Six Degrees of Creativity 2

In my daily life, I work hard to carve out studio time. I treasure these precious hours of creativity that bring sanity and grace to my hectic, scheduled life and I didn't think there was room to add "one more thing." However, when I was invited to teach a class for Six Degrees of Creativity 2, I was intrigued and tempted. Six Degrees of Creativity 2 is an on-line art workshop and community, sponsored by the Art Therapy Alliance and includes six different workshops. Each is offered by a different instructor from the art therapy community and explores hands-on art making concepts and techniques as means for social change and transformation.

Although I thought long and hard before taking on that "one more thing," I knew that teaching one of the six classes could add a new dimension to my studio time, especially since I could choose what I wanted to teach. So, what did I want to learn more about?

I like to teach around my current studio obsessions, but for a class lasting six months, I needed to find something that would provide continuity, no matter what my immediate focus. I decided to explore how to help artists and other creatives build and maintain a studio practice; nurturing a conscious habit of doing something over and over --or what Csikszentmihalyi called "flow:" that single minded immersion into an activity.

Writer Elizabeth Bishop came up with wonderful line. She said that, "the thing we want from great art is the same necessary for its creation, and that is a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration."

I decided to call my class, Still Point in a Changing World: Creating a Mindful Studio Practice. We'll concentrate on cultivating that perfectly 'useless' or mindful concentration that drives a studio practice.

Six Degrees of Creativity goes on sale April 1 - June 30, 2012 and you can find out more by clicking here.

A Year of Watercolor

Since I've been studying watercolor, I wanted to find a way to create a practice. In the same way as one would create a meditation practice, I wanted a painting practice. No judgement, just watching drops of color as they arise, disperse and flow together.

'My Year of Watercolor' started February 14, this meant that I would paint one watercolor each day for the next 364 days.  That was the only parameter I set for my practice, just the dailiness of it. There was no specific amount of time, no size of paper, color scheme, no decision to go black and white. But then I started asking myself those very same questions about which I had not wanted to set parameters!

What size should the paper be?

What kind of paper should I use? Should it all be the same kind of  paper?

How long should I paint?

What if I need to sketch  first and don't have time to watercolor?

If you notice that the operative word in these questions is should, you're not alone. I noticed it too.

Then, impatient to begin, I started painting on watercolor paper I had in my studio and set about to ordering more and quit my fussing. In short, I jumped into painting mode. On my walks I had to resist the temptation to slip into neighboring yards to clip blossom-bedecked twigs.

The daily routine has become a refuge in my overly-crowded days, an excuse to meditate.

Inscribing a Circle

I've been drawing circles since I was four, but my fascination with them as an art form dates back to to the 80's in front of an ashram in Oakland, CA, where, just outside the door, I saw a most astonishing drawing done in a rich array of vibrant colors all contained in a circle.

Ritual rangoli done in powdered pigments

These circles, called rangolis, were done for religious or healing ceremonies. As an artist, I ached to be able to do something like this and after some investigation, came upon the mandala (the Sanskrit word for circle), an art form with a long history across many cultures. Like the rangoli, it is art created created for ritual purposes in a circular form and these days, also employed in art therapy.

New Years Mandala, ©2008, Hannah Hunter, Collage

So, while I've been painting, collaging, and inscribing these geometric discs for years, nothing could have prepared me for the excitement about the circle that recently burst upon the art scene in the form of Damian Hirst's spots.

I started poking around and pretty soon I discovered that I could make a distinction between a circle and a spot. It's strictly my interpretation, but the way I see it is that the spot is just that: a rounded mark or splotch made by foreign matter. It seems to have arrived in a rather casual manner.

Spots tossed on a watercolor in the studio, photo by Amelia McSweeny

The circle on the other hand is a closed line, something inscribed in which all the points on the line lie at the same distance from the center. It seems intentional, elegant, something that shows up in nature, but also something that 3 and 4-year olds begin drawing as they enter into the world of representation. The circle is one of the early building blocks.

Rose Colored Egg, ©1998, Hannah Hunter, Colored pencil

I looked up on my studio wall, where all three current pieces are iterations of the circle, so I tried to dig a bit deeper to see what was so fascinating-- and, what keeps me returning to them as a form decade after decade.

Rice Bowl, ©2012, Hannah Hunter, Collage

I'm reminded of something that another blogger, Gwyneth Leech, said in a recent post, "Spots Before My Eyes...:""...there is the infinite variety of things, then there is an infinite variation of one thing." A circle suggests eternity (think of a ring), something bigger than myself, time layered upon itself, the pleasure in creating a multitude of variations on a theme.

