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.

Gelli Interrupted

As I mentioned in my last post, I was set to take an online Gelli Plate Printmaking class this week with Carla Sonheim, a gentle and humorous soul, whose generous manner makes even the most embarrassing flops seem like a blessing in disguise. I felt excited about the class; I knew it would be fun and that I would meet any challenges that arose with open arms.

Clearly a woman who knows her way around a print studio, Carla packed a lot of information into every day of the 5 day course. I headed off to work afterward each day repeating her words over and over like a mantra, "thin, thinner, thinnest, watercolor" (referring to how you can stretch out an application of paint on the plate.)

We worked on a suite of 8 prints and each day, we could, if we wished, post our work on Flickr.  I played with the colors, enjoying the sensation of the brayer (hand roller used in printmaking to spread ink) on the plate and the soft 'squish squish' of acrylic on the gel plate.

On Wednesday, we worked with the same 8 prints, adding layers onto them with stencils--and it got a little trickier. In the first roll out, the paper is a blank landscape and anything goes. When adding additional layers, there's that familiar feeling of discomfort and simultaneous attachment. What happens if I screw it up?

Like any kind of change or alteration, with printing, it's safer to stay with what's familiar, even when it limits how far you can go. Fortunately, the process leads the way. Apply a stencil on paint, put paper on the stencil and whole new horizons open up.

I looked forward to the final day, when Carla told us that she'd share some ways to continue developing the prints--even when the next step wasn't clear.

Unfortunately, fate intervened in the form of boiling eggs accidentally left on the stove by a guest. My husband came home to a house filled with smoke and a shrieking chorus of alarms. We learned that we would have to move out until the microscopic deposits of burnt protein on every surface in the house were removed. I wasn't able to work on the last lesson.

The nature of gelli printing is also filled with blips, spots and full on bloopers. Mistakes are made. Carla noted that one of the best things about these "accidents" (besides consigning them to a sludge pile) is to study them. Pick apart what works and what doesn't. Where are the values too similar? Where does more texture need to be added?

As I witness and experience the effects of this forgetful mistake upon my family's life, I find myself examining our own "virtual prints." We've been asking ourselves questions and finding that there is a lot we can let go of: clothes, papers, attitudes and attachments. A few shifts in attitude are powerful.

I marvel at the correspondences between art and life. Are mistakes truly the way we find our way to change?

Gelli Plate Printing +

I recently visited Hawaii with my family. It's something we try to do once a year, so, with the aid of  frequent flier miles, we headed off; my husband, my sister, my daughter and my daughter's boyfriend--and me.

I'd taken care to pack my new favorite art medium; a gelli plate; a kind of squishy gel surface that serves as a printing plate and allows people like me who treasure immediacy, to create monoprints using stencils, plant matter, and what have you, together with acrylic paint.

I'd ordered some new acrylics and as I packed, I made sure to put plenty of bubble wrap between them and my swim suit.

Each day at art time, I set up shop on the dining room table, which was spacious, overlooked the mountains and had plenty of light.

Wandering outside, I gathered a number of leaves with interesting shapes and began printing--and printing and printing.

Over the next several days, I played with the vagaries of acrylic pigment, strange flora and experimented to find the means to capture the outrageous color and patterns I saw everywhere around me.

I divided my days into warm colors, cool colors and days when I layered both together. Naturally, my guidelines only lasted  a couple of hours until I threw them over and just started adding color by feel.

My intent was to enjoy my time in Hawaii and explore the island through paint, paper and leaves. I learned to tolerate the uncooperative elements and to welcome the surprise that the textures of the leaves created when they met the squishy plate.

Often there was an extra treat; the print on the cover pages I was using would transfer to the printing paper, adding yet another layer of meaning.

I honestly didn't believe that these experiments would lead anywhere. I made a bunch of prints; grist for the collage mill upon my return, I thought.  However, one fine day when the rest of the family was out exploring the island, I found myself exploring the web and discovered the perfect Gelli class.

