One of the major goals of an effective holistic curriculum is to encourage development of a healthy identity. Art is a wonderful way to support self-discovery and personal awareness.
Over the past few weeks we have been looking at and imitating the style of painting of various artist such as Klee, Miro, Pollok and Rothko. When one of the student's was painting like Rothko, she kept repeating, "This is not my style. No, it is definitely not my style." I asked her what her style was? She said, "I don't know, but this is definitely not it." I decided to spend this week having them working on discovering their own style. They started by making 3 to 5 drawings using markers, watercolor or crayons. For me, it was interesting to notice not just what the painting and drawings looked like, but how the kids engaged in the process. Some attacked the task with energy, others were more trepidatious. Some finished five paintings in no time, others finished one during the entire Art Garage. At the end of the day, they looked at each other's drawings and tried to determine who painted what. It was a perfect way for them to connect to their own style and to notice how each person's style reflects who they are. I am excited to continue on this theme. It is a wonderful way to help the student understand what makes him or her unique. Especially for those who tend to rush into a task, it is important to help them to know when to put down the paintbrush. I have two who are wonderfully prolific, but at the end of the day their work often gets destroyed when they add giant handprints, or half a tube of purple paint. For these, it is not about getting the creative juices flowing, it is about helping them regulate the flow. Those who are more inhibited require permission to be free, to enjoy the process, and not worry about being judged. This is a great way to learn more about themselves and how they engage in the world. I feel more and more confident that engaging with the arts is a pathway to self-discovery.
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There are those special moments in life when we feel more deeply its essence. In these times, our senses are heightened. Time expands, our perception opens, and we experience a greater sense of beauty. We feel a sense of oneness with all, it is as if things make sense. It is like seeing the world from the top of a mountain. Everything is in its rightful place. These are what Maslow called Peak Experiences. What is interesting is that psychologists now talk not only about Peak Experiences, but also Nadir Experiences. These are extremely dark moments in a person's life. The loss of a loved one, physical catastrophe, or any other painful life event can throw us into a space where our psyche gives up living out of the normal conditioned self (Robot Mind), and surrenders into a more pure state of cognition. Most people don't want to experience the Nadir. But artists seem to spend much of their lives exploring this state of consciousness. Art helps us experience it and move through it. It helps us use the experience to transform and let go of what is no longer serving us. It is most certainly a spiritual experience that can cause us to question the nature of everything. This week at The Art Garage we painted pictures in the style of Mark Rothko. As I was looking a bit into his biography, I was surprised to find out that he was an alcoholic and committed suicide at the age of 66. How painfully sad and disturbing. What an amazing talent, and yet he was tormented. Why is it that artists are so often tormented souls. When I was growing up my parents had a book of photos by Diane Arbus. I loved looking at these interesting and sometimes disturbing images of humanity. It wasn't until I was in my forties that I learned that Diane Arbus had committed suicide. I really felt that I wish I had known that when I was young. It might have helped me feel less alien and alone in my own struggle with finding peace and happiness. It wasn't until my senior year of high school, when I read the biography of Franz Kafka, that I suddenly had a realization of how I could learn to navigate life. Kafka was an unhappy and disillusioned man. But his writing so moved me; it is powerful and beautiful. I felt, through seeing his struggle, that ultimately happiness wasn't everything, but rather if I were to find something beautiful to leave in the world, that would make my life worthwhile. It is ironic that through changing my focus from myself to others, I was able to find purpose in my life and that lead me to happiness. Today I do feel a great sense of joy and a deep sense of purpose. But that doesn't mean I am always happy. Negative emotions are natural and healthy. Ultimately, we need not avoid the dark spaces. We don't have to run and hide from our sadness or fears. We can experience them with a sense of awe and conscious awareness, using those moments to understand deeply our own needs and the needs of others around us. We can use those moments as jumping off points to create something better for ourselves and the world around us. Art is a beautiful and soulful experience. Still we need help when we move into those spaces in the soul that are dark and painful. We need a basic sense of hope, feelings of unconditional love from others, and the awareness of purpose. My new date for purchasing the Brick House Sober Living is to be 10/10. The chance to bring more hope into the world can't be passed up! Last night, I attended an online lecture and meditation hosted by Dr. Gene Ang, PhD. The topic was Deconstructing the Self. In it there is the recognition of the multi-natured aspect of the Self. At the lowest level is the ego identity. At the highest level is the Higher Self, also referred to a Divine Self, Truth