"Caring for children...our first job"*

Lately, it's been a Charles Dickens kind of time. You know, that line from  The Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."

These words, written by Dickens in 1859, 153 years ago, speak worlds about today. When I juxtapose the lights of Chanukah and Christmas against the carnage in Connecticut, I wonder how we can comprehend this paradox of light and dark. I don't know.

I took heart as I listened to President Obama speak at the memorial service for the 20 souls of the children and souls of the 6 adults.

"This is our first task -- caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?...I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change."

That is a call to action if I ever heard one and it makes me take a closer look at my immediate world.

It's easy to become desensitized working as an art therapist in a hospital--every day--a census filled with names, ages, diagnoses.

Lately that census has included more than one child who wasn't adequately cared for; whose parents didn't meet their obligation and left them untended, unfed, or even worse, dropped or shaken.

My mind cannot contain the range of extreme thoughts which arise, watching a toddler careen around the playroom sporting an NFL-size helmet for self-protection.

Often, due to brain injuries, these children have little or no impulse control, so put away those crayons and markers art therapist, it's time to get moving.

The task becomes following them, holding them, talking to them, playing with them, getting down on the ground and dancing with them and in every way that I can, loving them.

In this new year to come, I challenge us all to take one small step toward the goal of caring for all of our children. What might that be? Taking time to listen, really listen when a child speaks, (put down the cell phone already!), donating time or money to an organization that brings aid to children, reading to a child, mentoring one, teaching a class at a local art center or finding a school that needs your aid.

There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we hold -- for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a little one’s embrace -- the best cure for the worst of times.

*President Obama in his address to Newtown CT, 12/17/12.

Winter Wisdom

"Art expression itself is a way of creating something new from what you already have, but may not have fully recognized within yourself.” Cathy Malchiodi

The other day I received a newsletter from my art therapist friend Lisa Mitchell.

She's constructed a new series of workshops, including a vision board* workshop--and not just any old vision board workshop. Her descriptions note that, by using ordinary materials in unusual ways and learning new techniques, our intentions are solidified. In the process, our brain gets a workout using all our senses. The point is to bring our abstract ideas and dreams into the realm of the concrete and plausible, by incorporating them into the board.

That got me thinking about my own vision board, which I wrote about in a post, "Mindfulness at Play," at the beginning of the year. I decided to go back to the board and see what has come to pass.

As I look at the board, I see a large, peaceful Buddha's head framed by conifers and plants that remind me of our winter foliage here in California. Underneath the Buddha, from left to right, children hold a board filled with artist trading cards. To the right of the children a yoga class takes place. A teacher is helping a student with a pose.

In my post, I said that I wanted to deepen my art therapy practice; to become more present with the children, even as my own are grown. And I wanted, although I didn't write it, to have a steady yoga practice.

What's odd is that both of these desires have come to pass, but not by deliberate intention. The vision board hung on my studio wall, where it watched over me and I looked at it, day after day, while a year passed.

It has not been a straight path back to yoga--(is it ever?) Like Goldilocks, first I sampled the "big bowl," a class at our University gym. I was the oldest participant and the class, a Viniyasa practice, and I felt like I'd just had an aerobic  workout, not a yoga class.

Next, for my "middle size bowl," I tried a class offered through our hospital. The instructor offered peacefulness with a pale green scented candle. I ended up with a migraine.

Finally, for a bowl that is just right. The solution came in an unexpected fashion. Both my daughter and my sister have recently been diagnosed with auto-immune diseases that make certain movements difficult.

I remembered yet another yoga class I'd taken the previous year for people 55 and over. Led by the fearless and inimitable, Hana Raftery, majoring in exercise physiology, she had every one of us, from me to the oldest 80- something moving with ease.

I e-mailed her and set up a private lesson for my daughter and me. I invited my sister, who suggested we have it in her new house, which has a wooden floor, but would be empty for another month. Shazaam! A yoga studio!

We began by meeting once a week and now have increased it to 2 times. We've been meeting since before Thanksgiving and even though the two of them are still waiting for their respective rheumatology consults, their movements are coming more easily.

