The Mama Judy and Jill Podcast
Welcome to the place where we, Mama Judy (bonus mom) and Jill (bonus daughter), have conversations all about art and the creative process.
We chat about finding inspiration for artistic expression, conquering the hurdles that hinder creativity, and empowering the creative spirit.
Along the way, we share techniques, tips, and stories from our experiences with fiber arts, mixed media, hand stitching, painting, and MORE!
Our goal is for you, our listener, to walk away inspired to create (whatever creating looks like to you).
Whether a seasoned artist or someone just starting out, we look forward to you tuning into the podcast each week.
Questions or podcast topic suggestions? We'd LOVE to hear from you!
Email us at podcast@jillgottenstater.com
Or send us a direct message on Instagram:
>> Mama Judy Instagram
>>Jill Instagram
The Mama Judy and Jill Podcast
Episode 23: Art and Nature - A Beautiful Intersection That Fuels Creativity and Well-Being
This week, Mama Judy and I explore how stepping into the great outdoors not only fuels your creativity but also works wonders for your wellbeing.
It's scientifically proven that the calming effects of nature can reduce anxiety, a perfect antidote when tackling new art projects or techniques. Whether it's the sea's soothing sounds or the quiet solitude under a tree, nature can help us feel more relaxed and focused, thereby enhancing our creativity.
Join us as we chat about the benefits of being immersed in nature, from the mental wellbeing perspective to being able to observe the tiny nuances of plants to allowing the shapes and colors of nature to inspire your work. There's a certain depth and texture that pieces of nature – leaves, sticks, shells, even tree bark and acorn caps – can add to your artwork.
Whether you're an artist seeking inspiration or simply a lover of nature, we hope you'll enjoy this episode.
A few inspiring creatives mentioned in this episode:
Alexandra on Instagram (uses shells and pebbles in her art)
Megan on Instagram (uses eco dyeing/printing in her art)
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We'd LOVE to hear from you! Click here to send us your thoughts and ideas for a future episode.
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>> Mama Judy on Instagram
>>Jill on Instagram
Oh good, you made it. We are so glad you're here. Welcome to the Mama Judy and Jill podcast, an intergenerational chat about life, art and the creative process. I'm your host, jill, and joining me is my wonderful co-host and bonus mom, mama Judy. Let's get started. Welcome back everyone. Mama Judy and I are so thrilled to be spending some time with you today. And hi, mama Judy, I see you're sitting outside today for our episode.
Speaker 2:I am Jill. You guys can probably hear the birds in the background and if you hear an occasional voice, it's just someone walking by.
Speaker 1:We like it. We like the activity in the background and some of you may know this, but Mama Judy is back home from her travels. She traveled for five months and now she's back in California where she lives in the Southern California desert area. So in the background, where it's getting a little cool here, where I live in North Carolina here it's green, the sun's out, there's a palm tree trunk in the background. So two very different scenes here today.
Speaker 2:That's right and that's why we go off. As we've said before is I can't do the 120 degree heat, but sure love the 73 degree heat in the winter time.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I was talking to dad, who is Mama Judy's life partner my dad the other day and he said it felt like a vacation coming back to your own place and then you all will be ready to like take a weekend getaway soon, probably in a few weeks.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, that seems to be our pattern. But you know, the other reason, jill, that I kind of wanted to sit outside is that today we were going to talk about nature in art, and it just seemed stuffy for me to be inside when we're going to talk about nature. And, as you know, every time that I visit one of those different areas in the summer, I pick up leaves and sticks and whatever I can find from that area, because every area has different trees, different leaves, and so I thought it would be interesting to talk about nature in art and nature and art. I know, for example, that Alexandria, which you can put her full Instagram name in, uses shells a lot and stitches them into her wonderful little journals. So there are a lot of people that use different parts of nature in their work, and I think you have to, am I correct?
Speaker 1:Yes, and actually just last night I spent some time creating a little small journal and I had a stick that I got in Oregon. I just found a little stick. It's a stick that I could find here too, but I just wanted to take something back with me from Oregon and so I broke off a little piece of that stick and then I did some couching with it into my little fabric journal that I was creating last night.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and there's something wonderful about having some natural thing in your work, whether it's a twig or a leaf or feathers and I collect a lot of those, as you know, and put them in my journals, usually on the cover, and I think the reason I do is I feel such a connection to the natural world, and that just seemed to me that art in some ways mimics the natural world, and so, by bringing it to my work, I'm combining two things that I love together.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I. Another thing too. This was a while back when I went on a beach trip and there were some wonderful, beautiful grasses that I found along the way, and so I clipped those and I still have some sitting on my mantle ready to be used at any point. I used a little bit of them. But yeah, I love how the found objects, the natural found objects Another thing that I've incorporated into some of my journals has been tree bark. So you know, and it's flatter and you can stitch that down, or I guess you could glue it down also. But pine cones I did something with a pine cone, but what I did the other day was I took an acorn cap you know the little comes off of it and stitched that into one of my journal pages as well.
