Happy February and happy Friday!

I'm finishing this up on Friday morning (which is what usually happens). When I thought about this month's installment earlier in the week, I wasn't even sure that I would the capacity to write this. 

That's because right now I am in the midst of (frantically) finishing my Women's Wisdom Project.

In early 2018 I set out to document the insight of 100 different women, making papercut portraits paired with quotes. Here we are two years later, and I am staring down the finish line, because all 100 will be displayed during the month of March at Vashon Center for the Arts. If you're in the area, I'd love to see you at the opening on the evening of Friday March 6th, 6 to 9pm. 

Don't worry, I'm at 91/100 (you can see them all here), so only 9 left to make, but the intensity of wrapping up this endeavor up has left me feeling like I am at creative capacity. The emotions flow at the drop of a hat—elation one moment, a sense of deep overwhelm the next. 

I question what else I can give my attention to, and if there's anything additional I can even squeeze out right now.

And yet...

Fullness seeds expression. 

This week I was researching Anaïs Nin quotes (there's a fascinating read on Anaïs Nin here if you are interested) and I came across this one, which felt apt for this newsletter. 

"You must not fear or hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and your feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to receive, to nourish yourself, and not be afraid of fullness.

The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow. Allow for the rise in temperature and all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess.

Great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”

-Anaïs Nin, A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anaïs Nin

I don't think that great art has to be born of pain and suffering, but I do think that art and creativity are born from feeling and openness. Permitting yourself to "flow and overflow," as Nin would say. Feel the tidal wave instead of avoiding it.

I am reminding myself to do the same.

Because of fullness, and for the sake of allowing myself flow and overflow, I wanted to share the insight of some of the creative women that I have profiled throughout this project.

This project is, after all, where a lot of my creative thinking has gone to over the last two years. It hasn't always felt like a freeflow form of expression, and many times it has felt more like a slog than an enjoyable creative act. I can only hope that what I have put into this will plant a seed in someone else. A seed of curiosity, of knowledge, of questioning, of creativity. 

With that, here is some wisdom from incredibly women. I hope that you take some of it to heart.

Be full. Allow for flow and overflow. 

Until next month, stay creatively fueled.

-Anna

ps: calendars are on sale in my online shop. you can basically consider them a pack of postcards.