Body, I AM presence. In between these two are multiple aspects of a person’s being that contribute to the ego identity. One such aspect is what is referred to as the Causal body. Here we find aspects of a person’s life purpose. As I was on the call last night, during the final meditation, I spoke with the owner of the two community houses. He accepted my offer. I am so excited and scared at the same time. What am I doing? Am I crazy? He has a lot of stuff in his house, and so he is going to take time to clear these things out before we make the final sale, but things are definitely coming to fruition! Things are moving from the idea realm into the physical realm. It is amazing to see this vision taking form before my eyes. In the lecture, Gene talked about how our personality will cling to certain aspects of life and that will cause us suffering. He noted that it need not be just negative things, but clinging to positive things as well. Clinging to a job, or a material object, or even a plan, can cause someone to close the door to what is actually happening, and limit what is possible. I started to get a bit frustrated when Gene said that anytime you felt the "contraction" just RELAX, let go. For me this ego contraction most often takes the form of fear but also attachment to the outcome (including outcomes that already happened and did or did not go well). Even as he was talking it seemed like that couldn't be right. I have so much desire to see the vision of a positive, healthy community come true. I feel like it is my life's purpose. How can I just relax and let go? Wouldn't that be giving up? What I came to understand is that I can do my life's work without the ego attachment when I show up and hold the vision of a positive healthy, healing experience for all those who attend. When I do this in full presence of my highest self I can respond to the events around me with a kind of grace and perfect timing to bring about the best possible experience of learning and connection. Kindof like the experience of Flow, this takes place in a state of heightened cognition. This type of responsiveness can't be done through execution of my little plan. Even the best plan would fail to understand the complexity of any given situation that arises moment to moment. I have spoken to the idea before that I am not in charge of what is happening at the Art Garage. I don’t get to decide who shows up. I don’t get to decide how they will respond to my suggestions. I don’t have the power to control anyone. The Art Garage has a life of its own, and I am the one nurturing the direction through my vision of what I am intending to share with the world. That is a hard thing for most people, especially those in education who think, “you need to control your class.” We do not need to control, we need to trust our higher vision. And of course have very good boundaries! This year we have been actually "studying" artists. We started with Klee and Kandinsky since I basically love these abstract colorful geometric works of art. I printed a bunch of cards with different artists works, and had them rate their favorites. Klee came up pretty high on the list. For some reason Miro was much further down, and Andy Warhol didn't make the cut. I realized I forgot Jackson Pollock! Everyone loves Pollock, I think because they get the feeling, "Hey, I could do that!" So I got the supplies, pulled out all the old house paint and showed a video of Pollock at work. It is quite beautiful to see the act of creating. The kids loved it too. Yesterday before the Art Garage, the kids met their teachers and got their school schedules. Although disappointed about not going back to the classroom, they were very excited to get started learning again. They told me what classes they had, Math, ELA, Science, Social Studies...I asked if they had art, and it seems that art doesn't make the cut in virtual school. I started to think about why we teach what we do, and why I think art is one of the best subjects for all students to learn. My ideal would actually be to have a fully arts-integrated curriculum, like Waldorf, for example. In this way you teach math, science, ELA and social studies using art. This makes the learning more engaging and allows non-traditional learners to connect to the material in ways beyond just words on paper. But art as a subject, what value could that possibly hold? Plenty! Art shows us about the value of a single individual in expressing him or herself, but also shines a light on the society in which the artist lives. Doing art teaches us about material science as we observe how the paint interacts, or the plaster hardens. And of course the greatest gift of art is the gift of self-expression. Districts are paying tens of thousands of dollars for SEL curriculum, when what we could be doing is providing a rich arts-based curriculum focused on self-expression. And then, of course, what about the true artists in the classroom? I do believe these students have so much to contribute, and yet they are often the most misunderstood. Art brings joy into the classroom and keeps students happy and engaged. Learning cannot be forced, it has to happen from a person's inner desire. Because art is so satisfying, it activates that intrinsic motivation, and that translates to happy, engaged learners in the classroom. So don't pooh-pooh the value of art. Instead, start creating with your kids! I am so grateful for all that I have and I want nothing more than to share this joyful life with as many people as who will participate. I wasn't always as happy as I am today. I had many years of struggling to figure out life, and it included a lot of drinking. Today I have been in recovery for many years and I am so grateful for a life of contented sobriety and spirituality.