Speaker 2:So I've mentioned why I like using natural things in my work. What about you? What prompts you to put natural things in your stitching?
Speaker 1:I feel grounded in a different way when I add things from outside. I find that I feel pretty grounded anyway when I'm stitching, but bringing in a piece of bark or a piece of grass, it just makes me feel grounded in some sort of way. I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't really know what it is, but I love it that's an excellent word to use and it's been proven through scientific studies that being in a natural environment in nature actually lowers your blood pressure, makes you calmer, lessens anxiety and so all those wonderful things we can bring into our life and we're bringing into our art.
Speaker 2:By putting those things in our art and actually, after I was kind of thinking about things to talk about on this podcast, it occurred to me there have been times when I have started a new project or a new technique that I have not been comfortable with and that it's been a little bit of anxiety. I wonder if I would do better by doing that in a natural environment. So what I mean by that, in summary, is if the natural environment has been proven to reduce anxiety. It made sense to me that if I'm going to do something that I know is going to kind of raise my anxiety, take it out to sit under a tree or sit here on the patio down on the end, where all of the trees and bushes are, so that I then surround myself with a calming energy. It'll make it easier for me to do something new rather than sitting in the house and letting some kind of anxiety build up.
Speaker 1:Yes, and for people that live near the sea, which neither one of you has necessarily lived there, but I can imagine if I lived by the sea I would probably want to go hear the waves crashing the goals or the birds flying overhead and the air being outside too, just the feeling, the air on your skin and just yeah, I believe that that would be a truly great thing to do for us as artists.
Speaker 2:I do too, and just watching you and listening to your voice as you were describing that, you got more excited about it. So I think there's something in human beings that we innately connect with nature and in our art we can bring it into it in small pieces and we can submerge ourselves in an environmentally friendly environment to do our art, such as plein air painting, where they go out to the natural environment and they paint that scene. But they're right there, they're submerged into it, not just painting from a picture, and we can all, no matter what our form of art is, we can take some piece with us to do in that natural setting. In fact, knowing me, I'll probably be running around and every time I see a park I'll be. Oh, I could come over here and sit under that giant tree.
Speaker 1:Right, or you see a picnic table somewhere. Just stop anywhere you can and we have little benches sitting down by the lake and I'm thinking I've never gone down and sat and stitched at the lake. I've gone down and written poetry before which. I like being out there writing poetry, but I've never thought to go down and stitch. But that seems like something I might want to do too.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I don't think we're alone in this, because as I watch out on Instagram, I see a lot of people like Alexandra who do include the pieces that they have found. You not only have a wonderful piece that has additional colors and additional texture, but you have a memory that you're sewing or you're gluing into your art.
Speaker 1:Right, and, like you said, alexandra, we keep referring to her who does this, and I will put her Instagram link in the show notes, but she I know one time I commented on one of her pieces and I said how much I enjoyed seeing that, and she said that it was nice to even the collecting process, the being outside and collecting along the way, and so just that part of being outdoors.
Speaker 1:Another thing, too, I thought about is we've talked a little bit about just being inspired by nature before, but a new thing that I learned recently, which, if you go outside and I think this was a painter that I saw on Instagram, I don't know who it is, but she suggested you take your piece of paper and put it where the shadow of, like a leaf or a tree or something is back there, and then you can trace basically the shadow and then come back and either paint it or I could stitch it, and so, before we talk today, I actually went outside because I hadn't tried it yet and I thought I wanna go see how that feels. So I went out to our backyard, put it in front of some leaves and different things loved it. I wanna go find some really pretty flowers or some sort of grasses. That I'm gonna do, but next time I'm out in nature I'm gonna use that just to get something started that I would have never thought before, like take that and then do something different with it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know, speaking of leaves and flowers, not only can they be attached, but I was thinking, as I was getting ready for this, that this week Lynn and I are going to have a play day where we do jelly printing, and one of my favorite things with jelly printing is a flower or a leaf. So nature can be used in all sorts of art. And in fact, one thing I've never done, but I do, look at the beautiful things that people create with ecodyne and they know what plants will give what color, and so there's just an endless array of the way that nature can be used. And if you're interested in drawing or painting, you can study the bark of a tree or a flower for texture and shape and color. In fact, I think it was Van Gogh, who has a famous picture of the sunflowers, studied sunflowers for a long time before he painted them. Oh, so studying different aspects of nature up close is also a way to increase the depth of our own art.
