. According to the experts at the top of the algorithm, January Blues is anything from a “dip in positivity” to a critical health issue that requires the expertise of more experts to manage (since overcoming or solving problems, in the world of experts, is rarely an option).

art paintings wall january display

Few of us have home walls filled with this much art. What we do have, however, is worth taking time to stop and view, ponder, and contemplate. January is a great month for doing this.

Commonsense, however, and when we choose to use it, tells us that January will be rough because it comes on the heels of the holidays. In a normal world, we’ve just experienced weeks of bright lights, good cheer, and families and friends getting together to eat, play games, exchange gifts, and generally experience joy and acceptance in one another’s presence.

Often during the holidays, we set aside various issues and challenges for the future – January – and when January comes, well, those various issues and challenges are waiting for us. Oh, joy.

All Problems Have Solutions

Okay, so that’s the problem, but all problems have solutions. The first step to achieving any solution is serious thought, and for opportunity to think and reflect, January positively glows.

candles beeswax glow flame colorful calming

Candles add a glow of light and warmth to our environs that inspire a sense of thought and contemplation.

There is time, quiet, and solitude. In the northern climes, weather is generally hostile to active gardening or sun bathing, so we’re inside. And if we eschew the TV, phone, or screen of any sort (if you want to make a New Year’s resolution, this is a good one), we take advantage of that time, quiet, and solitude to think, contemplate, meditate, plan, innovate, and even create.

And here’s where art comes in. If you’ve got a work of art on your wall, January invites you to brew a cup of something hot, snuggle up in a chair, behold the artwork, and ponder. We had a client once who wrote us about a painting she bought:

“I hung the artwork in my bedroom. In the morning, I bring my coffee there and contemplate the piece while I sip. Throughout the day, I stop what I’m doing, sit on the bed, and look at the scene. In the evening, before I go retire, I look again, and think. This has brought me great peace.”

Art Promotes Pondering

Aside from being the client from paradise, this intelligent thinker has discovered that two-dimensional visual art, unlike TV sitcoms, talk talk “news” analysis, “reality” fare, and made-for-the-moment dramas, allows the mind time to ponder, uninterrupted by commercials, proselytizing, and propaganda.

January entertainment jigsaw puzzles pottery candles

It’s the perfect entertainment for January evenings — putting together a jigsaw puzzle while sipping tea. A candle in the background provides a sense of calm.

Art inspires thinking. Thinking is a crucial element to freedom. And freedom is a worthwhile pursuit every month of the year. Why not start with January?

And while we’re at it, let’s go back to that coffee cup. Three-dimensional functional art – as in pottery, for example – is also a means to contemplation and thought. There is pleasure in holding something that human hands have crafted, stimulation to the mind through touch. Brewing hot fare and pouring it into a beautiful mug is a self-directed, mini-ritual that slows us down, and slowing down is the first step to thinking. You can’t think deeply when you’re multi-tasking.

And don’t stop with the cup. Another artisan means of slowing down is the humble candle – timeless technology perfect for January’s early dark days. You don’t have to get into a lotus position and chant om to reap benefits from the candle’s light. Just bask in its glow.

As we think more, as we ponder and contemplate, we begin to find that we want to express what is going on in our heads. Communication, after all, is not the exclusive province of those who can afford to buy the airwaves and the publishing companies. Expression of thought is necessary for individual and societal health.

It Feels Right to Write

note cards greeting art nostalgia journals write

Whether you write personal notes in a journal or a letter to a friend in a greeting card, writing is an excellent way to share the things we’ve been thinking about.

Some people blog. Others keep diaries. Still others – rare gems indeed – write notes and cards. As with the pottery mug, art cards and hand-crafted journals are tactilely pleasurable to use, adding to the experience.

And before I leave this essay, let me put in a word for jigsaw puzzles. If you want to break the worry, angst, anxiety, frenzy, and fear that will gladly be our Normal if we let them, spend an hour each evening putting little pieces of random-cut cardboard together. The act of concentrating on something that ISN’T chronically agitating is calming. Calm is good.

Art is good. All these elements – paintings, prints, pottery, candles, cards, journals, jigsaws – we have at the gallery, and we invite you to take one of these January days to step into a warm, bright place and just look at the array of beauty that individual humans create.