Zodiac Season, ©2010, Hannah Hunter, Collage

The idea that each circle can both be the same yet different; it's own infinite, elegant universe is  powerful. A 3-year taps into these infinite possibilities without fear or the preconceived notions of adults. When I began this post I thought that I'd be arguing for the integrity of the circle, but now that I've experienced spots and dots á la Hirst (and, for a great post on spots, see Joanne Mattera's  "Connecting the Dots), I'm looking to get rid of some of my trepidation and preconceived notions, and hopefully, adopt some of the spot philosophy too.

I know that many of you have had fun in the studio with circles, spots and dots--if you have any stories or images you'd like to share I'd love to hear from you.

Mindfulness at Play

Have you ever felt the axis of your life shifting? Last year I was deeply focused on my artwork, with art therapy a bit out of focus.

As the year has turned, however, so has my attention. For many years, I relied on observations of my own children's developmental stages to help me understand the children with whom I worked.

Now, with my own children navigating the waters of young adulthood, I no longer have that framework to depend on. While the memories are there, I need to stay fresh in my art therapy practice.

With that in mind, I've been re-infusing my knowledge of art therapy and child development by lots of reading, particularly on the Art Therapy Alliance group threads on LinkedIn.

I've been particularly intrigued by the development of Cathy Malchiodi's "Trauma Informed Practices Institute." In her recent newsletter, she lays out some of the core foundations for integrating mindfulness practice and positive psychology into art therapy.

"Making art can help us become mindful in the moment, just like when one learns to be present in the moment through the practice of mindfulness meditation. In art therapy, we often speak of that moment in art making when "flow" occurs-- an experience of losing oneself in the experience, but at the same time being present and engaged in the process. Being in the flow state can help you become more relaxed and begin to observe yourself in new ways. Art expression itself is a way of creating something new from what you already have, but may not have fully recognized within yourself."

Observing the children on the unit, I would say that the flow state has more and more been relegated  to the world of Wii, Playstation 3 and Nintendo. While there is value in learning to control the actions of characters on screen, I have a personal bias. I think it is just as exciting and possibly more so to be able to affect actions with one's own hands in our three dimensional world.

In other words, how do we help children find their way into the flow state with art, music, dance and other forms of creative expression? That's the question I'll be asking of myself in the next few months as I craft art activities which stimulate that sense of flow. I'll also be looking forward to attending Cathy's class this March in San Francisco: Enhancing Resilience Through Trauma Informed Practices: Positive Psychology and Mindfulness Based Art Approaches.

For a treat, if you click here, you will find a podcast containing a wonderful talk with Oxford psychologist, Mark Williams and a short 3 minute mindfulness meditation that made my day.

'Tis the season to...?

When this season rolls around, we know it's time to be busy--I'm reminded of my third grade grammar lesson in superlatives: busy, busier, busiest. All this hustle and bustle comes at just the time when the light and temperature (in the Northern hemisphere) beckon us to to slow down, bundle up, and brew pots of tea and tureens of soup.

Each year I'm challenged to find a way to keep my balance-not to get so busy that I neglect the beauty in gorgeous orange globes of pomegranates, the migrating birds, and the friendly faces of my family. This year, I noticed that if I just did what was in front of me, I was OK.

Of course that had me doing everything at the last minute: buying Hanukkah candles the final day the synagogue gift shop was open, wrapping my families' gifts the day I gave them, and waiting until the holidays were over to begin my cards.

I love getting holiday cards--the sense of that person's warmth from across state, elsewhere in the country, around the world, never ceases to move me. They take time to think about me and my family, to sustain our connection in spite of the urge to let go, because in these days of e-mail, facebook etc., it's all too much.

So I argue with myself--do I make the cards this year? Do I use Shutterfly to get one of those composite photographic documents of my family life? (Hmmm...kids grown, still won't sit still.) I want to go be in the studio--so making the cards wins. I moan. Why can't I just keep it simple like most of the people I know who send cards? Then I realize that it's through their making that I feel  connected.

After a while, a rhythm and logic develop and a flotilla of delicate rice paper snowflakes emerges;  carefully glued on top of pieces of script.  I love pulling random pages from old books, foraged from library sales (an act which distresses my husband), and discovering some synchronistic pattern like Charles Dicken's ode to his Christmas tree from a 1920's book on elocution.

I discover that in cutting and unfolding, the shape of a Jewish star emerges in the center of the flake, surrounded by a circle of tiny people reaching out towards each other.

The star reminds me of my Jewish grandmother's Christmas cards. These were cards that she sent out in the twenties and thirties to her non-Jewish friends and although they were sent as part of an attempt to assimilate into mainstream culture, I like to see them as a bridge between cultures, a way of creating and maintaining a connection.

All of which takes me back the beginning; maintaining connection--and what better way to do this than through art?