Entries from: March 2009
Virtual Art Picnic Update!
March 17th, 2009, Comments (0)
With the help of a Tweet from Jamie, I noticed that I'd written the wrong date for the free Intro to Virtual Art Picnic call. Doh! Just in case you were wondering whether I was human or robot, now you know I'm definitely human.
I'd written that the call was Thursday, March 18th, when it is actually, Thursday, March 19th at 1 p.m. EST (I put the right day of the week, wrong date.) I hope this isn't an inconvenience for anyone signed up for the call! Fortunately, I will be recording it, so you can always listen to it later. There is still time to sign up for the free call here.
I've just finished the Virtual Art Picnic info page, where you can sign up for the first Virtual Art Picnic teleclass! The first class will be held on Thursday, March 26th from 1-3 p.m. EST.
I'm planning a Saturday call next month. Is there a time or day of the week that works better for you? Feel free to let me know and I'll see if I can work in those times in the future.
Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: March 16th – 22nd
March 16th, 2009, Comments (21)
This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.
Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 3/2/09 - 3/8/09.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you!
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.
Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.
If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or "Mr. Linky" widget.
Theme: The totally optional theme for March is dreams. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the theme here.
Happy Creating!!
The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to a new creative movement. Awe is what moves us forward.
~Joseph Campbell
Positive Priorities
March 13th, 2009, Comments (17)
The creative process gives back tenfold. It is by definition abundant and unending.
~ Cathleen Rountree
I really love the latest chapter in The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women, which I'm reading with Jamie Ridler's wonderful book group. The chapter is all about living in abundance and that is what I'm all about right now.
Abundance is one of the things we talked about a lot at the retreat I attended last weekend. While I don't agree with all the Law of Attraction stuff out there, I think some of it is valid. I believe in a mix of articulating your vision for your life, calling it out (in the form of writing or vision boards or whatever works for you), and then taking action. The action piece is important.
Since leaving the retreat, I've been spending a half-hour every day clearing clutter in my studio/office space. I know a lot of artists are clutter collectors and I am definitely one of those people who has trouble throwing things away. But I also know that when I'm able to release clutter, I feel more clear and more open to bringing good things into my life.
I tend to get overwhelmed easily, so the idea of clearing all my clutter tends to just freeze me up and I do nothing, but doing it at a set time (I chose 11-11:30 a.m.) and for just a half hour (set a timer), really helps me out. It's along the same lines as SARK's micromovements, but having the exact time set up helps too. Accountability also helps me, so knowing that I was going to check in with my fellow retreat participants helped keep me on track too.
I love 12 Secrets' author, Gail McMeekin's explanation of abundance,
When we are in touch with true abundance it permeates the fabric of our lives. It includes passion, both romantic and creative; positive relationships with people, animals, and nature; life experiences you crave and enjoy; personal and professional challenges and growth; and individual moments to savor. Abundance invites us to live the life we desire instead of settling for less.
Yes! Part of inviting abundance also includes getting rid of "scarcity thinking," releasing things we no longer use, no longer fit, or no longer love (or maybe never loved, but held onto out of guilt!) Christine Kane has a great post about the reasons we cling to clutter and how to let go. I recently took Jennifer Hofmann's office spa day workshop and one of the things she talked about asking yourself, with each item in your space, "do you love this and does it support you?" This is such a beautiful, gentle way of making choices for the stuff in your space.
I also loved what Gail McMeekin had to say about Positive Priorities,
...a life of Positive Priorities - life choices that express who we are and what we want for ourselves - is in itself a creating act....own up to what it is that truly nourishes you.
Indeed. So, for me and my de-cluttering escapade, that has meant getting rid of the cheap-o plasticy shoes I bought at Tar-jay that feel awful on my feet. It also means, replacing the office chair that is literally falling apart (anyone have any recommendations for an awesome office chair?) It also means, surrounding myself with things that bring me delight, burning delicious smelling candles (I love the ones from Zena Moon!), and wearing clothes that fit, feel great, and that I love.
What are the positive priorities in your life? What makes you come alive? For me, daily creative expression is huge. Laughter is essential, as is movement (getting to the gym, doing yoga, dancing in my pajamas, etc...). Other priorities include time to myself, connection with people I love, learning, and time in nature. I'm also learning that my physical environment is something I want to make a priority and bit by bit, I'm making changes to reflect that.
::::
Hey, there's going to be a super fun celebration call with the 12 Secrets book club and I'm going to be on it with lots of inspiring women! You can sign up for that here.
