Blog Triage in Action!

I began this blog last year with a desire to make my journaling as an artist both manifest and public. Devoted to journaling as a teenager and young adult, I chronicled my adventures, loves and art school experiences. I continued journaling in graduate school, but once the adventure of family began, my commitment to journaling waned. Several months ago, inspired by an on-line course I'd taken with artist business coach Alyson Stanfield (http://artbizblog.com), I signed up for the 4-week Blog Triage class with Alyson and Cynthia Morris (http://originalimpulseblog.com and http://journeyjuju.com). My goal: to build a more vibrant, meaningful and engaging blog for you, the readers.Welcome!

Yesterday, class began with our first homework assignment: "Describe the people you want to visit and read your blog." Who are my readers? All of you wonderful folk who've so far signed up to follow are people with a passionate love of art making or a desire to help others, especially children, create art. In spite of that, the question caught me unawares. Today I learned the answer at an awards breakfast for Children's Miracle Network, a national organization whose efforts fund my work as an art therapist at UC Davis Children's Hospital. The room was filled with people who had one goal in common: to create meaning and miracles for children undergoing a myriad of medical challenges. When a teen stood up and told her story of battling cancer three times over, there was not a dry eye in the place. When I drove away, I realized "I want to write a blog that attracts people like you who are reading this now. People who are passionately dedicated to meaning making; whether it is making artwork that is shared in exhibits, or, introducing others to the pleasures and life-saving qualities of art making. I envision you ranging in age from 17 to 100, because art making crosses the lifespan. My personal motivation in making art is "tikkun o'lam," the Jewish spiritual practice of "repairing the world" and I'm looking for you; like minded readers from across the country and indeed from around the world.  I celebrate the differences between us, but I choose to focus on the qualities that we all share in common. You, my readers, might also be avid readers of literature, ancient and modern and enjoy exploring art through the lens of mythology or psychology. You understand the beauty of finding meaning in the smallest details of life and it is my hope that, even if you are not initially comfortable blogging yourself, the desire to share experiences and engage in discussion would help to meet any challenges that arise. (I know that was true for me!) I think that sometimes the desire to express ourselves is strong enough that even we more introverted persons are moved to take a risk and put our fingers to the keyboard and speak.
Pictured above: "Blue Buddha," detail, copyright, 2009

"Friends" Exhibit at the Artery

I have a friend Sara Post, whom I've mentioned before (and am likely to mention again). We met in 2005 at the very first SoulCollage®
Facilitator's Training in the mountains above Santa Cruz, CA. When we discovered that we were both artists, had both lived in the same town for many years and shared a love and appreciation for all things mythological and archetypal, we became good friends and have been exchanging ideas, art and artistic adventures ever since. Recently she asked me to participate in a show at a local cooperative gallery, the Artery. Her subject line of the e-mail read "Friends Show at the Artery." I love the magic of artists' friendships and the art that comes out of them, so I agreed. The show opens this Friday, April 9th at the Artery in Davis, CA and runs through April 20th. There will be an exciting range of work, including not only wall artists but also fabric, ceramic, glass, wood, and jewelry artisans. The following are a few of the other participants: Melissa Wood (oil and graphite), Stella Stevens (water color), Judy Catambay (clay), Anne Syer (giclee print), Naoko Bautista (oil), Beth Grundvig (pastel), Pam Berry (fiber art) and Pat Meade (woven Alpaca).

Pictured above: In Balance, 2010, Hannah Hunter

New Series

I began a new series about a month ago at the suggestion of my friend Beth Rommel. Actually Beth suggested I just experiment for bit because I'd painted myself into a corner (something we artists so often do). The experiments morphed into a succession of pieces each containing multiple images of Buddhas. I began thinking about the  abundance the images suggest, which in turn led me to thinking about abundance in general. Visions of "amber waves of grain" and the goddess Lakshmi began dancing through my head. I'm eagerly awaiting my package of panels from Dick Blick and the weekend, waiting to see where this new idea will carry me.

The poetic object

My friend Sara Post has got me thinking about objects. She's curating a show entitled: "Lesson's from Things: Looking at Objects." She's taking her inspiration from the French, who, with the same excellence they apply to cooking and couture, study the history and development of common objects. (How otherwise can we imagine the writer Collette or the great designer, Coco Chanel? Words and fabric became great in their hands.) In order to wrap my mind around the topic I've dug out my copies of Bachelard's works, the French philosopher and phenomenologist. We read Bachelard's Poetics of Space in my graduate school art seminar and we were all practically levitating back in the early eighties as we read his words. Consider this passage for example: "...I studied a series of images which may be considered the houses of things: drawers, chests and wardrobes. What psychology lies behind their locks and keys! They bear within themselves a kind of esthetics of hidden things." Quite heady no? These days, we are often so focused on the practical side of things (and maybe that's my age speaking), that I think I could use some of this dreaming Bachelard speaks so highly of. So, before I go choosing an object, common or otherwise to render, I'll be picking up my Bachelard and spending some time daydreaming...

Accepting the gift

Last week I found myself musing about gifts. As an artist and an art therapist, I spend a fair amount of time shifting between these crafts, wondering about the differences between art and art as therapy (hence this blog) and trying to balance the quality of effort that I devote to each. I often think that I could be very happy left to my own devices in the studio, but in fact, this is patently not true. I draw, no pun intended, much of my inspiration from the children with whom I work. When we make art together, I learn so much more about what it is to be a human being living and breathing and living on the earth at this time. My heart expands and thus does my vision. It's like the proverbial story of the blind men and the elephant. As the sightless men stand arrayed around the beast, a sage asks them to describe this animal. One man reaches up to the trunk and speaks of its roughness and length, another describes the sturdiness of a leg, another the back and yet another the tusks. Who has the true story? In other words one discipline feeds the other. This came to me clearly this morning after talking with my friend Beth Rommel about the subject. Soon, after that, I turned on the radio to hear Abraham Vergese, the physician and author. What I loved about listening to this man, was his absolute devotion and love of medicine. It didn't just serve to feed and clothe his family so that he could write, it was his wellspring of inspiration. The wonderful intertwining of these two disciplines was apparent in his description of his call to medicine which he relates came from reading Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage." A physician called to writing through a fictional character who is also a doctor! It underscores my belief that art and writing, in particular, fiction writing, serve to tell us truths that we could not arrive at any other ways, truths for which there is no existing image or combination of words.
Photo credit: Lynn Cohen, copyright, 2010.