Pembroke Designs

Zesty Art; Fresh Delivery

Metaphor

Once you feel comfortable with artistic expression and begin to find your own style and ways of doing things, reach out and expand. Find connections between your moments in art and your everyday life.

• Art into the Everyday
• Everyday into Art
• Iconic Art
• Abstract Entry
• Concrete Poetry
• Crossing Disciplines
• Merge

Art into the Everyday

Have you twisted straw paper wrappers into shapes while waiting on your food? Or played with the paper from a fortune cookie? Perhaps you split pieces of grass lenthwise when sitting in the grass watching a game. Take these moments just a little bit more seriously. Put a little more shape into it, and then display prominently. Will others notice? The waittress with the origami napkin? Just think... Random acts of creativity.

Try creating your own greeting cards. Share your handwriting, touch, insight. Like Hallmark, cards can vary from beautiful and serene to silly, sexy, teasing, instructional. If you clam up at the last minute, start a tradition of creating cards en masse once or twice per year. They are more of a reflection of yourself that way. Then when the time comes for giving, pick one that feels good, and customize it like you would a store-bought card. If you're creating for a younger person and worry you have nothing to say, pretend you are an elder in an earlier age. The community pauses to listen whenever they think you might speak. Years alone bring you experience worth sharing. Now share it.

Ritual is important. It gives us a sense of time and place. Personal ritual taps into a meditative force available to all. It's about the things we already do: wishing warm thoughts as we see the baby photo on the fridg; sighing at the traffic jam beyond the cross on the rear-view mirror. It's also about the more we can do: tucking a confidance-boosting image in the briefcase; placing a paper with the word "patience" by the jewelry box.

Everyday into Art

Try a Daily. It's mind expanding to think that you can come up with something fresh to say, sing, dance, draw, or paint once per day, everyday. Build a small group of supporters and email them once per day with your Daily. Or find a following and post daily YouTube internet videos. Set limits. No more than 20 words per day. No more than 2 minutes per drawing. Something that will force you to the page, but will constrict you enough so your innner judge understands you are working with limitations, and gives you a break. Keep an archive, and name each entry by its date (such as 20080312). If you miss a day, make it up. Notice how you soon feel like a spring, with water gushing forth. No shortage of content and fresh ideas.

Learn to find beauty and interest in each direction, wherever you are. Focus your eyes-- pan, zoom and tilt like a camera. Perhaps you are sitting at a long traffic light driving behind a truck. Zoom your eyes in to the curves of the handles at the back doors, or the zigzag line between the rusted reds and painted solids. Look at it not like a flat boring surface, but inspect it like a model on stage. How about the sounds in a busy waiting room? Close your eyes and let your attention drift. Find one voice that is airy or methodical, somehow of interest. Listen to it like it is a song, disconnecting meaning and listening to it like melody.

Iconic Art

Icons are images that represent ideas. Icons of religious figures are used in support of traditional worship. Icons from the modern world are found in Hollywood mags and computer screens. Claiming our own icons adds depth to our world.

In times of stress, an iconic image can be a grounding force. The more intentional, the more powerful. Icons can be simple and temporary, complex and concrete, abstract or literal, cliché or one-of-a-kind.

It is helpful to have many icons. A rock in the pocket may remind one of stability during a speech. Half an hour later, it may be dropped on the sidewalk, signifying that we tread similar paths. A stuffed animal in the car may reassure that we are all treasured children of God. Artwork by the front door may serve as a totem for the family name. The point? We all have the power to adopt and discard icons, and to assign and re-assign meaning.

Concrete Poetry

In Concrete Poetry, where you put the words matters. Words may spiral like a lollipop, or be interspersed in a pie chart. They can interweave themselves amongst pictures, or be spread out sequentially across a room. Poetry often deals with things of the heart, may be abstract, and need not follow a linear path. Concrete is a thing of the modern world, and brings to mind texture and weight.

Abstract Entry

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Crossing Disciplines

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Merge

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