Art Plus Life

I am getting ready for my next exhibition called "Art Plus Life," a group exhibition at a really lovely venue. Commonweal is a center for healing, research, and inspiration in Bolinas, CA. I will exhibiting some of my large-scale mixed media collages from Milagros. In this series, I photographed people's arms and asked them to write a wish for a positive change or miracle in their life, and then I created a collage combining the two with the intention of creating a visual affirmation of that wish. Pictured here is one of my pieces in the "Art + Life" exhibit - called "Kindness". And if you look closely at the original you will find the handwritten wish in the forearm, stating "What about kindness becoming infectiously popular - among close relations and strangers - unknown kindness mischief." I am so delighted to be showing this series at a place so committed to transformation and healing. I hope that if you are in the area, you will get a chance to see the exhibit.

"Art Plus Life"

June 23 - September 21, 2012

Opening Reception: June 23, 3-5pm

Commonweal Art Gallery

451 Mesa Road, Bolinas, CA 

www.commonweal.org

curated by Jacqueline Mallegni and Claudia Chapline

Artists: Bob Demmerle, Linda Gass, Mary Daniel Hobson, Elizabeth Jameson, Daigon Lueck,and Maud Zimmer

Image Info: "Kindness" from the series Milagros, 28 x 10", mixed media collage, $1750

Art Everyday Month Starts Today

November 1st marks the beginning of Art of Everyday Month! I have never participated before, but was intrigued this year after listening to Leah Piken Kolidas, the founder of Art Everyday Month in an interview with Britt Bravo for the Arts & Healing Podcast. The premise is fairly straightforward - do something creative everyday for the month of November - no matter how small or what the form. It need not be serious Art with a capital A, but rather any creative process you choose. For example, one woman kept it simple and purchased an itty-bitty sketch book and put at least one line on a page per day.

If you like, you can share the resulting art online. Leah offers options to sign up on her web site as a participant, to share your daily art on a Flickr page, or to track your journey on your blog. You can also make it a private commitment and just work away at it knowing that many others out there are engaged in the same practice this month. If you get stuck, Leah has a great advice in the her "Art Everyday Month Survival Kit."

For me, my life is so full right now that finding the space to be creative has been challenging. I am taking inspiration from Art Everyday Month to add some little doses of creative expression into my life. The first step today was to set up some art supplies (pictured here) in my sun room where my daughter and I could work together, playing with colored paper, scissors, glue, and more.

The Creative Entrepreneur

I am so inspired by Lisa Sonora Beam's book, The Creative Entrepreneur. It feels so good in your hands and the lush color illustrations make you want to dive right into it. Lisa's book offers a terrific synthesis of right-brain creative processes and left-brain business planning, making things like marketing and sustainability so much more accessible and fun for artists. I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa recently for the current issue of AHN News. Below is an excerpt - to read the whole interview, please click here.

"It took many years before I felt like I was living my creative dream and had the resources to support it. And I did it all by intuition, without having any specific tools or teachers. It was all trial and error, and believe me, plenty of error! By the time I went to business school, I had already run several successful creative businesses and worked internationally as a creativity teacher for individuals and in corporations. I went to business school because I thought it would honestly help me understand the world of money better -- making money, that is. I'm quite skilled at spending money. I wanted to launch a new business and was worried that all I had was my intuition, and that it wasn't enough (which is true in some ways). Business school (the useful parts) helped me develop a solid set of tools to test and back up my intuition. It was like learning a new language. I learned the language of business, and that helped me greatly speed up the trial phase of an idea and eliminate a good deal of the errors. Eventually, my creativity classes that I had been teaching since I was a therapist in the late 80’s, morphed into teaching business strategy to creatives, which is how the book material was tested and documented.

With The Creative Entrepreneur, I wrote the book I wished I had when I was struggling and trying to figure out how to make a living doing what I love (without selling my soul). I include the essential business tools you need to know, but it is all based on and taught via the creative process. So your new, healthy relationship to your creative process informs and guides the business essentials. Plus, learning about business this way is just so much more fun and engaging. When we learn something new with a sense of play, and using our creativity, that knowledge becomes deeply absorbed in a very practical way that can be used immediately."

Flight

Recently I received a wonderful box in the mail from Healing Environments full of postcards featuring a detail of my collage, Flight (pictured here). This card was part of a postcard gift packet distributed to their audience. In addition, work from my series Mapping the Body is going to be in their next publication. I am truly honored to have my work included. Healing Environments is an extraordinary organization whose tag line is “together we will comfort the suffering,” and you could learn more about them by clicking here to read an interview with co-directors Traci and Kate on artheals.org. They create both healing spaces with interior design and elegant books and publications, which they give away free of charge to their audience as tools for healing and inspiration. It is such a beautiful model of generosity. In response, I want to offer something back as well. I invite you to leave a comment here on this blog post before March 26. Then I will randomly select three people to receive a set of 5 of these postcards.

