Workshop/Salon V: Memory, Dreams and Legacy

PLEASE WELCOME OUR HOSTESS FOR THIS WORKSHOP (APRIL 30-MAY 11), collage artist and author, Zelda Gatuskin.

Feel free to join in the discussion by leaving comments. We promise to respond and dialogue with you!




I'm walking along a street, lost, and it's getting dark. Someone's following me...
I go into a house, running. My legs are heavy.
At the top of the stair, I feel the monster behind me!
There's no way out but to jump. I think: This is like a bad dream!
And then I raise my hands and look at them. And I'm flying.
Up, up through all the dream levels, and out...
With the walls crumbling away at my touch.

I’m thinking about 3 things: Memory, Dreams, and Legacy.

I’ll start with Legacy, since that is a bit of shorthand on my part. Legacy, as I am using it, has to do with the work of perpetuating the work of someone else - either actually continuing it in some way or disseminating and memorializing it, or all of the above. A young artist has little patience for this. There is a time when we need to do what we have to do with blinders on. That was me, anyway.

It’s amazing I got through school at all, I was so averse to anyone telling me what to do or how to do it. All I wanted was to do my own thing my own way and think my own thoughts and find out who I was and what sort of artist I could be. “Legacy”? Gag me. That was oppressively stringent religious observance, a too-close-for-comfort extended family, and being haunted by history. Specifically: “If you do not adhere to a Jewish lifestyle and bear and raise Jewish children, all those who suffered persecution in the past suffered in vain.” So, what was I? Chopped liver? You’re saying God grants free will to everyone but Zelda?

Memory. Side by side with these memories of external pressures and internal turmoil are those of a very much loved and fairly well adjusted kid with a lot of role models to look to for alternative life paths and a degree of personal freedom that would be the envy of most teenagers today. I was allowed to think for myself and was rewarded for it, if I wasn’t too snotty. I was supported in my own interests. Which is just to say that the memories encompass as many of the facets of living as the living itself.

Memory is different than objective knowledge and may or may not coincide with fact. I got a chuckle out of Frank when I said at dinner one night, “I feel like the memories of everything I have ever experienced in my life are in here somewhere, and always will be.” But I really do - and that in the face of ridiculous lapses of recall, complete blackouts of certain times and events, and sometimes heated disagreement with my companion of 27 years over who said or did what, when. It’s just that when I remember, I am there, I am in it...

Look at my syntax. I first said the memories were in me, and then I said I am in the memories. Yes, it is more like the latter. I’m back inside that seven-year old trudging home from school and almost getting lost because I’m so busy counting cracks in the sidewalk I walk right around the corner and when I look up I don’t recognize what street I’m on!

Dreams. That is my standard nightmare - being lost. I am afraid of being lost. The phobia about driving sprang out of that, but I conquered it out of necessity when I left behind the MBTA in Boston for the sprawl of Albuquerque. Working with my dreams over many years, I can get out of the nightmare now. I’m lost, or heading in an unfamiliar direction, and can feel that anxiety creeping up on me. The more dire the circumstances, the more likely something will click: “Oh, this is just like that nightmare I’m always having.... Maybe it is the nightmare.... Hey, if I’m dreaming, I can.... Fly!” Or just make it not so - shake it off, get to a better place. I have worked through a lot of personal b.s. in my dreams. And occasionally in real life in real bad situations I can observe that it “feels like a nightmare” and, no I don’t raise my arms and fly away, but something clicks over in my brain and I can be more outside of myself and cope a little better.

Back to Legacy. They went through so much more danger and heartache than I expect to ever see. They arrived on strange shores and were greeted in a strange language. How about that for a nightmare? Could my dream of being lost be hereditary, or perhaps absorbed from the communal psyche? The dream becomes less frequent, the nightmarish quality lessens. But the fear is real. I am afraid still of being lost. And of losing. Of losing my loved ones. We have a legacy of that. (Don’t we all? It is the human condition.)

My art, my life, has a central theme/purpose, which is to conquer my fears so I can be free. Live my own life. Do my own art. Think my own thoughts. And these are the tools that help me: Dreams, Memories, and Legacy. The dream points to the hang-ups, and provides an experimental canvas for working things out. The memory anchors me to my own experience, keeps me of a piece. And the legacy places me in history - in the vastness of all of time, I am right here, the Zelda after the Zelda who left Russia in 1899. (I don’t know the Zelda before her, but I like to think that she did.) If she bequeathed me her fears, she bequeathed me her courage as well. Legacy interests me a great deal now, and far from being a distraction, or sidelining me from my own creative work, it takes me deeper, points the way, and empowers me.