The Brick House is intended to be a recovery house. What is it that gives someone the strength to do the work it takes to stay sober. I know it takes a lot of support, and I was lucky enough to have that support. If it were not for my step-mom Sue, I would be dead. I was in a meeting this morning, and I had the opportunity to listen to a woman who has been struggling with this for years, and has recently become homeless, and another woman who is about to get 6 months sober tomorrow. "I was hurting myself as much as I was hurting anyone else." and.."Drinking was our solution, not our problem." Yesterday when I on the phone with the seller of the houses I leaned down and picked a 7 leaf clover. I am not kidding. Then he rejected my offer and the skys opened up and it started to rain. It was like the heavens were crying. We need this goodness in the world. A colleague and I are working on a curriculum designed to guide teachers and parents through the process of using project and problem based learning. The protocol is based on our own experiences, and a bucketful of techniques used everywhere from design, to leadership circles. Today I will meet with the owner of what I hope will become two new Community Houses. I am so excited, I could hardly sleep. Thinking about this project is both exhilarating and terrifying. I can see the amazing potential to bring hope, joy and light into the neighborhood. I have already experienced a glimpse of this. But I can also imagine the project going to hell in a handbasket. Fear is such a trap. I have decided to use our protocol based on a process oriented look at solving wicked problems. Wicked problems are those that are complex, entrenched and will not respond to a quick fix. They are systemic, generational and societal issues. No matter how much money we throw at these problems, they never seem to get better. But there are those pockets of success, and these are the places that give us hope. The first step in the process we are working on is to envision the problem space. That was fun. So basically this is a first step at understanding the needs-and potential solutions. What I have are three houses, but four clearly deliniated spaces. The entreprenureal side of this is strongest in the Shop/garage space which I am calling Sue's Shop Co-Op (after my step-mom), and what I am calling Judy's House of Beauty (after my mom). I envision this space as meeting some very important needs. I see it as providing space for those who already have skills to do their good work, and also a space where youth can learn these skills. I see it as an educational space for learning business skills as well. I see it as a space where events can be hosted that focus on these skills, both training and business. I like the idea also of having home-ec type acivities. Healthy cooking and the like. I like the idea of having a garden in this space. There is a place for it. I like the idea of teaching about edible "weeds" horticulture etc. When you are really strapped for food, this can be invaluable. You can't believe the amount of edible plants are growing in my back yard, and in all the non-treated yards...For those seeking the perfect lawn, all I have to say is "Stop poisioning your food and start cooking it!"
Sue's Shop Co-Op is probably the first area I expect to see blossom. I have so many men on my block already engaging in auto repair, specialty vehicles, and the like. They have already expressed interest. It is just a matter of clearing the space and giving the green light. Sue always drove beautiful, well-cared for cars. She always made sure I had a vehicle, and I am driving her car to this day. I am very grateful to her for this. I know she would like this idea of a Shop Co-op. I like the slogan Arrive In Style. The other half of the story is creative learning, self-discovery and personal development. These will be fulfilled by the Brick House and the Indigo House. I am getting tired of typing so I will have to write more about these tomorrow. My sister texted me this morning that she was going to dedicate August 16th as a day of service to the community in honor of my mom's birthday. That is so perfect and the timing blew me away. Yesterday I went to see my mom and was going to bring her down to Peoria to celebrate her 85th birthday. When I got there she wasn't feeling up to the trip. It wasn't so much the travel, but the fact that she would have to be quarantined in her room for 2 weeks when she returned home.
