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.

Looking at the World from Back to Front

"Cloth is rich with metaphors for the body and healthcare. The very act of stitching can be experienced as wounding the cloth or mending it- a stab or a suture. These metaphors are part of what makes fibres so rich to work with - they can hold all that complexity and contradiction and make it whole." -Alison Fox, Art Therapist, Artist and Nurse with the Inuit in Northern Canada

Recently, I began to work on a series of small quilted fabric pieces. Pulling together odds and ends; old cloth napkins printed with zoo animals, pieces of rusted fabric (courtesy of Lisa Mitchell and Jennifer Libby Fay) and snippets of fabric whose original purpose was long forgotten, I created a palette ranging from creamy whites to deep siennas.

I was trying to find a way to describe the series; a response to my art therapy work with very young patients at our hospital, who come to us suffering from abuse or neglect. I didn't want to sound maudlin or theatrical, so Alison's quote was a poignant means of expressing my point.

In the visual work, I want to express the "forgotteness," or hidden side I imagine in many of the children we treat at the hospital. They arrive to receive our care and for complicated reasons, some reasonable, others not, their parents are not at the bedside. Looking anxious, a nurse carries a child into the playroom, where she hopes our staff and volunteers can offer relief--to cuddle, to play with, to divert.

I found myself musing on the romantic notions of childhood; ideas we have about innocence, playfulness and early life as a time distinct from the complicated world of adulthood. For the purpose of this fabric series, I decided that a more realistic image of childhood would inhabit the front side of my pieces.

I also wanted the hidden side of the pieces to be compelling in its own way. I remember an Aikido teacher once talking about the back sides of our body. She noted, we spend so much time concentrating on the appearance of our front that we forget how often people see of us from behind. I wanted my "backs" to tell stories about the part of childhood we don't romanticize, yet when met with awareness and love, is replete with its own kind of wonder.

I don't mean to say that abuse is beautiful. Rather, that when one has the courage to face it, even a person's woundedness becomes part of what we love about them. Those words: "stab wound or suture." Each step we take toward these kids becomes a suture.  Whenever we find an opportunity to hold them, love them, speak to them, sing to them, remember them; those actions become the sutures which begin to heal their wounds.

Is it Failure or Seasons of the Creative Process?

Recently there have been a number of blog posts, books and articles on the subject of failure. One such thread began with a question by artist Lisa Call who asked Artbiz coach, Alyson Stanfield:

“Is failure in your art practice something to be embraced, managed, or forgotten?”

Alyson answered in a follow up post, saying “The only failure is not trying your best.”

Lisa responded with a blog post, Failure Sucks. What happens, she asks, when despite all your best efforts (and perhaps skillful denials), you just get derailed?

"...In my opinion, the interesting part of the failure question: what do you do in between?"

All this talk about failure got me thinking. To a certain extent there are are flops that are best treated by brushing the dirt off your pants and getting back on the proverbial horse.

But often, things just die on the vine. Where does that fit into a culture obsessed with saving time; one that chops time into smaller and smaller bits, allowing us to leap from act to act and achievement to achievement without respecting the time it takes to pass through the stages of the creative process.

We forget to think about the seasons of the earth. There is no way to immediately replace a failed crop of wheat or corn, almonds or oranges. Farmers have to clear their fields, let the soil regenerate and wait for the next planting season.

When a tree drops it's leaves, it doesn't immediately sprout new ones, yet the buds are already in place for when the right time comes. Spring, summer, fall and winter; birth and rebirth, growth, harvest and hibernation.

The creative process is no different. There is incubation, growth and fruition of an idea. And when it doesn't work, sigh, the process needs to begin again. And you wait while an idea, the wave, builds. The time it takes to mature; that's the mystery; the awe inspiring and at the same time totally frustrating part, because we don't know how long it will take or what will result.

Lisa asked what do we do in between? Even though the idea may not have hit the shore, I think we can be skillful. We can cultivate a mindset, a state of mind that invites the ideas in.

The October, 2013, Atlantic article, Losing is the New Winning notes “Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?” asks the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, in which she argues that a willingness to court failure can be a precursor to growth.

I'm curious. How do you face failure--or do you call it that? What do you do when something you've worked on for some time crashes to the ground?

A Map to Morning

It's mid morning, and I'm in the copy room of our hospital, appreciating the sweetness of my short days while they last. Beginning in September, I'll be going full-time. The knowledge that my half days in the studio are coming to an end is poignant.

Normally, I'm there in the afternoon, and it occurs to me that I should call the playroom supervisor, Margaret* and ask if she'd like me to hold an art group. Most days, the music therapist does a group in the morning, and afternoons are mine, but she's on vacation for the month.

I push the button on my cell phone badge and call Margaret. She's busy, so I call a Child Life Specialist who thinks not, but better check with Margaret who calls back soon after. Margaret is moving quickly while we talk, getting ready for a visit from our university bug museum--yes bugs! Bugs are big here on Peds. "Yes," she says, "I didn't think so, but I was trying to trace a dragonfly for the kids to color in, but I'm needed in 43."  The room number, code for whatever patient is presently staying there.

I've got 5 minutes to consider what to do instead of my usual hour. (Normally  I arrive in my office, check email, study that day's census and charts. In the back of my mind, I'm wondering, "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TODAY???" I've got to keep it fresh, both for myself and the patients.

Today, I grab a stack of old maps that I brought from home. We're going to create treasure maps--choose an imaginary destination, draw a path to get there and then crumple and age the paper with plenty of brown watercolor.

It's slow in the playroom and I have time to cut the maps to drawing paper size while I explain the project to an intern Sara* who's holding a lovely baby. Sara loves it. and actually draws out a map to get the feel of the project.  The baby reaches for the edge of the paper, an early map eater.

The kids arrive slowly  and I'm able to explain the project to them. One, confined to her wheelchair, draws swirls of circles on her map, her mind a tangle from infection. I don't think many of the kids have seen maps before, and they're a bit puzzled, so I reference Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean.

The room is filling and within its confines, there are two in wheel chairs, as well as one boy who's recently recovered from a stroke and needs his paper held down. The baby is unhappy, so I offer to take him and I put on a CD that I think is Caribbean Playground, but turns out to be Taylor Swift.  I gently rock the baby while I hold another girl's paper down for her.

And suddenly, like the swirls on the paper, the room and the group are at capacity. Several kids need individual attention; they get agitated by too much stimulation. It's just myself and the intern for both the group and the rest of the playroom.

A one year old is running around, the swirler begins to hurl crayons. The baby, who has incomplete intestines has a colostomy bag that feels like it's leaking on me. A young boy and his mother are happily working on a map together. She tells me that she used to live in San Francisco and the section of the map she's drawing on is exactly where she lived.

Oh my. Such sweetness and chaos all tied up in one moment. We've tried to calling the nurse for the baby, but she must be busy. Fortunately, several kids complete their project and "oh," another intern comes in. I unplug the baby's IV, try to maneuver the pole with its attachments and the baby out of the playroom.

As I go down the hall, I run into Margaret who helps me to the baby's room. I set the baby carefully down in the crib side wise so he doesn't feel like he's being trapped in the crib. He smiles and his legs kick free. I'm a little wet, but it was just the diaper.

"Welcome to mornings." she says.

*The names of the real people have been changed to preserve anonymity.