creativity.

Well for me, it does come down to the exploration.
The way my journal helps me find out totally new things.
It is certainly not about making a pretty thing, although when it is pretty, I admit that it pleases me.
I am starting to understand that the expectation of "pretty" actually interferes with the finding out of the new.
Creativity takes courage.
It takes being able to mess up and make mistakes.
That is something you don't seem to be taught in school much these days - it all is about performance and achievement.
well, please know that your journal is a place where achievement = experiment.
Make a mess.
Be creative.
Find something new.



"Creativity is the residue of time wasted." --Albert Einstein

the "asana" of working in a journal daily

Last night lying in bed unable to fall asleep, I got this idea.
That the practice of doing those asana poses in yoga -- making your body pop into that certain position over and over again, is what makes it easier.
The word "asana" means pose, and most people who do yoga think of those poses as the work of yoga.
But yoga is more - it is a way of thinking, a way of breathing. It is more an attitude than an exercise.

and working in an art journal is like that.
It is really more a way of thinking - a way of unleashing the creative intuitive part of the brain that is connected to the unconscious dream state.
By making these pages with color and image, we access this other side of the brain, the non-verbal side.
This is why my pages often give me insight.
and this is a practice.
The more your body does the asana, the easier it is to snap into that position.
The more your mind lets the creative voice speak in making art journal pages, the more the subconscious has a voice.
That's why doing art journal pages feels like a sacred practice to me.
I do enjoy when the pages are pretty, and I do enjoy getting praise here for how they look.
But even more rewarding, is when doing a page in my journal gives me some sort of insight and knowledge about my own inner truth.
Try making this your practice, and see how the "asana" of making journal pages helps unlock your inner dream voice.



"I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands." --Louise Bourgeois

standing stones, Ganesh, painted skin

Just some images in the journal from Spiralheart camp.
To make art more in community -- I would like to figure out how to manifest that a bit more in my life.
I guess showing you these pages here counts a bit for that.
So, thanks for looking!
**Air High Five**
(Did you do that - air high five to me out here in cyberland? Then did you wildly look around your cubicle to make sure no one saw you? or the library? or your desk by the kitchen window?
No, the dog does not think you are crazy for doing an **Air High Five** alone in front of your computer, or even for laughing out loud after, I promise!)
Now go make some art and have a great day!



"In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art." --Rumi

today . . .

What are you doing to add creativity to your life?
Do you have a practice?
Do you stick to it?



"It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential." --Barack Obama

travel and more

I had the most wonderful amount of travel the last few months, thanks to unemployment, job options elsewhere, kind relatives, and just luck.
I seem to need to move.
Stagnation comes quickly and for me, a new place, a new adventure, a new dream, and even just new books and magazines and films are necessary to keep my mind moving forward and not feeling dulled and lifeless.
I have a new idea for a project done while on a train. Yesterday we went into the city for some back to school shopping and the train plan just showed up in my mind.
I am learning in life to make what I love to do meld with what I need to do for my work.
Following the bliss, is one way to look at it.
My journal helps me with all this.
How does your journal help you?



"A creative train of thought is set off by: the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible." --Asger Jorn

enlightenment

"The stronger and more intense my desire becomes to capture and record that which is unsayable, the more tightly my mouth stays shut..." --Max Beckmann

the MaGaZiNe!!!!

Well it is done.
The first issue of Creativity Cafe is published and ready to be sent into the world. It has been a labor of love; also I have been feeling very honored to include such awesome women and artists in the first issue - I love learning the different paths we all take to get to our ultimate truths - journaling, poetry writing, blogging, painting; it all really points us toward authentically sharing our inner and connected selves, which turn out to be the same thing. Creativity helps show me how we are all in the Oneness . . . hard as it is to remember this in our chaotic separateness of daily life.

Here is where you can preview and order the first issue in the U.S. and Canada:

http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/11139

and here is where you can order it from the blog for international orders -- the publisher does not ship anywhere other than U.S. and Canada, but I will send you a copy if you want to use paypal to purchase it here:

http://creativitycafejournal.blogspot.com/

and on a creative journaling note, I finally got some new pages done in my journal. Here in my lovely cocoon of a studio where my waxing and waning creative voice sometimes sings and sometimes screams, I always feel so at home.
I took so long in life to know I needed to get the right space, to honor my need for a dedicated place for making my art. I never again will be without some space for this work, even if a closet well outfitted with inspiring supplies, good lighting and some hidden chocolate. To be on a journey of self discovery through creation, either with words or images or film or poetry or drama, or whatever the creative outlet asks of you, take it seriously and listen closely.
Give it some space.
Give yourself some space.
I think you end up finding yourself in the space you make, even if you don't know what will happen there. The muse sometimes needs to be enticed.
Make an inspiring space, and inspiration will then come, I have learned.