PS - I have gotten some feedback that people are unsure how to leave a comment. Be sure you are reading the post on my blog page and then click on the text below (1st line, right side) that says Comments. Then you can fill out the form and submit your comment online. Thanks!

Creative Generosity

I just posted a new issue of AHN NEWS on the Arts and Healing Network. I am particularly inspired by the topic this time – CREATIVE GENEROSITY. These times we find ourselves in our full of change and challenge, especially economically. It’s easy to give way to fear and feelings of scarcity. One of the best antidotes I know is generosity. The act of giving takes me outside myself - beyond the place of preserving and tightening around what I have – to opening up and connecting with others and being of service. I really do believe it is this kind of generosity of spirit that will make all the difference right now as we go through so much intense transformation in our country.

I was really delighted to feature a Britt Bravo's interview with Cami Walker, founder of the 29-Day Giving Challenge. Last year, Cami gave away 29 gifts in 29 days. She found this experience so healing and transformative, that she invited everyone to join her in this process and created an online community around the practice of giving. Today, the 29-Day Giving Challenge is a global giving movement with an active online community where people have shared over 3500 stories of giving along with artwork and videos. As Cami says. “What I notice is that the people who are taking part in this, what is common amongst us all, is that we all count our blessings. We practice gratitude. We feel like our lives are full no matter what we have.”

Also in this issue of AHN News is a write-up on the Federation of Students and Nominally or Unemployed Artists - a group of 10 artists who took giving into their own hands by raising $100 each, pooling their money ($1000 total), and giving it away as instant art grants of $10-$60 in a public park. All an applicant had to do was tell the story of his/her creative need and then he/she received a grant on the spot, along with an official handshake (see photo here). I love how artists took it into their own hands to support and give back to other artists in a fun, creative way - what a nice model of collaboration and spontaneity.

I hope you will get a chance to read this issue of AHN NEWS by clicking here. May it fill you with a sense of abundance and possibility.

(photo above from www.generosityfoundation.org)

Gardening at the Dragon's Gate

“I am a mad gardener. I mutter and rant, and at night, I shake dry seeds out of my unruly mane of hair. The garden is in my bones, in my gut, and in my hands that pearl sweat at the first hint from the overturned soil of March that it is time to sow Cherokee beans again in the open ground. And although I am a civil person, I am at my best when left completely alone at nightfall to spread that last wheelbarrow of aged horse manure around the base of the budded-out black currant plants from England.” -Wendy Johnson

I have the great good fortune to call this darling and wise woman my neighbor and friend. Wendy just recently published a new book, both poetic and practical - Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World. A Buddhist meditation teacher and organic gardening mentor, Wendy weaves together stories and advice about cultivating the earth with spiritual insights gleaned from her many years at Green Gulch Zen Center. The writing is as rich as good, well-composted soil. I have been savoring it, reading pages before bedtime to inspire garden dreams.

Last month, I invited Wendy over to my studio to be interviewed for the latest Arts and Healing Podcast. We spoke about the healing power of gardening, the benefits of community gardening, creating memorial gardens, tips on gardening with children, environmentalism, and more. I invite you listen to this podcast either by downloading the podcast via iTunes, or clicking here to listen to the podcast directly on your computer (use the audio player on the right hand side).

The Arts & Healing Podcast is part of the Arts and Healing Network and is produced by my good friend and blogger/podcaster Britt Bravo - you might also enjoy her blog, Have Fun Do Good.

Gift Giving and Guerilla Art

One of my favorite parts of the holidays is gift giving – thinking about each person, brainstorming gift ideas for them, making or acquiring the gift, and then wrapping it in colorful paper and ribbons. There is creative thinking and some handiwork involved that is very satisfying to the artist in me. In fact, during the holiday season, I usually derive more pleasure and excitement from the act of giving than the act of receiving.

Lately, I have been thinking more about the relationship between art making and gift giving. One person said to me recently “Art is a gift to society that the artist pays for.” This was a rather world weary response addressing the fact that artists are usually not well compensated financially for their hard work and dedication, and yet the art gets made anyway. My more optimistic attitude is that the artist is compensated in ways other than financial – namely the satisfaction of having expressed something from deep within that in turn can connect and communicate with others, sharing beauty, insight, and new perspectives.

One of the more provocative ways art can be a gift is anonymously. I have been so intrigued by the work of Keri Smith and her recent book, The Guerilla Art Kit. She defines guerilla art as “any anonymous work installed, performed, or attached in public spaces, with the distinct purpose of affecting the world in a creative or thought-provoking way." Her book includes great ideas and tools for guerilla art projects – some as simple as arranging a pattern of leaves in a chain link fence or chalking a favorite quote on the sidewalk. I love the idea of art like this that is ephemeral, generous, and perspective changing. I was delighted to interview Keri for the Arts and Healing Network’s current isuse of AHN News. As Keri explains in this interview…

“Coming across something that is unexpected helps to pull us out of our habitual ways of thinking and reacting to the world. This goes for the creation side of things too - we must tune in to the environment in order to allow it to speak to us and to notice the little things. This, in my opinion, is the greater purpose of art - to pull us out of our unconscious behavior and make us aware of something we might have missed. It asks us to pay attention, and, as I mention in the book, guerilla art says, 'the human spirit is alive here.'"

