Mind mapping my work

As you’ve likely gathered from previous posts, I’ve been working on writing a grant for an artist fellowship over the past six weeks. This process has allowed me to dream about what I want my creative life to look like over the next eighteen months. I have learned so much on this journey. Mostly through writing and rewriting and refining again and again how I talk about my work. But part of that writing process has included looking at some of my older art works and making mind maps about them to help clarify my thinking about the hows and whys of my making.

I’ve talked about mind mapping before. This process was slightly different than any I discuss in that post though because I have been looking at an art piece I made and using the mind map to capture things I liked about the piece, thoughts about the work now, and notes on the process of making it. I wanted to do that for a few pieces so I could find commonalities and draw some threads together for my grant essay.

Of course, I wanted to share the pieces and their corresponding mind maps here so you could see them. I think mind mapping is such an interesting and useful way to think through things and I never get tired of the way a mind map looks on paper.

I’ll be sharing different parts of this grant writing process over the next few weeks. So if that’s interesting to you, there’s more to come!

Note: for most of the still images, the mind maps are on the second gallery slides.

The old and new system

I’d actually forgotten about this work so when I pulled it up from my portfolio I was blow away by the energy in this piece. It was a thrill to go find it in storage and look at it up close.

Excavation (the painting)

This work is near and dear to my heart and has hung in my living room since I made it. I look at it every day and the hand print reminds me of all the people before me who didn’t stifle their creative impulses and instead chose to make something and share it.

Excavation (the book)

This was the book that I made alongside the two previous pieces. All of them are a part of my Handprint series. This book is a bit unusual for me because instead of working in the book and seeing what theme emerged, I started with the theme and worked in the book with that in mind.

Happiness Book

I had this tiny blank book sitting on my desk for months. And then during a journaling session, I made a list of things that made me happy. It was destiny that I transfer the list of happy things to the tiny book that also makes me happy. Tassels aren’t listed inside the book but they make me very happy too. And attaching a tassel that’s twice the size of the book made me so giddy I had to do it immediately. I fully recognize that this is a ridiculous idea and project but it’s also absolutely perfect.

Landscape and Ground

These two pieces are from my Ground series and mark a pretty serious change in the way I think about and make work. Before these pieces, I thought I was supposed to be an abstract painter. But I’m finding my best work in these mixed media/assemblage pieces.

Circle Book

This book is full of so much experimentation and I love that for it and me! If there’s just one piece of my work that explains what I do and who I am, it’s probably this book.

Do you use mind maps for creative brainstorming or documenting things? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.