ISBN 978-1-62847-598-2
Copyright © 2013 by Court McCracken
All rights reserved

artnurture.com

This book is dedicated to my father.

He taught me it was beautiful to dream and that thinking outside of the box was a lot of fun.

To this day, I continue to paint on the easel he gave me when I was six.

Acknowledgements

Special Thanks to my Kickstarter Backers!
You all brought me to tears with your support and belief in this project. I am deeply grateful to you all.

Kirsten Stolle, Stacie Lindner, James Leslie Miller, Sara Truitt, Jocelyn Young, AC Baker, Walker, Hannah Miller, William Bodnar, Roger McCracken, Kathey, Shonna Campbell, Kathryn Hall, Sara Nichols, Jenna Yarosh, Ginger Huebner, Kyle Samples, Tim Mills, Miranda Wildman Efird, Tricia, Rock Eblen, Drew Reisinger, John, Sheila Kent, Terry Van Duyn, Brian Burns, Joelle Diepenbrock, Mountain Feist, The Fritz, Stephanie Anderson, Jennifer Scarborough, Johanna Hagarty, Kristalyn Bunyan, Amanda Orders, Emily, Ben Tyson, Jennifer Gilarowski, Nancy Coffman, Melody Reed, Joy Goetz, Rachel Wingo, Stephanie Sorrell, Emma Berger-Singer, Dwayne Parton, Sarah Reiff, Terry Ferree, Sandra Morgan, Mark Romano, Marc Stephen Mullinax, Jessica Raczka, Heidi Howard, Elizabeth Moreno, Ashley Orders, Betty C. Reiff, Alison Pettigrew, Heather Barham, Dan Evans, Ben Newton, Shawn Henderson, Sara Surabian, Justin Carpenter, Joy Boatwright, Gail King, Mary Negley, Joshua Coffman, Chip Oglesby, Melanie Kool, Peggi K Lorenz, Laura Lynch, Andrew Taylor, Erin Casey, Justin Smith, Jesse Iaquinto, Sharon McRorie, Camille Milloer, Chris Cole, Sarah Hummel, Scott Lowrey, Nancy Kool, Shawna Lee Marinello, Andrea Womack Bridges, Blake Windsor, Susan Dufon, Will McCracken, Matthew, Ashley Coffman Loureiro, Joan Hoffman, Meg Winkler, Bryan, Christine Plassman, Mary Lyford, Loretta

Special Thanks to the following crew for their hard work helping this project become a reality.

Laura Boffa for her editing services.
Taylor Hellhake for creating the Kickstarter video.
James Leslie Miller of gorillabunny for working with me to create the vision of this book with graphic design, layout and beautiful fonts.

Drew DePorter for his constant feedback and assistance on all of my projects, whilst using his expertise and skills as a designer and being an overall wonderful studio mate.

Emma Berger-Singer & Rand Harcz, for their hard work creating the hand made screen-printed posters.

There are so many more people who I need to name.

To every single person who has asked me, “How’s the book going?” I give you a deep and heart-felt, “Thank you.” The simple act of asking me what was going on with my project was incredibly encouraging as I embarked upon this journey.

To all of the coffee shops, park benches and barstools I sat in while writing and editing: I sat there because the environment was inspiring, so whoever was a part of creating those spaces, thank you.

To all of my friends, family, and the beautiful community of Asheville, you all have changed my life and helped me to nurture my own art. I hope to give you that same beautiful inspiration right back.

In deep gratitude,
Court

A NOTE TO THE READER

Art Nurture is an approach to enjoying life, living it fully, and living it beautifully.

The main purpose of the Art Nurture Journey is that you live life with the soul of an artist.

What does that mean?

Artists are those who make choices with three main considerations: passion, purpose & intention.

Passion — Is the fire, the love

Purpose — Is the reason or the meaning

Intention — Is where it is put into action

When you find these three things present in what you are doing, you have found your art. This art is not only for you, but for you to share with the world as well. You may have many ‘arts’ throughout your life, but the greatest art is that of living.

