21 Days

I've been having a lot of fun lately with 6 Degrees 2, an on-line workshop. I'm one of the instructors for this nourishing soup of activities and I'm also a student. As soon as the class descriptions were posted, I promptly signed up for the other 5 workshops.

But I decided to begin with my own: Still Point in a Changing World: Creating a Mindful Studio Practice. (Or, 21 Days, 21 Lesssons.)

When I initially conceived of the course, I thought about the many times I've heard an artist sigh and wish that s)he spent more time in the studio. From my own struggles with this predicament, I knew there must be a way and I pondered how to come up with internal bearings, a means to orient participants, over and over toward their work space. Perhaps even to a place of stillness where they might find their heart's desire.

Little did I know that I was drawing my own map. When I wrote out the course, I was feeling lost and stuck in a barren landscape. Try as I might, I could not get a new series going. Small starts led nowhere or into cul-de-sacs.

In order to build a structure for the class,  I paired a poem or quote for each day with a corresponding directive for artwork. Each person can choose whatever they want from that combination and take off from there.

As I make my way through "21 Days," my 21 have expanded into many more. I begin with one simple watercolor and then let the guidelines for that day govern the fate of the rest. I've been hovering between Days 9 and 13 for sometime and the collages I'm tackling are captivating me.

Constant slow movement teaches us to keep working

Like a small creek that stays clear,

That doesn't stagnate, but finds a way

Through numerous details, deliberately.

--Rumi

I began the course myself to test the prompts I'd written. I didn't assume that following them would lead me in my own new direction. I'm profoundly grateful to Gretchen Miller for inviting me to take part in this workshop and I'm moved by the power that connecting with like-minded individuals has to provoke change.

So, I'm curious. Have you taken up a new direction this summer? I'd love to hear about it.

Yunomi, or, "Fired Thing"

Ever since my recent trip to Iowa City, I've been thinking about collections and collecting. Over lunch at the Bread Garden, a haven for visiting writers, my writer friend Carol Spindel and I discussed collecting and collectors.

We had just visited Akar, a gallery which features Japanese tea bowls made by ceramic artists from all over the country. I've never seen anything like it in Northern California where I live, so each time I return to Iowa City to see my dad, I make sure to stop by Akar and pick one favorite bowl.

My habit began years ago. I'd taken a ceramics course from Bunny McBride, an artist with a love for Asian pottery, and discovered the Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzō. (Reading it was magical--like coming upon Grimm's Fairy tales for the first time.)

Kakuzō describes the Japanese tea ceremony in a way that embodies the principles he seeks to teach: simplicity, harmony and, to use a nowish term, mindfulness.

I was smitten. The whole notion of simplicity achieved through mastery spoke to me deeply. (Where did that come from? Was it that my English professor mom nourished me on Taoist collections of poetry at a young age? Who knows?) During one trip back, some 20 years ago, I selected my first Japanese tea bowl, a wood fired thing with a lovely exterior of salmon smeared with blacks and browns. I hesitated, being on a slim budget, but  it chose me and I plucked it off its stand.

I had purchased a yunomi, or,  "wood fired thing" and I've been collecting them ever since. The whole idea of drinking from one of these bowls incorporates being present, acting with care,  savoring one's drink. You sure as heck can't grab a yunomi like you would a Starbucks cup with it's cardboard collar. You'll burn yourself. You have to learn to wait.

And, in learning to wait, you watch the bowl change. Over years, not seconds, there is an alchemy that happens between the tea and tea bowl. The pattern of crackles in the glaze shifts, the colors deepen.

I now possess too many yunomi to store on the shelf in the cupboard where we keep tea and coffee mugs. My husband complains that he can't empty the dishwasher without building tipsy teacup towers. I might have to build them their own shelf.

But I probably won't, because that would remove them from the realm of common use and make them special in a way that would defy their meaning --"wood fired thing." And because like The Troggs song, "Wild Thing," they make my heart sing.

Finding Your Voice

I've been away from my studio recently, visiting friends and relatives back in the Midwest. Whenever I go, I always come back with a fresh outlook, a new way of seeing things. Iowa City is especially stimulating, being home to storied and innovative writing programs and a virtual beehive of activity during the summer months, when people from all over the world come to hone their craft.

Each summer my old friend Carol Spindel makes the journey there to teach. Carol and I met at the University of Iowa as undergraduates in the art department and although she went on to the art of writing, we like to meet whenever we can and see how our two worlds of text and image pair up.

One morning, she arrived for breakfast with a bag of chocolates, leftovers from one of her writing class exercises. She described the exercise to me.

There were two kinds of chocolate in the bag. She asked  students to taste both kinds of chocolate and then, without resorting to metaphor, describe the tastes of each. It turns out to be very difficult, but it is a wonderful (and tasty) exercise for sharpening one's descriptive skills.