Also, be sure to sign up for my free Intro to Virtual Art Picnics call right here!
Virtual Art Picnics – Free Intro Call, March 19th!
March 12th, 2009, Comments (5)
The first Virtual Art Picnic will be taking place this month and I'm so thrilled to share this experience with you! This workshop will help you ground yourself, get unstuck, and find the joy in your creativity.
A quick overview of art picnics: One of my favorite ways to get playful with my creativity is to have an art picnic. All you need is whatever materials you have at hand, a comfy spot (I like to spread out on the floor with a blanket and pillows), and some dedicated time to play. I like to begin by giving myself permission to make "bad" art and then I jump in by selecting whatever material I'm drawn to in that moment.
The class will meet for about a half hour to check in, do some grounding, and then go off and have our own creative fun for an hour. Then we'd come back and check in again for a half hour at the end. Doing it in this class format is a great way to plan for some pure creative fun in your life with a great support system in place.
The date of first teleclass is Thursday, March 26th, from 1 - 3 p.m. EST and it's only $25! I will describe the process more thoroughly in the coming week, but there will also be a Free Intro to Virtual Art Picnics call on Thursday, March 19th at 1 p.m. EST. (Use this time zone converter to find out what time that will be in your area.) The call will be approximately 40 minutes and we'll cover:
- What is an art picnic, anyway?
- What will the Virtual Art Picnic workshop will be like?
- How can you use art picnics to kick-start your creativity?
Simply fill out the form below and I will send you the call-in information when the call gets closer. I will be recording this call, but you will need to sign up in order to receive the recording.
*Update: This call has already happened, but you can sign up below if you'd like to receive information about future Virtual Art Picnics and free Intro calls.
The call is free, but long distance charges may apply. I look forward to speaking with you on the call!
Dreaming of Bears
March 11th, 2009, Comments (7)
The retreat was great. A wonderful combination of relaxing and inspiring. I got there the day before the retreat began to do a little unwinding and getting centered. I'm glad I did because all the travel exhausted me. I stayed the cutest little loft room (that I had to climb a sort of ladder to get into.) Fortunately I'm super short, so I could just stand up in it. It felt like I was tucked in a treehouse and I loved that.
I spotted Animal Speak on a bookshelf in the hall and took it up to the loft with me to look at. I'd just been talking about the book with my coach, so it was funny to see it there. And I'd been wanting to read over the part about spiders after I had that spider dream recently. I rested in bed, reading and journaling, and drifted off into a lovely nap.
I dreamed that the hubster showed up at the retreat and I had to tell him that it was an all-women retreat, so he couldn't go inside. We pitched a tent together outside the house and we were sitting in it, when I looked down the road and saw a huge bear coming down the road towards us. There was an old man under a tree near us. I turned to him and asked if we should be running into the house. But he said not to worry, that we didn't have any food, so the bear wouldn't bother us. Then a drunk man came out of the woods and started harrassing the bear. The bear was pushing him away, trying to ignore him, but the man kept coming after the bear and eventually punched the bear in the face. The bear then lost its temper and bit the man. It was a very vivid dream and I woke up remembering it fully.
Later that night, I turned to Animal Speak to read about what bears symbolize. I learned that the bear has ties to the subconscious and unconscious mind. It is associated with Diana, goddess of the moon. It teaches you to use your inner resources to find your answers within. It teaches you to make choices from a position of power. Bears are often associated with trees, an ancient symbol that is like an antenna connecting heaven and earth. Trees remind us bring what we awaken into the world and to make our marks with it.
The things I read about the bear, it's connection with trees and the moon, and the bits about what it has to teach, were so relevant to me. I did some writing about the dream, which I think I'll share later on. It's interesting how focusing on dreams this month for the Creative Every Day Challenge, has brought such powerful dreams! It just goes to show you that what you focus on expands.
The next day, I had an amazing massage in a cute little boathouse (above) with an incredibly talented, nurturing therapist. While my face was down and looking through the head-rest, I opened my eyes and laughed to myself because within the rug pattern below, the shapes looked like a bear standing in a river with a crescent moon and birds flying by. That's where the image I painted above came from. After the massage, I drew a little sketch of what I saw and knew that I wanted to paint the bear in this way. I painted it today in acrylic and ink on watercolor paper.
I have more to share on the weekend later, but in the meantime, some fun links to check out:
- Spark, art from writing: writing from art is now online sharing the paired up artists and writers and what they created in response to eachother's work. Mine is here!