It was also hot. We had a nice day together in Chicago, and then I went home alone. I had planned to BBQ with her and the Art Garage community for her birthday and was going to cancel when I realized there was another reason to celebrate. I had received a message when I was at the beach with my mom, just about the time I took the picture you see below. I was bummed because they were not letting anyone on the sand, which seemed ridiculous. The water looked so beautiful and just out of reach. We took a picture and I looked at my phone to see a message from the owner of two houses down the block. I had looked into buying them some time earlier. My plan was to expand the Art Garage project into one of community houses-- shared spaces meant to support and enrich the lives of everyone in the community. He texted me that the houses were again available. So this morning, I spoke with my neighbor across the street about creating a community house. He works with teens, and was saying that he would love to participate. He even had ideas ready to share, and said he worked with two others who were interested in mentoring teenage boys. WOW! Later in the morning, I showed the space to another neighbor. There is a huge garage on the property suitable for a little autoshop. He is constantly working on cars, and so I explained to him the idea of using the space while also teaching those skills to youth in the community. He was so positive and excited. I was riding a wave of joy and excitement. Although my mom was sorely missed at the cook-out, it was an amazing day, and good food too. My mom may not have been there physically, but she was definitely there in spirit and I will most certainly keep this day of August 16th as a day of honoring her and giving back to the community from this day forward. What a powerful day! Thank you MOM! I LOVE YOU Working on this book has got me reading again. First I picked up Colin Wilson's "The Outsider". I had heard him share on Jeffrey Mishlove's program "Thinking Allowed" https://youtu.be/8WWeE1GnZjA He is well known as the founder of a new school of Existentialism. I am a scientist more than a philosopher, but I have always struggled with understanding life and have constantly sought answers wherever I could find them. What Wilson talks about is how we live a low-level existence. We live in the mind of habit and routine, and also fear and inner worry.
I love the section of the talk linked above where he describes catching his adrenaline. In the moment when he found himself going into a fearful state he could suddenly let it go and become rebalanced. With me it is more like chasing after the adrenaline in a slow moving truck, eventually catching up with it to find it has exhausted itself and left a wake of emotional and relationship damage. I find using art helps. His primary idea, though, is not about escaping fear as much as it is about living a fully alive life. He calls us onto a path of waking up from the slumber of routine and the incessant chatter of the monkey mind. He asks us to look at life through a new lens, that of present fully aware consciousness. He makes note that we can become the observer and director of our own lives whe we awaken to the senses and our own consciousness. I find it interesting that there is such a growing movement towards mindfulness today. You hear it everywhere, even in our public schools. And no wonder, as we have become less and less present. We are completely busy and crazy, driving ourselves harder to achieve, and never having a quiet moment as we obsess over social media and other incessant distractions. We have taken ourselves out of the present moment and live in a world of planning and memory and distraction from the here and now. When we are truly engaging in art, creative play, and free expression, we are not planning. These types of artistic activities can bring us back into the present and even beyond it. Through creative expression we can move into the states of heightened awareness. During creative expression it seems we can be catapulted beyond time and beyond self. It is like the state of Flow described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. We have often heard of the Existential Crisis--that is when we question everything and struggle with understanding the meaning of life, but isn't the real crisis when we don't question at all and live a robotic life? Does it really take courage to be creative? I am believing more and more that it does. As I continue to work on this book about creativity, I am writing about my own creative experiences. Much of what I experience in those creative spaces is far out there. For me it is not such a big deal, I have embraced my inner weird a long time ago. I have let go of notions that I am crazy. It took quite awhile to come to that place, where I could accept my own experiences as valid and true regardless of what the general public believed. In many ways, creativity it opening up to a new perspective on reality. To engage in this space of creative-possibility we are working with our Creative Self. Opening up to this space where anything is possible can challenge our convention mind. The part of us that needs to fit in and be validated. This I will call the Inner Critic. The skeptical Inner Critic is always there, shutting down the wild ideas of our Creative Self. The Creative Self is not bound by convention, it lives in the magical world of imagination. Even moreso, the Creative Self has access to our highest aspirations, all the ideas of what we think to be. The Creative Self will imagine the life of our dreams, and the Inner Critic will tell us all the reasons it is impossible and why we are stupid for even thinking of those things. We can compare the Inner Critic to the ego, and Creative Self to the soul. Think about the great works of art that move us at this deep and soulful level. Those are works that transcend our skeptical analytical mind and touch us deeply. The Creative Self has access to those soulful moments, and is capable of understanding them and moving them into a form. Sharing those soul creations can be terribly frightening. If people judge my soul, my inner self, it feels so much more painful than if they judge the outer self, the one that I put on to please the world. At the same time, this act of sharing strengthens my connection to my higher self. I become empowered by this act. This is what courage does. It empowers us. So yes, I do believe being creative takes courage, and indeed it builds courage at the same time. Being creative in the basement is one thing, but putting those creations out for the public to view and critique is another. There is nothing better than feeling so comfortable and confident in who you are than to be willing to share it. When I decided to write a book about creativity it all started with a giant mock-up. I journalled and drew and colored my way through the idea of being creative. The How of it, the Why of it, the Audience and the Inner Critic. Now I am putting it all into words, and I am becoming more and more worried about how my own thinking will be judged by others. It is interesting, because here I am writing about creativity, the importance of non-judgement, and even a section on the role of the audience and now I am struggling with the very problems of fear of judgement that I am encouraging others to step-over.
