Workshops

Monday, January 11, 2010

Dream, Visualize, Plan, Believe, Act




To accomplish great things we must first dream, then visualize, then plan . . . believe . . . act! Alfred A. Montapert

Last Saturday, Alley Art Studio was abuzz with women creating personalized vision boards. Our day started at 10 AM, when we did a breathing, stretching, and relaxation exercise to help get us into the right frame of mind. I had also asked the ladies in advance of our gathering to come up with a word they want to focus on for the year, and we each revealed our word during our open sharing time.



Destree, who helped me with set-up for the day, led us in an exercise called Five Bold Steps (something she created and designed!). The purpose of the exercise was to help us identify our goals and dreams for the new year, list our supports and challenges, and finally, come up with specific steps we can take to help us achieve our intentions. And then all hell broke loose when we brought out the magazines!




We had snacks upon arrival, then around 12:30 we shared a salad potluck.



After lunch, it was time to begin laying out and gluing our vision boards.






At the end of the afternoon, we shared our creations with each other, highlighting why we choose certain images.


Here are some of the completed boards in various stages of completion (some women planned to finish their boards at home . . .). Words of the year included: Abundance, Independence, Consistency, Fresh, Strength, Believe, Creative, Emerge, and Balance.











And here's the happy gang of Vision Boarders!


Sometimes when I do a blog post, I like to post a few of the comments that people left about the class. Here's a sampling:

I loved the class, Dayna! . . . I am thrilled with what I came away with and am working on my board this week to round it out. It's so important - it's a tool I use all year long, so giving intense attention to it when creating is a-ok with me!

Your class, as usual, was wonderful! The class left a lot of room for creativity within a focused environment. . . . The potluck was a fun option! I thought that the stretching and reading both gave a way to focus on the task at hand and opened our minds to the possibilities that stretched before us. I appreciated the Five Bold Steps activity and this helped me to feel more focused on drawing me to the symbols that will represent my wishes for the new year and beyond.

Your class was just what the doctor ordered for my stressed out life! It allowed me to take a breath, get centered, and focus on the looming tasks at hand. Thank you for a splendid Saturday.

I loved it as always. I love readings, stretching and such. I like that it is informal and personal and I even like the idea of shared food.


It was truly a great day -- and I was able to work on my own vision board the next day. My word? Fearless. My board? Here it is. Can you figure out what my intentions are for the new year? There are six . . . .



Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. Carl Jung

Creating a Little City - Block by Block


I signed up for another block swap, this one a little different from the last one. The previous swap was called Around the Block and involved rotating three blocks to five women with each of us arting up one side of the three blocks (did you get that?). For this new swap, each artist is to create five blocks that represent buildings you would find on a main street, in a village, neighborhood, or town. Hosted by Susie LaFond, the swap is called the Main Street Block Swap. The swap is through the Yahoo group In This House and Garden. Anyone can join in, you just need to join the group and sign up for the swap (the due date for the blocks isn't until February 27th!). Crazily, I have tons of immediate art deadlines, but for some reason, I needed the silly play of creating on five wooden blocks. It did the trick - no artist's block for me!

So here we go. The creation of my five-block village. First, deciding on the blocks (couldn't be any larger than four inches or smaller than one inch).


I decided to do a church, a factory of some sort (turned out to be a Power and Light Company), a clock tower, a Museum of Modern Art, and a mausoleum (what? where did that come from!).



Ta da! The front . . . .



. . . . the back.



In detail:













Tagged and ready to be mailed.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Walking in This World: Discovering a Sense of Origin


Last night was the beginning of a new journey for a group of six women as they began Walking in This World. This book is the second in Julia Cameron's Artist's Way trilogy and the first time I have used it is as the jumping off point for a class. I've been leading Artist's Way Creative Clusters for several years, but I wanted to expand on that offering, so I chose to use Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity.

The studio went from empty calm . . . .


. . . to a glorious frenzy of activity!




Because Walking in This World includes a weekly walking practice, I decided to dovetail exploration exercises from Keri Smith's How To Be An Explorer of the World. The first assignment (if they choose to accept it) will be to look for discarded scraps of paper and glue them into their journal.

The creativity project last night was to collage the cover of their journals. I also thought it would be fun to have a mini journal to take along on their weekly walks so I had the ladies made beautiful exploration necklaces. All they have to do is insert a pencil into the spiral and they're ready to explore.







Every morning when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! Thich Nhat Nanh