The Biggest Aha! Moment of My Life

There is no doubt things things have been quiet around here. But I am super excited to reveal the primary reason I haven’t been posting. But before I get to the biggest Aha! moment of my life, I feel the need to fill in a few blanks. Let’s just say that when it comes to focusing on our house, I have been on the struggle bus for nearly three years now. Beginning in January of 2019, a series of life altering events happened one after the other taking away my focus from our house. While this has been the cause of much consternation, much of which has been written about here, it has mostly been out of my hands.

In a nutshell, it all started when my mom passed in January of 2019. Then in the spring, I found that every time I tried to start working on the house, I was getting very tired, very fast. I thought I was depressed (due to the loss of my mom). Then came the diagnosis of cancer in August, which totally explained my total lack of motivation and energy (and had nothing to do with the loss of my mother). I spent fall and winter of 2019 and 2020 undergoing cancer treatment followed by major surgery and finally began to recover in early 2020. Then COVID hit…

I know that for many folks, the pandemic has turned out to be a huge opportunity to work on their houses, but for some reason that is not the case with me. I did get some projects going, including installing a wall of pantry cabinets in the dining room, bringing water to the backyard for the first time, and working on my studio. As part of my recovery, I began daily walks in April and haven’t missed a day since (today is 561!). I now average about 3.5 miles each day. But walking for an hour or so each day still doesn’t cover why I haven’t been focused on the house.

In addition to all those life events, I did begin to focus on my creative self last year. The biggest house project I did manage to get going was building out my studio, which I posted about in the fall of last year. I also posted that I was diving head first into the art of stained glass making. Well…. As much as I enjoyed making stained glass, I soon discovered that it simply did not fulfill me as I had thought it would. It just wasn’t my thing.

Let me back up a bit more now…. I have been practicing various forms of art-making for most of my life to varying degrees. I have done paintings, collage works, the aforementioned stained glass, and woodcut print-making. All of which I enjoyed, but none of which stirred enough passion for me to endlessly pursue them. Then in February of this year, everything changed.

I somehow stumbled across a post featuring the artwork of Generative Artist Michelle Chandra. Her works are somewhat modest, but I found them to be incredibly beautiful. I went to her website where I learned about how she made her work, then I immediately bought the piece shown above as a birthday gift for Hubs because I knew he would like it, and that it would be on our wall for both of us to enjoy.

Upon its arrival in late February, I was so completely in love with it, I began to madly Google my way into a whole new world of generative art and creative coding. I was simply mesmerized by how incredibly complicated it was while at the same time how simple it was. This day became the day I experienced the biggest Aha! moment of my life. Yoav’s birthday was still a few weeks away, but I could not wait to share it with him only one day after its arrival. And only two days later, I placed my order for an AxiDraw pen plotter from Evil Mad Scientist.

After a lifetime of searching for my creative medium, I discovered it in Generative Art.

What is generative art? Well…. Here is the definition from Wikipedia: Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist creates a process, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is then set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art. But this is a rather broad definition. My focus involves using computer code to generate a vector image, which is then sent to a pen plotter (basically a drawing robot), which draws my art using ordinary writing instruments onto paper. Michelle actually has a very nice summary of it on her website.

Why generative art? I have always been drawn to abstract modernist art based on lines and patterns. After all, who doesn’t want to spend hours staring at a full wall of precise pencil marks by Sol LeWit? It is a natural fit for me with my background as a data-analyst combined with my creative self. It makes even more sense when you look at my father’s background in technology and my mother’s free-spirited creativity. I am truly a marriage of the best (and sometimes worst) of my parents. I still keep asking myself how the hell did I not figure this out before given my endless curiosity and tech knowledge?

So… With that said… I have been more artistically prolific in the past nine months than I have in the past 30+ years. So prolific in fact that I have created nearly 120 different works just since July.

To go along with all this work, I have built an entirely new website (axisXYart.com) where I plan to display my work, and I have revamped and rebranded my Etsy shop (AxisXY) where I have nearly twenty different works for sale (and more to come soon).

My current work is mostly focused on creating digital harmonograms based on publicly available JavaScript compiled into a customized tool created with the assistance of my software engineer husband. I have been studying code and learning to use a program called Processing which is a Java-based program specifically designed for creatives.

The coding learning curve is very steep, I have only begun to scratch the surface. To further my cause, I will be taking a seven day retreat in December where I intend to immerse myself in code and I hope to come out with new skills, ideas, and concepts. I look forward to finding much more of the weird and wonderful world of generative art.

As for the house? Well…. Coming later this week is a post on the status of my art studio. And later this month, I plan to post about next steps and our 2022 goals for the house. Actual things WILL happen, starting with a room I started three years ago.

Till next time. . .

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