There's Something Happening Here...

As I drive across town I imagine I am quite 'out of my body'. It's been less than 6 weeks since I gave birth and relinquished my baby to Catholic Charities Adoption. Then I came back to my parent's house and hear that a boyfriend had died alone in his apartment from a drug and alcohol overdose. After that shock I am informed that I will be living with strangers next door to my family home.

So having permission to borrow mother's car for this sunny Sunday afternoon gives me the freedom to begin to reconnect to the lives of friends. I'm going to visit a raucous group who are pursuing dreams as artists, musicians and poets. This group shares a big old dorm house on the campus of Case Western Reserve. Even being so oddly out of my body I feel happy that I will see them all, hear the music and have the chance to simply hang out.

An hour earlier the guy on the phone had told me that everyone was across the street in the park playing touch football. When I arrive there's no sign of them. Pulling into the driveway feels odd. There are no bikes leaning against the porch railing. There is no music floating out of the open windows into the small back yard.

This quick graphic done in Sumo shows the back of the house as I pull in.

Mutambo

A wonderful crisp morning at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens with a terrific group of Princess Anne High School IB-MYP art foundation students. I was one of 4 artist/art teachers asked to join Betsy D's classes to help guide them through the process of drawing the stone sculptures in six different destination gardens. Betsy always has great ways to help the students get the basics while also adding a twist to the assignment. She's provided a solid foundation from which the group will now prepare and produce some inventive and inspired works. More to come.

Live a Simple and Peaceful Life

Getting ready to head out of town for all manner of wonder-filled art related adventures is a very positive variety of stress. Here at home we like to remind ourselves that "ain't nothin bad happenin"... and yet at the same time it's useful to notice the many opportunities to become distracted from what has real meaning and value...dontcha think? Notice/release. Notice/release.

Related to this is an excellent little link that I wanted to share.. instant refreshment for all us creative types. :-o

Live a Simple and Peaceful Life - wikiHow

The Room of the Skill

Artist friend http://www.kristinreiberharris.com/ has been enthralled watching the DVD of The Power of the Myth with Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell.

The book lives in my studio...I often open it at random...like now...

Bill Moyers: What does it mean to have a sacred place?

Joseph Campbell: This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don't know who your friends are, you don't know what you owe anybody, you don't know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Do you have a sacred place? Do you go there?