- Rainn Wilson (Dwight on The Office) has a new website called SoulPancake that is all about creativity and spirituality. Very cool!
- Need a pat on the back? A boost? A job well done? Check out my pal Jim Doran's new website, Hey Good Job. Love it.
Dream Board
March 10th, 2009, Comments (19)
Hello, lovely, creative readers. I've just returned from a refreshing and inspiring retreat with Christine Kane. I'm still processing a bit and trying to re-ground myself after the shuffling process that happens when I travel, but I'm sure I'll share more about the retreat soon.
One of the things we did during the weekend was to create a Vision Board. I create Vision Boards every so often, so the process wasn't new to me, but each time I create one, I get a little more insight into what it is that I want in my life. And for all you visual people out there, this is a great way to see your visions brought to life. Christine has a great ebook on Vision Boards which you can get for free (see her sidebar for the info) by signing up for her newsletter.
It's funny that in this month of the dream theme for the Creative Every Day Challenge, I've already created 3 different Dream Boards (I call them dream or vision boards interchangeably.)
There are lots of different ways to approach the process of creating a Dream Board. I've created some with a particular theme, but usually I just tear through magazines, letting my intuition guide me to rip out images that are calling to me in the moment. When I've got a pile of images to work with, I lay them all out on a big piece of paper or posterboard, re-arrange the imagery til the board is filled with images that resonate strongly with me, and then glue them down.
Jennifer Lee, has a wonderfully creative and unique way of creating a vision board that I tried out recently. She calls it the Unfolding Your Life Vision Kit, which you can learn more about and order here. The kit comes with a visualization on cd, the materials needed to create a portable vision board, and an instruction manual. You can see the folded up version of the one I created above. And the open version in all it's origami-type-coolness is below. I love how you can pop this vision board in your purse and pull it out whenever you need a hit of inspiration.
Today is the Full Worm Moon and on each full moon, the lovely, Jamie hosts a dreamboard challenge. What a lovely process to renew your Vision Board with each full moon!
Have you created a Vision Board before? Many people who do them experience the imagery they include on their Vision Boards coming true with great speed. And even if that seems a bit woo-woo or farfetched to you, it's still a fun process to explore and get creative with.
Creative Every Day Challenge Check-In: March 9th – March 15st, 2009
March 9th, 2009, Comments (29)
This weekly post is a place for CED participants to share their creative activities.
Ways to share: Leave a comment on this post or use the "Mr. Linky" widget below to link to a post (or posts) about your creative activities during the days of 3/2/09 - 3/8/09.
The widget below is an optional method of sharing your creativity that makes it easier for others to check out what you're up to. You can use it to link to a blog post (or posts) during the week listed. Or if you have a bunch of posts and don't want to link to all of them, you can link to your main blog page once. Do it in a way that makes sense and is fun for you!
You can also take advantage of the great CED flickr group to post your images and see what others are up to.
Join in the Challenge: To find out more about the Creative Every Day Challenge check out the details here.
If you want to sign up to be a part of the challenge, leave a comment on this post or email me to let me know. When you contact me, please let me know how you'd like to be listed in the list of participants, which resides in the right sidebar (I can list you as your name or as a link to a blog if you have one. A blog is not required to participate!) Please email or comment to let me know you're participating before you start posting links in the comments or "Mr. Linky" widget.
Theme: The totally optional theme for March is dreams. I'll be posting about the theme throughout the month. You can find out more about how you can use the theme here.
Happy Creating!!
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. ~Virginia Woolf
Retreat to the Castle!
March 5th, 2009, Comments (10)
Emma in her castle
Hello, you creative geniuses!
I'm going to be out of town on a short retreat this weekend and I will not be able to check my email or post here as frequently as usual. Feel free to scroll through my archives for fun ways to play with your creativity, visit the Creative Every Day Challenge participants (listed in the sidebar) for loads of inspiration, and check out the interview with author, Robert Moss I posted this week!
Hope you enjoy this pic of my sweet, Emma, who every so often I find curled up within this cat castle. I totally wish I had one in my size! In lieu of my own castle, I'm making my own mini getaway to retreat and refresh (something I recommend to all creative souls!) I hope your weekend is creatively delicious!
Interview with Robert Moss
March 3rd, 2009, Comments (21)
When I imagined doing the theme of "dreams" for the Creative Every Day Challenge, author, Robert Moss immediately came to mind. I'm so thrilled to be able to share this interview about dreaming and creativity with you!
