Fascinating Women: Fran Meneley

Fascinating Women seem to share certain characteristics: they exude creative energy, are actively engaged with life and shaping their experience, and listen to that wise inner voice. Art journal artist Fran Meneley joins our distinguished group.

Meri: Fran, we’ve never met in person. I was led to you by following a trail of bread crumbs sprinkled by my friend (and Fascinating Woman) Deb Taylor. She follows your blog, so one day when I was looking for inspiration I clicked on over to see what you were up to.  So can you tell us about yourself? Who are you?

Fran: I’m an artist, wife, and mother. One of my children is a college student, the other a teenager still living at home. Home, by the way, is on the high plains of Colorado.

Meri: What do you love to do?

© 2012 Fran Meneley

Fran: Cooking and eating, though not necessarily in that order. Great food is high on my list of pleasures. I’m an explorer at heart — I love to travel, always, anywhere. I garden (sporadically) in small containers. I’m a museum hopper, life long learner, and experimenter.  It doesn’t matter whether or not I have a partner — I dance when the music or spirit move me. I’m a natural scavenger and collector (think corvid librarian). I’m also inspired by the intricacies and divine beauty of nature. In a former life, I was associate publisher of a nationally circulated environmental magazine call Buzzworm.

Meri:  In your current life, how do you express your creativity and leave your fingerprints on the world?

Bird Painting © 2012 Fran Meneley

Fran:  I teach art to both big humans and tiny ones. And I love to combine art and the written word via art journaling. I blog, as you know,  and have a page on Pinterest.

Meri:  I haven’t heard of Pinterest. What is it?

Fran:  The best way to describe it is that it’s a virtual bulletin board where you can share things you love. I’ve got categories like color palettes, books worth reading, my idea of camping, and things I like.  I don’t spend much time on it, but it’s a fun idea.

© 2012 Fran Meneley

Meri: Where else can we find your imprint?

Fran:  Besides the blog, you can find my work in several publications. I’ve got things in  1000 Artist Journal Pages by Dawn DeVries Sokol, Beaded Embellishment by Amy Clarke, 500 Beaded Objects by  Lark Books, and in issues of Studios Magazine, Beadwork Magazine and Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine and in The Brooklyn Art Library’s Sketchbook Project.

© 2012 Fran Meneley

Meri: That’s not only an impressive list of credits, it’s a great segue into the topic of creativity.  How do you think of creativity? A lot of people believe that they’re totally devoid of creativity. What’s your take on that?

Fran: I think creativity is something you are, not something you do exclusively as an activity. And I think everyone is creative — an artist really — though some of us are more awake to that reality than others. We create our lives everyday and make a thousand and one creative decisions all day long. What to wear. What to eat. Where to do. How to invest our time. What to read. What music by what artist enthralls us. What to tune out and what to tune into. All creative decisions! And, of course, one of the most creative choices we make in life is who to love.

That being said, I really enjoy cooking as a creative, hands on, fully sensorial and engaging activity. And of course, working in my visual journals, painting and exploring other art mediums. I always want to be learning, but also honing my craft and working toward mastering the media I gravitate to — definitely a life long pursuit.

Meri: I’m always intrigued by the role of intuition in women’s lives. I believe it’s something we’re all born with to help give us information that we overlook when we overthink, but some people are more in tune with it than others. Where do you fall on that scale?

Fran: Intuition plays a fundamental role in my life. I’ve learned over the years to access and really pay attention to my intuition. . . the little voice that speaks to me, sometimes in a whisper and sometimes as a shout. I think as artists, and just as aware human beings,  it’s important to tune into our own soul and hearts — what they’re telling us. I think another facet of my intuition is my inner critic. I think it’s crucial to learn to discern the inner critic’s voice of fear, understand that it’s offered to somehow protect you from making mistakes, but is often misguided. Most of the time now, I’m able to ask my inner critic to kindly sit in the corner until I need her input. Inner critics are really helpful, for example, at the editing stage when you’ve got your first draft done. As a tool for discernment, the inner critics can be very useful. But as fear mongering pests, not so much. Listening to my intuition  is a very important part of finding my voice as an artist and individual on a path toward living authentically —   always heading toward my true north.

Taos Notes © 2012 Fran Meneley

Meri: What things have you learned about life and love that are surprising to you?

Fran: My life is constantly surprising. It constantly exceeds my tiny expectations. I have a great love with my family. They have taught me everything about love. How much effort it takes to nurture it, how to enjoy it, how to relax into it, how to count on it. My early years were shadowed by the death of my father when I was six. I had a lot of misconceptions about love and loss from my early family of origin experiences. The love of my husband and children grounds me and teaches me every single day that a loving life is not only possible, it is impossibly deep and rewarding.

Meri:  That’s a pretty profound and inspiring statement. “A loving life is not only possible, it is impossibly deep and rewarding.”  Wow! So let’s talk about inspiration. What inspires you? Fills you up when you’re depleted? Are you good at nurturing yourself or is that hard for you?

Beach Offering © 2012 Fran Meneley

Fran: I’m inspired by music, movies, nature and other people’s creativity. Plus a hot bath, a good book and an artist’s date (in the Julia Cameron sense). I have cultivated a fairly good practice of nurturing myself. Self-care is so important for all of us. I need to fill the well so I can continue to give back to the world, to live a creative life. Inspiration can be found in so many places! I’m always on the lookout for it and I find it quite often. Traveling is also a deep source of inspiration for me and I do it as often as I can. It allows me to step out of my comfort zone and routine. It makes me experience life with new eyes.

Meri: What have you learned about beauty? Authenticity? Following your passion?

Fran: Beauty really is everywhere. My path in life has me looking for it all the time. It’s part of how I choose to see the world. I think authenticity is really about finding your own voice, which I would say is a lifelong path and evolves over time. I think it’s an approach to life really. To be authentic and have my work be authentic really means to have it be true. True to myself and my own very personal point of view. It reaches across all aspects of my life. I’ve done vision or dream boards since I was a teenager and I still do them. This has been such a great tool for discovering my own voice. It’s a tool for discovering what I like and don’t like, what’s beautiful to me, what colors I like, what is an inspiration to me and what’s not. It’s so individual and unique to each one of us. When I live out of my own truth, that’s when I feel authentic and when I feel like my work really is true to myself and represents me. I’ve taught myself to really tune into my intuition and listen to what I think is true and not true for me.

© 2012 Fran Meneley

Meri: What’s your focus of attention right now?

Fran: We have been designing, and now building, a house from the ground up for the past two and a half years. It is by far my biggest creative undertaking. And we have help. It’s been a very satisfying collaborative project with an amazingly creative architect and two wonderful interior designers. I’ve been able to really hone my personal design sensibilities. Like decorating your room as a teenager, only on a much bigger scale. All the design decisions, big and small, have really made me think about what’s important to me in the way I want to live. And I’ll have a new, spacious studio to move into!

I’ve also been teaching visual journaling this year. I teach locally at a wonderful little shop in Boulder, Colorado called Two Hands Paperie. I also taught Journalfest in October in Port Townsend, Washington.

Meri:  Fran, thanks so much for honoring us with this interview.

Port Townsend JournalFest Pages © 2012 Fran Meneley