A Hands-On Class

I had the chance this week to teach a custom art class for a group of Reiki practitioners and clients! Since Reiki healing uses the hands, I wanted to do a very grounding, "hands-on" class. The group was game, so we dove into Touch Drawing . . . here's a student rolling out the ink.


And here are students beginning to make drawings, using their hands to press the paper into the ink . . .




We spent about an hour just making drawings . . . wiggles and squiggles and natural loops . . .

All those shapes our hands just naturally want to make!

Then, we combined those images with collage . . . and of course, I forgot to get pictures of the finished "products," but it is just kind of a reminder that the process is really the most important thing . . .

And the organizer, Michelle, brought me these lovely flowers! Wow! I wonder if I should offer a discount to students who bring me flowers . . .

A few more touch drawings . . .

Sweet moon faces . . .


And a nest - drawn by moving the paper from one color of inked surface to another until all the color is applied . . .


And here a hand - I layered tissue paper, text, and pastel highlights to create this composition.

A Beautiful Place to Draw. Inward.

Retreat is important. It's not something our culture really values, but I believe it's critical for creative health to spend time in a quiet place and listen to the intuitive voice. It gets louder as we quiet down . . . this may not be true for everyone, but I have certainly found it to be true for me.

There's still lots more to share with you about the Touch Drawing workshop last week. I've had to dive right back into non-art-work this week, but I'm feeling strangely grounded after a week of intuitive artmaking . . . it was like getting a tune-up.


Whidbey Island is a beautiful place . . . quintessential northwest . . . clouds, ferns, ocean, ferry rides . . . and Chinook is an amazing place on Whidbey Island. We had amazing food to eat, a beautiful labyrinth to walk in, and an amazing room to work in.


The round, moon-like reflection in the glass is from a window on the other side of the room . . . this enchanted me all week . . .

And here's the farmhouse where I slept in a snug little room on the second floor . . . I really think we all need these places and times in our lives.

More actual artwork tomorrow.

I'm a Lucky Girl

I'm up on Whidbey Island, Washington (west of Seattle) at the Touch Drawing Gathering organized and facilitated by Deborah Koff-Chapin, the developer of Touch Drawing. It's an intuitive, process-oriented way of drawing that uses your hands as the primary mark-making tool. I use it with my students in the Artmaking as Playful Prayer classes, but I've really been wanting to take the practice a little deeper . . .


The event is held at the Chinook Center of the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, and we've been having amazing weather - sunny and 70 degrees, surrounded by forest . . . and the food has been amazing, too . . . "macaroon" is today's magic food, followed closely by "peanut sauce on kale and mushrooms." Wow.

But it's not all about my stomach - there's been drawing, too. I'm pretty lazy with my drawing (a reminder for those of you who don't remember Janaury's "Drawing a Day" madness), so this is a great stretch for me - doing 15 or 20 drawings at a sitting, focusing on the process, not worrying too much about how things look, but still getting better for all the practice.

This is the week!

Halloween. Dia de los Muertos. The true deep dive into fall. I don't have any big plans for Halloween - I may put on the Bumblebee Costume and go dancing. I may stay home and make some art. I may actually give candy to trick-or-treaters, as there may actually be some in my neighborhood this year. But no matter what the week holds in the way of celebrations, I gotta say that this time of year is invigorating in that go-deep-within, bake-and-snooze-in-front-of-the-fire, make-shadow-art, do-tarot-card-readings, layer-up-with-sweaters-and-scarves way.

Here is one of my seasonal touch drawings - Mr. Skelly - done a week ago, and feeling very timely . . .

Last week, I went to the opening of Mad/50's latest outdoor shadowbox installation - this one, a Dia de los Muertos shrine to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. For those of you unfamiliar with Mad/50, it's another one of those cool Portland things - two artists (one full time, one part time) who share a house and a life at the corner of SE Madison and 50th have created a yard full of art and neighborhood involvement. Four artists a year create shadowbox installations for the outdoor art display - and it looks like I'll get to do one next Spring! Right now, though, the featured artist is Malaina Guzman, and the piece is wonderful.







Here, you can see the shrine in context - complete with Marigolds - as well as a marvelous detail of some of the handmade figures. The shrine is up through December 10th, so definitely come by if you can! (PS - couldn't find a website for Mad/50 or the current artist - don't think they have one, but if they do, let me know what it is!)

The most exciting thing this week though is two openings on Friday, November 2nd - One: the Dia de los Muertos show at the Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, OR and the other: the Celebration of Souls show at Sixth Street Gallery in Vancouver, WA. Both shows feature some of my encaustic work and promise to be very fun shows for those of you interested in the traditions of the Day of the Dead . . . to find out more about both shows, check out my website here. There's even a few links to more info about Day of the Dead, if you're curious . . .

Masks and Myths

These are the masks the Artmaking as Playful Prayer participants made this week - we also did Touch Drawing (a type of intuitive mono-printing developed by Deborah Koff-Chapin) - which warmed people up. For me, the Touch Drawing always breaks things loose . . . and I think it made the mask-making much more organic. I'm really hoping to attend the in-depth Touch Drawing Workshop next summer . . . maybe tomorrow I'll post some of the ones I did this week.

With masks, we get to invent new identities and try on ancient archetypes. We get a chance to act out our own myths and stories. In some spiritual traditions, the masks worn to represent different deities in rituals and dances are considered too powerful for anyone save trained priests or shamans to wear. While poking around a friend's blog today, I found a link to the Endicott Studio, an on-line journal dedicated to mythic arts. Artwork that deeply engages us in the expression of myths. What a yummy thing for fall . . .