I was thinking yesterday about how my skills don’t really translate into a world without computers. The end result of my work is a customer that doesn’t need me. That’s it. I don’t have a product that I can point to and say “I made that.”

Recently, a web page that I help run had some art contests. I entered all four: photoshopping an image, photography, poetry and multimedia art (painting, sculpture, woodwork, etc).

I haven’t been this excited in a long time. Walking around with a camera looking for some photographs to take was a great experience. Everything around me was a potential photograph, and I studied everything with an intensity that was almost scary.

The poetry writing was so much fun. I read a lot, and I write this blog, but that’s it. To have to sit and really think about each individual word, and try to convey an emotion other than the cheap laughs I try for here… it was wonderful exercise for the grey matter.

The most fun I had was in creating an art piece on the topic of “Birds”. I had planned a model of a bird made out of flattened tin cans, but it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. I decided I’d try to use up some of the plumbing fittings that I had in the basement, and I built a copper sculpture of a goose. It worked out far better than I thought it might. It was tremendous fun and nevermind if it’s great art or not, holding this finished piece in my hands makes me grin from ear to ear. “I made this!”.

(click the picture for larger view)

I think I need to do more of this. Create, for no reason other than creation itself. We all do.

What have you made recently?

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