Breathing

It was well beyond time for it to happen, and I am not surprised. The commission is too far overdue and has been called off. And yet, I will continue – with the piece partially assembled that is what makes the most sense. But having gained some perspective, I will breathe first. I will try to do some work at which I can feel successful. I will try to nurture the joy I remembered that I still have before I turn back to the project so that I can make it something good...something that didn't just get put together because it needed to be done.

The truth is that it also frees me up a little in terms of the parameters of the project – things we had discussed that as the project started to go sideways got lost, and then I would have to try to re-integrate although they no longer made sense. Someone who was smart and more sure of themselves would have just kept the communications open with their customer as the project progressed and discussed each of these elements.

As nice as they are I knew that I was so far behind on the project that I crawled further and further into my insecurity and the idea of communicating with the customer terrified me. Not because of them, but because of my own issues. Had I approached the project that way from day one, it likely would have gone very differently.

Among the many things I have learned from this project is that I need to be very careful of the type of commissions I take – especially at this stage in this venture. I went through a period where I had decided that I would never take a commission again because I was clearly incapable of producing one. That was a stage that lasted several weeks. Wallowing in my anger at myself, kicking myself and berating myself. Very productive. But it was a process – grieving for the image of who I thought I could be, some kind of girl hero who could do it all with ease and certainty and success. And once I was done I was able to move on more rationally.

When I went back and looked at things more rationally I understood that what I needed to do was choose my early commissions with a more realistic eye and expectation. Don't try to choose something that made me jump 15 steps further in my practice of the trade than where I was standing. Don't say yes based on the estimations of those who have been making their living doing this and only this for 10 years or more. They aren't wrong, but they see the world differently. Maybe in the first year, but by year 10 they are seeing the early years through a different lens. And they may be in a different situation. Transitioning from one career path to another, changing the balance of multiple jobs or careers is a different thing than struggling to do one thing and make ends meet. Their advice and insight is very valid, but they see things from a different perspective. And sometimes they see things as easy because of where they are in their own process. Or maybe sometimes others are just too generous in what they think I am capable of.

The first steps I need to take are to start creating a more regular practice. It is easy to say that when you have “time off” you will go out to the forge every day. Your faith in your passion says you will. But other things creep in. Life creeps in. And for me, trying to balance the shift – especially since I don't really know how this shift is really going to work...I changed so much all at once – finding any balance at all has been a huge challenge.

It has effectively taken me 2 years to get enough of my sea legs to be able to look at the world around me and get a sense of which way was up. Turns out I've been thinking down was up this whole time...so now I need to take a deep breath and realign my perspective of the world. I need to re-evaluate everything. And I've gotten this sense of the waters just as I head out to unfamiliar seas again. 6 weeks of a working trip to Europe...amazing! Yes...but also another invitation to disorientation.

Yet another round of waves to make the world askew...lets see if I can remember which way is up by holding onto the rail....

Reminders and Discoveries

So, throughout this new version of the blog I have been talking about how much you are your business and facing up to some of my failures. That is bound to continue. But yesterday, I went out to the forge and I was reminded of something. In the wake of beginning to try to chase my dream, in the face of some things coming to pass that I could not forsee which led me down the path to my goals, I have lost sight of something. I have lost sight of the love and the passion for what I do. Yesterday in the heat and the noise and working through trying to fix yet another error I checked in with myself for the first time in a long time and I found the joy again.

My head was still filled with the desire to please, the fear of failure, the proof of failure. The feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar landscape and not having a sense of direction in my new life was still there, if not so overwhelming. There was still the frustration of every stroke that was not just so, the criticism chorus running in the back of my head. The empty wasteland of this object just not looking like it had in my head, and veering farther and farther from my hopes...

But there was an undercurrent that I had stopped noticing beneath all of that at the quiet core of my being. Beyond the swearing at the scale burns and feeling sloppy because the heat made me tired before I began there was something else. When I noticed it, it helped me to keep going long after I felt I was being useful, and to get further into the project than I'd expected.

There was a deep well of calm and contentment there. There was a joy at the rhythm of the hammer that I feared I had lost. There was a quiet joy in forming the shapes from something else.

And in those moments I realized that I had not lost my love. I had not wasted time and money on tools and plugging away at something I was now afraid to do. All of this was not a mistake. All the effort that I, (and several other people!), had put in to making me a space to do this thing I love but have been avoiding – it was not a mistake.

I have been letting the fear get in the way. I have been allowing what skill I have to languish and rust. I have been avoiding something that brings me peace and contentment and joy because I have been chasing something that is not mine. I have been chasing other peoples ideas of what this is for me. I have been trailing after things I have seen others doing successfully and failing at them miserably. I should know better than this. But I forget. I get lost in the world of expectations and trapped in my own cycles of making do for fear of not doing. And the irony is, those very attempts have had me doing exactly that – Nothing.

I hang around with a lot of really amazing people who all excel at what they do. As one of them likes to point out – everyone is at one end of the bell curve, the top end. This skews my judgement, at the very least, and my expectations. It has also created a streak in which I wanted to try to “keep up with the Joneses” which is utterly unrealistic. And it has taken me away from what I do best, which is making my own path through things rather than following any of those set out by others. As skillfully as they may be laid out, I am someone who learns best by stepping off the path and poking under the undergrowth to see how life is lived there and what I can learn from it. Not that there aren't things to be learned on the path too, and sometimes they are the same lessons...but I often think I speak a different language. I don't get the nuance that leads to understanding undercurrents and big picture stuff unless I have sniffed around on my own.

