Week #2 of Creative Gymnastics

Once again, the combination of words picked from my pile of artist prompts was challenging. The words were: Salt, Espresso, and Photography. I really love each of these separately. I had no idea how I would put them together. This really was going to take some creative gymnastics!

First, I researched the use of the word ‘salt.’ It’s everywhere from restaurants to businesses, and contained in volumes of history. The question was, how to put those three prompts together into something fun and creative.

The Simple Solution:

The easy way out would have been to make a photo of a little pile of salt next to some espresso beans. I also considered going to a local grocery store and asking permission to pile up all their jars and bags of salt and espresso on a little table in the middle of an aisle, and then take pictures. The next alternative was to wander around my house gathering all the different types of salt shakers and espresso cups and my Bialetti espresso pot (I only have one of those). But there wasn’t any creative gymnastics in any of those ideas.

For last week’s post, I came up with a fairytale, but this time I haven’t found a cohesive way to bring those three ideas into one story. Since I had a self-imposed deadline of posting this within a week, I was running out of time.

Salt Dough!

And then I got an idea. Suppose one of the items, the salt, became the medium for the other two items. Salt dough!

It’s been a few years, ok, make that many decades, since I’ve worked with salt dough. I went to the store to get the basic ingredients: salt and flour. Just add water, how hard could it be?

What a mess! Cracks in the dough showed up after baking, and the lumps and bumps just got bigger as it hardened. Sanding the finished pieces after baking didn’t work either. The results look like they were made by my grandkids, but it was fun anyway.

The “espresso beans” came out pretty well even though they’re also made out of salt dough. Maybe my art will get better after all these gymnastics.

Solution #2: Cartoon

I just wasn’t satisfied with the salt dough creations. They looked so rough and slapped together that I felt like I needed to go further with the three words. I only had one more day to put something together, but weirdly I was inspired by a dream. It was something about a shark asking for a glass of salt water at a restaurant. From that dream, I had the funny thought of the way deer like salt licks and envisioned a shark in the woods licking a block of salt.

This is what a panicked last minute brain came up with. It made sense at the time …I guess you had to be there.

Next Week’s Artist Prompts

Anyway, onward! My next creative gymnastics words are: Blueberries, Crayons and Willow Tree. Stay tuned!

I hope you’ve got your own bag of favorite “likes” and “loves”. See the original post for instructions here. Let us know how you did in the comments. Also, sign up for email alerts in the right sidebar so you know when the next post is out.