"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness." --Eckhart Tolle

a digital journal page for today:

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory." --Mahatma Gandhi

messy pages = happy journal

So while at Spiralheart camp, I had a soggy journal with me. (It rained a lot there.) I didn't have my "real" supplies (we were camping) and the goal was not to make art in my journal, the goal was just to get the words down as I needed to remember and express what I was learning.
So the pages from the week are nothing like my journaling practice at home.
And that's fine.
Your journal can do way more than just one thing.
It can allow you to, yes, make nice collagy pictures that you are proud of.
But it can also be there for you to whine, make a mess, cathartic-ally dump, and take whatever you can dish out to it.
It can be there for you to write and write and write words that you want to then rip out and throw away.
It can be there for you to find your truth through a long-winded, meandering path of what you don't mean, then what you might mean, and then what you really do mean.
I like to let my journal be there for me, whatever un-artistic and uninspired mood I happen to be in.
At camp, making nice art was not the goal, self expression was the goal.
So I am sharing what some of the pages look like here, so you too, can make some messes in your journal.
I did bring along a different book to use for camp, and I think I will bring that same book year after year, and let it fill with the one week's words and ideas and learning that happens at this special event for me.
Letting loose really is the goal, letting go of the worry and tightness and concern that the pages look a certain way.
Letting go of lots of extra baggage in life is a good thing.
Control does not equal happiness.
at least, in my book.
and these pages show that, I think:



"I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life." --Jean Michel Basquiat

Standing stones at Spiralheart

Until I get time to commune with my journal, here is a photo of some of the massively large stones set in a circle at 4quarters retreat center where we had camp:



"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." --Lewis Carroll

the mountains and the valleys

I am coming to realize in a deep way that without the darkness, there can be no light, and without the valleys, there can be no mountains.
It is hard to be in the dark valley place, and when I am, I cry out in blindness and fear. But I am very very slowly and incrementally learning that if I can just have faith and get through the dark times, the light is so much more bright and nourishing.
If we always sit at the banquet table, it ceases to be a banquet!

I have been working on the first issue of Creativity Cafe magazine, and the road isn't so easy for me, but I am chugging along and will let you know when it is ready.

It is August, and the time for ripe fruit - juicy peaches and plump corn and to enjoy the bountiful harvest the Earth rewards us with. Yesterday we celebrated Lammas at our UU congregation with a guided journey under a fruitful tree to the earth where all life starts -- I was yet again reminded of the blessings of soil, and worms, and roots, and minerals which feed the plants which feed the animals who feed us.

Today I am grateful not only for the abundant harvest, but for the hard labor that got us where we are, and I am reassured that my hard work will bear fruit, in the fullness of time.


"Whoever gives reverence receives reverence." --Rumi

back from Spiralheart

I spent last week at Spiralheart reclaiming camp in Southern, PA.
There was some time to work in my journal, but with camping and rain (lots of rain) things were damp and I did not try to make pretty pages.
In fact, some of my work while at camp was to let go of how the pages looked and make really messy, ugly pages.
It helps to wreck the journal (sound familiar?) now and then to get out of that careful editor mode that inhibits loud and authentic freedom in the creative voice.
Eventually I will do pages I can share, as I process all I learned during the amazing week of Path, Affinity group and Ritual.
But in the meantime, a bit of a photo collage from camp:



"What we need is more sense of the wonder of life, and less of the business of making a picture." --Robert Henri

a few more pages

are you spending time with your journal?
are you spending time being creative?
are you saying what you need to say?
go in Truth.

and here is another little bit of Iceland:

and me wondering a bit why it is I do this work:


"I count life just stuff to try the soul's strength on." --Robert Browning

more ICELAND pages

I am still processing my photos and ephemera from our ten days in Iceland during the solstice.
Vikings and their wonderful festival in Rekyavik.
Arches of wood and stone, Cairns along the highway marking the path for a thousand years.
Sun and sun and sun with no moon or stars.
Cameras and driving and ponies and sheep and more sheep and even more sheep.
Waterfalls, rocks, geysers, rainbows, ocean, cliffs.
Hot springs.

I just truly loved this country and hope one day to go back.





"Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey." --Pat Conroy

finally some more pages to share. . . .

"Get a Mac!" they all said.
"You will love the way it handles graphics."
"You will make movies, and scans, and photoshoppy magical collages, and make magazines, and your life will be perfect and wonderful and full of unicorns and rainbows," they said.
So I did.
I got a MAC.
and my life hasn't settled down yet into a routine and it has been SIX painful months.
I am pretty good with this computer stuff.
and yet, still.
STILL.
My MAC just DOES NOT BEHAVE.
So finally, I just took out the ole camera, snapped the photos of these journal pages, and dumped them here using my OLD TRUSTY Vaio and all my old software.
My Mac just won't talk to the scanner and it really hates my printer.