Just one more note about Legacy: It need not be associated to family, it need not really be “ours” by inheritance. We find mentors; we find friends we admire; we find artistic movements or philosophical traditions that speak to us; and we are compelled to plunge in and work through something historically, in order to build on it and take our own projects or thinking to a new level. To flip the old saying: Honoring a legacy is taking one step backward to take two steps forward.

Three Creativity Enhancement Exercises:

Legacy: Write a letter to an ancestor or admired person of the past. Ask questions you wish they could answer for you, personal or philosophical. Tell them about yourself. Then answer the letter, as if you were that person. What you don’t know, make up. Or if you want, do a little research.

Memory: Find some old photos of yourself. Really look at them. Write down what you observe in the photo, as if you didn’t know the person. Then write down what you remember about yourself, at the time the picture was taken.

Dream. One technique for becoming lucid while dreaming (realizing that you are dreaming) and able to exert some influence on the dream (though it may only be to wake yourself up - but that’s good if you then remember the dream whereas you otherwise wouldn’t) is to look at your hands. This may take a lot of practice. But meanwhile, pay more attention to your hands while waking. Look at them more often. Notice what they are doing, how you are holding them. I have two ugly burns healing on the back of my right hand right now, and a cut on my left hand. This tells me I am flailing around without taking sufficient care - too rushed, too distracted, too something. How can I expect to be aware in my dreams when I am so oblivious while awake? We have to get lucid in “real life” first, to be able to wake up in our dreams.

Zelda Gatuskin, April 2006
Link to large version of collage with text: http://www.cinderzelda.com/dr01-flying.htm

ABOUT OUR HOSTESS:
Zelda Gatuskin explores self and society through her work as a collage artist and author. She is proprietor of Studio Z, multi-media arts, in Albuquerque, NM

Links to Zelda's websites:
Her own Legacy/Memory/Dream Project is at http://www.ancestralnotes.com/an-home.html
and her home site is http://www.cinderzelda.com


PLEASE NOTE: This workshop will run from April 30 through May 11th. Michelle will be away for a few days at mid-month, so we need to shorten our usual 2-week run a bit this time.

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS:
Workshop/Salon VI - May 15-May 27: The mid-May workshop will be hosted by Artist ShaRi Brooks and we understand a different sort of treat is in store!

A Wee Break - May 28: Michelle will post some food for thought and some creativity enhancement exercises on May 28th but not a workshop, since she will then be en route crossing the pond from Scotland to the USA and traveling around during the first half of June, thus not able to moderate or click in any comments during that time.

Workshop/Salon VII - June 18 - July 2: Workshop/Salon TBA.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GRAB THE TALKING STICK?
Anyone interested in hosting a workshop should email me at stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk. There are openings in July, August and September. Don't let technology or credentials intimidate you. All you need is an idea for us to toss around, related to creativity, and a two-week block of time in which you are available to check your emails and respond to comments here a minimum of once a day. I do all the "tech" stuff of uploading any images and text you wish to use to start your workshop. All I ask is that you send out a notice to your circle of friends and ask them to stop in and take part. My hope is to keep increasing our creative network that way.

RECOMMENDED READING:

From Crisis to Creativity: Taking Advantage of Adversity by Gail C. Feldman, Ph.D. (BookPartners 1999 gailfeldman.com) (Republished in 2000 by Time Warner in the UK as Taking Advantage of Adversity). Feldman’s book is one of those rare books relative to the grief process that is obviously written by one who has been there. In addition to her own experiences, Feldman brings to this book her career as a clinical psychologist (formerly a professor in the UNM Psychiatry Department), writer and a public speaker who has appeared across the country on such shows as Larry King Live.

Feldman’s premise is that grief is a catalyst for creativity and that it is through creativity that we can save ourselves. She uses contemporary personal accounts/case studies as well as historic and mythical figures to build her case, which is a powerful method, as it roots the ideas of adversity, grief and growth in the whole history of man/womankind.

Feldman advises that, in order to move into life from grief, we need to open up to our inner world. Her book provides tools to do so, including some very intriguing and inventive daily exercises to help transform the energy we focus on life crises into creative self-expression and transcendent living.

An account of a dream by one of her divorcing clients embodies what Feldman’s book is about. The dreamer is climbing a steep mountain and her backpack is getting heavier and heavier, so heavy she is afraid she won’t be able to finish her climb. Finally she turns her head to see why.

“I’m astounded to see that I had been growing huge, beautiful, white wings, and I simply let go and fly.”

