Divine Inspiration: How to Release the Artist Within[Excerpts from the Book, Sample Chapters]
INTRODUCTION
At the age of eight I decided to be an artist. I didn't really know what that meant until high school when I was looking for a focus in my life –– a focus that would always be with me, one I would be able to search out and grow with. I knew I had to leave Michigan. It was east or west and I chose the West Coast. I settled in Oakland to pursue graduate studies in art with a scholarship at the California College of Arts, and a special arrangement with the University of California, Berkeley, with the same privileges as the Cal students. There was so much stimulation and I loved all of it. I explored San Francisco restaurant by restaurant, went to two movies a week (reading Pauline Kale to help me choose), and went to one or two concerts at the University of California and jazz in San Francisco after my Monday night painting seminar. North Beach in San Francisco had wonderful places to hear the jazz greats such as Anita O' Day, John Coltrane, and Dizzy Gillespie. If anyone talked, he would stop playing. There was studio time, of course. I studied painting but soon evolved into collage, assemblage, and montage. The University of California has extensive libraries where I would disappear for days. Here I was exposed to the Dada, Surrealism, and Vortex movements by studying from the original documents. And I had the time to do it. Later, after school, in the 1960s, I began my first foray into combining multiple art forms. I would make a collage and then mount it in a "sculptural setting" such as a stool, a table, or on wires so it could be pulled across the ceiling. I also created pieces that combined motion and sound. My explorations of photographic silkscreen began with an interest in daguerreotypes along with the mirrors and the photographs that I used in collages. I wanted to be able to work in larger formats and the silkscreen work eventually evolved to a bigger scale. Some of the works could be shown either in or out-of-doors. I received a commission in conjunction with the Photo Media Show from the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City. I created a façade piece that covered the front of the museum for four months. In the early 70s my career changed. I wanted more excitement in my creative life so I started a newspaper called Mail Order Art, and with that came a flood of connections worldwide. I became the “Mail Queen.” My artist stamps, drawings, and collages all expressed these new ideas that began when I split up with my husband and began teaching at three universities, driving 300 miles a week. As if that wasn't enough, I was helping to organize women artists from California and the National Women's Caucus for Art, while teaching some of the first classes in the History of Women Artists. I also began taking energy classes––it was my introduction to the metaphysical world. My new experiences translated into creativity workshops and private classes. Most of this expression came through my collages and some Mail Art. There was no name for this when I started. I was a very busy and inspired woman artist. Just perfect for a Gemini rising... . During the late 80s I made tons of mono prints and tons of Mail Art. At school (the University of California Berkeley Extension San Francisco), there was a funky old press and one of my students discovered that by plugging it in with an extension cord, it worked! Thus began my career of creating and teaching etching mono printing. I loved it (and still do). The class was and continues to be a constant high as neither I nor my students can predict what the print will look like. All the students rush to see each new print and usually make a few "oo's and ah's." In the 90s I began learning about electronic technology –– how to make art and video on the computer. My printing, painting, and collage works just jumped into the computer! As one of my students said, " Patricia, you are into your mono print layers again." As an integral part of whatever I do, I try to put forth healing energy in my visual world using my knowledge as an artist, healer, and student of metaphysics. The world needs as much healing and love as we all can give. The day I completed this book, I made my first blueberry pie and went to see the movie, “The Mona Lisa Smile.” I sometimes wonder how I ever created this life... but I'm surely glad I did. I have a feeling of enormous accomplishment and total living. And this is what I wish for all of you. Join me as together we embark on the exciting journey to release the artist within YOU.
IDEAS(and or nurturing or feeding ideas to yourself)
How do you or your ideas get started? Do you go to the store and buy them? They come from some place. Sometimes it seems as though they just pop out, and other times it is an evolving process. Sometimes you squeeze them out very slowly, and sometimes very painfully. The first step of an idea is like a crumb. And like a crumb, I find it is usually very undeveloped at this stage. It may not seem important to you, and yes you can easily sweep it off the table. It can lay dormant for years. That's OK. One way I work with crumbs is to pick up things that make me curious in some way; scraps of paper both printed and unprinted, or photos and objects, and I pin them to a wall in my studio. I may never do anything with them and that's fine. The point is what they stir up in a non-verbal way in my head. Sometimes they will manifest themselves quickly or, I might just work on them unconsciously for a while. At times, when I couldn't get a collage to work, I would take it home and hang it on the wall so that I would subliminally work on it as I passed by. I almost always found a solution that way. Totally new ideas are something different. They are not crumbs. An example of this is my Bird House Stories. Pinned to my idea section for at least three years was a round cardboard birdhouse about three inches high. I'm not sure where I even found it, and I had wondered if I would ever do anything with it. That is as far as I had gotten and I was fine with it in the “idea section” of my studio. Then I was asked to do an artist book for a show, and that little cardboard birdhouse popped into my head. "Oh," I said. "What a nice idea." I began playing around with collage on the house. To collage on a round surface presents a whole new set of challenges. It almost had to be set in my head so that it would work together when I glued it on a 3-d surface. Precision was not a part of these collages, yet it had to look precise. When I talked about my birdhouses, people told me their stories and experiences with birds. They were so diverse and many people had so much fear of birds. The fear element is what fascinated me the most. I had never thought of being afraid of birds. (Except maybe for turkeys and chickens when we were about the same size). Another whole new world opened, and so I took notes and began writing. These stories became miniature books that I hung from the birdhouses, which were hung from tree branches mounted on the wall. And I stood in the middle for this picture. This series was such a pleasure to do. Occasionally, I still get the urge to write a “bird story”. 
A Few “Bird House Stories”
Some Final Thoughts
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