Then another chess coincidence happened that week. While I was working at my sewing machine, I pushed play on Radiolab, one of my favorite podcasts. It just so happened that they were rebroadcasting an episode on games, which included a whole lot of interesting information about chess. My ears piqued.

As I listened, I learned the chess term "out of book". This term quickly caught my fancy. If you don't know this idea - as I didn't - here's the background: there exists a "book" of all the chess moves that have happened throughout the history of the game. Although it's not a real book, in Moscow there is an actual library of all these recorded moves. This library has been kept since the 16th century and, like most things, it recently has been digitized. Basically, during a game of chess, most of the moves players make have already been made before in past games. (The digital book can even tell you how many times before each particular play has occurred!) But, not all of the possible variations of chess moves have been made before. When a player come to the point in the game that isn't in the book, the play is now considered to be "out of book". The way chess analyst Fred Friedel explained it on the the Radiolab episode is my favorite. He says when your play is out of book, "you have a position which has never occurred before in the universe."

​Wow. Consider that!
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Traditions are the life equivalent of playing by the book. The book of life says: go to school, get a job, get married, have a family. Traditions can be great; they provide quick and easy answers to basic life decisions.

In the game of chess, it's easy to tell when players are playing by the book. Their moves are quick and decisive. These moves are easy because the players have them memorized. They've been done so many times before that no thought is necessary. It's when play reaches the point of being out of book that the game becomes a challenge and slows down. Now, players have to think about each move they might make. They have to consider all the possibilities and all the consequences of each move and can no longer rely on what's been done before. 

We humans can be really hard on ourselves. We beat ourselves up when we feel we did something wrong. But life isn't always predictable. ​​​If we learn anything from the game of chess - and the unfathomable number of possible plays there may be in a game - it's that not everything is in the book. Not everything has been done before. There are times when you may "have a position which has never occurred before in the universe."

For me, the pandemic created a whole slew of things that never happened before. I didn't know how to make money as an artist. My two teenagers fell into depressions. Tradition was no help, life was out of book. And just like the game of chess, everything was slow and challenging at this point. It makes sense to me now: my brain needed time to process absolutely everything. At the time though, it was awful, exhausting and terrifying. I felt incredibly guilty and constantly felt that I wasn't doing enough. The problem was, that I didn't know what I should be doing. 
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Here's my art interpretation of the chess concept Out of Book.

"Out of Book" 
16" x 20", cut and sewn cotton fabrics, thread. Sold.
​© Mary Pow. All rights reserved.

Hey friends, I've started a new project! It's a series called 8x8x8 Faces. Each artwork is soft pastel, they are 8x8 inches square and take about 8 hours to complete.

If you'd like to participate in my new series, it's $100 per face and you provide the photo reference.

Need ideas?
Turn that senior photo into a work of art!
Send me a favorite photo of your child and I'll turn it into something to cherish!
Turn your boring business pic into something worth sharing.
Go here for 7 Tips: How to Choose a Reference Photo

If you'd like to keep up to date with this series of artwork, follow me on Facebook and Instagram @marypowdesigns

I'll forgo the by-now tired phrases such as "well, things sure have changed..." and get right to the nitty gritty: this has been hard. Extremely, depressingly hard. Frankly, having an entire season (possibly two or more) of art shows cancelled at a time when I was diving into them as my main source of income has been incredibly difficult for me to process.

But, I'm not in this alone - I know it's been hard for every artist out there, and you, and everyone you know, as well.

In order to move forward from the sad reality that I currently have no way to sell my art in person for the foreseeable future, I've decided to create something to share with my community: an artist response project.
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I've been working all weekend on setting up this idea that has gotten me excited again. Someone once said "creativity thrives in the midst of chaos" - well, we'll see how it goes! 

My response project is aimed to help those of us stuck at home to get through the COVID-19 quarantines. I hope to spread a little joy in this difficult stay-at-home time. I also am looking to raise funds for my art studio and other artists affected by the pandemic. (Donate here)

At the end of all this I should have an art exhibit to share with my community.
Stay safe, be healthy, wash your hands!

The best part of being an artist is also the hardest part of being an artist: there is no job description.

You get to make up the job yourself! - but - you also have to make it up yourself. It's amazingly freeing to be able to figure out for yourself who you are as an artist, but it's also incredibly challenging and terrifying to do this. Yes: both, and. At the same time.

A traditional job comes with a built-in job description. You know what is expected of you in that part of your life. When you're at work, your job is to do A, B, C.