I hope you enjoy reading this book, as I seek to share with you the simple ways I have found to connect with creativity. When we connect to our creative energy we are able to live with passion, purpose, and intention. It is at that time, we realize, we are truly living life with the soul of an artist.

May you nurture your creativity, your art, yourself, and share it with others as well. The world needs you to live with the soul of an artist. We need you to be your awesome, amazing, and unique self; fully alive and fully realized. Give us the good stuff!

Sincerely.
Court McCracken

shed its outer husk and reveal its inner potential. We will talk about how we developed our Outer Layers that keep us from cultivating our creativity and how to rid ourselves of them in a healthy way.

Taking Root is the next step, as we spend time in the rich and fertile creative soil we will cultivate in our lives and give ourselves a foundation. When we are strongly rooted in ourselves it is easier to continue on the creative journey. Breaking Ground is next, that first major push of creative energy where we see tangible results of creativity in our lives. We will finish up with how we will continue Growing Up and creating a Sustainable creative practice over the course of our lives.

Through each of these stages, I will not only be discussing their nature and functioning in our lives, but I will also be asking you to actively follow along through journaling, introspection and reflection, and calling you to act on those findings. Throughout the process we will be actively cultivating our creativity

How did Art Nurture begin?

Art Nurture was born out of a time in my life when I had drastically fallen away from my creative self. My creative spark was a dull memory and I wondered if

I would get back to my dream of being a professional artist and a teacher.

To share with you my Art Nurture Journey, I should give you a brief sketch of my life up to this point.

I was definitely encouraged in my creativity from a young age. My father bought me a beautiful, wooden A-frame easel when I was 5 or 6. It is the easel I still use to paint on today. It was set up near a bookshelf, along with a drafting table and stool I had to climb up to sit on, I was ready to paint and draw for hours. It was my first studio. Not only did I paint and draw from a young age, but I also enjoyed carving and shaping cardboard into all kinds of things. Forts, homes for my toys, and a large TV in which you could perform your very own TV shows. There was even a cardboard remote control and a cardboard TV guide with the shows I had rehearsed for people to call out while they simultaneously pushed the ‘button’ on the cardboard remote (I was not into electronics, so this was good enough for me). For a time, I also became obsessed with jewelry making and my dad proudly sported a hot pink flower bead necklace on a long cord, wearing it over his tie.

My dad was a creative entrepreneur and thus I was aware of the joys and struggles of making it in the

world with nothing but your unique skills and wit. But, man, it was truly cool to watch him pull off his big projects. The creative bug was in me, though I had much more to learn.

Around middle school my Dad had heart surgery. This was a very challenging time for our little family and around that time I became very dedicated to the study of science.

I decided at the age of 11 that I would become a cardiologist and to do that, I would probably have to go to Harvard. This was the logical choice because of the necessary smartness required of a cardiologist which could only be imparted at Harvard, right?! So the nerd persona took its hold as I begged for science publications for holiday gifts. Mysterious artsy girl wouldn’t come back for a while.

Through the rest of middle school and into high school I focused on grades, soccer, and the occasional participation in a school play. It wasn’t until junior year of high school that I entertained my interest in visual arts again and took painting for my arts elective.

My school was lucky to have a talented and dedicated art educator. He entered us in competitions and chalk festivals and really pushed us. I loved every bit of it!

Our painting class even requested to come to school on a Saturday to complete a still life! It was at this time that I was also taking Chemistry that the thoughts in my head that I may not make it to medical school started to creep in.

This was also that pivotal high school time of taking SAT’s and visiting colleges. Could I really be 16 years old making these types of life-altering decisions? But yes, this is how it is done. We visited a number of schools and I realized…Art had become my priority and I would have to break it to Dad.

After years of my interest in the medical field, this was an incredibly jarring announcement. Amidst this news, we agreed that a liberal arts school was a good choice, as it would give me some freedom and flexibility to study different subjects and potentially change majors as opposed to looking into just a traditional art school.