I am in hog heaven, if you can say that about a yoga class. I feel like I really have found the bowl that is "just right." And it all started with a small 8.5 x 11 vision board.

I'm looking forward to making my 2013 vision board soon and I invite you to join me and make your own. Who knows, those dreams might just be waiting for an invitation to come out and play!

*A vision board is usually a piece of matte board on which you paste or collage images that you’ve torn out from various magazines. The intention behind the vision boards is the notion that when you surround your self with images of what you want to develop or change, your life changes to fit the images.

Taking My Own Words to Heart

I grew up and found my purpose and it was to be a physician. My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this...but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering others will heal our woundedness. And it can. But it can also deepen the wounds.

Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

There are times when life becomes a heavy load--patients, tasks, family issues.  I was trying to keep myself glued together as various parts threatened to swirl off, so many fall leaves sucked into the wind and I was stuck in the studio. Odd, because lately the studio was the only place where I wanted to be-- and suddenly, I wasn't comfortable there.

I was going through the motions of art making, pushing pieces of paper together for my collages, fitting them like so many pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but where was my intention, the focus that brings everything together?

What to do?

How to open my heart? As I sat thinking, I remembered 6 Degrees of Creativity 2. Several people had written about major life transitions they were experiencing. They said that it was difficult to find time and energy to engage in the prompts I'd written for Creating a Mindful Studio Practice.

I urged them to take the prompts slowly; to divide one directive into smaller, more manageable steps. Their responses were heartwarming; I was honored that they were able to take something from what I'd written and apply it to their lives.

Once you’ve chosen a theme/object, write down everything that comes to mind about it, every perspective that you can come up with. DON’T EDIT--USE A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS APPROACH.

Now, take the same object or theme do it again, only this time, write down only the things that interest you about this object.

Look carefully at the two lists and ask yourself what appeals to you about the second list. What you’re going to come up with is your artist thumbprint--your slant on the world. Be mindful AND RESPECTFUL of this-- it will stand you in good stead...

I took up my pen, groaning inwardly, "you mean I have to hand write this??" The odd thing was, as soon as I had my pen in hand and started to write, the grip on my heart began to ease. I took my subject: "Repair" and began to break it down.

By the time I had two lists in front of me, I was feeling whole again. It's funny. Many artists find that sketching their ideas allows them to create an outline, a plan, a clear intent. They create an approximation of what they want to do--paint  a landscape, a portrait, represent an abstract idea. I've always written mine.

Caught up in the difficulty of the cases I was working with at the hospital, I had forgotten how important this step was.

My journal waits for me now on the work table, right up front with the watercolors and I sense where these pieces on "repair" may take me- but more importantly, I've rediscovered the means of writing myself back together again...

Altering an Image

Many years ago in graduate school when Polaroids still existed and the magic of images appearing before your eyes was still new, I enjoyed taking small photos of the sculptures I'd made and altering them with thick, gooey oil pastels--the kind that were an inch wide and 4 inches long and smeared like lipstick.

I savored the challenge of wielding a big stick in a small space-it was a means of gaining control over the uncontrollable. Graduate school was a place where hardball was the rule. Working on these small and intimate scenes returned me to a more comfortable place.

Recently, I've had the opportunity to revisit photo altering in the Altered Image, one of the workshops in 6 Degrees of Creativity 2 taught by Fiona Fitzpatrick, an Australian art therapist. For my project, I chose a photograph my father had emailed to me several weeks ago. In the photo, my father, a young professor, crosses his arms with a roll of papers in his hand. His gaze is expectant, searching, as if looking into the future, wondering what it might bring--and a bit apprehensive at the thought.

As a child, I knew that my dad longed to write. He was an English professor at a Big 10 university, always busy with his classes and busy too, writing the texts from which he taught, but I knew that what he really wanted to do was to write essays. Essays were his favorite form of prose.

Of course, things got in his way as things always do.  I remember wondering if he would achieve his dream and being ignorant of the pleasures of retirement, I feared he might not find the time.

