"Art Making as a Spiritual Practice" -- The Journey Continues

It was very important to me, after last month's rather rocky start, that we take time to become very grounded in the process of artmaking as a spiritual practice. During the intervening month, I spent a great deal of time meditating on how we got to where we are, and where we might want to go. I say "might", because it really is a group decision. I came to class last night ready to rebegin and recommit to this journey we are on. In order to do this, we needed to start at the very beginning, defining for ourselves (both individually and as a group) what these ideas of "artmaking" and "spiritual practice" meant and how do they or could they dovetail. From my own personal experience, I have learned that sometimes the connections are made and the way is found after you take the time to parse out the thought process. With that in mind, I decided to slow the process down and really take time to develop these concepts as a group, as a way to create a foundation of understanding and framework for our time together this month and as an overall basis for the next eight months.

Before doing any art, I invited the participants to take some individual time and work in their journals exploring the following questions:

What is art-making?
How do you experience and embody your own spiritual practice?

After some time for self-reflection, we discussed these ideas together as a group.

ART-MAKING is:

*making art *putting marks down * being creative * making concepts tangible * making beauty * reaching out to capture the world around you and bringing it in * reaching inward to let the spiritual stuff out * a goopy messy process

We experience our SPIRITUAL PRACTICE in the following ways:

quiet * gardening * praying, meditating, chanting, singing * art making * walking in nature * fellowship, community * hundreds of squirrels simultaneously bowing to you in the city * deep breathing * connection * drinking warm tea, cocoa * swimming, sailing, dancing, yoga, tai chi *
ritual * sacred

Having created these lists together, we then explored how we could merge the two lists so that making art could be approached with the same sacred ritual and conscious intention as our many and varied spiritual practices. Here's what we came up with:

ARTMAKING AS A SPRITUAL PRACTICE

Crossing the void (or maybe falling into it) we fearlessly create,
while doing/being in community.
Breathing deeply,
we come face to face with our struggles, anxiety, frustrations, fears.
Looking with perspective (old and new),
we allow for the probability of messiness.

In a spiritual practice, we learn to
place our emphasis, focus, intention
on PROCESS rather than product or outcome:

We let go of preconceived notions;
Experiment and Explore;
Free Up; Free Play; Have Fun.
GO FOR IT!

Stop, Look, and Listen
for those ah-ha moments.
TRUST THE PROCESS!

I recorded everything on large sheets and hung them around our work space.This was very helpful as we had a visual reminder of our collective ideas, and from all these notions and a few more questions* we created our group intention (see right).

*What do you want to get out of our time together over the next eight months?

What do you want to be present in our space that will support us on our journey?




Finally, we were at a place where we could begin making art together. Everyone was given several 3"x3" cards on which to begin creating their own personal dictionary of symbols. I had a notebook chock-full of all kinds of symbols that have been used by different cultures, traditions, societies throughout the ages. These were just to be used as inspiration to jog the creative process along. And it worked.

Participants began creating their own symbolism using a variety of media including drawing, stencils, and collage. At the end of the evening, everyone shared their cards and something of their experience. I gave everyone a lovely satin bag to keep their cards in. Perhaps in the future we will make reliquaries to hold our decks!

We were all so involved in the process that I forgot to take pictures. I take that as a good sign! Maybe next time I'll remember to pull out the camera so you can see what we're up to.

If our process is of interest to you and you want to join our merry bunch, be sure to give me a holler. I'd love to hear from you, and there's always room at the table for another creative journeyer.