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Photo Credit: Before and After from http://www.drawright.com/
Muse Whisperer: Fred Haberlein
Thursday, January 6
6:30 pm - 9 pm
Fee: $25.00
You can DRAW! Join Fred "Lightening Heart" Haberlein in this amazing, inspiring and fun-filled class. Fred has been teaching the class with great success for over 20 years. Join us and unlock the key to your true creative potential.
To Avoid Cancellation, please Register by Jan 3, 2011/ Tel: 970-618-0561
My Town...The Giving Tree
Each year this beautiful tree magically appears on the corner of 3rd and Main St in my town. It is a reminder to me, of the true spirit-often forgotten-of the Holiday Season.
This week, I watched a little girl pluck a baggie of marshmallows and graham crackers off one of the branches. Instantly her face lit up with a smile, as did her family's as they watched her open the bag filled with her gift.
We all know it feels better to give than to receive and this year, I wanted to get back to that feeling in my heart. I made a comiment not to purchase needless gifts, just because there is consumer driven pressure to do so. This year, it was an astrology reading from a dear friend for my husband, handmade New Years cards, handmade tin ornaments, home baked cookies and small loving gifts from the heart.
After all...what else do we really need?
Happy Holidays to you and yours...I look forward to creating art of intention with you in the New Year.
Sheri
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Fred Haberlein
Thursday, January 6
6:30 pm - 9 pm
Fee: $25.00
Please Register with our secure server Paypal by Friday, January 31
You can DRAW! Join Fred "Lightening Heart" Haberlein in this amazing, inspiring and fun-filled class. Fred has been teaching the class with great success for over 20 years. Join us and unlock the key to your true creative potential.
Art, Healing and Hope - Introductory Evening
Sheri Gaynor
Thursday, January 20
6:30 pm - 8 pm
Suggested Donation $ 10.00
Please Register with our secure server Paypal by January 13
A creative cancer support group for anyone who's life has been touched by cancer. Creative writing, poetry and collage. Absolutely no art experience needed. Proudly co-sponsored by Valley View Hospital Foundation
Sewing Silly Sock Monsters
Lynne Cassidy
Saturday January 29
9:30 am - 2 pm
Fee: $40.00 up to one child, $5.00 additional child
Please Register with our secure server Paypal by Jan 21
How many of us have somehow lost ONE sock in the dryer. What do you do with that other lonely sock? MAKE A SOCK MONSTER.
Every sock has the potential to become a one-of-a-kind sock creature. Just as Michelangelo looked for an image within the rocks he carved upon, you will look for the little creature that emerges from within your stray socks. Come and have fun turning new or stray old socks in loveable sock monsters. No sewing skills are necessary. Participants are encouraged to bring their own reusable supplies just as their favorite old stray socks (clean), buttons, beads and sewing supplies (colored thread, needles and small scissors). Download Sock Creatures Materials Lists
Please allow me to share my Creative Awakenings thought process as I continue to explore my intention for December.
Sometimes it's hard for me to take time this year to sit still and envision my future because I'm so busy wrapping up the past. The finishing part of my intention is filling my days and the beginning part of the intention is simmering on a back burner. I was feeling anxious about this, after all I'd declared my intention to be about finishing and beginning, about a type of metamorphosis, moving from one year to the next. Ironically, this anxiety has been stopping me from finishing my Art of Intention. (That anxiety plus fear of creating something so hideously ugly that I am embarrassed to post a picture here!)
Since I want to make setting and following my intentions a priority in my life, to ensure that I don't squander my days just crossing things off my to do lists for the sake of feeling productive at the cost of being creative, I decided I needed to pull out one of the Transformation Deck cards and see how it might inspire me.
I'd been hoping to pull a card that prominently featured wings and birds and flight - the imagery that I've been collecting for my Art of Intention. When I turned over the card I selected, I was disappointed to see it had pictures from the past, photos of someone's mother or grandmother in the 1950s, dark imagery, a picture of home. Why was I pulling a picture of home when in my mind I was dreaming of flying over the rainbow?
The truth is, I pulled the perfect card. When I flipped in my Creative Awakenings book to page 117, I found out that the card I pulled is called "Gypsy Spirit Day" and lurking quietly in the background image is a bird sitting at the top of a tree. The combination of looking to the past while thinking about the future, being grounded by family and memories while dreaming of flying, the idea of being a gypsy while being in love with home: all of this reflects what has happened to me in 2010. Let me explain.
1. Being a gypsy. Gypsies might be known for not having roots, but that's not really true. The Roma people (what the European Gypsy's are properly called) are a very tight-knit group with close families and strong traditions. They are just not tied to a specific piece of land. I love this idea because I love studying historical traditions while at the same time being free to move around physically and mentally, getting to know new ways of doing things at the same time. It's hard because I don't bring all of the people I love with me on each new journey, but the internet has helped me keep in touch more recently than I ever was able to in the past.
2. Loving home. This time last year, I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep my house, or even continue living in Colorado or the United States. But after spending four months sort-of vagabonding around Europe, I have come to appreciate the comfort of home much more. Again, it's my friends I miss when I return to my nest, but I am completely thrilled to be back in my comfort zone where I can totally relax for the time being. It's true, the cliche, "absence makes the heart grow fonder, and also, "familiarity breeds contempt."
