JULIE AND JULIA AND THE INVISIBLE AUDIENCE

Since it has only been a couple of days since my last post. I am becoming more comfortable with an invisible audience, I think. I had a small epiphany on Sunday when I finally went to see the movie, JULIE AND JULIA. The movie was much more than I expected. I expected to see a passion for French cooking, but what I really identified with was the need to find an audience to share that passion with.

I have been a little afraid of blogging...of saying things to strangers that might sound foolish, that I might wish I could take back in a year because I know longer feel they are true to what I believe. But during the movie I realized that is exactly why I like to speak at conferences and workshops. I don't get to meet everyone in the audience and I leave not knowing what the vast majority of them are thinking. The reward always comes from people I meet or hear from as a result of the talk. And as a writer and artist, I will never know what each reader or viewer is thinking when they are holding one of my books, or looking at a piece of my art.

After seeing JULIE AND JULIA, I admired Julie for two reasons. The first was that she was not afraid to use another person, Julia Child, as a role model, to literally copy someone else's expertise. The second thing I admired was her search for the essence of the cooking. She did not buy the same cooking equipment, or rebuild her kitchen, but using the same ingredients, and following instructions, attained her goal of preparing every recipe in Child's cookbook. While that was the surface acheivement, it was more important to me that she found her own passion, and discovered, as Julia did, who she really was, with or without the constant approval of everyone around her.

I love cooking, but it is my husband who has the passion for it. But if I had been as brave as Julia, I would have sat down and tried to duplicate all the art of Rie Munoz, an artist whose work has kept our walls full of color and energy for years. Rie is an Alaskan artist who is known internationally. She has has captured the energy and happiness of people in Alaska where we lived as well as in many other areas. Because she is so well known, I have gone out of my way not to let my work look like hers. And it doesn't...it can't. We are two different people.

But a couple of years ago, I began to look for the ingredients in her work...not the actual images. I found patterns, a set of colors true to her work and a focus on shapes and editing out. I found a connection to French art for some reason, a freshness and an airiness and a love of what people do everyday at the bakery, the lake, the park, and a fearless use of her imagination.

My picture at the top is called DANCING THE NEW BABY IN. It is an image done with acrylic and colored pencil that I have put into print. It is the result of doodling while on the phone and liking the first sketch. Yup'ik dancing was a big part of our life in the village years ago, and I find the theme comes up in both books and art for me. At a gallery opening in Anchorage at the beginning of the month, I wondered if people would tell me my work was like Rie's. They told me instead that that my art is whimsical and happy and tells a story. But like Julie, I know who I studied to find the ingredients to create my own art, to follow my own passion.

For those of us fortunate enought to get glimpses of our passion, there is a great quote from Abraham Maslow that allows us to take our times of feelikng off course a little easier. "It isn't normal to know what we want-t is a rare and difficult psychological acheivement!"

DISCOVERY

I have had the privilege of sharing my new book during speaking engagements at schools, bookstores and conferences, and of receiving great reviews since its release in late spring. To my deight and validation, the reviews from Newsday, SLJ, Kirkus, etc. focused on the sense of wonder I feel about the world we live in.

This weekend I spoke at the SCBWI Regional Conference at Mills College. I was asked to give an inspirational keynote at the end of the day, It was a good time to talk about THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY as well as some of my own folklore. Just as the discovery of the paintings on the cave ceilings in Altamira created a sense of wonder in Maria and her father (see Jan.'s Blog), the last few years have been years of discovering new things about the world and about myself and how I relate to that world.

As I have said earlier, there might have been a non-fiction story to be told about the cave discoveries, but it did not have a great ending for Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautula whose daughter discovered the painting. His discoveries conflicted with academia at the time, and the world of academia would not let his writings have any credibility. The story is that after his ideas were denounced he spent the rest of his years in depression.

To me, that is unfortunate, because in my mind, based on what I know of his time period and setting, I believe he was an unusual man. For one thing he respected his daughter's discovery and did not try to claim it as his own. He was brave enough to share what he believed and knew with the academic world. He was following his passion and he took a risk. Can you imagine the number of times we have discounted important discoveries and ideas because we are not comfortable exploring their possibilities, when instead we could have allowed that sense of wonder to open up a whole new world of thought for us.

My job as a writer is to start our writing everything that I wante to say, and then eliminate anything that gets in the way of sharing that original sense of discovery and wonder with the reader because to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes: Our world will never lack for wonders, only a sense of wonder.

This weekend at Mills was a learning weekend for me as well. Even though we seem to still be experiencing an economic downturn, this conference for writers and illustrators was sold out. It reminded me again that in difficult times we turn to stories and we all need to share the stories we know. We need to hang on to the discoveries we make about ourselves and the world we are in and for those of us who enjoy the arts, we need to put these discoveries into a form we can share. We need to embrace time as a friend and not an enemy. For me, there is often a long span of time between the inspiration or the discovery that starts my imagination moving into something that I can create and share. Then there is often a long period of time before I know how to funnel those thoughts and feelings into their proper package.

And sometimes the final package, or book, in this case, can hold more than one story....a story that served more than long enough time in my drawer labeled " writing limbo". Years ago, I had written a two page piece of my own folklore about how the animals got their spots and stripes from people who had painted themselves and danced so fast around the fire that their paint flew off onto the animals watching. That two page story now takes up one paragraph and fits within THE OLD MAN. So hold on to your discoveries and your inspiration and let them take you on a ride. Share them with others when you are ready, but most of all give them credence. We have much to share.

THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY

This weekend I had the privilege of speaking at our regional SCBWI conference. It gave me a chance to delve into how ideas change from the original inspiration, travel through our imagination to become something we create. In the case of my last book, THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY, the packaging or funneling into a picture book was the last and most difficult step.

Like most people who are interested in the world around them I have no problem feeling inspired by a discovery.