I'm so excited because starting today, for a week, I'll be exploring Gelli printing in Carla Sonheim's Gelli Print Printmaking course. I'm using some extra professional leave to get a few more hours in the studio and look forward to sharing my progress with you. Gelli ahoy! A hui ho!

My One Word

There's a New Year's practice that I've often read about on various blogs: choosing one word to guide one's actions for the coming year.

I'd forgotten about it though, until I read Alyson Stanfield's post this morning entitled "Clarity."

I skimmed the article and while walking down the halls of the hospital where I work, I began to internally audition my own lettered candidates.

I tried out various words; self confident, aware, determined, acceptance, safe, secure, peaceful.

I noticed different body sensations. Safe and secure felt contracting (although they are not necessarily so). Self confident felt a bit too other-oriented and acceptance--well, I spend a lot of time with that already!

I checked back with Alyson's post and came across this line: Your word of the year should inspire and motivate you. It provides focus without limiting you.

That provided the 'Goldilocks' moment and the 'just right' word popped into my mind: FAITH.

Faith covers it all. Faith in my self, faith in my art making, faith in my practice of art therapy. Also faith in my ability to be present as I encounter the uncharted territory of 2014.

How about you? Do you have a word or intention or new practice you're beginning? I'd love to hear about it.

Postscript: Many thank to Gretchen Miller. The word "START" in the collage comes from one of her revo'lution pieces, which she shared as a PDF for readers of her blog, Creativity in Motion.

David Hockney: Diverse Perspectives

I spent Sunday in sparkling  San Francisco, traveling there to see the much anticipated David Hockney "A Bigger Exhibition," at the deYoung Museum. I'd read about the exhibit, but was unprepared to enter a virtual (and I do mean virtual) wonder of the world.

At a time when we complain about memory lapses and gray hair, this 76 year-old master lives life to his fullest and shows no signs of slowing down. After navigating through a labyrinth of grand halls, I emerged renewed and astounded.

Much of the work originates from Great Britain, in the county of Yorkshire, near where Hockney grew up. There were two rooms in particular that struck me. He had chosen a spot in Woldgate Woods and in a quartet of pieces, painted this same spot in spring, summer, fall and winter. I could stand in the middle of the room, turn 90 degrees and watch the world ripen and die away throughout a year! The works were massive; six panels, each the size of a large painting in its own right. Immersion is putting it mildly.

The next room revealed another 4 pieces, in 4 seasons, on 4 walls. But this time, each one was a carefully constructed montage of 9 video screens, slowly advancing down a country lane, shifting in and out of synchronization and overlap (yes, some our party found it a bit dizzying).

The video images were created by placing 9 different cameras on a van, all filming the same scene from slightly different points of view. Once back in the studio, Hockney edited the footage to create the composite perspective in the piece above.

I had read much about Hockney's use of the iphone and ipad, but mistakenly discounted the authenticity of the media; thinking that a mark of the hand on paper is genuine and somehow more significant than gestures on a screen. I was taken aback as I entered yet another huge gallery, this one containing ipad drawings from Yosemite National Park, each enlarged to 12 feet tall. (The drawings were blown up in sections, printed on separate pieces of paper and reassembled.)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             The  drawings were done in a sweeping and general way; the swirls and lines of cloud and tree reminiscent of Chinese landscape painting. The docent, whose tour I'd joined, invited us to approach each painting as if it were a roadside vista, stop 18 inches away, and "look up."

I obeyed, wondering what might happen. As I tilted my head up, I felt uncannily as if I were standing at the bottom of Half Dome, staring up into the gauzy clouds. If you've spent any time in Yosemite, many of the views are unmistakeable. As I looked over to the next painting, the swoops of cloud, which from standing afar, are clearly the artifacts of touch on an ipad, merged into a sort of luminous fog, obscuring the boundary between the depicted rock wall and the wall of the gallery.

Exiting the exhibition and then leaving the city, the green trees of The Presidio rushing by, I had the sensation of inhabiting an endless Hockney painting--the incredible gift of the painter and his works--and I wondered what the world would be like if we all tried a bit harder to study it from multiple perspectives.

To see more of Hockney's works,  you can click here for a short video that he made for the Royal Academy of Arts in London.