My frustration with the college search found me one evening spending some time with Google. I typed into the magical search bar three simple words; college, mountain, art. Looking for a Magic 8 Ball answer to point me in the right direction, I then clicked ‘Search’.

The first school to pop up was Mars Hill College.

I had always had this vague idea in my head that living in the mountains of North Carolina would be amazing. Being as that I grew up in the middle of a big city in Florida, flat, hot with a bad traffic problem, doing something completely different peaked my young adventurous spirit.

When I visited the campus, I was sold. Yes, this is where I would study art, get out on my own for the first time and have some serious mountain sports adventures. You never fully know why or how you end up in a place, but the Blue Ridge Mountains have stolen my heart and the community I have found here has been an important influence on my life’s work.

I wont spend too much time on my college years except to say that I loved being in the studio. I loved making art, learning techniques, studying art history. I dove into my Art Nerdiness with serious tenacity. I had to make up for those science years. Don’t get me wrong, I love science, but I really love art.

Graduation came and my post-graduation plan was simple. Make art. Build portfolio. Get into Grad School. Earn MFA. Get job as a professor. Perfect plan. The end. Forever and ever amen.

Here I will ask you to insert a record scratching noise to abruptly interrupt the story and let you know that there is going to be a change, not like a cool DJ record scratching, but more like an “Oh, crud, I just ruined that record!” type of scratch.

The Daily Grind

Some of you may be laughing at my youthful naïveté. Life is so much different than our 21 year-old perceptions of it are. Bills start coming our way, loan repayments for that awesome education, friends move away, we begin worrying about health insurance and jobs. We float through this vast expanse of time and space known as life, feeling as though we just got shot out of a cannon the minute we walked across that stage and accepted our hard earned diploma or moved out on our own! Man, life made so much sense when it was divided into semesters and credit hours, back when summer actually meant something.

This is where the playing ground gets leveled. This is where many of us find ourselves. We have some young dreams and reality collided with them, crumbling them to bits on the floor. We realize the hard work involved in making those dreams come true is more difficult and complicated than we ever knew. We scramble, picking up pieces and dusting them into a dustpan, trying to

patch our perfect plan back together. It’s ok, just stick to the plan. All the while, we become tired, thinking that the plan and the idea were kind of a lie, kind of silly, maybe a joke, maybe only for certain people and not for us. But alas, the path is not always straight and narrow.

This is where I embarked on the multi-year journey that kept me scrambling. After a few years away, I returned to the mountains and began reflecting on the path I had originally laid out for myself during undergrad, my perfect plan. I realized that things had changed and that perhaps I had too. I knew I loved art and I knew I wanted to teach it, but how?

Losing the Spark

It wasn’t just the difficulty of how to make my dream a reality, but through the previous years, I had begun to feel stiff. My creative spark was not at its peak, to say the least. It was barely a glimmer. I was feeling like I had spent much of my energy worrying about life and making it happen and none of it on keeping myself nurtured in my creativity. I didn’t really have words to describe it at the time, but I was reaching out for some lifeline or resource to get myself back to the place I had once been and to find a way to not slip like this again. I began wondering, was it career coaching I needed?

At this time, I reached out for job and career resources and found Dan Miller, author or 48 Days to the Work you Love and No More Mondays. I loved his writing and perspective. It opened me up to new and creative ways to live out my dream of art and teaching. I started to feel more inspired. More creative. More myself. I was regaining my sense of childhood possibility slowly but surely.

It was at this time that I began a blog, entitled Art Nurture, to document my journey back to my creative self. Yes, life had gotten me kind of down. We all get stuck in a rut. We all go through times where we give up on our dreams because they seem impossible. It was through writing the blog and talking with others that I realized…

…it was not just me and my fellow art-school grads that had these struggles. In fact, it wasn’t just artists who struggled with this creative anxiety of being an adult. It was everyone that I talked to! The majority of adults that I talked to had somehow given up on a hobby or an “art” they had once enjoyed.

‘Why does this happen?’ I wondered.

“Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain one.” -Pablo Picasso