The Artist's Way - Week Seven: Recovering a Sense of Connection

After warm-up stretches, sharing about our week, and then discussing the chapter on strength, I handed out Paperclay and set out a variety of mark and texture-making tools and guided the women through an exercise on creating a personal plaque. It was a pleasure to watch their hands in motion (and Frida even stopped by for a table visit).

The next morning, I set their drying plaques in front of the window for a better view. Aren't they beautiful?

Beneath the Surface: Searching For Memory

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

 

Week six was about abundance, so after fueling up, we headed to the basement for an hour of digging through my bins of goodies. One woman, upon entering the basement and seeing all of the supplies, summed it up: Holy shit. Yes. I do believe it is.



 

 

 

Disclaimer: The formatting on this blog post is a bit wonky. Blogspot has made some kind of internal changes and I'm unable to figure it out at this time. I'll keep playing around with it, but for now, this is what I've got!

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

We started our evening indulging ourselves in a sound bath.. Since one of our ladies was out sick, I joined in. One at a time, each woman stood in the center of a circle while the rest of us walked slowly around her. While walking, we each made a different sound or tone, bathing the woman in the center in a sea of soft, gentle sounds. I could have stood there all night.

Relaxed, we moved into our evening discussing possibility. Our creative project was a series of blind contour drawing exercises. First we drew a bouquet of wonky flowers, then self-portraits, and finally  each other. Blind contour drawing involves not looking at what you are drawing (at all) and not lifting your pen or pencil from the page; you only look at the object you are drawing. It's challenging, but freeing and fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last week we all received beaded book marks, this week another woman brought all of us fresh bouquets of rosemary. Ummm, it smells so delicious and fresh.

Sacred Scraps: An Exhibition

I had this wild idea that it would be fun to bring a group of my assemblage artist friends together for an exhibit where we would share how we use old discarded items and found objects to make our art. The artists I invited were Stephanie Brockway, Tory Brokenshire, Shelly Caldwell, Jennifer Campbell . . . . and me. The result of our union is Sacred Scraps, which opened Friday night at Willamette University on the second floor of the Hatfield Library.

Here we are on Friday afternoon, happy and satisfied with our exhibit.

 

THE SET UP

Let me back up a bit to Friday morning when we all arrived on campus and used library book carts to tote our precious junk into the library (and Tory toted her famous deviled eggs). .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE RECEPTION

We hosted a reception on Friday.During the reception, two ot our artists, Tory and Shelly, offered demonstrations on how they make their art.

 

 

 

In addition to the demos, three of the artists (Tory, Steph, and Dayna) provided art for giveaways every 30 minutes. We had some pretty happy winners!

 

 

 

 

 

The reception itself was pretty darn sweet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The exhibit runs through the end of February and anyone can visit during the library's public hours (which are posted on the library's website).