Art Antics | SavvySpoons

if your body is convinced the world is trying to kill you all the time.

I am more than 16 years into my chronic pain journey. In that 16 years I haven’t gone a day without a headache or pain somewhere in my body, usually both. I’ve spent a fortune visiting the country’s most knowledgable doctors, having the most in depth tests, and trying the most outlandish treatments. I have tried all the drugs, including Ketamine Infusions, and I have done all the botox.

What I discovered was this;
Pain killers don’t work with neuropathic problems. They just add fatigue, confusion, constipation, and eventually addiction to the problems I am already facing. They also impair my ability to drive and make decisions.
There are medications that will bring neurological symptoms to a dull roar, but there aren’t any that will make it go away. Medicine isn’t there yet.
So what the eff does give me a break from the unceasing pain coursing through my body?

ART.

Making any creative thing really. Fine art, crochet, designing stickers online, making miniature gnome habitat parts, it really doesn’t matter as long as I am losing myself in the process of creation or – as the artists lovingly call it – the flow.

See the little watermelons on the right of the bamboo decking? I painted acorns I found on my walk with paint pens. Not fine art but it sure was a fine pain distraction.
See the shiny sparkly thing on the left of the house? Beads, wire, and several hours distraction from pain. (I made 5.)

I have created art my whole life, whether through singing and dancing or painting and writing, whether for myself or for profit, and I can tell you the meditative deep dive your brain goes through when you start making something, is the best pain break on earth.

One of the heartbreaking things I have discovered in my time as an artist is most people believe they cannot create art. Our culture has monetized everything to the point that we all believe we can’t do something unless we can do it to the level of selling it. When it comes to the creation of art, we are selling ourselves short. Humans have been creating art since we’ve been around. There are cave paintings from our earliest ancestors. Our very existence on this earth has grown up with art and the process of creating things and expressing things through music or sculpture or drawing or anything is deeply rooted in our brains. We benefit so much from making things. Any things.

This “Little Free Gnome Stuphs” library I made day before yesterday took me 5 hours. I was in a horrible pain state in the morning so I brought out a glue gun and some popsicle sticks and a YouTube tutorial and as I worked my body began to relax. My pain eased.

I devoted more than half a day to making that tiny popsicle stick library for neighborhood children to open and take gifts out of. It is not something to sell on Etsy or to hang in a gallery but it was fun and meditative AND very effective pain control. It will not solve the crisis in the Middle East, or earn some art dealer a giant commission. It did give me several hours of lessened pain and made at least one little girl smile as she took a trinket out of it on her walk this morning.

Now, if you had told me in year five, or seven, or even nine of this horrible chronic pain journey that I would be controlling my pain with popsicle sticks and glue I would have shoved some choice words up your ass and moved on to my next doctors appointment. I am in no way telling you to stop getting treatments or taking medications. I am simply suggesting you also pick up a coloring book and some pens and see if you get a bit of a break from the eternal weight of chronic illness with an art project.

Being a sarcastic person I am a fan of this stripe of coloring book. You can get your art zen on and swear a blue streak at the exact same time. The important thing is to find the flow.

My flow has been very Gnome Garden directed lately. I’ve made a well, tiny produce, repurposed various jewelry pieces for decor, and created a little village under my juniper bush for the folk. I even treated myself to a few pre-made solar houses that light up, though I did repaint some of them.

I’m not sure what my next art project will be but I know there will be one. It’s a vital to my continued existence on this planet as my PT and my cold plunge.

but very nearly a lamp fire.

Art is not always the seamless and graceful creation of something beautiful out of random other things. Often it is the messy and curse-laden creation of crap out of other crap.

Today I was attempting to make another lamp as a gift for my son for Christmas. My idea was to make an octopus with XBOX consoles for tentacles and LED light strips running in and around the thing.

After hours of diligent work the base was finished, the lights were in, and I had three tentacles, having already decided it was going to be more of a tri-pus than an octopus.

After hours of hard work and preparation it was time to shape and cover the thing.

Which is when my friend asked me if I smelled any burning.

I live in an old house. She’s nearly 120 years old, so my first thought was wiring or the heater I was using on the porch. It wasn’t until I had given up on finding the smell and settled back down thinking it was a passing car that I smelled it again.

In the fucking lamp.

All those lovely LED lights were heating up just enough to cause burning chemical smells to emanate from my creation.

I swore some and began ripping the lighting out of the three tentacled monstrosity.

Which is how I ended up painting my son an image from Super Mario Bros. (Which I will not be sharing here until after Christmas in case he reads my blog.)