My interest in dream imagery stems from the fact that my dreaming is quite vivid and I often get a lot of ideas for art there, but the typical dream interpretation books never made much sense to me. Robert Moss's book, Conscious Dreaming was recommended to me by CED participant, Kelly, who found me through a bit of synchronicity and my post about a lynx dream. I deeply resonated with Moss's discussion of dreams and finding the meaning in your own symbology.
Since deciding to contact Moss, his work has been turning up everywhere! An article by Moss was in a free magazine I just happened to pick up at the beginning of the month and then this week an acquaintance emailed me a link to a podcast interview with Moss that she thought I would enjoy. Synchronicities are an important topic in Moss's work and I love his discussions about them. I hope you enjoy this interview with Moss. Be sure to check out his website, his online dreaming courses, and his latest book, The Secret History of Dreaming.
LPK: Have you always been a vivid dreamer?
RM: In my early boyhood in my native Australia, my dreams got me through crises of illness and I had indelible dream visions of traveling to worlds beyond ordinary reality. I learned from Aboriginal friends that our personal dreams can be portals into the Dreamtime, the source of ancestral wisdom, creativity and healing. I did well in exams at school, in part because I used to dream exam questions ahead of time. I started keeping a dream journal in my teens and often turned my dreams into poems, drawings and paintings.
LPK: How does dreaming impact your creativity?
RM: My seven nonfiction books on dreaming and imagination have flowed almost seemlessly from my dreams. My dreams also give me scenes, plot ideas, characters and dialogue for my novels and sometimes the whole of a short story. Sometimes I wake (as Charles Dickens told a doctor he used to wake) with the sense of wave upon wave of words moving through me, and I write with these rhythms rather than from specific dream content. Even more than from sleep dreams, I find my creativity is released in in-between states of reverie, daydream and hypnagogia (between sleep and waking, or vice versa). These liminal states, as I suggest in The Secret History of Dreaming, have been the "solution state" in which creative breakthroughs have been made in many field - in science and invention as well as in literature and the arts.
LPK: Do you think there's a certain amount of playfulness involved in interpreting your dreams and experiences with synchronicity?
RM: At one of my first public lectures on these themes, a very earnest fellow asked, "Bottom line it for me - what is all this about?" I said, very distictly, "Remember to PLAY." And he wrote it down. I'm not sure he really got the point. We do our best work in a spirit of play, and my work as a teacher and writer is essentially to encourage people to play better games.
To harvest messages from dreams and coincidence, you need to develop a talent for resemblances - for noticing what looks like or sounds like something else. If you have an ear for puns, you'll pick up messages in a dream that others may miss. If you have a playful sense that the universe is alive, and that unseen forces may be at play around you and with you - giving you a secret handshake, or mussing your hair, or sometimes pushing you back - then you'll come alive to the great art of navigating by synchronicity.
LPK: I know people who say they do not dream or at least they don't remember their dreams. What suggestions do you have for people wanting to tap into their dreams?
RM: The new science of dreaming confirms that everyone dreams every night, in four to six cycles of REM sleep (when the eyes are moving under the lids) and in other sleep phases too. Anyone who says "I don't dream" is just saying "I don't remember".
If you want to break a dream drought, here's how to begin:
- Before you go to bed, write down an intention for the night. You might ask for guidance on something or simply say, “I want to have fun in my dreams and remember.” Make sure your intention has some juice. Don’t make dream recall one more chore to fit in with all the others.
- Having set your intention, make sure you have the means to honor it. Keep pen and paper (or a tape recorder) next to your bed so you are ready to record something when you wake up.
- Record something whenever you wake up, even if it’s at 3 a.m. Sometimes the dreams we most need to hear come visiting at rather anti-social hours, from the viewpoint of the little everyday mind.
- If you don’t remember a dream when you first wake up, laze in bed for a few minutes and see if something comes back. Wiggle around in the bed. Sometimes returning to the body posture we were in earlier in the night helps to bring back what we were dreaming when our bodies were arranged that way.
-If you still don’t have a dream, write something down anyway: whatever is in your awareness, including feelings and physical sensations. You are catching the residue of a dream even if the dream itself is gone. And as you do this, you are saying to the source of your dreams, “I’m listening. Talk to me.”
LPK: I love how you use synchronicity as guidance in your life. For those wanting to experience more of this kind of guidance, what would you recommend?