3. Grounded by the past. Just like the Roma, I have to remember that I am made up of my past. My mind is filled with thoughts and feelings about things I've learned on this journey, and my cells are filled with the DNA that's been passed down to me from my parents and grandparents and their parents before them. We can't know anything about the future, so it's only by looking at the past that we can gain any sense of continuity or progress and change. I love my past and even though I have some regrets, I don't let them hold me back. If I've learned one thing it's that I will most likely regret NOT trying something new, NOT opening myself up, NOT going through the next door, rather than holding back.
4. Preparing for flight. And that leads me to the final part of my intention for December, taking flight and moving on to something new. I won't be able to engage in that fully until sometime in the new year, but I don't want to keep looking backwards. While I am finishing up so many projects that I've been working on for the last weeks, months, and even years, I am remembering to muse about the future and keep an open mind about where I will find myself this time next year.
Home: Travel
Past: Future
Ground: Flight
Finishing: Beginning
All of these opposites are just like the two sides of the coin that is my life. Another cliche, but also true.
I love how all these images tie together, even if it's "just" my mind, my brain, my attention that makes it work. Coincidence? I don't think so. Setting my intention and giving myself time to muse over it is helping me form a better view of my future. Now I just hope that this weekend I am brave enough to pull all the materials I've collected together and finish my Art of Intention!
DIY Greeting Cards and Printing (1 slot left)
George Stranahan and Sheri Gaynor
Saturday December 11
1pm - 4 pm
Fee: Gratis
Tin Ornaments (2 slots left)
Sheri Gaynor
Tuesday, December 14
6:30pm - 8:30 pm
Fee: $24 or two punches on pass
Create unique holiday ornaments
Please RSVP
Music Together with Art at The Spark!
Annie Flynn and Sheri Gaynor
Wednesday, December 15
10:15 am - 11 am
Join Annie and Sheri for an RSVP morning combining Music Together and creative expression.
Please RSVP
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Fred Haberlein
Thursday, January 6
6:30 pm - 9 pm
Join Fred "Lightening Heart" Haberlein in this amazing, fun-filled class, and unlock the key to your true creative potential.
Please RSVP
Art, Healing and Hope - Introductory Evening
Sheri Gaynor
Thursday, January 20
6:30 pm - 8 pm, $ 10.00
A creative cancer support group for anyone who's life has been touched by cancer. Creative writing, poetry and collage. Absolutely no art experience needed. Proudly co-sponsored by Valley View Hospital Foundation
Please RSVP
Sock Monsters
Lynne Cassidy
Saturday January 29
9:30 am - 2 pm
Please RSVP
My intention for December is FINISHING.
I knew that immediately. But at the same time, my intention is getting ready to start anew in January. I knew I wanted to focus on finishing things this December before I stumbled onto Creative Awakenings in the bookstore, but I thought it was only about finishing, just so I could cross things off my list. But as I've been musing over things and reading through Creative Awakenings I've realized that it's also to release myself so I can feel free to turn off of the current path and follow new interests, to explore the forest.
Where do I really want to go moving forward into 2011 and beyond? Are the projects I've planned the ones that are really the desires of my heart? Am I doing an planning things because I feel I should or because I have a true passion drawing me?
I want to follow my heart more and not over think everything. The writing, it doesn't help so much with that. I've done morning pages and free writing and even mind mapping, but it's always based on words and logic. This visual experiment with Creative Awakenings will help me to trust the faeries to show me the way. Like listening to music or just letting my soul float free. Where will the winds of my soul and my heart and my feelings take me? What does FATE have in store for me if I let go?
Before, I was THINKING of my work as making meaning - there it is again, that word "thinking"! - I found I forced myself to attach some mission, some social value and political direction - to my work. Here's what I wrote as a "mission statement" for 2006:
My purpose will be to help make the world safer and more comfortable for women and minorities. How will I accomplish this?
- By creating things that provide comfort, such as hand-knit items to donate to charity and knitting books that allow others to create comfort, and by continuing to provide free knitting patterns and charity knitting information on this blog.
- By using my writing to advance reason and enlightenment and to oppose fundamentalism and the beliefs that breed hatred, violence, intolerance, and ignorance.
- By valuing--and encouraging others to value--the ideas, creativity, and contributions of women.
- By supporting secular organizations that help women and the glbt community.
- By speaking out whenever I can in private and in public to point out injustice and to defy the censorship that silences those with no political power.
In each of these areas, I will volunteer, work for pay, and develop personal projects. As the new year begins, I hope you will join with me in evaluating your own purpose in life and choosing a path that brings comfort and joy to the world.
Sounds great, doesn't it? But when I work on my art, when I write an article or knit a hat or play with beads and paints, I don't FEEL a mission. I feel only the love of what I am writing or knitting or painting. I feel the satisfaction of simply creating, and it frees me.
Why do I feel I must have a mission? Because books say I should? Because so many other artists seem to have political motives or causes infusing their work? If that's not me, and it is SO not me, why should I feel pressure to conform to some imagined ideal? I have always said "I will not let my happiness be in someone else's head," but I don't always succeed at achieving that goal. I do things because I think other people want me to. It's OK on a personal level, to do things for friends and loved ones. But on an artistic level, I must allow myself to follow the dandelion seeds floating on the air. Just see where they land, where they want to grow.
A couple of weeks ago, I made an excursion to Michael's and bought a pile of art supplies so I can start my December imagery! In my mind's eye I see:
I don't want to forget these images, but I want to process it visually, not with words. So next time I stop by here to give you an update, I should have a dream image to share with you. Here's a collection of materials I've assembled getting ready to visually represent my intention for this month.