Creativity is an essential element to be human. And we create because, first, we think. Take advantage of January, and allow yourself time and place and scope and freedom to think.

Wenaha GalleryArt Brings Joy to January is the featured Art Event at Wenaha Gallery from January 4, 2022 through January 31.

Contact the gallery, located at 219 East Main Street, Dayton, WA, by phone at 509.382.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.

 

 

 

java junk journal gift diaray trudy love tantalo

No Rules — The “Junk” Journals of Trudy Love Tantalo

steampunk junk journal no rules trudy love tantalo diary

Steampunk, junk journal by Trudy Love Tantalo.

Rules are funny things.

We’re taught that they make our lives easier and “safer”  by protecting us from all the bad stuff and people.

But they also do something else: they grow and multiply, expand and enlarge, develop to the point where it takes libraries of volumes to contain them, and everyone, at some point, becomes a rule breaker. When rules get out of control, they limit and hinder, circumscribe and restrict, regulate and dominate.

It’s the perfect place to draw one’s thoughts — Art Paper 1 junk journal by Trudy Love Tantalo.

Artist Trudy Love Tantalo discovered this foray into philosophy by, of all things, creating “junk journals,” handmade paper books embellished with additions like lace, fabric, ribbons, even discarded cereal boxes. It was an epiphany.

Initially, the Des Moines, WA, creative “jumped onto the scrapbooking bandwagon” because of her fascination for papers and design. But she found that the emphasis on getting the pages perfect, the unwritten rule of scrapbooking, was stressful.

The Rules of Perfection

She encountered a similar sense of stress upon receiving an especially beautifully bound journal as a gift, after years of using whatever notebook she had on hand. A lifetime lover of journals to record her day or feelings, Love Tantalo noticed an unusual change in her behavior when she used the gifted journal: instead of writing in pen, as she usually would, she used pencil, in case she made a “mistake” and ruined the perfection of the page. Journaling, like creating scrapbook pages, was no longer fun because the emphasis was on perfection, not creativity.

Bird Neighbors junk no rules journal birding trudy love tantalo

For the birder, or someone who loves birds — Bird Neighbors journal by Trudy Love Tantalo

And then she discovered junk journals.

“I happened upon them on Pinterest — the uniqueness and creativity really appealed to me. And the fact that you didn’t necessarily need a lot of fancy supplies or papers fit perfectly with my innate frugality and desire to ‘upcycle’ as much as possible.

“This finally fit the bill for me.

“There were no rules!”

Freedom from Rules

The finding of junk journals released a sense of creativity that Love Tantalo didn’t know she had. She quickly put together her first two journals, choosing folded-over cereal box as covers and incorporating a variety of papers.  One she used as a travel journal on her trip to Europe, filling it with brochures and postcards, tickets stubs and packaging, thoughts for the day. And . . .

java junk journal gift diaray trudy love tantalo

JAVA — coffee comes in all flavors and styles, with no rules to limit its style. Handcrafted junk journal by Trudy Love Tantalo.

“I threw caution to the wind and used a pen to write with!”

Junk journals, to Love Tantalo, perfectly fit her desire to create, her interest in journaling, and the challenge of using items that might ordinarily be thrown away. These were interests, she realized, that other people had as well. She turned a second bedroom into her studio, filled it “to the rafters” with a variety of papers and all manner of upcycled items (“AKA ‘junk'”), and got to a most pleasurable and productive work.

“My biggest problem is becoming overwhelmed with all my ideas and possibilities,” she says.

Lots of Space for Writing and Drawing

“Because I am a journaler and use my own creations, I always make sure there is plenty of writing space in each one, although I want to make it fun and interesting to look at and use, too.”

Junk journals, like the precious people who use them, are unique, Love Tantalo says, and there is no one way, no incontrovertible series of rules, to use them. Some people use them as diaries, others as doodle spots. Some draw in them. Others write quotes, list what they’re grateful for, tuck in mementos, pen prayers, fashion collage.

Or do it all.

Because, after all . . . there are no rules.

Wenaha GalleryTrudy Love Tantalo is the featured Art Event at Wenaha Gallery from August 11 through September 4, 2020.

Contact the gallery, located at 219 East Main Street, Dayton, WA, by phone at 509.382.2124 or e-mail art@wenaha.com. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and by appointment. Visit the Wenaha Gallery website online at www.wenaha.com.