(Reprinted from my book review column, February 2006, New Mexico Woman "Great Reads")

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
www.greenphoenixproductions.com

Workshop/Salon IV: Art & Fear - The Legend of the Apprentice Pillar

"When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, 'You mean they forget?'" --Howard Ikemoto



During a recent visit to Roslynn Chapel here in Scotland, because I wanted to see the hundred + Green Man icons I have heard are there, I found a fascinating story. The chapel was built in 1446 by William St. Clair, Prince of Orkney and is much beloved and interpreted by the Guilds, Templars, Rosicrucians, Masons, Christians and Pagans. It is considered to be "a book in stone".

The story is supposed to be true...or it is a legend...

At the altar area are massive, white, stone, carved pillars. One, carved by the master mason, is a linear work with intricately-carved vertical bands. The other is called the Apprentice Pillar, and is similar except the carved bands are in a spiral formation, and the base of the pillar is formed of eight dragons circling, eating each other or coming out of each other’s mouths.

While the Master’s Away...
The story is that after the master carved his first pillar, he left for Europe to get ideas and look at the work of other master stone carvers before carving the second pillar. While he was gone, his young apprentice had a dream one night, in which he envisioned the spiraling pillar and the dragons.

So, inspired (and, no doubt, probably figuring everyone would be as excited as he at the finished product!), he went ahead and made the pillar. Apparently it was not only a much more interesting pillar than the master’s had been, but was very well-executed for a mere apprentice, and he had finished it in record time.

Upon his return from his research trip, the master saw the pillar, became enraged and hit the apprentice over the head with a mallet and killed him.

In another area of Roslynn Chapel are carvings of the heads of the murdered apprentice with the scar of his mortal wound on his forehead, his grieving mother, and the murderous master apprentice.

Well, my imagination has had a Jungian and Joseph Cambell-esque field day with this story! I find a handful of concepts here...

Seeking Higher Authorities
Often we artists believe we need to go to a higher authority to get inspiration, ideas, to copy the masters. Recently I have myself experienced this one. I am writing a novel that, although it is not strictly a historical novel, is based and rooted in matters of historical fact. Before beginning to write, I have immersed myself in copious amounts of research -- the living room and my office are piled high with an obstacle course of books, Amazon.com is very happy with me, and my Google list of “favorites” could fill probably ten computer screens. Everytime I sat down to write, instead I would find myself checking this fact or that, mentally circling and circling my subject, feeling I had to get it right before I could start to write. Hours would go by and not a word written but much Important Information crammed into my brain. I had long since passed the point of doing my responsible research and had fallen into the realm of "using" my research to avoid my subject!

Then, one morning I awoke from a dream and came and sat down at the computer and began writing. What came out had nothing to do with all the research, it was just the thoughts of a human being walking along a Scottish sea wall circa 1050 A.D. It flowed and was exciting to me. All my trepidation about tackling the historical material and “getting it right” were suddenly gone! Twenty pages later my character had a life of her own and was taking me by the hand, introducing me to the archetypal center of my story, the guts that needed no historical basis to prove validity.

I had transferred from the “get your facts straight” mode into the dream vision mode. From seeking authority to allowing myself to receive. From being in control to letting come what would come.

Fear of Creativity
The second concept that comes to me from the Apprentice Pillar story is that we can take the two characters, master and apprentice, and see them as archetypal aspects of our creative selves.

There is, within each of us, the master artist who fears our own creativity and the power of art.

That fear is reflective of the world around us, it is the same aspect that is involved in censorship and repression of art in social structures. "Making art can feel dangerous and revealing," write David Bayles and Ted Orland in ART & FEAR. "Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be."

Then there is, within each of us, the apprentice who just wants to let the work flow through, who has dreams and follows them.

Too often we allow the inner master to squelch or repress the inner apprentice. The inner master is prideful and accomplished and knows how a thing is to be done. The inner apprentice is humble and in a learning mode, thus more open to letting the thing tell him/her how it is to be created.

The third concept or lesson of course has to do with power and ego and control, and is all too obvious...probably the moral of the story as first conceived, if it is a legend, and certainly still the moral of the story if it is a true story.

The irony is that, although the apprentice was murdered and didn’t personally live to see his work exhonorated and appreciated -- and was seemingly punished for following his dream -- it is his pillar that gets all the attention and is perceived as more beautiful, creative, powerful than that of the master. (It has even been rumoured that the Holy Grail is buried under it!) As with any martyr story, although the human was killed, the message of the human survives and all the more so, for the murder.