​This is a list of some important points I want to remember. A rough draft of my "job" description.

• I want to show people the good that I see in the world.
• ​I want to help people see the possibilities that could exist for them if they learn how to look.
• I want to share a sense of wonder; I want to pass on delight.
• I want people to come into my space at a show and feel that they are welcome to stay for as long as they want to, to chat with me, to look around, to leave, to come back. No pressure.
• I want to explore, play, and try new things.
• I want to be brave and vulnerable.
• I want to be creative in the way that feels right to me at the time that it feels right to me.
• I want to crack open the dull, ordinary things people tend to ignore, and reveal the beauty within.

This is my life as an artist; and it's a constant work in progress. 

I'm working on another painting about the line between imagination and reality. This is something that has always interested me, but more and more lately I'm understanding what it's all about for me. I've come to believe that, if we practice thinking differently, we will see that the solid walls that form barriers in our lives, are actually bars that we can slip between. 

As children, we're so connected to our imaginations. Magic is real, unicorns and fairies really do exist. We're filled with wonder about the world and excited because we know anything is possible. I'm reading "The Secret Garden" to my daughter and it's this idea, that there's something magical and secret lying in wait just behind the wall that I'm really interested in conveying in my art. 

As we grow up, we have to learn the rules. We're taught the structure of society, the way things need to be, and we learn our place within that structure. Rules are necessary, of course, but we forget that all things are possible. The rules forms walls around us that we think are real and solid. We live with those wall surrounding us for so long that we aren't able to see any other way. They are our reality.

It takes a new kind of thinking to snap us out of our adulthood, to give us back our imaginations and to realize the rules are just rules, not walls. In fact, if we remember how to truly see the possibilities, how to follow our hearts, we'll find a key. If we listen to ourselves, deep inside, we'll find the door. We can get through the wall, to a secret place that was there all along, just waiting to be discovered.

Here's what I'm reading and listening to as I work on my current artwork.

The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens
Between the Bars by Elliot Smith
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Blackbird by The Beatles

11/4/2019

This piece is now finished! After struggling with two title ideas, I decided to go with "Between the Bars". The original is available, prints will be available at some point. Contact me for details.

The idea for "Possibilities" came to me while I was on a walk. I was taking a break from another painting of this same girl, getting some exercise and reflecting on things.

I know how important it is to get outside, to free my mind while moving my body. I quite often discover a new perspective on a problem while I'm on a walk or run. So, when a vision for this painting popped into my head while I was walking, I laughed out loud, because how funny - it seemed so, almost predictable, actually.
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I thought it might be interesting to show the progression of creating this piece. This is my largest pastel painting to date and it was, to be honest, a little brain-straining. I really enjoyed creating it, but I had to step back and take a lot of breaks from it so I could keep my original vision clear through to the end.

​Step three - and very importantly! - I've got to purchase a tent. It'll happen soon. I'm doing research.

I hope to see you at the Edina Fall into the Arts Festival this September!
Find more of my upcoming events here.

In one episode of the podcast Hidden Brain, host Shankar Vedantam describes a theory called the edge effect, which is the point where two ecosystems adjoin. It's at this location that the most new life forms are created.

Shankar then asks the question: "What could happen when strangers meet?" He explains that interesting things can happen when people from different cultures, backgrounds, and points of view, work together. Just like the edge effect between ecosystems, innovation is more likely to occur when diverse ideas come together. Diversity and creativity go hand in hand.

I've found that I can use the concept of the edge effect on an individual level to spark creativity in my art practice and my life. Simply by doing something different, trying something new, listening to another point of view, or putting uncertainty into my day, can cause a spark of creativity. Trusting that spark and seeing where it takes me is a challenging, but satisfying thing to try. In the past year, I've used these concepts to break things and start anew.

It is scary and uncomfortable to step into the unknown. But it's also exciting. And it's amazingly gratifying to come out the other side and see how you've grown!

Everyone has a desire to be comfortable and safe, but the most interesting things can happen when you allow yourself to be uncomfortable. Open your mind to possibility. Be curious.

 Thank you for coming. Hi, I’m Mary Pow.
 
I began this grant process with the simple desire to have more time to create art. I was interested in allowing myself the freedom to be creative. So, I spent much of the year researching the creative process. The social psychologist Erich Fromm said, “Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” I took this to heart when I started my work last summer.

I decided to throw some uncertainties at myself and see what would happen. I pulled out an assortment of strips of fabric that I had saved from other projects. I started to arrange them and sew them together without thinking of the final result. I played a bit with the idea of back and front, and exposing the seams, which was something I had wanted to try for a while.