I will keep at it (I have no choice at this point, the old system is at home with the family, now.)
Last night at our monthly journaling meet-up, I did these three pages, so here, finally are some images I can share of actual journal work. I was so sorry to miss the last two meetings with travel, as it is always wonderful to work on journaling in community.

I do hope YOUR computers are co-operating with YOU, and more importantly, that your journal is there for you, as is mine!





"No pressure, no diamonds." --Thomas Carlyle

"Sacred Practice"

Those two words sort of make my heart beat just a bit faster.
I realize that my journaling is my sacred practice.
The triple strike of: 1. I am setting up a new computer arrangement in the studio, 2. at the same time as meeting some deadlines, and our 3. family reality is in huge flux, so my normal making of pages, scanning and posting them here has gotten quite off kilter.
When I have news, when I get the scanner talking to the computer, and when I am back in the routine of my regular sacred practice, there will be more pages here to share with you.

In the meantime, I am following my own advice (that I seem unable to remember so very often) and BREATHING and doing YOGA and just being in each moment as it comes.

NaMaStE!
(now go work in your journals!)

Rumi

I am having a hard time with a new set up in the studio - can't get printer/scanner going, so in the meantime, here are some words from RUMI that feed the soul:

Enough Words

How does a part of the world leave the world?
How can wetness leave water?
Don't wash a wound with blood.
Do you put out fire with more fire?
No matter how fast you run, your shadow always keeps up.
Only full overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
You must have shadow, and light source, both.
Listen and lay your head under the Tree of Awe.

More journal pages to come as soon as my machines co-operate - Now go do some juicy work in your journal and allow yourself to have an Art-gasm!

UPDATE on Et Studio - more journaling pages to come.

Until I can get journaling pages uploaded, here is an update from the studio:

I had the good fortune to visit some amazing places in June.
First was Breitenbush Hotsprings in central Oregon, where I will have a solo show of my Mushroom Collages at their annual Mycology Festival in October. Mushroom experts from around the world come to share science and ideas about this amazing family in the plant kingdom, so I am honored to be included in this work.
I was then lucky enough to be able to take a Nature Spirits Shamanism course with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies on Mt. Shasta in Northern California.

Finally, with my husband, mom, and youngest daughter, I drove the Ring Road around Iceland for a glorious ten day journey during the Solstice. We were within a few miles of the Arctic Circle, so the sun never set. It was a magical experience I will never forget, with many views of glaciers, rainbows, waterfalls, and countless Icelandic sheep and horses in the very green landscape. Having studied Viking Runes, it was a treat to actually go to a Viking Festival and see some of the old ways reinacted.
Some photos are here if you would like to see more:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=121557&id=616233487&l=4049dec0e9

Other news is that the end of July, I will be selling my work at SpiralHeart Camp in southern Pennsylvania. Look for journaling pages about this wonderful experience in the blog early in August.

The first issue of Creativity Cafe should be out the beginning of September - so thank you for your subscription order if you already subscribed, and if not, I will be sending out another ET Studio update when the magazine goes to print so you won't miss out.

Our lives are in transition now, as we face decisions about our future in this uncertain time, but my art and my Shamanic work continues to keep a solid foundation under me -- I hope and pray you also feel supported in this changing landscape.

bright blessings,
-Emily
http://www.etstudio.net/

ICELAND!

I am back from driving the ring road around Iceland.
What a beautiful country - it is a young place where two tectonic plates are crashing into each other, so there are volcanoes, lava fields, waterfalls, geysers, glaciers, rocks rocks and more rocks, and millions of sheep and beautiful Icelandic ponies.
We were there at the Solstice, so close to the Arctic Circle that the sun never set. In fact, it never got dark the whole ten days there, which was hard on the biological clock but very powerful to experience.

Here are the first journal pages done from the trip:

until I get back:

June 14 is the Birth of the Muses, from Ancient Greece mythology.

On this day the goddess Mnemosyne (whose name means 'memory') gave birth to nine daughters: Calliope (epic songs); Euterpe (lyric songs); Polyhymnia (sacred songs); Thalia (comedy); Melpomene (tragedy); Terpsichore (dance); Erato (poetry); Clio (history); and Urania (astronomy). The Muses brought an appreciation of the arts into the world with their inspiration of creativity, social and scientific studies.

I hope your muses are alive and well, I am feeding mine this month with travel - updates to come!