CREATIVE EXERCISES:

1. Close your eyes in a quiet place and envision, if you created your own chapel to honor your creativity, what elements would be in it. Imagine an icon in that chapel which would represent your inner master and another which would represent your inner apprentice. In your imagination, rewrite the story of the master and the apprentice, with a different ending.

2. Has there ever been a time in your life where an inner or outer master (authority) criticized or rejected or censored your apprentice self? Are you carrying, still, the ramifications of that event? Does it limit you in any way in your work? Sometimes if we can remember these moments and forgive them, we can set them aside each time they try to interfere.

3. Finish this sentence: "I am afraid to create ____________ because _____________."

RECOMMENDED READING:

Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Art Making by David Bayles & Ted Orland (The Image Continuum Press 1993) A small book with much to think about, and courage-inspiring.

Brett Curtis Weber: This is not a book but I want to point out an inspiring website that makes me grin...artist Brett Curtis Weber, please click on the link to him below (the link for BrokenArt Gallery). When you get to the first page, click on the picture at the left side of the screen and it will take you to a big page about him...there is a lot about him on the Internet...


UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
First I wish to thank Bradford Hansen-Smith for hosting Workshop III. It was great, throughout the course of a day, to check in and see the discussion as it unfolded, and to have the ideas moving around in my head, feeding my own creative process, even when I wasn’t in front of the computer. I hope it did the same for those of you out there who participated and those who just listened in. Be sure to check out his website at www.wholemovement.com, there is much to see!

April 30: GUEST HOSTESS ZELDA GATUSKIN will present Workshop/Salon V: MEMORY, DREAMS & LEGACY. Zelda explores self and society through her work as a collage artist and author. She is proprietor of Studio Z, multi-media arts, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (I’ve had a sneak preview of her presentation and have been giggling and rubbing my hands together in glee!)

DO WHAT YOU LOVE AND LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

Michelle Miller Allen
http://www.greenphoenixproductions.com

CREATIVE BUTT KICKS:

http://www.brokenartgallery.com/The%20Healing%20Spirit2.htm

http://tinyurl.com/zvqvz

"My paintings are about bringing unity to myself. They are about listening to instead of shouting at reality. They are also about triggering my unconscious thought processes toward healing--by paying attention to and making sense of the normally silent, and often distant, elements within myself." Artist Brett Curtis Weber

http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/carvings/carvings.htm

(First two photaes courtesty of (c) Dan Henniker; third photae by Michelle)

WORKSHOP/SALON III: PARABLE ABOUT THE SQUARE, TRIANGLE AND CIRCLE

The square when resting had a dream of triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, trapezoids, octagons, and circles. Upon awaking he was troubled finding this dream disturbing.

The triangle when resting had a dream of triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, rhomboids, octagons, and circles. Upon waking the triangle was also troubled finding this dream disturbing, but not as much as the square.

The circle when resting had a dream of triangles and squares, pentagons, hexagons, parallelograms, rhomboids, and all manner of polygons. Upon awaking the circle was delighted with his dream.

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Workshop Host & Presenter of Parable:
Bradford-Hansen-Smith (c) 2006
(www.wholemovement.com)

"I am here with parable in hand and curiosity about response since parables are not common forms of communication and everyone interprets them differently."

Dear Workshoppers, Bradford invites comments!

Bradford Hansen-Smith is a sculptor who explores the nature of Wholeness by folding circles; discovering a process that uniquely models total interconnection and unity. The images here are some of his new pieces. The surface designs have been developed on the computer and printed on regular 20 lb. printer paper, cut into circles, folded and assembled.

Bradford Hansen-Smith has given the last twenty-six years to exploring geometry and patterns of spatial organization. For sixteen years he has been folding circles and traveling the US and Europe giving presentations for schools, teachers and institutions, and teaching this approach in geometry and art, from primary grade up through college level.

“Only to the degree that we are willing to comprehensively approach the inclusive nature of pattern – that which is principle, and structural generation - will we understand that it becomes essential in how we live our lives. Pattern is not the reality we experience; it is the living and evolving truth that leads us forward towards the source of all things.”

“This is what science, art and religion are about; a process of the human mind trying to understand as much as possible about what we see, and to observe with greater clarity what we cannot see. These three basic components, this triangulation of human expression; the physical, the mental and the spiritual together provide understanding into the marvelous, mysterious and extraordinary things that happen everywhere, all the time, in both the seen and unseen space of this universe.”

