Art & Soul

Art & Soul was an amazing experience!  This is my third time attending, and hands down, it was the best time!  My original plans got shaken-up about a week prior to the event, but it all ended up for the best as I ended up having unhurried time to get together with individual friends for dinner (or lunch) and conversation.  Much laughing and sharing ensued.  It was all very good!

I took three classes over four days and came home with a renewed spirit, clarity about many things, new friends, and a completely new appreciation for tape.  Yes, tape.  Scotch, masking, packing, strapping, electrical, decorative, transparent, tape.  They even make cool tapes with pictures on them, including the Jolly Roger. Jill kindly shared her pirate tape with me.  Tape is my newest obsession.

My favorite and most deeply meaningful class was the visual journaling class with Juliana Coles.  It was such a great experience to spend two days with 12 other women doing very personal journaling work.  The purpose of the class is not to make pretty art.  It is about letting go: of expectations, control, judgment.  It is about personal expression and not keeping a visual journal to impress anyone else.  It is about trusting your intuition to guide you.  In this way, I used colors I never would have chosen, experimented with familiar tools and found new and surprising ways to use them.  I had a couple of epiphanies that rocked my world like little earthquakes. 

I left her class yesterday afternoon, changed. 

My description does not do justice to the experience.  At some point I might share some of the pages I did, but as they are more process driven and not results driven, I'm not sure their "beauty" would make sense to anyone but me.  What's funny is, the resultant pages are not meant to look good, but I'm always very happy with the work I create through this process. 

In any case, if Art & Soul wasn't wonderful enough, the bigger news (saved the best for last!) is that Mr. P. arrived home two weeks early.  He arrived home at midnight Sunday/Monday!  It is so good to have him home for awhile!

If you're reading this at my blog site, you'll notice some changes which I'm still tweaking and will explain in another post.

Cheers!

(Journal page made in Traci Bunker's "Confessions of a Daily Journaler" class).

 

Comments

[Andrea Mitchell]

Yay, Mr P is home!

I like the new black background - it makes your artwork stand out more on the page :)

[kiri]

lots of exciting things happening in this post.
i like the colours of this journal page fresh and bright.

[Alison Whittington]

Art & Soul sounds amazing... I'd love to go someday.

Enjoy your time with Mr. P!

[Sandra L.]

Were you there? I was too! I didn't see you though. I would have loved to meet up with you, I love your work so much.

If you visit my blog you can read my entries about the classes I took too. I had Traci Bunkers but on Monday, for The Prepared Journal or Artists' Book.

If you're going next year, maybe we can plan to have a coffee or something.

And that's wonderful about Mr. P!!!