I wasn’t sure where this work was going to take me. I started to feel a lot of nervousness at the not knowing. What would the final exhibition for this grant turn out to be anyway? What was I going to do? And would I be a disappointment? It was a scary place to be. Yes, I was freaking out a little bit.

 
As I worked with my random scraps of fabric, without the solid knowledge of what the outcome would look like, I realized that I was living through the exact things I was researching. Doing something new requires one to be bold and brave. It can be really, really hard to allow yourself to trust the process and see where you end up. To trust yourself.

As I worked, I considered how human beings are such a confusing species. There is this duality to us. I mean, we have two opposing desires: predictability and exploration. How can we desire both? They are opposites.

On one hand, we love to fit things into boxes. We want simple explanations and absolute answers. We want things to be black and white. Plus, predictability is comfortable.

Contrast that with the human desire for exploration. We crave the new. We’re curious, we love to learn, make discoveries, and explore the vast unknown. We like a challenge, but this can be uncomfortable. ​
 
I got to a stopping point with the piece I was working on, so I hung it up in my studio doorway and stepped back. I didn’t know what I thought about it. Well, I thought I did. I thought I didn’t like it. I thought: What is this anyway? I don’t know what I’m doing! But then then sun streamed through it, and I realized that it was two-sided. And I had an ah-ha! moment. I realized that the things I was thinking about – the opposing human desires of predictability and exploration cannot be separated. They are two sides of the same coin.

And so, I realized for myself as well, that the only way to get through the challenging part of creating art was to push through the hard parts. If I allowed myself to go through the uneasiness of the unknown, I would find the delight of discovering new things; about myself, about my world, about my art. Once I pushed myself through the discomfort, the unknown became known. Thus, the title of the piece hanging in the window is “The Way Out is Through.”

 
I recently heard a journalist say, “How you see the world depends on where you look.” Which really resonated with me, as I love to consider all the different ways that people view the world. I can really get myself going, thinking about: what is reality anyway, when we all see things differently? You know, everyone experiences and understand the world slightly differently, and it all depends on what you value; what you notice; how you were raised. There is never a singular way to see the world.

Of course, people tend to seek out and spend time with others who share similar viewpoints because it’s really comfortable to be with others who see the world like we do. But I learned the importance of searching out ways to make yourself see things differently. The way to be creative and uncover new ideas, is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

 
The title for my large piece here on the wall, Luster, comes from a novel. In his book The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen writes, “Life had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal.” This line sticks with me. I like to think that each person’s reality can be similar to the luster of velvet. If you are able to shift your viewpoint slightly, everything will look different. And if you can open yourself up to other viewpoints, your world can only expand.
 
If you have any comments or questions, I’ll be more than interested in hearing your viewpoint.
 
Thank you.

Thank you to everyone for coming to the opening reception! If you missed it, you can see the exhibition through July 27, 2019.

I realize that I haven't been at all outspoken about the body of textile art I'm currently working on. Lately, I've been thinking about what I want to say in my artist statement for the upcoming exhibition of my work. It seems an almost impossible task to get down all the thoughts I have while I work into a one-page, 18-point-font statement!

Yesterday I wrote down a sentence I heard Joshua Johnson say on the radio: "How you see the world depends on where you look." It's a timely quote for me.

I'm interested in viewpoints, and humanity, and creativity, and how we're interconnected, and how we each see the world. Thoughts about these ideas float through my head while I work. I take little notes about things I hear and read, and somehow, they all seem connected to a larger idea I have forming in my mind. It's hard for me to put these ideas into words, so I put them into my art.

Everyone sees/experiences/understands the world slightly differently. I don't know if there is a right way or a wrong way to see things. I think maybe there are just different ways. Together, all these different viewpoints add up to create the world of humanity.

Personally, I think we probably need them all. Who is to choose which ones we don't need? Everyone has a different viewpoint. Everyone has a different opinion.

Maybe, instead of thinking one way is right and another one is wrong - if instead we're open to the 'other' - that is the best way. Listen to other people, learn from their experiences of the world, ask them what they see, what they notice; hear their opinions, respect their viewpoints, be curious. If you can be open to the other, your world can only expand.

I invite you to see my textile art in person at the exhibition "Orient, Disorient, Repeat". The opening reception on May 23rd starts at 5:30pm with artist remarks at 6:00pm.

I hope to see you there! I'll be more than interested in hearing your viewpoint.