Speaker 1:Well, and mentioning plein air painting, that started back in France and I actually had to look up. Plein air means outdoors and so that started in France for the painters, but we just said it doesn't have to be painters. But what I loved is that remember when we talked to Bee and Molly, molly said as a little girl that they would have their birthday parties and stuff and her mom would take all the girls out and they would paint plein air. And I thought about that too. And one thing that I know, that the artists that go out I see some of you, for, like the lake that I live near, I'll see someone set up with an easel and I know one of the things that people do plein air, at least for painting is that they're able to capture, in the moment the light changes, the difference.
Speaker 1:You know the way the light is or the kind of the how it truly looks, versus if they took a great picture at that one time and then we're painting from that. They can actually see things that are going on and that might affect like ooh, I like adding a little more pink here or whatever it might be at the moment. Even if they're there for an hour, the sky may look different than they thought of 45 minutes ago, to how they ended up with it, because of how it changed in front of their eyes.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know taking that, I'm not doing plein air painting, but I'm doing plein air podcast. I'm out here in the natural environment. Yeah, and sitting here I thought you know it really does feel different than sitting in a room which, no matter what you do, you don't necessarily get the right angle or the right light.
Speaker 1:It just feels better doing it outdoors in the natural air Well and where you're sitting right now, besides recording this podcast, that is your workspace a lot. Are you at the table there where you usually spread everything out?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I am and I have.
Speaker 1:I have overmaking and journaling and all that out at that table also.
Speaker 2:And, as you know, before I got into the books, when I was doing the jewelry, I would spend hours out here because I could take all my stuff on one tray all the beads and bindings. It's a little harder with all the supplies that I have, but I'm certainly gonna make sure that I do more of it now that I'm back where I have a covered patio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, One other thing too, being in nature, and this is a little different, but remember William and I used to have that little farm in Tennessee. We owned a 10-acre property that William ended up creating a huge garden, like I think that garden was a half-acre big, but I remember him saying when we would go out there and he'd work in the garden and be working with his hands and just getting into the earth, he was creating a garden. He also said he felt connected to God in a way never had. He felt he's like I just feel this connection to God in nature and he felt creative and good and so anyway, that just came to my mind and he was using his hands and he was planting. So it's different than an artist like we are, but that garden was kind of his palette.
Speaker 2:It was his palette and that's absolutely right. When you step out into the natural environment, you're closer to the rhythm of the essence of life, To every tree. I have a fig tree out here that is probably 40 years old and I know it's rhythms. Now I know by the end of December it's not gonna have a leaf on it, by my birthday in March it's gonna be blooming. Not blooming, it's gonna have it's little green leaves. So you get closer to the essence of the rhythm of life and anytime you can bring that into your life, and especially into your creative process, I think that's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you mentioned the eco-dying before, but I wanted to shout out someone that I follow that has been really experimenting with the eco-dying and the leaves and stuff and her name is Megan. Her name is Megan, but her Instagram handle is thread spells, and she has really been experimenting with growing flowers and then taking them in and working to her art and she does a lot of slow stitching as well. So she's making things on fabric. And I've seen another artist that I follow I cannot think of what their name is, but I love that they do pressing. They take a lot of stuff in from inside and have some pressing going on, but then pulling the things out and incorporating them into journals or that, or you could just frame it too, but a lot of things that they tuck away and press and then maybe later bring out. Or I think you've taught me this is taking a leave and like with a paintbrush or something, just painting it and smacking it down on a piece of paper to just have this cool design.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I love the word smacking it down. Smack it down, see what comes up. Yeah, now all those ways, because in doing that you're bringing design, additional texture, additional elements that if we just paid attention to cloth or paper, they would not be as multi-dimensional as you can get by adding natural found objects into your art in some way.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it just adds that depth. You know, thinking about the depth of it. Another thing that I don't. I mean, I guess this is not natural, but, mama Judy, I think I told you this a while ago I went to a friend's house who has horses and I asked her can I have some horse fur Not fur, is it hair, horse hair? And she gave me some, and so the other day in my journal, I just hadn't known quite yet what to do with it, but I just took some of it, clipped it off and put it near a stick this was like a different stick that I was talking about earlier and just couched that in. So there's like a little tuft of horse hair and it just delights me and that is part of nature too, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Well, you know our audience won't know our connection through the horse rescue that I used to work at and you came out and fell in love with the Clyde Stale named Munchy. Well, when Munchy passed away before he passed away, when I was grooming him, I saved all of his tail and mane hair. So I have a whole bunch of it in there that I am working into my natural wall hangings. So, yes, your dog's hair. Some people are able to save their dog's hair. There's actually a form of pottery that is called horse hair pottery and they take it and they put it in the clay and then it gets burnt into the finished piece. So there's just all kinds of ways that we can add nature into our creative process. So we're talking about two things you can add elements in, but we're also talking about the benefit of getting out into a more natural environment every opportunity that you can, and that's for not only the development of your art but also for your own well being.
