An Inteview with the Illustrator and Author Keri Smith

The new year. Time to wipe the slate clean and get started anew. Time to let go of the anxiety about all the stuff you didn't get done, and at the very same time, commemorate and celebrate all that you accomplished in the last 365 days. Time for resolutions, to look out on the year ahead and figure out how to make it yours. Time to make lists, write a long journal entry, take a hard look at all the unfinished business, to figure out what's worth leaving behind and what needs to get back on the high-priority fast track. And of course there are the new ideas. The start of the new year is the perfect time to put the spotlight around all those inspired new ideas firing up inside your head. It's time to get to work.

I was looking to kick off the new year with an inspirational entry, and I have the good fortune of being able to publish an interview with Keri Smith, an inspired and inspiring author and illustrator who, in many ways, encourages a New Year kind of day -- with all its resolutions and revelations and celebrations -- every single day of the year.

So, whether you have yet to make your resolutions or you are crystal clear on what you plan to accomplish in the upcoming year, Smith's insights in the following interview -- about making lists, failure, and beginning RIGHT NOW -- are a great read for the start 2005.

What is it like to read the comments on your website's journal section? So many people write in to say how inspiring your words are...

An interesting question. It's a bit of a catch 22 at times. On one hand I really value the feedback that it gives. My career is a rather solitary endeavor, with long hours spent in the studio alone. So it feels good to see people responding to my work on a regular basis, a rather new phenomenon in the scheme of things. I really enjoy the interaction with like-minded individuals, and have made many new friends through the site, (something that I am incredibly grateful for.) There are two downsides as I see it. It is a common thing to start to gage one's success with a post or a piece of writing by how many comments one receives, (this is not a positive thing in my opinion, I do not want to 'cater' my writing to a market, and so I try to not let it impact me as best as I can.) Secondly, as with any published media the audience is seeing only a selective portion of an author's life, and makes an image based on that. So there can be a tendency to idealize or make assumptions about a person. So there have been many times when I have been uncomfortable with being "an expert." My hope with the blog and the website is that people read about my process and somewhere see bits of themselves. Maybe they go away with an idea or a small shift in perception. The root of the word "educate" is "deuk", which means "tug" or "pull", while I am not trying to educate people I really like the image of my writings (or drawings) acting as a little tug at someone, accessing their own ideas. No one has all the answers. I will share my opinions but what works for me may not work for others. I too have many times searched for someone who can tell me how to be successful, but acknowledge that we are taught to trust the experts more than ourselves in our culture. I want to invent a new school where the students learn how to trust themselves and honor their instincts above all else.

I go on long runs to clear my head. I find that it helps me sort of disconnect the wires of logistics and opens up to the purity of an idea, so that I can see what I am really getting at with a story or project. How do step aside from the logistics of a creative project and see through to the ideas?

Ha, we are of the same philosophy. The thing that works for me every time (even though I fight it sometimes) is a very long walk in the woods, at least a couple of hours. The first hour of walking my brain is the dominating force. Thinking, controlling, forcing, pushing. After about an hour or so I can feel it start to slow. I start to breathe a little deeper. This is when the good stuff begins to come in, the intuitive stuff. I have often said that the best ideas just "present" themselves, but you have to give them the space to show up.

When was the last time you made Creativity Soup? (Note: Creativity Soup involves making your favorite soup, setting an elegant table, then eating the soup while reflecting on five things you would like to do in your lifetime. Complete details can be found on page 45 of Smith's book Living Out Loud.)

I am an avid soup maker, many times using it as a way of just getting out of my head and being in the present. In fact I think I'm going to make some today. It's a beautiful metaphor, adding things to a pot to create something that nourishes the body and feeds the soul at the same time.

What is the Story in a Box project? (It's a link on your website, but I am not sure the link works...)

Story in a Box is a book project I did a few years ago with Chronicle books. (I had to take the site down because it got picked up by several sites in Asia and was getting over 200,000 hits a day, read: the bandwidth was costing way too much.) It was an idea the evolved out of my childhood, a small box containing a story, a paper doll with stick-on clothes, and a pop up room. There were two titles in the series: Cinderella and The Princess and the Pea. I really had a lot of fun with it, and found myself obsessed with creating small "portable worlds". You can find it at any of the major online bookstores (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters).

People often get caught up in the idea of failure when it comes to artistic projects. Failure, though, is simply part of the process, though of course it is not always so easy to see it that way and just shrug it off. How do you handle failure?

It would be very easy to say that we must somehow "shrug it off" or work at reframing it as a positive. In the past I might have said we must alter our perception of it so as not to perceive it as a failure. The truth is that we are human and consequently experience a variety of emotions. I believe in the past I was trying to deny some of the emotions I had about things, cover them up with happy words, or not look at them closely. Through much of my reading and learning I am beginning to allow feelings to come up no matter what they are. If I experience a perceived "failure" now I will allow myself to cry, feel somewhat devastated for a time, scream "this sucks," and maybe hide for a day or so. Then I will emerge with red eyes and start to see that things are not as bad as I thought, and I am o.k. even in those times that feel devastating. Tomorrow I will get up and start again. I have had projects killed, manuscripts rejected, major editing done to my work, been "fired" because the work was not suitable, etc. It does affect the self esteem even when you don't want it too, even though you KNOW it's not personal. But only for a short time. The feelings pass and the confidence seeps in again. Every artist I know feels at various times that other people are doing it better than them.

I do make a practice now to not participate in behaviors that cause me to feel inadequate, i.e. reading awards annuals compulsively, comparing my work with others, entering competitions, etc. These things do not help me and so I try to limit them as much as possible.

