Recovering a Sense of Abundance: The Artist's Way Week Six

Well, two of our women were sick last night, but we soldiered on without them. For our warm-up, I used some cards from the Soul Card deck created by Deborah Koff-Chapin, founder of the Center for Touch Drawing. We each chose a card and then did body movement that corresponded with the imagery on the card. It was energetic and soothing at the same time.


For our creative project, we experimented with blind contour drawing, a tool to help the eye to see without the interference of the mind (which means for this type of drawing, the person does not look at their paper at all!). The women were leary at first, then jumped into the process without reservation.

I first learned of this technique from Gretchin Lair, of Scarlet Star Studios in Portland. For last night's session, the ladies drew an art mannequin, a self-portrait, and then each other. When they were drawing each other, they could hardly stop laughing - we all had such fun!






Speaking of Gretchin, I received this pair of flaming heart socks from Gretchin and Sven when they visited me on the boat this summer. As the ladies were drawing, I was having fun snapping photos of my feet and legs. For those of you who know me, you know that flaming hearts are sort of my personal logo!

Birthday Goodness

This crazily beautiful card was sent to me by my artist friends Sven and Gretchin, both of Scarlet Star Studios. Sven designs and creates a special birthday card for his friends and I know this because Sven and I are both graduates of Gretchin's Artist's Way Creative Cluster (Gretchin is my Artist Way mentor). There used to be a group of Portland Artist's Way graduates that kept in touch via a weekly Sacred Circle check-in, but the group sort of fizzled out, except for Sven and myself. We have continued to check-in with each other and each time he made a birthday card for someone, he would include a photograph in his check-in. Well, guess who received her very own card? I love it! It so exemplifies me - multi-faceted and a little zingy, full of color and enthusiasm.

On with the gifts!

The first thing I had on my short birthday list was an iPhone. When Howard heard that I wanted this fancy phone, he went right out and purchased it for me. I've hardly tapped into all that the phone can do, but I've learned the essentials, like how to dial, take a photo, and check e-mail, so I'm on my way. I know there are something like 85,000 apps, which slightly overwhelms and disturbs me, but I sure don't need to investigate, do I?


Also on my list was a Santos head, which I received from my oldest daughter, Melissa. She purchased the wooden head from Cargo in NW Portland and had it sent to me. Yikes Almighty! What a fun surprise. I blogged about this store and led off my post with a photo of perhaps this very Santos back in June of this year.


My Portland daughter, Amy, took advantage of my massive hints and my recent blog post about the little shop on Fremont that I love, All My Favorite Things, and tootled on down and bought me the Jesus I was coveting.


Bobbie, who has taken my Artist's Way class and about every other class I have ever offered, surprised me with a present that arrived in the mail. It was this cute little clutch/purse and the crazy little monkey man. Both she bought at a store on N.E. Fremont in Portland, Found.



I received this gorgeous glass necklace from Laura, a woman I met while vending at Salem's Saturday Market a couple of years ago (Laura was also a vendor, vending beautiful handcrafted jewelry). Laura and I got to know each other and Laura ended up taking my Artist's Way Creative Cluster and several other classes that I have offered. Oh, and I'm lucky enough to see Laura almost every day as she works in Howard's office now!


And last, but not least, was a little gift I received in the mail from Vicki, who along with her husband Dave, have been friends for over 35 years! Vicki wrote a sweet little message about our friendship and inserted it inside of the egg carton cache. Sweet, just like she is.




I haven't posted everything from everyone, but these were some of my favorites - thank you for making my day so special!

ScRapYarD DoG

The quarterly garage sale, Scrapyard, was held at Scrapbook Fever in Salem on Saturday morning.


I figured if I was going to brave the crowds, something I do not enjoy doing, I was going to get to the store early. I picked up a breakfast burrito and arrived to discover that I was the very first one there. I felt very accomplished and pleased that I would be the first one to swoop through the doors when they opened at 10:00 a.m.


It was worth the wait. I came home with two bulging bags of goodies!












If you happen to be taking my Bountiful Blocks class at Stampin' Cat Studio on November 7th, you'll be the recipient of a lot of my bounty!

Abracadabra Alacazam!

A friend of mine, Susan Feinstein, recently launched a new business: Perfect Pairings for Conscious Singles. In addition to coordinating and planning events, and doing relationship coaching, she is currently offering an eight-week class entitled Conscious Dating and Relationship Success. To enrichen the sessions, Susan wanted the women to experience visual journaling, so she asked me to facilitate a private class for her group. That class took place on Thursday night at Alley Art Studio.

First, I prepared packets for all of the ladies and got the tables set up.




I decided to use a technique taken from Sally Jean Alexander's book, Pretty Little Things. The technique is called Abracadabra Collage and involves writing various art techniques onto little slips of paper and drawing them out of a hat/bowl/whatever you have on hand. The scraps of paper had such things as paint, sand, stamp, smudge, pencil, text . . . . and about a dozen more ideas.

The women all had their own journals, so I immediately began drawing the little slips of paper from a vase. I kept the women moving so that they wouldn't have time to second guess their progress or allow their critic to get too settled in.




At the end of the class we did a little show and tell and I asked each woman how they liked the process. They all enthusiastically responded that they had fun, the process was very non-threatening, and they were pleased with their pages. Ahhhh, a successful introduction to the fun of visual journaling.

Sweet Tweet-Wild Wild: Around the Block #4

The Around the Block swap is nearing the end, with only one more round of swapping to be done. As you can imagine, the blocks are getting full of arted up goodness. In the latest round, the blocks had art from three artists.

First, Santa Torres (these are her blocks):


Then a view of what Carolyn Abramofsky of Illinois did:


Susi Trenery used some fun checkerboard patterns on all three of the sides she did.


And finally, my contributions:




The blocks have been sent on to Sarah Fishburn for the final round of art-making! And there have been rumblings of a new block swap at the first of the year and all I have to say about that is: S I G N M E U P!

Recovering a Sense of Possibility: The Artist's Way Week Five

On Tuesday, my Artist's Way Creative Cluster met to discuss Julia Cameron's concept of possibility. The women also spent a little time writing, a little time drawing, and a lot of time playing with clay. Their creative assignment was to focus on their positive attributes, then translate those attributes into a visual representation using Creative Paperclay, a very lightweight, air-drying type of clay.




Here are the Life Plaques the ladies created (we've been missing one of our members, who has been very sick, so only three pieces of art to share):