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Feb 1, 2024

Have You Tried Reframing?

 

Each time I visit my grandsons in NJ, I bring a surprise. It could be folding a dollar bill into an origami shirt, sharing a fun painting technique (making roses using a plastic bag), or introducing silly riddles or word games. I listen for cues to incorporate their interests.

During my December visit the boys talked about enjoying açai bowls with granola at Playa Bowl, a shop near them. On my recent trip there, I thought it would be fun to teach them to make granola from scratch.

Will, who is 7, was in the back seat when my son picked me up at the train station. “I brought something sweet to make with you today,” I told him.

“What?” he asked excitedly.

“Granola!” I exclaimed.

Silence.

I heard a slight electronic sound emitted. Rob, my son, muffled a laugh. Will had texted him from his Gizmo watch saying, “Booooo.”

I’ll admit, my feelings were a bit hurt. Enough that I relayed the story to a friend, who smiled and said kindly, “Know your audience, Jane. Might you reframe your experience from a different perspective? If you were telling this to a 20-something backpacker, they might have gotten really pumped. But a 7-year old hears ‘sweet’ and does NOT dream of granola.”

This got me thinking about how I literally and figuratively frame my artistic creations, a circumstance I find myself in at this very moment.

I completed the series of four textiles I’ve been working on since fall. They are meant to be grouped together for visual effect. It has taken me months to accomplish the stitching with over 1100 individual pieces sewn to different shaded background fabrics. My goal is for the eye to dance around the four framed designs and to be entertained and involved by following that movement. Thanks to my Color Theory class, I’ve been able to manipulate the positioning of the woolen circles to create that effect.

Only when I hung them up for the first time, the magic wasn’t happening. I brought this issue to my support team. I was ready to toss the whole project and move on to something new.

They gave me homework. “Can you sit with the pieces, move them around, re-hang them differently? Put them against other backgrounds or imagine them matted and framed in a way that satisfies you?”

My unexpressed and defensive reaction was, “That’ll never work.” I’d rather not even try than suffer the possibility of failure. However, I received their wisdom which I had been too blinded by my self-judgment to see.

My nurturing Inner Parent – who I’m learning to rely on more and more – spoke to me gently saying, “Let’s give this a try.”

I used PowerPoint, a reliable tool for visualizing, to try on different spacing between the four squares and alternating the matting colors and background. In less than an hour, I was able to satisfy my eye and please my soul. Can you see the change?

It is common knowledge that we creatives are a sensitive lot. The chat card I noticed next to one of Henry Taylor’s paintings at his current show at the Whitney quotes him: “Man, I’m so full of doubt.”

I once visited an exhibit of William Steig’s work at The Jewish Museum. He was a celebrated illustrator who painted many New Yorker magazine covers and wrote the original children’s book, Shrek.

A story I took away from that show described Steig presenting several ideas to the arts editor at that publication. After displaying an intricate, colorful painting, the editor explained that it wasn’t quite what he was looking for at the moment and handed it back. Steig promptly ripped it into pieces and tossed it in the wastebasket.

I, too, felt like dismantling my piece and tucking it away in my closet. Until my friend encouraged me to reframe it.

I’m now looking for a buyer for this 4’ square wall hanging that will be a stunning focal point of a room – asking price $15,000.

I’m forever grateful to the men and women I’ve chosen to give me the Unconditional Positive Regard I learned about during my coach training. There are ways of delivering information that are motivational versus crushing. I’ll do anything to avoid being booed.

If you’ve ever wanted to give up at any point in your work, no matter the medium, try asking your most loving friends to weigh in before you trust the voice of your non-audience members. A reframe may be all you need.

P.S.  There’s a sweetness that I took away from the interchange with Will. I’m glad that he doesn’t feel the need to pretend to like something he doesn’t like just to please me. And, that he and his dad are so beautifully connected that he trusts my son with his truth.

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