Transformation

Just writing the word transformation is magical. I imagine a butterfly making its way out of a wrinkled brown cocoon and beginning to move its wings, fluttering them open, letting the air dry the bits of moisture clinging to those tissue thin filaments. That's me--the butterfly with the tissue thin wings. In a matter of months, I too will be making a transition out of my role as a hospital art therapist, and into that of studio artist.

In my last post "Circle Game," I was circumambulating (playing around) the topic. Until I had made my departure official with my manager, I didn't want to mention it in public. No coming out of the pupa before you're hatched! So, although I waxed eloquent about the ways in which we look forward to events, I didn't say that my return to the studio full time is what I'm looking forward to the most. I think that I will always be an art therapist because I can't separate the act of healing from making art, although, believe me, I've certainly tried. It doesn't work. I'm just very lucky to be able to reset the balance.

Making the Countdown series allows me to process this change and make it explicit. As I create rows of circles, gluing them onto the panels, each circle represents a passing of time; a month, a day, an hour, a minute. Each measures a period of letting go.

And yet, as I make each part, I find that I have to retrace my steps constantly. As I enlarged some of the circles, then discovered that they didn't work, I created more circles, and as I glued them down, I realized I'd forgotten to change the ground beneath them.  I had to take up those circles as well and replace their backgrounds. The whole process is rife with metaphor, as it should be.

I like this challenge. Every time I come up to the studio, I tell myself there are no mistakes and each step forward is the gateway to the one after that. How else can I learn?

Circle Game

There are  many things for which I count down--the time 'till I get to hit my studio again, a few days off or a get together with friends. My favorite: thinking about transitioning from the role of art therapist to that of artist and teacher.

I've used the circle in my work for many years and in my new series, Counting Down, I'm using the circle as a symbol to represent the act of counting. In Counting Down, the circle functions as a clock form, in which the circle is divided into four parts, each part slightly offset from the other.

The various circles function as a series of crazy clocks in which time flies both forward and backward; into the future and back into the past.

The pieced together circles are made using monoprints. This process serves a double function. I save many of the prints that don't quite turn out right. When I print over them with a solid color, you can see the shadow of images below--as if through a screen or a veil. They have an ethereal quality--as if you could almost touch them, but not quite, much like the future for which we conjure dreams, but can only guess what it will really feel like.

And I love the irony of the series title and the process. When I think of counting down, I'm looking at time passing, but I'm not in the present (how can I be?) Yet, on the other hand, the act of putting together the circles places me squarely in the present, neither reaching backwards into memory and history or ahead in the time that is yet to come.

This is what I love about art. It has the ability to transport us; as a viewer into the past or future, or, as the maker, directly in the place in which we stand.

Mercury Goes Retrograde in the Studio

Recently, people have been talking a lot about Mercury Retrograde. An event that takes place 3-4 times a year, the planet Mercury appears to slow down and actually move backwards. It's an optical illusion, because the planet continues to move forward, its just doesn't look like it from Earth's point of view. It's like when you're in a slow train and a much faster one speeds past. It seems like you're not moving at all.

One of my favorite commentators on astrological events, Cathy Coleman, wrote the following about Mercury Retrograde:

Mercury symbolizes communication, and its retrograde motion beckons us to pause and re-think, re-organize, and purge the Inbox and remnants of lists undone rather than start new endeavors. Communication can get snarled and confused, so be patient with mistakes and with those who make them.

My own adventures have been limited to garden variety computer glitches (how come I can't log into the electronic medical records with the same password I've used for 2 years?) the i-phone (no matter how many pics I delete, I still can't take any more??) and my favorite one, the studio.

When I made it up to the studio this past weekend, I thought that I'd successfully set up four panels with monoprint collage bases. I used 12-4"  squares on a 12" x 12" panel and 24 squares on a 12" x 24" panel. Um hmm. I completely forgot that those squares I planned to turn into segmented circles were actually supposed to be 6." I didn't remember that part of the plan until I'd glued on almost all of the circles, and dammit--they looked really small!

At that point I had a choice, freeze up and curse and jettison the whole lot or...pause.  I thought about a passage I'd just read in Pema Chodrons's book Comfortable with Uncertainty.