So, I approached this project from entirely the wrong angle. I was trying to play a game for which I didn't know the rules or how to use the equipment. I didn't even know which field I was supposed to play on. Truth is, I think I was trying to impress people. I couldn't have failed harder at that if I'd set out to do just that.

So now, on some level, I am starting again. Oh, no – I'm not restarting the whole project, as much as I've thought of that numerous times, starting again from scratch now that I have the glass and the light. As much as I think it might yield a better result the truth is I now know it would put the project back by such a huge amount of time (because I have a slightly more realistic view of my real schedule) that it would just be the wrong thing to do. But I am starting again in terms of seeing the project through my own lens, and walking my own path to complete it. I am starting again with the comfort of having remembered that this is actually being made with love and care and as a discovery process.

I think I am starting again from the other side of the wall I built between me and it.

I do what I do because I love what I do. That has always been how I've worked, but sometimes I try to convince myself of that love rather than just reaching in and feeling it, and that tends to be when everything goes horribly wrong.

My work may or may not have merit in the wider world, but as long as it has merit to me I am doing the right thing. So here's to a new chapter of lessons born of failures as well as those born of success.

Chandelier - The Learning Curve Continues...Steeply!

Chandelier - the Learning Curve Continues...Steeply!

The continuing review of the chandelier project … so far...

My original concept was something that was not really possible with the materials I was working with. It is metal, and it was being heat formed so it isn't that it was entirely impossible...but it was pretty much impossible – particularly for the equipment, the material, the process and of course, my own skill level. Even if I could have done it it would not have looked the way I wanted it to.

So I had to re-design to make that possible. After I had forged out most of the initial pieces for the original design. Hopefully not having to start again from scratch. Hopefully being able to use at least some of the work I had already done.

Going from the feeling of euphoria over having completed the main elements of the forgework to the crushing realization that this was not going to work … well, let's just say it wasn't a good start.

Now, this is a problem that should have been easy to spot when I made my mock up. Except, I made the mock-up so that the people who commissioned this piece could see the approximate size of the piece and decide if it was what they really wanted. I didn't make it as a learning tool for myself. If I had, I would have cut the pieces to be paper templates of the forged bars. Because I wanted to be able to fold this huge thing into something more compact I ended up making the mock-up in a way that is closer to how I'm making the chandelier itself. So, I suppose it was good for helping me realize some of the ways I could potentially fix some of my errors. Had I been smart I'd have hung it up somewhere so that I could see it all the time and keep it more firmly in my brain. I suspect that would have made me think about it – unconsciously at least – and solve some of the problems more easily.

To be fair, with each of the setbacks, the last thing I wanted to think about was the project. I needed to go and lick my wounds before I could come back to it.

So, what did I want to do that was going to be so impossible?

The octagon was going to be made of eight rectangular window shapes and the bottom is an octagon with spokes meeting in the centre...somehow. The spokes were supposed to be formed from the horizontal edges of the windowframes tapered and bent underneath – all made from a continuous bar.

Anyone who knows anything about working with metal is now either laughing at me or doesn't believe I've ever done anything like this before because the errors in that idea are so glaringly obvious that they have written me off as an idiot. The idea in my head was not thought through in terms of the material when I made the design, okay? And it is my first time designing an object like this – particularly one that has a function.

So let me take you through the process and the errors and the processing of the errors inherent in just this step...This isn't exactly how the process went, but it's a fair estimate.

Let's see...8 windowpanes is 16 bars, but I want 8. Okay, but that's easy....we just join the two bars of the adjoining frames together to create, in effect, a single spoke...right? Nope. First of all, the bars are all textured and tapered by hand. This means they are not perfectly symmetrical or even in any way. So that just won't work – not without doing a lot of work to take out the texture and imperfections that I spent all that time putting in.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly – what was I thinking?  I'm not looking to bend the bars under in a straight 90 degree that goes straight back. They have to angle in towards the centre of their windowpane – effectively the centre of the octagon. There are ways in which this could be accomodated, but no...not really. Especially not smoothly or with any semblance of elegance of form.

And with 16 bars, not only would they have to be able to have their edges match one another tightly but they would all have to be angled just so to make it work. The pieces would have to go together in a specific and precise order and placement, not quite like a jigsaw puzzle, but enough like one. In fact, it would be like a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces were not quite cut right - or one in which they were cut freehand and not out of the same sheet of paper or card.  This is hand forged bar, not pre-fabricated and machined to precision....so yes, I'm an idiot.

Oh, and did I mention that this piece is a 3 foot diameter so each of the spokes would be 18 inches long?

Um....

So...yes. I didn't think of any of this until I had forged 16 18 inch tapers onto bars that were long enough to do the full job and textured them all, plus done the texturing on the horizontal pieces.

They looked great. I was happy. I was beyond happy...I was excited.

And then I realized my mistakes....but not all at once. Once I figured a way around one, another one would crop up. That happened over and over...and then I was, let's just call it not so happy.

And the really fun part? As I was coming up with the facts that I'd made these errors it didn't occur to me that all of this was going to change all of my measurements.

Remember that full size layout drawing I didn't do?

So yes...it just keeps getting better...or maybe worse depending on whether you are laughing at me or crying with me.....