Unleash your creative superpowers!
Join me in ushering in 2025 with intention. Not a list of pointless resolutions we won’t keep for a week, but a commitment to approach everything in a fresh new way. Allow your artist within to find its way out. A minor shift in thought — that can lead to radical results. You may surprise yourself. Just imagine.
“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.” — Bruce Garrabrandt, artist
Wishing you a spectacular year ahead!
Call it Inspiration. Maybe creative spark. Whatever you call it, it is the lifeblood of an artist. It’s that magical sight or sound that motivates us, animates us — even when we are at a total loss for imaginative ideas. it’s then that the message from the Muse (if we are lucky enough to receive one) feels like hitting the lottery. Most artists never know when it will come around — and each time it does, they worry it will never come back. Wouldn’t it be comforting to know that there was something you could count on to trigger your creativity? I realized this past weekend, I have something just like that — and it always delivers.
2024 marks the 35th year we’ve have been holding art workshops for children in South Los Angeles. It started when I was a TV reporter/anchor and my news director told me I was long overdue to give something back to the community. I’ve been doing it ever since. It feeds me in a way almost nothing else does. But I didn’t completely realize until this past weekend that these kids are my creative Muse. Watching the unbridled joy they bring to painting, and the fearlessness with which they do it, always helps me reconnect to that 7-year-old with the big box of crayons who begged her Mom for just 10 more minutes to color.
During our Halloween workshop this weekend, I stumbled upon a little girl (pictured above) who blew my mind. She had seen a pair of my scissors with a white rope tied around the handles. She asked if she could use it. She didn’t need the scissors exactly, but wanted to untie the rope, and with it, fashion a set of long braids on her pumpkin head. Then, she sculpted hair toys out of red and green pipe cleaners. In a million years, I would not have thought of those moves. Both were original. She saw something no one else saw. And like an artist, she expressed her vision in her unique way.
When I got home, I was exhausted, I had all my art supplies to put away, and about a hundred things on my to-do list. But all I really wanted to do — was paint. Why? Simple. I’d just had a profound encounter with my unexpected Muse.
(Pic #1) “Zelda” (Zebra) by Helga Stentzel Yes, it’s basic laundry, with a twist.
Creative Drought? Look around the house.
Her canvas — is a clothes line. Her materials? Shirts, pants, towels and socks — and a keen eye for shapes and story. Helga Stentzel’s “Clothes Line Animal Series” cleverly breathes life into everyday objects. With her magical touch — clothespins and cotton weaves — landscapes transform into a whimsical menagerie of animal characters, each with their own personality.
Stentzel is a Siberian-born multidisciplinary artist based in London. She says her art is about “finding magic in the mundane.” She says she hopes her work will help us connect with our inner child, and “savor the little visual delights.”
(Pic #2) “Laundrosaurus” by Helga Stentzel
(Pic #3) “Camella” (Camel) by Helga Stentzel
(Pic #4) Polar Bear by Helga Stentzel
(Pic #5) “Pegasus” by Helga Stentzel
(Pic #6) “Smooothie” by Helga Stentzel