As I held the photograph, I remembered all this--and the recognition of all that has taken place since his retirement. My dad, Carl Klaus, is 80. He has written 6 books since retirement, his Mac on fire with all that he stored up to say.  It was this blossoming of words that I wanted to express as I altered the image of the writer as a younger man.

I wanted to take that figure and surround him with the fruits of his labor; fruits that he couldn't possibly see from his perspective in time, but that certainly, in due time, were his to harvest.

I took postcards announcing the publication of two of his early books and cut them into slices, encircling him so that he appears to be at the center of an illuminated manuscript. I tucked a picture of Kate, his second wife, into the corner. Her death became the subject of another book: Letters to Kate.

As I glued, painted and pressed papers onto the surface, I was transported by the process of juxtaposing past with present in the same picture.

I took a break in the middle of the process and checked my e-mail. There was an e-mail from my dad. While I'd been working on his collage, he'd typed a message: "...the attachment is the manuscript for my new book, which I just finished yesterday afternoon...I thought you might be interested... on the chance that it might give you some ideas you can use in the writing you do for your blog, for your art, for your professional work, for your personal satisfaction.

Mysterious, isn't it, how altering an image can affect your life in an unexpected way?

A Case for Community

I'm fast approaching the end of  Creating a Mindful Studio Practice Workshop in 6 Degrees of Creativity 2. Regretfully. As I mentioned in my last post, I felt that I'd written the workshop as much for myself as for the workshop students.

But that would be a short sighted view. As Gretchen Miller said in her promotional materials for 6 degrees 2, the workshops are a way to develop community.

And community bears fruit beyond what anyone can imagine. Case in point, I became friends with Beth Rommel, of niftyartgirl.com in another online art workshop series. We began talking to each other 2 years ago, helping each other to solve art problems (and as time passed others as well.) Recently, I'd been talking to Beth about how to supervise student volunteers in the hospital setting.

I was frustrated. Often, it seemed that these bright premed students saw their time in the hospital playroom as a chance to return to childhood themselves. I wanted to find a way (without reverting to my own past days of mothering) to convey to them the gravity of these children's situations and how important it is to give each of them pure, undivided attention.

There is a lot going on with kids in a hospital playroom, some it obvious, some of it not. An iv pole or long scar on the head are hard to miss. Emotional distress is often invisible at first glance.

Beth had an unusual suggestion. She told me that she was listening to "The Martha Rules," an audio CD of Martha Stewart's. In it, Martha lays out a framework for success in starting, building or managing a business.

Despite my misgivings about Martha because of her conviction for insider trading, I purchased a copy and began to listen. Martha presented a succinct and understandable paradigm that I could easily adjust for my students.

But that wasn't all. Yesterday, the book literally saved my life. I was on my way to visit my artist friend, Linda Johnson, who lives a couple of blocks from the hospital. As I drove, I listened to the CD, paying close attention.

Martha stated firmly that sometimes bad things are going to happen and that while you can have strong feelings, even overreact, you cannot panic. She firmly reiterated that whatever happened, not to panic.

Suddenly, smoke started to creep out of my hood. 2 seconds later it was billowing and the car crawled to a halt on the exit ramp to the hospital, located in a rough part of town. Cars started to swerve around me.

"O.k., Martha says not to panic," I told myself and took a deep breath, thanking God for cell phones and AAA.  Long story short, a kind gentleman helped to push me down the ramp and around the corner to relative safety. I was scared, but hearing Martha's words moments before gave me an inner certainty that everything would work out.

And it did. The tow truck came, Linda arrived and we ended up having time to paint together before work. I am extremely grateful to both of these friends, who are part of my artist's community. Beth lives in Georgia. I live in Davis, CA and Linda is in Sacramento.

These days, people talk a lot about whether connections we make through the internet can truly help to create bonds of friendship. Although we are separated by distance, the connections that I've made with these two friends through my artwork has created more than good artwork. It has created a network of community that I can count on in good times and in bad.

I'd love to hear your stories about serendipity in your art community.