Courageous Creativity Day 6

Even though they were both amazing and thought provoking, I'm skipping Days 4 and 5 because I don't have any art to show for it yet..  Amanda Mauck interviewed Jenny Ynnej (formerly known as JP Kim) for Day 6. Jenny led us through another guided meditation and used a process she called CITE. C stands for Center in which she encouraged us to embody this moment. I stood for Inquire/Intention. For this step we were supposed to ask our source a question and to guide us in some way. I asked how to hear and trust my inner voice and to guide me into opening my heart. We wrote this intention down in pencil on the page. The next step was to Trust-- open up and allow the process. Here she told us to take a pen or sharpie and scribble all over the page. I ended up closing my eyes so that I couldn't force this process too much. Next we looked at the scribbles, turning the page if necessary until an image stood out to us. We colored in the images. The last step was to Exclaim-- asking what the message was. She suggested we visualize offering the pen to the image and letting the image write to us.  I didn't do that, but I did write down some first impressions of my image.  She also suggested that we take photos of each step of the process, but I didn't have my phone with me and didn't want to take time to go get it, so the end piece is what you get to see.

What came up for me: 

• Me holding me, supportive and loving
• Small me is mischievous and happy
• Large me is quiet but strong, watchful and observing
• Small me has a mouth and the large me doesn't-- is it there and just covered by small me's arm?
• The green background could represent growth, creativity

I also love that Jenny is a word lover and discovered that another definition of CITE is to "praise for a courageous act."

Courageous Creativity Day 3

Day Three was an interview with Devorah Spilman who did a guided meditation using her Instoryway process. After connecting with our ground, she invited us to think about our gifts and what we were grateful for. After that she asked what was an image or metaphor for who we were or what we do in the world. We were supposed to trust in the first image that came to mind. My first image was of an eye followed quickly by a boulder in a river with water flowing over it.We were then supposed to explain or interpret how the image is like ourselves or how we are like it. I went with the boulder and did some journaling for it. The words "solid," "stable," "ground," "big" and "full" came to mind.  Last night I decided to try drawing the boulder in the river. I had no idea how to do this and not much time to do it in. I was compelled to use colored pencils although that probably wasn't the best medium to depict water. As I was trying to draw the boulder, an eye emerged. Now I have to figure out what the eye means!

Lunar New Year

Looking back, it looks like I haven't shared any of the carvings I did for the last Four lunar new years! This is the one thing I consistently do every year because I participate in a lunar new year swap from the Carving Consortium. The last one I posted was year of the monkey in 2016.
So here was my print for 2017, year of the rooster.

2018: Year of the Dog

2019: Year of the Pig

2020: Year of the Rat

Courageous Creativity Day 2

I'm a day behind so this is yesterday's interview with Shelley Klammer. I've been following Shelley for several years and was excited to see her interview. The exercise was using abstract collage and doodling. I did this one twice. The first one was very different than what she guided us to do and also from what I expected since I'm not a huge fan of the water. But this morning in meditation, I did feel like I was floating in the waves, so maybe that's where it came from. Also my daughter had a phase where she made jellyfish that looked a lot like this.

Here was my second go:

Beginning again...Courageously

It's been over 3 years since I've added anything to this site, but I feel like I'm ready to start sharing again. Since February of 2017, I've closed Eyes Open Now but in future posts I will share many of the things I created during that time. I definitely learned a lot from that business and may have kept it going if it didn't meet in my home. As it is, I've appreciated being able to do art just to do art and not as part of a business. I will be continuing to offer classes periodically through the Bozeman Dharma Center's Mindful Creativity Group once that becomes an option again in a COVID-19 world.

Right now I'm enjoying Courageous Creativity offered by Amanda Mauck. Each day we receive an interview with Amanda and another artist with a creative exercise to work through. Each artist is also doing a freebie, but I haven't had a chance to check those out yet.  Amanda suggested making a Smash Book which I had a great time doing using one of my son's old Composition Notebooks from grade school (because I don't throw anything out).

The intention for this book is Mapping the Journey to My Heart. It's what I'm working on personally and so I know it will come out in anything I create.

The first exercise was with Tracy Verdugo who is just incredible. It entailed ripping magazines/book pages randomly into hand-sized pieces and then looking through the pieces for what captures your eye and writing down a line about it. At the end you have a poem. So cool how it works out. I pasted my pieces into my smash book, but Tracy keeps them tied in a bundle and can reuse them in different configurations.

The poem reads:

Because I was a girl

Fear was a weapon

Holding me down

When I get out

Lines will converge

Manufacturing Renaissance

A new way forward

I will hold the little girl of my heart

Boundaries

Here's a painting I did while thinking of interconnections and boundaries.  Took lots of photos with this one so you get to see all of the changes.  I started off with 2 magazine pages showing a night sky with a tree silhouette and stars.  Then I used up paint left over from my first art workshop.

 Later, I felt like making interlocking circles.  I also started rotating the canvas.

 More circles-- kind of missing that streak of red and white though.

 Adding in some other textures with stencils (you can see a clock face in the bottom right corner and some green dots in the upper center).

 Finished piece (rotated again).

Shadow Shrine

This is the project I'm doing for Eyes Open Now this month.  The idea is to work with our shadows which could be a hindrance, something you don't like about yourself, or something you don't like about your life.  By representing and exploring this shadow through art, maybe we can shed some light on it or at least have a different relationship to it.

I'm not sure this is finished yet, but I am certainly liking how it turned out.  I wanted to work with fear because I was feeling fear pretty intensely with the start of this business.

First step was to get some color on the box (purchased from Michaels).  I used Golden fluid acrylics.  I wanted to try a glazing technique that I learned in Collage Discovery Workshop by Claudine Hellmuth so I painted the back a light orange color.  Once that dried, I painted a darker color over top and then wiped off the excess.  I painted the edges blue.

Once this dried, I got to work by gluing images on with matte medium.  Some of these items were from commercial rubber stamps. The woman holding her knees is an image that I handcarved. I used some washi tape on the edges of the box and painted the outside with black gesso.