Speaker 1:Yes, probably more so than anything.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is, and you know any place you can go, any time that you're feeling anxious or upset. If you can walk into and sit for 20 minutes in the natural environment and it naturally lowers your blood pressure, hey, I'm all for that.
Speaker 1:Yes, me too. Well, and then another thing with the well being that is true with any doctor or counselor says you know, if you have anxiety, depression, that is their number. One thing is to get out and take a walk if you can. Yes, it is. That is going to elevate your mood, and so no matter if you're an artist or not, that is just something that the doctor always orders.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And before we leave this subject, there was another thing I wanted to mention. I we started out and I said that no matter where I am, I pick up the leaves and the sticks because they're from. They're not necessarily where I'm living, and that's the same with the audience. You may have a friend that lives in the desert or someone who lives up in the rainforest type of environment.
Speaker 2:You can exchange elements and in fact, eucalyptus grows out here, and Val, who we've had on before, was doing, I believe, some ecodyne and wanted some eucalyptus, so I sent her a whole thing of eucalyptus I love it and I saw one of the other women that I follow who does spirit dolls, which often I mean most of the time they have several natural elements in them, and she had just received a package of elements from a friend that lived in the totally different area, and I thought that's another way we, as artists, can share things in our lives. If you have someone that wants what you've got in your area, send them a gift package. Yes, that is a great idea.
Speaker 1:I love that you sent those to Val the eucalyptus leaves, because not only are they pretty, but they smell so good.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:And I thought you know I live here with these eucalyptus leaves. Maybe I should try doing ecodyne or something with them. You know I can't go down that rabbit hole. Yet I haven't even come out of the rabbit hole, I've already started down.
Speaker 1:Well, this was a fun chat about this, but I think it is just an encouragement for anyone, especially if you're feeling stagnant or you just haven't gotten outside. Like, make it a point to do it. It's going to be better off because of it, and who knows what will come out creatively just inspiration, ideas or the actual pieces. One thing I wanted to ask you to don't you think being outside in nature like that the inspiration and all could you potentially learn perspective more? Like? I don't do a whole lot of drawing or painting, but it seems like that's where you're going to get your perspective training, and I'm guessing that's why plain art artists too. They're able to see the depth of things.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You're going to get the perspective. And if you, let's say, you love trees, which I love, and I do sketch them quite often, well, when I go out and sit by a tree, I get the nuances of the bark, the coloring. I may not capture it exactly realistically, but I've added another depth to my drawings by studying it. And you mentioned Bea and Molly, who we've also had on before. When Bea was an art teacher, she would take her class out and have them look closely at the bark of the tree and study it, for all of those things.
Speaker 2:So again, I'm going to jump back to what we said about being out in nature is calming. I'd like to improve my sketching skills, so it makes sense that I find a tree, go out and study it and sketch it sitting underneath it. I think that would be a perfect way for me to do that and I could bring a piece of bark home, which I've done. You know, you see birch trees or aspen and they peel their bark and I'm the person running around ripping it off to help them out. But that's not the same as if I were to go find that birch tree and sit there and do my art, right there under that tree or in front of that tree.
Speaker 1:Whole different depth, whole different perspective, as you well pointed out and I think also, you know there's the term tree huggers, but I love to hug a tree or to just put my hands on the tree or put my hands in moss. You know, just sink your hands, there's nothing again. It's a grounding type thing when you feel, and especially with these trees, you're thinking look at what are the history of this tree. It's life, and the moss too. But that's a beautiful thing to do when you're out there in nature.
Speaker 2:Yes, I finally trained, as you know all family and friends. If you go on a hike with me and you can't find me, it's probably because I'm back there hugging and talking to a tree. So it's just the way it is.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, let's leave it at that. We just encourage you to go out and give a tree nearby a big old hug please do, while you're studying that and thank it for being there. Yes, all right, mama Judy. Well, this was a fun conversation. Love you dearly.
Speaker 2:Yes, me too, and it was, and we hope that people will find some way to bring nature more into their life and their art, and we would love to hear the various ways we've talked about people that we know use it, but if anybody has anything they'd like to share with us, we would love to hear it.
Speaker 1:Yes, we love that. We love seeing what everyone's creating out there. So, yes, all right. Well, we will talk to you all next week. Now every Wednesday, new episodes. We would love it if you would share this with a friend or two, this episode, and we're just grateful to be with you. And we'll talk to you next week.
Speaker 2:Absolutely goodbye everyone.
Speaker 1:Bye mama, judy love you.