The central question of a warrior's training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?...We regard disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, jealousy, and fear as moments that show us where we're holding back, how we're shutting down. Such uncomfortable feelings are messages that tell us to perk up and lean into a situation when we'd rather cave in and back away.

Indeed. I calmly peeled away all the little quarter circles, measured and began again. And here's what I found. Rather than screwing up my plans, the confusion between my math facts lent the work in progress a kind of complexity that I could not have planned. Working with the difference between multiples of 4 and 6 was like working with music in different time signatures--fun, exciting, stimulating. So I'm going with it. Leaning in and discovering what happens when I welcome the random challenges of Mercury Retrograde.

Tiny Desk Art

How does an artist keep making art when the flow of life brings a series of not so fortunate events? That's what's been happening to me lately. From a fractured foot to a persistent virus, not to mention getting rear ended, was life conspiring to keep me from the studio?

With little time and less energy, it seemed that the obvious solution was to make smaller work. "But I don't want to make smaller work!" an inner voice whined. "O.K.,"-- I answered the voice, "but smaller work can add up." It occurred to me that I could use the same journal format that I'd been practicing in my recent work.

I approach my work in an additive way anyway, creating one print or collage and building on that with the next one, and so on; day after day. At the end of a run (determined by season or plant material), I curate them into a composition that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

This time, although the size would be smaller, I could still use a sequential format. Then, the words "Tiny Desk Concerts" came to mind. I remembered that these were intimate musical events  performed live at the desk of one of NPR's music hosts, Bob Boilen.

Great idea! I figured that I could work the same way. During a break at the hospital or lunch, I could stack the key board on my computer monitor and employ the resulting 13" wide open space for art making. Tiny desk art indeed. But my patch was large enough to fit a cutting board. And where would I keep my materials? I slid open my file drawer, revealing a box of jasmine tea, some almonds and chia seeds, and added a pencil box of collage materials and a folder of colorfully printed papers.

There is a sequence of 3 letters: prn, medical shorthand for the Latin phrase: pro re nata, or, "as the thing is needed."

I love that phrase "as the thing is needed," meaning not always, not every hour or even every day, but when you need it. And that, for the time being, is how I'm making art.

Generosity & Creative Deed 365

An online project, Creative Deed 365,  got me thinking about generosity. What makes someone want to give? The project's creator, Gretchen Miller, decided that she wanted offer a project/challenge that involves "...making small pieces of art (3 x 2.5) to randomly gift to others as acts of kindness and to spread creative goodness to others in the spirit of 6 Degrees of Creativity’s 2014 Creative Deed Project.  I want to dedicate 2015 to sharing this process with others and give all the art away with year long positive messages of hope, inspiration, and possibility."

As I read further, I discovered that Gretchen was leaving the cards in coffee shops, tucked in bookstore shelves, at bus stops, almost any public place you could imagine.  Each of them had the following message on the back:

I was inspired by Gretchen's idea and wondered how I could adapt it for myself. I knew that I couldn't keep up with one card a day (although I tried). Instead, I began to make cards in odd moments in the hospital, using them to process an interaction, or in an art therapy session, and as a means of self-care.

I wondered what to do with them, how could I offer them to others as a means of inspiration? I wanted to provide a place where people could look through the cards, choosing one that felt right to them. But where would that place be?

The idea, when it finally arrived, was simple. As I prepared my studio for our town's open studio tour, I thought about how when I visit artists' studios, I want to to leave with something tangible, something that preserves the beauty I've seen. The problem is that most of the time, I can't afford the art work.

I decided that in my own studio, I would take that obstacle away. Although much of my work would be for sale, I would give away small "365" pieces of art.

And I did. I watched people looking over my work: the prints, the large wall pieces, the gift cards and I could see at certain points, a small moment of longing cross their face. At those moments, I offered them a card. They took the process to heart, leafing through them as if they were tarot cards, searching for just the right one.

After that, I couldn't stop making the miniature offerings--although I don't know where the next drop off will be, that's all part of the surprise element.

If you are interested in joining Gretchen's project: Make a request to join the Creative Deed 365 Group on Facebook and contribute your own art in the spirit of this effort.