6 Degrees of Creativity Rides Again

In the summer of 2012, I had the pleasure of participating as an instructor in a workshop/project called "6 Degrees of Creativity 2."  Sponsored by the Art Therapy Alliance,  Six Degrees of Creativity is an on-line art workshop and community and included six different workshops, each offered by a different instructor from the art therapy community.

6 Degrees of Creativity unites concepts of social networking, connecting, collaboration, art-making, and creativity into an engaged global community of artists exploring transformation and using art for good.

My workshop, Still Point in a Changing World: Creating a Mindful Studio Practice was a wonderful means to bring awareness of the area of studio practice and I loved connecting with so many art loving people located all over the world.

Recently, Gretchen Miller, the creator of 6 Degrees, told me that  6 Degrees of Creativity will be offered again as a 10 month (wow) on-line workshop running from March 2014-December 2014 and all 6 workshops will be taught by Gretchen herself.

With such delicious sounding titles as: Everyday Creativity,  The Creative Deed Project and Creative Goodness, It's in the Cards, the workshops sound like a great way to charge up your batteries during the depths of midwinter or take time during a summer break to indulge in studio madness.

As a wonderful bonus, she told me that I could invite a guest to take the workshop, free of charge. I thought of many ways that could happen, but landed on you, my blog readers as the most enjoyable way of participating. Soooo...If you would like a chance to take 6 Degrees of Creativity, meet a bunch of extremely creative people and find inspiration and imagination for your art, drop a comment in the comments section. Let me know what you'd enjoy about taking 6 Degrees and I'll put all the names in my hat at the end of the week and select one. On Saturday, I'll let you know who the lucky workshop participant will be.

However--if you'd like go straight to registration, pass go, and collect many incredible ideas, you can register by clicking here.

Mending Walls and Making Change

At some point in their studies, art therapy students discover the "media continuum." On this continuum, media are placed along along an invisible line moving from point A to point B line according their degree of safety and control.

A lead pencil at one end of the continuum offers a feeling of familiarity and control--and on the the opposite end spectrum, oil paint offers an unwieldy challenge. If you don't watch out, you might find your client who has difficulty with impulse control spraying the paint all over your office walls.

The key is to match the both the media and the intervention to the needs of the client. To non-art therapists, this might sound theoretical and over cautious.

It's not. In my very first art therapy bereavement group many years ago,  an angry adolescent punched a hole in the wall of the hospital in which I was working; his reaction to my misdiagnosis of media and intervention. I hadn't read the signals and had asked the group to attempt something that put this young man face to face with his grief far too early in his grieving process.

If I hadn't been convinced about the medium continuum before, if my teachers' stories seemed only to be tall tales, I became  a convert and I've employed it ever since.

I use the same principle in my own art. When I'm feeling stretched thin, I stick with materials over which I have more control. When I'm feeling expansive, my work and my materials grow too.

Right now, I'm in the process of sanding the panel edges of my "Mending Wall" series. I love this series, but I don't like finish work. It feels like all the fun and discovery is over and I'm doing the visual equivalent of balancing a checkbook.

Recently, I decided to intersperse the task of sanding with our 6 Degrees of Creativity "Pocket Change" project. My deal for myself is: finish one sanded panel--make one artist trading card.

I've arranged the artist trading cards, in various stages of completion, at a discreet distance from where I sand. I can see them while I work, their bright colors shining, offering the possibility of almost instant gratification.

I'm beginning to love sanding. By creating a new rhythm: hard medium/easy medium/hard medium, I'm finding patience and sanding is leading to new ideas for my next series. I love the smooth, variegated surface of the wood.

Meanwhile, artist trading cards gather at the end of the table, ready to be mailed off for Beth Rommel, collector and distributor for our Pocket Change project.  Gretchen Miller, Beth and I have concocted this project to focus on the power of creating change through making something small (in the form of artist trading cards) and through engaging in simple acts of creative kindness.

You get the picture--help yourself, help others--it's not too late to join us! The deadline is tomorrow,  Tuesday, January 15. For more information on the exchange, click here.

I also invite to share stories about your own media continuum experiences--whether you called it that--or maybe just "those darn pastels!"