I have made the decision that I am not going to filter as I write. I say this in the very first section of the book, "Turn off the Filter". I need to let whatever it is my soul is longing to share, come through without judgement. Whether I ultimtely have the courage to publish, I will cross that hurdle when I come to it. My favorite definition of the word inspire was shared with me by a brilliant educator, mentor and guide to so many, Fleurette Sweeney. She founded Education Through Music now called SongWorks and the Living Language Institute Foundation, not to mention being a founding member of the SelfDesign Graduate Institute. She shared with me the spiritual nature of the word. I went looking for this definition, and found it in the entymology: inspiration (n.) c. 1300, "immediate influence of God or a god," especially that under which the holy books were written, from Old French inspiracion "inhaling, breathing in; inspiration" (13c.), from Late Latin inspirationem (nominative inspiratio), noun of action from past-participle stem of Latin inspirare "blow into, breathe upon," figuratively "inspire, excite, inflame," from in- "in" (from PIE root *en "in") + spirare "to breathe" (see spirit (n.)). , And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. [Genesis ii.7] The sense evolution seems to be from "breathe into" to "infuse animation or influence," thus "affect, rouse, guide or control," especially by divine influence. Inspire (v.) in Middle English also was used to mean "breath or put life or spirit into the human body; impart reason to a human soul." Literal sense "act of inhaling" attested in English from 1560s. Meaning "one who inspires others" is attested by 1867. Retrieved from: https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspiration I am convinced today that as we engage in creative pursuits we connect to our highest nature. In creative expression we become channels of something greater than ourselves. I don't believe this is necessarily anything reserved for an elite class of artists, but rather a natural capacity of being human. The ability to create is divinely human. It seems to me that we tend to shut down our natural creative inspired self, and replace it with a more stereotyped version of what we think we are supposed to be. When we are creative we are tapping into that original free self of childhood. As adults Maslow called it a type of "second naivete". Here is Maslow's description: “Another observation was that creativeness SA was in many respects like the creativeness of all happy and secure children. It was spontaneous, effortless, innocent, easy, a kind of freedom from stereotypes and clichés. And again it seemed to be made up largely of unmoved freedom of perception, and innocent unihinibted spontaneity and expressiveness. Almost any child can perceive more freely without a prior expectation about what ought to be there or what must be there, or what has always been there. And almost any child can compose a song or a poem or a dance or a painting or a play or a game on the spur of the moment, without planning or previous intent. "It was in this childlike sense that my subjects were creative. Or to avoid a misunderstanding, since my subjects were after all not children, they were all people in the 50s and 60s, let us say that they had either retained or regained at least two main aspects of childlikeness; namely, they were non-rubricizing or “open to experience” and they were easily spontaneous and expressive. These are certainly different in quality from what is found in children. If children are naïve, then my subjects had attained a “second naivete” as Santayana called it. Their innocence of perception and expressiveness was co-mingled with sophisticated minds." So what shuts it down in the majority of us? I would say it is fear of judgement. We become restricted and worried about how we should act. As Maslow points out, children can make up a game or song or dance in the moment, without hesitation. Why do adults shut down when asked to be creative? This signals to me that we have lost our connection to that source of infinite possibility. But all is not lost. We can reconnect. We can move into our own era of creative, inspired living. We can have a second naivete! Just give yourself permission! |
Abigail LarrisonEducator, Scientist and Art Maker. The purpose of all life is to spread joy. What brings more joy than making art? Archives
November 2023
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