RM: You'll find lots of coincidence games, and Moss's Laws for Navigating by Synchronicity, in my book The Three "Only" Things. I'll just mention just one everyday game for now. Think about an issue in your life on which you need guidance. Get this clear and simple ("I would like guidance on......") and write it down. Then as you go about your day, be open to the idea that the first unusual or striking that enters your field of perception is a direct answer to you from the world. It may be the vanity plate on the car in front of you, or a snatch of conversation, or a deer on the road.
LPK: I dream paintings sometimes, but I often have trouble remembering them fully when I wake up. Do you have any tools for remembering dream images?
RM: I find that often dreams come back later in the day, especially under the shower or when an incident in waking life starts to call up a forgotten dream incident.
Remember you don't need to go to sleep in order to dream. You can enter dreaming from a quiet place of meditation, from the twilight zone between sleep and waking, or through shamanic drumming. You may want to check out my drumming CD, Wings for the Journey. You can take a favorite picture and use it as a personal dreamgate. Imagine yourself stepping behind that line of trees in the landscape painting, for example, and having an adventure on the other side. Or take a favorite piece of music and let yourself flow with it into a series of dreamlike scenes.
LPK: What are some of your favorite dream resources?
RM: The most important book on dreams you'll ever read is your own dream journal. I offer workshops and classes in dreaming and navigating by coincidence all over the map, and my events calendar is at my website www.mossdreams.com. I also have a lively blog, www.mossdreams.blogspot.com. I have published seven nonfiction books on Active Dreaming - my original approach to dream exploration and healing - starting with Conscious Dreaming and including, most recently, The Secret History of Dreaming, which describes how dreaming has been the secret engine in great lives and great events across all of human history. I have also produced a video workshop, The Way of the Dreamer (Psyche Productions) and an audio series Dream Gates: A Journey into Active Dreaming (Sounds True).
:::
Thank you, Robert for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share your dream wisdom with us! I hope that this interview has inspired you to get playful with your own dream imagery. Sweet dreams!
Art From Your Dreams
March 2nd, 2009, Comments (32)
dream spider, acrylic and ink on watercolor paper, 16"x12"
I didn't sleep well at all on Saturday night, I dreamed of spooky spiders attacking me (one of which I squished with my bare hand and it's juice/blood/venom squirted all over the people around me), I dreamed I was being chased through doorway after doorway, up and downstairs, and finally out to a yard where a father and two kids were shooting rifles in their yard. I also dreamed about being a photographer at a wedding and I was having all sorts of trouble with the lenses.
Some of the dream images came from things I'd seen or read the day before. There were two spiders in our bathroom that evening (one surprised me and I smooshed it), I knew a friend was shooting a wedding on Saturday, and another friend uses a doorway in her newsletter. But the way theses images all mix together into such vivid imagery and bizarre stories is so wild!
Sunday I decided to make some art around the dreams I'd had. I wanted to let it come intuitively, so I started with red paint on watercolor paper, letting it flow, and then the green organic shapes came, and then I used the shapes I saw in the red paint as the basis for the scene. First, I painted the hand on the spider, then the figure and lastly the houses in the background. It feels a bit dream-like, a little spooky, especially if you take all the red to be blood or venom. But I think most of my art feels a bit dream-like, a bit surreal.
I had an art teacher in a critique once who discouraged me from painting from dream imagery and oh, did I cry. She felt that focusing on still life painting would serve me better. And I understood that she wanted me to focus on my skills, but painting from my heart was so important, so to have her put that side of me down was so painful to hear.
It took me a long time to get over it. I even abandoned this one dream-based painting at the school. I let someone paint over it as I didn't want to ever see it again. It took me years to get back to the place where I felt good about creating from my heart again. I suppose I always knew that I would get back to that place because something in me just ached to express myself in that way.
I wasn't intending to talk about this when I sat down to write, but it's important to say:
Create what's in your heart. Don't let the people who don't "get it" (and not every one will get it) get you down. There is only one of you in all time. Express what is uniquely you.
And the beautiful thing is, when you express what is uniquely you, you encourage others to do the same. And how beautiful is the world when we all share what is in our hearts?
Back to the dream theme for a moment...Dreams are a wonderful way of accessing what is aching to be expressed in us. Sometimes our dreams have an odd way of sharing this information with us, but it's a fascinating place to dip our toe in and explore. Try this with a recent dream. Journal about it, draw a sketch or doodle a character from it. Or use a dream as the basis for a new creation, no matter how strange it may seem to bring it to life. Let your art or writing bring your dreams to life and see what they might have to share with you.
