serafaery

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These Writer's Block thingies are teh fun!

Inspiration for my arts and crafts comes from different sources at different times. Lately, I am most inspired by other artists' work. I see what they can do and I want to try, in my own style, with my own designs and materials.

Often artists' work inspires me just by being beautiful. Even though it's nothing like what I could or would want to do, I still find it inspirational just be way of its beauty and the feelings it conveys.

Lately I just adore other artists' environments, too. Grassroots galleries and underground shows, performance/street art during street fairs, whacky displays or really well-designed websites all pull at my creative heartstrings in one way or another.

And sometimes it's just stuff inside of me that bubbles out and demands expression. It's hard for me to force it - I can just pick up a pencil and do something, but the result is never as good as when I have something demanding expression inside of me. Sometimes my head swims with so many images that I feel like I'm overflowing, and it's an emergency situation and I need to get all of it down as soon as possible or I will lose it. Those moments are frequent, but fleeting, and I haven't found a way to capture and hold onto those rushes of creativity, except to embrace them and create within them for as long as I can before the demands of life distract me. It would be nice to lead a life where I could just immerse myself in that whenever the need arose. I dream of being a professional artist for that kind of reason.

Mostly I just love art and want to be a part of the artistic world, even though mine pretty much sucks. And crafting is just a fun thing to do.

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Like alchemi, the first band that comes to mind is Nirvana. I of course had interest in music as a child, and would consider myself a fan of Bach and Beethoven before Kurt Cobain. I also had my share of pop icon adoration, including Madonna, Michael Jackson, Cindi Lauper, Tears for Fears, Prince and the Revolution, etc. Before that, my older brother turned me onto Van Halen - if we're talking pop music "bands" that may technically be the first one I was a "fan" of. I worshipped the 1984 album. "Jump" was my favorite song when I was eight or nine. Oh! And I went to an Amy Grant concert when I was 12 - that was my first concert. (My mom is very God-loving and I was a Jesus-crazed kid, what with being home schooled and everything.)

But I got the Nevermind cassette when I was 15 (1991 - I think my brother's girlfriend Shaari gifted it to me - she was friendly with the band), and played it so much I wore it out and had to buy another one. (The only other cassette I ever did this to was the Labyrinth OST - so throw Bowie into the mix.) Nirvana reached me where no other music had, and pulled me into a new world. Helped me come of age, find myself, and I settled extremely comfortably into Grunge, what with my shy demeanor, my brother living in Seattle, partying with Soundgarden and shooting up with Alice in Chains (another favorite), and I in Portland, my propensity for baggy jeans... the flannel and black stompy boots and scraggly hair, too much coffee, angst and cigarettes came totally naturally for me.

Ten, Dirt, and Little Earthquakes were among the first CDs I ever purchased. (I didn't have a CD player until I was 17.)

Tori Amos soon followed, and I must add that my reaction to Head Like a Hole at age 14 was incredibly strong, tear-inducingly relieving, actually, to find music that resonated so beautifully with me, so technically I was a fan of NIN before falling in love with Nirvana. But I didn't buy any NIN albums until much later. (I was slightly goth/industrial before going totally grunge.)

In conclusion, I was a damn cute teenager in 1992.