Keri also writes a wonderful blog, called The Wish Jar, which I often read with my morning coffee before heading to the studio. Her writing reminds me to slow down mentally, think creatively, experience and appreciate the details of nature, and enjoy the exploratory process of creativity. What better gift can art give.

Studio Visitors

Usually, it is just me and my dog at my Muir Beach studio, but yesterday brought two visitors. The first was Coleen, a wonderful book binder who lives in Muir Beach. We have been talking for ages about connecting to see each other’s work spaces, and yesterday we finally did it. We started with mine. It is always interesting to see what draws people’s attention first – for her, it was the shelf of Bottle Dreams pieces (pictured here).

After a full tour, we headed toward the ocean to her home and newly built studio space. I wish I had brought my camera as she has some wonderful old binding presses and the view from her studio is amazing – a full clear shot of the ocean. Coleen’s focus is creating unique housings for special texts she finds. One had just arrived in the mail – an artist friend had sent Coleen a text block featuring quotes she had found underlined or highlighted in used self-help books, now re-arranged and letterpress printed. For Coleen, the text block really inspires her process – she creates in response to this subject matter, bringing together great materials, leather collaging techniques, and even creating a cover with secret pop-up flap. Driving home from her studio, I thought to myself how she and I creatively are the inverse of each other. She initiates projects from the inside out – the text pages of the book lead her to the creation of a wonderful cover. Whereas I move so often from the outside in – finding a great bottle or an old frame and then working to find the right content with which to fill it.

Later in the afternoon, visitor number two arrived – Rachel Bagby. We gathered to record a future podcast for artheals.org about her amazing work with choirs, music, and healing. In preparation for our meeting, I have been reading Rachel’s book, Divine Daughters: Liberating the Power and Passion of Women's Voices, and have really loved the rhythmic quality of the writing and the circular, organic nature of the storytelling. Her tale of empowering her own voice and the voices of others (especially women) resonated strongly with me. In our conversation, she both spoke and sang news of her latest vision to unite choirs across the country to create positive change. She left me humming – re-awakening my own desire to sing.

At the end of the day, I felt filled up and reminded that it is important to take breaks and meet face to face with other creative people. I do treasure my solitary studio time, and yet it feels so good to stretch and be expanded by the visions of others.

Thinking about Art

The Legion of Honor in San Francisco always makes me feel like I have been transported to Europe. My father and I traveled there together this week to see “Rembrandt to Thiebaud: A Decade of Collecting Works on Paper.” It was a treat to wander the marble halls with my father because his knowledge of printmaking combined with mine of photography allowed each of us a more complete understanding and insight into the works on display. In the first room, I fell in love with an intimate etching by Rembrandt of a puppy (I am always a sucker for dogs), and my father gave me a crash course in print media, such as the distinction between a mezzotint and an aquatint. In the next room, I was struck by the illusionistic beauty of a drawing by Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype – it was certainly not a lack of drawing skill that inspired him to become one of the inventors of photography. If I could take one thing home with me, it would be the Tina Modotti photograph of an interior mural in Mexico – the way she photographed it turns it into a sweeping dreamlike experience.

Walking back to the car, I snapped this photograph of Rodin’s The Thinker. The next day, while listening to Anna Halprin on the artheals.org podcast I was touched to hear her say that it was a visit to the Musée Rodin sculpture gardens in Paris that provided an antidote for the deep horror she had experienced just prior in visiting a concentration camp – that it was art and beauty that truly have the power to heal the soul. I had a moment of inter-rushing connections – Rodin’s sculpture in San Francisco that I just saw and the ones that populate the Musée Rodin that inspired Anna who then inspired me…and it made me all the more grateful that I took the time this week to let art speak to me.

Artheals.org Launches a Podcast!

It’s official. The Arts & Healing Podcast has launched! Britt Bravo and I have been working to birth this new feature of artheals.org for the last several weeks. It is very exciting to see it go live. For the first two podcasts, Britt interviewed Alli Chagi-Starr who speaks so eloquently about art and activism, and Britt also interviewed me (as the director of artheals.org) about my life as an artist. You can tune in and listen to the podcast on your computer, or subscribe thru iTunes by clicking here.

Here are some of the other podcasts I listen too. In listening to these, I experienced the enlivening power of hearing people’s voices online, and it inspired me to enrich artheals.org with audio interviews.

• Art Talk with Richard Kamler
• Big Vision Podcast by Britt Bravo
• Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac
• Hirshhorn Museum Podcast
  
• KQED’s Forum
• Lenswork – Photography and the Creative Process
• NPR’s Wait, Wait….Don’t Tell Me
• SFMOMA Artcasts