A lifetime of inadvertent percolating.

I was talking the other day about how my Secret Play Dates might sound kind of boring to you.

• Making marks on grid paper
• Gluing random scraps into my notebook.
• Learning to knit.
• Even drawing from life.

How is that fun?

How is that play?

Well, it is and it's also something else.

In my first post, I wrote about how randomness is part of the play in my Secret Play Dates, and how much I learn from randomness.

Today I want to talk about another element that's important for me (your mileage may vary).

Process.

One thing most of my Play Dates have in common is a process that is meditative. They're typical of the kinds of processes, the kinds of situations that I set up for myself when I was a practicing artist.

In the fibers department in art school, so many of the things we learned were process-heavy.

• Wind yarn into skeins.
• Then, dye them.
• Then, ball-wind them.
• Then, wind a warp.
• Then, thread the loom.
• Then, wind the bobbins.
• And then, weave the thing. Whew!

The painting I went on to do was process-oriented, too.

Somehow the 'easy way?'

At the time, I had doubts about this way of working. It seemed like an easy way out somehow, because most of the major decisions about the work weren't made on the fly.

I don't know why. (Okay, maybe I do: Abstract Expressionism and post-Modern painting of the '80s.)

Even the most spontaneous painter or sculptor usually does stuff to prepare that is meditative, even ritualistic.

• Stretching canvases.
• Gessoing.
• Wedging clay.
• Building an armature.
• Mixing paint.
• Caring for tools.

I'm thinking of an art:21 episode where Kiki Smith says that one thing she loves about being an artist is that she always has something to do: filing down some cast metal piece, polishing a component.

That really spoke to me, and started to change how I thought about processes.

With Secret Play Date leading me back to making, and with realizing how important percolating is to my creative process, I look back and think, how natural it was for me to be drawn to those processes.

Ways of working that were made for percolating.

I know now that knitting or any other kind of meditative, hands-on activity is going to give me precious percolating time.

And the more percolating, the better.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Tuesday, Feb. 22 at noon -- tomorrow -- is the deadline to sign up for the very first Society of the Secret Play Date. If you love getting things done, awesome light-bulb moments, and friends to cheer you on, take a look and find out more.