KerryOn: Blank Canvas

Every winter, my daughter and I do some kind of creative activity. This year, we decided to partake in jewelry art. A long (very long) time ago, I made a jewelry tree – costume jewelry from my grandmother, my mother, and me glued to a felt background and framed by a lovely, discarded wood frame. It hangs each holiday season during the month of December. Paris often remarked how much she liked the jewelry tree, and how much she would like one for herself, to hang for future holidays. So, after talking about it for a few years, we finally put jewelry to canvas. She made a tree and I made a heart.

While I’m not an “artist” in the traditional sense (I don’t paint or draw), I do like to create. I believe that art is making something meaningful. What Paris and I did together is a beautiful collaboration of old jewelry from my mother mixed with our own, charms we both have acquired together, and brand-new shiny beads.

What made the artwork even more meaningful was the process. Together, we both began with a blank canvas and our imagination. Each piece was carefully selected, added, and sometimes removed if we felt it didn’t quite fit. We often stopped throughout the evening to give an occasional accolade and admire each other’s work. This continued, piece by piece, until unexpectedly, we had a sense that we were finished, and we marveled at the final products in front of us.

As I think of the art we created on the blank canvas, it reminds me of how similar the process is to life. Each of us has an opportunity to start with a blank canvas. We create art by adding to it piece by piece, sometimes removing when things don’t fit right. We do the same thing with our lives.

But we are so much more than a single blank sheet of canvas. Opportunity for another piece of artwork can show up when we cultivate a new relationship, try something we haven’t done before, or look at an idea from a different perspective. While we each may carry some old thoughts and beliefs from long ago, we most certainly have shifted our thinking over time, and there are still more things to learn.

If we think about our life as artwork, then we can begin each year, each month, each week, each day, with a blank canvas. We can place each piece of jewelry where we feel it best fits and through the process, we become the beautiful art. As the artist, all we need is a blank canvas and our imagination.

KerryOn Questions

- What are you imagining on your blank canvas?

- How will you begin to start your artwork? 

- What type of artist are you/will you become?

The Kerry behind KerryOn

My name is Kerry K. Fierke, Ed.D. (pron. Fear-Key) I have a unique combination of skills and experience – decades of fast-paced corporate experience in Fortune 100 companies and large health care organizations, combined with the academic rigor of a highly ranked research university. My focus is supporting others to create their own path to leadership development, lifelong learning, and a unique leadership legacy. Take a moment to focus on leadership, then KerryOn!

To see all KerryOn's and other leadership stuff, visit www.kerrykfierke.com.