Should I explain the title?
Maybe I should introduce myself first.
My name is Christa Percival, and I am an artist. I have been making art, with varying degrees of intensity and success, since I was little. I always think that this piece of art, the one I am about to start right now, will be the best one ever created, and I am invariably surprised when it is not. Over the years, the average observer who sees my art and says anything to me has tended to be more favorably impressed, so I suppose I'm learning something.
My most recent career has been as a Scenic Painter, which is to say that I have spent a lot of time painting things to look like other things. A few years ago, I was part of a crew that made a lot of raw concrete sculptures in Universal City, CA, look like Hogsmeade Village from the Harry Potter movies. I also spent a couple of years helping to make Galaxy's Edge - Star Wars Land look real in Anaheim, CA.
Now I am moving on to the next thing, which is where the title comes in.
One thing that happens if you keep trying to make really good art, over and over, is that at some point you are overtaken by The Muse.
Which is to say, you are painting, or writing, or playing the trumpet, or what have you, when suddenly, you are swept quietly away, and you are no longer in charge. The art is in charge. You keep going, because you can see, or hear, or tell somehow, that this is really good, and you don't want it to stop.
Sometimes everything just disappears, and you are lost in the how, or the now, and you don't notice until later that anything wonderful had happened. You only notice when you look back and ask, "Now, how did I do that, exactly?"
For me, it usually feels as if some subtle force has taken an inexorable hold of the scruff of my neck and is sending commands through my central nervous system. At this point, I try not to think too much and to stay the heck out of its way,
I told a friend that it was as if the Universe had thrust a hand into me, and was using me like a sock puppet...
...
...
...and that image was so ridiculous, and wonderful, and happy-making to me, that I couldn't let it go.
So I am here now, to share it with you, and to see if I can help you to experience it, too.
Because you have something wonderful in you, I am sure of it. And I have some ideas for how to help you to express that ineffable thing in your soul, the one that is waiting for the smallest of encouragements to drown us all in rainbows and light, or possibly exquisite darkness - we'll never know until it happens.
So I am inviting you, right here and now, to try some things, to see if you can connect in a new way with yourself, and find out what's brewing in there.
