St John’s Art Festival

St. John’s Art Festival opens with a reception Saturday, March 12, 2011, from 5 to 9 PM at St. John’s Lutheran Church, 1701 L Street, Sacramento.  This collection of religious and spiritual works runs through Saturday, March 19.

One of my pieces was accepted to this show, and submitting a piece to a juried art show is scary, there is just no way around that.  Fear can keep an artist from sharing and sometimes even creating work.  I know because I’m all too familiar with the self-talk that tells me my pysanky eggs are just a “little thing I do” and not really art.

When I stopped to think about my art-related fears, I realized they mirror my personal fears.  “Will-anyone-else-like-my-eggs” is really just me saying “will-anyone-else-like-me?”  “My-art-is-no-good” becomes “I-am-no-good,” and on and on.

I know to survive as an artist I must learn to separate my art from own self-worth.  And to grow and thrive as a person I need to embrace this separation.  The tricky part is putting this simple truth into practice.  But practice takes…well, practice, so one step at a time I’m working on this personal spiritual discipline by putting my art out into the “real world” beyond my comfort zone.  It’s not always easy, but it’s worth the effort.