I love lists, but sometimes I write too many things down and feel a bit overwhelmed by what I want to get done. These aren't life dream lists, but just weekend to-do lists. What's your advice for making a list?

Don't put too many things on the list. As creative people it is really important to experience the feeling of accomplishment. This is a great gift to yourself. As someone who has always had difficulty finishing projects I found it important to make the tasks more doable (shorter, less time consuming). I have a short attention span and I learned to use that to my advantage. I could not sit down to write an entire book, (way too overwhelming), but I could do an essay. My whole book was written that way. Look at your personality and work with it, not against it. Many times it is the trying to do too much that stops us, try to do less and see what happens.

What is some advice -- in terms of finding creativity -- you have given but have a hard time following yourself?

I giggled at this one. ALL OF IT. You know the saying, "Teach that which you most need to learn"? Sometimes I read my own tips and think, Man, I forgot about that one. I read my own book and think, Who wrote this?, I would like to meet this person. They must really have it together. As an artist every year I feel like I know less and less, but I FEEL more and more. I am very happy about this, because the really good work in my opinion comes from learning how to express yourself and develop your own language. I am not so concerned about being right as I am about just BEING. You must throw pieces of your heart into the fire, into whatever you choose to do. This is a scary feeling. But that is the good stuff, the stuff that will bring you the most joy.

"How to make a living doing what you love" -- I really love that essay. I think the best bit of advice in that piece is to "BEGIN NOW!!!", because "circumstances will never be perfect." Begin now -- it can be that simple, right? As long as you get started, then you are on your way. But if you never start, then you're just waiting for more ideal circumstances that will never truly be ideal. What got you to "BEGIN NOW!!!"?

When I finished art school I saw many people who would not go out with their portfolios because they felt that they were not finished, or complete. I saw them working on them and waiting for the time when they would be "sellable." I too felt that my work was not ready but I decided that I would take my book out anyway. Interestingly the art directors would inevitably choose the work that I felt was mediocre as the pieces they liked the best, and I learned a great lesson in that. That I am not always the best judge of my work, that I am often hard on myself, and picky. And so I made a decision to work on just getting it out. There are many stories of people waiting for the right situation, the right workspace, the money, the confidence. These things may never show up. Try doing it anyway.

Why do you think some people say, "I'm not a creative person."?

Often it is that someone told them this when they were younger. We all carry these labels around with us that we accumulated over our lives, can't sing, never finishes anything, shy, not creative. Many times we remember exactly who said these things to us. It is up to us as adults to challenge these labels and recognize that the people who said them to us were speaking from their own fears and shortcomings. For many "being creative" is thought to be for the artist only, while the truth is that there are many presentations of creativity. There is a great children's book called The Dot which explains this concept, in which a child who believes they are not creative does a series of paintings of "dots" that cause quite a stir. We can apply creativity to virtually anything. Many of the people who tell me they are not creative did poorly in art class in grade school, maybe because they couldn't draw well. So they accepted that label and believed that art was not for them. Drawing is one way of being creative but there are thousands of others. One friend of mine who regularly declared she was not creative had a wonderful knack for arranging her home to make it feel cozy and welcoming. Another friend has a gift for recognizing patterns, in nature, in man-made things. I was told that I had a terrible voice by a couple of friends in grade six, resulting in my not singing in public for years. As an adult I decided to challenge this belief and joined a theatre group. I've learned that I can actually sing quite well, and that I really love it.

What are you working on now?

I just completed another activity book entitled Tear up this Book for 8-12 year olds. It will be released in spring 2005 by American Girl. Currently I am working on a new book, a follow-up to Living Out Loud which is similar in ways but also quite different. I am wanting to have more of a "lead by example" approach as opposed to a dogmatic one.

The topic that I am most interested in is one that I have been giving many lectures on lately. It is based on the idea that all great artists and designers have many forms of "side projects," things that they do just for fun (and for themselves). These projects take many different forms which vary from the commonplace (journal writing - Frida Kahlo, ink drawings - Victor Hugo), to the bizarre, (shoe sole rubbings - Steven Gurnaccia, purse contents - Maira Kalman). In my talk I showed many examples of these projects. Many times these strange side projects turn into an artist's great work, which is really the point to me. This is the thing that I wrote about in Living Out Loud, that when we play, we get in touch with our greatest ideas. So the lectures are about giving people ideas of what "play" means. And also to encourage creatives to stop thinking about a "target audience" (a sure sign for dull and contrived work in my opinion). What really moves you and makes you unable to sleep at night? What gives you the most joy?

What book/writer/artist has most influenced your own artistic efforts?

As I'm sure you have guessed it would be nearly impossible for me to narrow it down to one person, I am the sum of many parts. The short list, May Sarton, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Linda Montgomery (a teacher from art school), Ross Mendes (another teacher from art school), Charles and Rae Eames, Corita Kent, my grandmother Hannah Irene Legrow, a group of creative women who were my mother's best friends (whom I call the Yaya's), Jefferson Pitcher (my husband), Maira Kalman, Tibor Kalman, Beatrice Wood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carl Jung.

Visit Keri Smith's website, and be sure to check out her books:
Living Out Loud -- Amazon.com | Powells.com
Story in a Box: The Princess and the Pea -- Amazon.com | Powells.com
Story in a Box: Cinderella -- Amazon.com | Powells.com

Here's an additional interview with Keri at Another Girl At Play.

And be sure to read Keri's advice on How To Be A Guerilla Artist.