I’m just going to say I wrote a blog post following this that took days and then didn’t save it so this is going to be brief.

Over the coarse of carving I tore my shoulder

Over the course of the past year I had been working non stop to take on what looking back on was what felt like an impossible task. I agreed to create five major sculptures of which to day three are complete and installed. In the process aside from the pandemic we all faced together I had a small advantage in that I work isolated 90% of the time. I felt optimistic yet like anything in life, no matter who you are or what you do, things happen. This meant limited access to supplies I needed in the studio and critical for time sake. Making due and working this way made me appreciate the foundation I was granted by mentors and the experience they’ve handed onto me along with new ones that come from, as they say ‘necessity is a mother of invention'“. Equally so being a creature of the night as many creatives are I was challenged by the idea that if I went out I wouldn’t see anyone. There is a comfort that if I chose I could go out and have interaction and with the uncertainty of what the virus was or how it would impact my social responsibility as someone who values very much the interaction with elders I was between a rock and a hard place.

I had been working for a 5 month stretch without much rest and just as we installed the third sculpture I had been finalizing the fourth going onto the fifth. Moving timber as a day to day operation I felt a pull in my shoulder. It wasn’t fast and in a matter of days I found myself questioning whether a trip to the doctor would be safe or not. I eventually received treatment and found a long delay as would be expected with circumstances.

At that point carving wasn’t an option and rest was mandatory by orders with a wait on judging the assessment of surgery. Time has a funny way of making you deal with things when time stops still and this was no different. It made me appreciate and feel for the businesses who had no option but to shut down, for our health care workers on the front lines, people who have lost loved ones.

On the flip side of that I was motivated by the outreach of what people were doing to stay connected even in small gestures doing what they could no focussed on what they could not. I sat at the desk working to regain a comfortable way of sketching if I knew I couldn’t carve and as October was coming in and the installation was finalizing I found motivation to apply myself to Inktober which I had missed out on while doing other work. I also took time with my son to watch movies and shows and get my head out of the hole as it were.

Inktober is an annual event that calls on artists to do a daily exercise of making work in ink with provision that pencil can be a foundation but to stick to a theme template set daily with a subject matter. No size restriction, no subject specifics just make your interpretation of a word. It’s good to do this to challenge yourself and break comfort zones you wouldn’t normally visit. No prize money, no glory, no penalty if you don’t follow through just dedication to the art and what it might teach you.

The first week is relatively easy just like a work out plan to get in shape once you’ve committed. There are many spin offs within the Inktober challenge and I posed that previously that Danike Nolie made a few years back.

Out of the gate I wanted to do something different than my comfort zone. I generally draw salmon or sea life related to my Coast Salish roots. I also wanted to apply dimension and movement to images if I could. Lastly, I wanted to avoid making polished images and draw freely without templates and lose the feeling of the relationship between the concept as it unfolded before me.

What I was keying in on right off the bat was the markers that were beat up over time and not wanting to go to the art store if I didn’t need to. I recalled how in high school we’d make the most of what we had using old felt markers as blending tools. I also found myself using Yupo (synthetic paper) to transfer ink onto other papers and experiment with the effects like printmaking as it was all ink afterall.

By the second week that is where you wonder if You have it in you to keep going because the list is daily keeping momentum is a challenge.

Outpost was where I hit a wall truly. Outpost generally thought of as military I over thought the subject as an Indigenous person and feeling defeat. I wasn’t going to glorify that iconography but revisit it somehow. I’ve always looked to our Mountain as a guide or marker. The trees and the land itself as a calming source of stability. I drew the wolf figure somewhere between a cartoon sketch stretched out into 3d from a lot of our woven baskets I grew up admiring in my childhood.

Closing into the finish I had watched several movies I hadn’t for a while or even at all. One in particular the last chapter of John Wick. I had actually been wondering how I would go out with a bang to close out the last day. I recalled the mythology built in the series of an assassin who killed three men with a pencil. Pen mightier than the sword as they say and it’s all captured in the series itself. So it only seemed fitting to capture something outside my comfort zone as I’m not a portrait artist by any stretch and found an entertaining youtube personality who I watched as I was trying to further my self education in the field. Angel Granov is worth a watch or two. Even it I didn’t apply what he’s done it’s a source of entertainment and appreciation for people who work in that type of work. He isn’t an ‘inker’ from what I understand but the fundamentals are there in his videos.

That said I wrapped it all up and made it to the finish line and can say I made it to the end of October Inktober 2020.