Love of writing runs in my family. As a writer and a teacher of writing, my dad was responsible for starting the the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Now in retirement, he's written a number of books and helps to edit a series of books on the essay for University of Iowa Press.

When I visit, he always shows me what he's up to. Pulling me over to the old Chippendale sofa that's ruled the roost since childhood, he flipped open his Macbook. (At 80, he's far more of a Mac savant than I). He told me that he's writing a book on the subject of voice in writing, an area that he feels deserves much attention and receives little. I picked up the computer and read the title of his book: Your Self and How To Make It.

As he fixed lunch for us, chicken salad with home grown arugula, he urged me to read the first three pages. My dad is like the proverbial Jewish mother--and in addition to saying "Eat, Eat," he also urges me to "Read, Read."

His introduction talks about how when we read the words of a writer, we often feel like we know the person, and if we were to be introduced, they would already be familiar to us.  In contrast, he maintains that the voice of a writer is more like the role of an actor, an actor who can be extremely creative and versatile in creating a character.

That all got me to thinking about the class I'm about to teach, 6 Degrees of Creativity 2. The class, Still Point in a Changing World, Creating a Mindful Studio Practice, is geared toward helping students get over the hump of thinking that studio practice is only for people who have the skill of Rodin or Picasso, or have the luxury of not working a day job. I'm interested in helping them to employ art as a means of mental, physical and spiritual balance. And in the activities which ensue, I hope that they'll find their voice.

Maybe you can’t see what is somebody else’s to see. But maybe, just maybe, you can see what is yours to see. So what is yours to see? This is a great question to ponder, to make your own, to let live inside your bones and your pores, and to guide your life.--Jon Kabat-Zinn

Reiki in the Studio

In my last post, "A Light Touch," I talked about the correspondences between practicing Reiki (a hands-on healing technique) and working with watercolors. (The Reiki Program at our hospital is directed by Kathy Lorenzato, music therapist and Reiki Master.)

The following week, the number of patients referred to me for Reiki treatments curiously multiplied and the week after that, there were even more. While I can see that Reiki clearly helps; patients quivering in pain slowly relax and fall asleep, even skeptical teens, who eye me suspiciously at first, doze off as well...I've become curious about how acting as a conduit for this mysterious energy affects me.

I notice that as energy pulses through my hands, it takes on different visual patterns in my internal awareness. At times it feels like a horizontal ellipse, pulsating and then changing to a vertical elliptical pattern. Sometimes small circles of energy seem to be there and other times the circles grow larger, for no noticeable reason that I can perceive or figure out.

I became fascinated with these internal images and wondered what it might be like to try and express them on paper.

I've been experimenting in the studio for several days now, making 'collage sketches,' trying to elicit these inner images.

Of course, art takes its own direction and as soon as I set about with my intention, an entirely different form showed up. Where these attempts will end up is beyond me, but in the meantime, I'm going to continue to follow the Reiki  thread.

A Light Touch

I've been practicing watercolor for 7 months now, with my teacher, Stacey Vetter. As is my wont, I thought that I'd be seeing certain kinds of results earlier. It doesn't really matter what I'm doing, exercising, studying, making art--I always want things to happen overnight. In this case, I wanted to see how the watercolor painting would transfer over to my collage work.

Luckily, I did notice results with the watercolor, at least enough to keep me going and, just when I'd forgotten about what it was I wanted to happen, it began to do so. I am just beginning to understand how crucial a light touch is.

Previously in my art, I've worked hard to create a series of layers whether it is in fabric, collage, paint or even pencil. I want to show the history of marks, to leave tracks that hint at the evolution of the piece.

Now, as I begin to believe in the power of the light touch, I find myself applying the same process with collage. This morning after adding a layer of gel to a panel, I stood back, gazed at it and stripped away layers that had been softened by the gel. There was a moment that I caught a reflection of the piece's bones and I liked them.

It makes me think of Reiki, that hands on healing technique that we use in the hospital to help with pain and anxiety.

As I hold my hands in different positions on a person's body, I find myself thinking "What I am doing? Is this crazy?" And invariably after I say that to myself, I see the child relaxing, going to sleep, the room quiets and even the parents in the room settle down. One of the patients I worked on described the effects as "smoothing out the wrinkles of pain."--As if while the pain subsides, ripples of relaxation take over.

I can't help but notice the correlation between Reiki and watercolor.  Watercolor too is a smoothing and rippling-the sound and feel of the paint going onto the paper, the shush shush as the brush slides over the soft, stippled paper, brushing on color. And there's something else about the relationship between Reiki and art; both require a light touch. The less you work at it, the better it is.