Celtic Festival Artwork 2010

This year's Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Celtic Roots Festival artwork has emerged from the Celtic creative soup. It is a rooster! It was fun to draw because of the energy of the tail and the comb around the head. As usual I work on representing the four elements as animals. This year the plant world also plays a role. He is standing on the sun--calling us to wake up and celebrate.

My Hands

I find it amusing that on the day that I commit to creativity everyday I burn my right hand. Thankfully not in a debilitating way but one of those 3 hour this hurts! kind of things. A reminder of the importance of my hands. A reminder to slow down. I am not good at going fast.

Creative Action

My blog has been dormant for a while. Life as a supply teacher at local high schools has been a focus of my time and energy lately. Exams are coming up and there is less need for my role in that community of learning. So yes, I have a reprieve. Time to gather my creative wits within the luxury of more time.

I confess my studio is in a state of neglect, the result of dashing in and out leaving boxes of things and not sorting them and putting them away. A mouse has taken up residence finding solace in the stillness of little human activity. I found a chewed bar of soap in the sink yesterday--yum!

With the help of my very generous mom we are sorting through things and reducing my collections of things to make room for new creative energy. One great prize of my neglect was finding a bucket of rotting plant fibre intended to be left so that the fibres would break down to and become more manageable in my blender. After a couple of years we opened the bucket and it seems blender ready! No smell either--bonus!

I know there is always time to create you just need to show up says creativity guru Julia Cameron. Book creative time just like you do a dentist's appointment, says Jodi Ohl in a recent Cloth, Paper, Scissors article. A creative appointment with yourself is a lot more fun. OK. In the back of my mind I am reminded of my physical and mental fatigue after a day in the classroom but what could be better than some creative play to sooth my creative spirits? Is this where I make a 365 day commitment to creative activity every day for at least one hour? WOW that might be fun.

OK--oh my Goddess here we go.

Huron County Youth Mural

I have been an artist mentor this summer for a local project called Engaging Huron's Youth in Arts and Culture. For the past two month's local artist Natalie Hussey and I have been meeting with youth in Goderich and Blyth. Each artist has painted a piece of the mural on 3'X4' of unstretched canvas offering their visual perspectives as youth in Huron County. The mural pieces have been linked in groupings and hung in the reception area in the Blyth Theatre. Our opening reception takes place on Thursday, August 6 from 7-8pm. The mural will hang at Blyth Theatre until September 19 when it closes for the season. The mural will then tour public buildings in the county until January.

What has impressed me the most is the committment and enthusiasm of these artists to the medium if paint of canvas. Painting is alive in Huron County!

Sketchbooks

Journals and sketchbooks have been a part of my life for many years. Lately it seems that words have overcome the images. Writing about dreams or doing Morning Pages as inspired by Julia Cameron's, The Artists Way have been an off and on ritual in my life. I began sketchbooks as a way to collect ideas for my body of work. My art comes from a fairly non literal place so I often write to develop a more conscious understanding of what I am creating. I love making discoveries in this way. Sometimes meaning emerges through poetic writing.

I have an artist friend who makes books. Both of my current books have been made by her. When on holiday recently I spent some focused time with a book that has a colourful textured cover and Fabriano pages that accept watercolour. At the outset this book is more about colour and image than written word. Creating each page becomes a form of meditation that is different than journalling. The messages are simpler as visual language tells a different kind of story.

Notebook Drawings

I was just going through my son's reading journal from school and discovered these drawings. It was fun to scan them from the journal and see them as unique moments of creation. It is really easy to overlook someone's doodles. Doodles are great! They are an expression of your unique visual language! They deserve a closer look.

Nest Making

Birds are great weavers of nests. Recently, some young people and I tried to figure out how the birds do it by constructing our own nests out of clay, sticks, wool, moss and a variety of fibres. We designed beautiful eggs with plasticene. New species of birds were hatched from vibrant imaginations. I am always amazed at what can emerge out of the magic of the creative process.