(From Folding Circle Tetrahedra: Truth in the Geometry of Wholemovement by Bradford Hansen-Smith)



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Upcoming Workshops here at A Bear Named Hope:

Workshop IV, April 16: (TBA) Host: Michelle Miller Allen

Workshop V, April 30: (Subject TBA) Host: Zelda Gatuskin explores self and society through her work as a collage artist and author. She is propriertor of Studio Z, multi-media arts, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

WANT TO GO TO CANTERBURY?
Later this year one of our workshops will be hosted by Dr. Jill Kiefer. Meanwhile, she asks that I let you all know about an event coming up, CANTERBURY: AN ARTIST’S INSPIRATION - A HISTORIAN’S DELIGHT, July 12-18, 2006. www.warnborough.edu and www.port-of-arts.com Check these links for more information, and note there is a fast-approaching April deadline for deposit if you want to take this journey with her! I can also forward you her flyer with full schedule and sign-up details by email if you contact me at stirlingshadow@yahoo.co.uk.

This program will be an interdisciplinary event--with an emphasis on Fine Arts and Art History--Creativity being a large component.

Dr. Kiefer has been designing, coordinating and leading arts programs for over twenty years. She develops curricula and teaches Art History and Fine Arts in university and institutional environments, and has led numerous workshops, tours and presentations for adults, college students, youth groups and seniors—across the USA and in Europe. She is the Director of Warnborough University’s Cultural Art History and Fine Arts Programmes, and is a WU Mentor, published author, editor, artist and Founder and Director of Port-of-Arts, Ltd.

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RECOMMENDED READING:

The Urantia Book (Urantia Foundation): I asked Bradford Hansen-Smith if he had any books he’d like to recommend that have been inspiring to him in his work, and this is the one he named. I recall a copy being in Rick’s library, so I will need to look at it when I’m back in New Mexico. You can purchase it directly from the Urantia Foundation or from Amazon.com. Urantia has a website, too. The book claims to be a revelation of truth to our world from a friendly and well-ordered universe. The Amazon blurb says “A revelation, in book form, intended to help guide humankind into a new era of evolutionary progress. It provides a deeper appreciation and understanding of our own planetary family while disclosing our place in the great cosmic family of freewill intelligent beings. It reveals as never before an infinite circle of creation, at the center of which reigns a beneficent and loving creator. First published in 1955, The Urantia Book is a literary masterpiece that harmonizes science, religion, and philosophy, while illuminating the origin, history and destiny of mankind.”

Folding Circle Tetrahedra: Truth in the Geometry of Wholemovement by Bradford Hansen-Smith (Wholemovement Publications Chicago 2005). “Folding the circle is a low tech, high yield process that requires we get in touch with our physical universe, and we open to the divine creative spirit.” I recommend this hands-on work and theory/philosophy book and all I can say is, there are paths that these explorations in geometry can lead you down which can be universally and personally very important. The work I did a few decades ago with this material had an impact that has remained. I began to dream geometric forms, floating in space...like visions...and then other things began to click open for me internally – intellectually, spiritually and creatively. As Bradford says in his Preface to this book, the recognition of patterned information “...crosses all educational and cultural boundaries and is crucial to all fields of understanding.”

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler (Michael Wiese Productions, 1998) One day back in 1997, I was busily working on my murder mystery when Rick appeared flourishing a copy of this book. He asked had I yet read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and said that, if I had not, I should while working on my book, and should look at this book too. I remember saying something pithy like, “Yeah, yeah” and he put this book on the edge of my desk and tiptoed away and I kept writing. Later I looked at Campbell’s book again – it had been a while – and started skimming this one. I had a hard time putting it down and did begin to incorporate some of the principals in my book. I had already written Journey From the Keep of Bones, so didn’t get to consciously apply the principals to that book, but later I realized they were already IN there! Sort of a litmus test for me, showing that Campbell and Vogler are right, those archetypes are embedded in our creative work even if we don’t consciously place them. They were there, the Reluctant Hero, the Mentor, the Threshhold Guardians, the Trickster, the Shapeshifter, etc. and the structure of the archetypal quest journey was there too. Vogler’s book is directed at screen writers but I find it totally important as a novelist and playwright. I would say any wordsmith will find it relevant. It’s also written in a very entertaining way, and it’s fun to keep in mind your favorite films while reading it, you will find out whole new things about why you love those films. I am rereading this book word by word at this time, as I work on my current project. I can’t recommend this one enough!

Do what you love and love what you do!

Michelle Miller Allen (c) 2006

Creative Butt kicks:

http://www.wholemovement.com

http://www.anaisnin.com/home.html

http://tinyurl.com/r3xly