I’m  currently reading the book, Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go, by Shaun McNiff.

One of the chapters, Reframing, talks about an exercise to enable you to transform annoyances/problems, etc. into more positive sources of creative energy.  One way, the author says, is to gather artifacts, photographs, colors, materials, other things/any thing, connected to the situation (a situation that you’d like to change) and place the items into aesthetic environments.  Boxes.

This activity is an intimate one because it involves careful placement within the environment.  By doing this, you are ‘reframing’ discontents into something new and creative.  The act of placing an anxiety or troublesome experience or thought into a creative space (a space we’ve created) literally changes its place within our lives.  And the artistic act will often have a corresponding effect on our overall relationship to the disturbance.

The use of boxes may help to keep the disturbance ‘enclosed’ and ‘framed’ as we work on the process of transforming its place within our lives.  The glue we use keeps it in place (controlled).

And I love what the author says here: When we use our disturbances as materials of expression we see that everything in life is fuel for the creative process.  Creativity puts toxins to good use.

The book is full of other good advice too…you might want to check it out.

As you can see, I’m a collector of boxes.  I have quite a few of them.

And they’re all empty.

For now.