Welcome to our second week on the February art/life trail ride. This week we celebrate the New ‘Renewal’ Moon of February 8, and the beginning of the New Lunar Year of the Fire Monkey:
The year of the Monkey is ideal for a quantum leap in your life! Now is the time to shake things up, create change, and invent a new path. Join Monkey’s enthusiast energy when risks are rewarded and anything can happen. Even the most ambitious plans can succeed.
Monkey hours are 3 – 5 pm
http://astrologyclub.org/chinese-horoscope/2016-year-monkey/
The Renewal Moon is all about having the boldness to revitalize some aspect of your art/life as you continue these last few weeks of moving through The Mystery. This is the natural time, each year, to gather the force, the impetus and the desire for what is to come. It’s a time to turn attention toward expressing how it feels, looks and what it sounds like to renew an area of your self-expression that may have gone invisible or fallen into dormancy.
Renewal, Drozda, Ink on illustration board, 10 x 8”
Consider the Renewal that comes with new forms of inspiration and engagement.
Ask yourself: Why do I become so alive when I explore the new?
Virginia Beach Art teachers experimenting with new techniques at Drozda Master Class, February 2016
I’m thrilled during this time of the Natural Year! Now there is the opportunity for a renewed look at the circular path that was gifted to us by Sun Bear. Each year The Mystery circles us around organically and opens us up to new, renewed meaning…and what is the art/life for if not for making meaning out of the stress of the trail ride.
Sun Bear intended that the application of the 12 monthly keyword/focus points would help those of us on a fast track to learn, collectively, to slow down and establish a sacred connection to ‘All Our Relations’.
This time of Renewal is an appropriate pause point. We will be hopping back into the saddle and galloping full speed ahead very soon. Take time now to consider what meaning you are willing to make…and why.
Here’s My Short Story:
I began increasing my ‘vocational arousal’ by leaps and bounds when I discovered the joy of working with a large group of dedicated Creatives in 1989. I believe that being a teacher of the art of ‘Walking the Natural Wheel of the Year’ for near three decades has given this art/life trail ride most wondrous meaning.
In 1991 I moved my studio into an exceptionally odd space. Once there I immediately understood why. It prompted me to invent the idea and then open my studio for First Saturday ‘Creativity Salons’. A core group of 12 visual, literary and performing artists met each month for five and a half years in my studio in the former high security lock-up ward for women in what had been the Fairhill Psychiatric Hospital. These dynamic day-long gatherings explored the lively variations with which each of us would connect and create using the idea and the energy of the keyword for the month.
‘Creativity ‘Growth’ Salon’ Retreat Day, Me & Sara Wasserman, 1991
March 12 & 13 celebrate the spring!
You will be opening your art/life trail ride for the six months of active, instinctive, bold connection to what is coming through you on March 20. Why are you blocked and/or why are you engaged creatively? Here at the beach we’re gathering around the Natural Calendar for a retreat weekend at Virginia MOCA on March 12 and 13. Join us!
The museum generously provides two large studios so that we have all the space to collect ideas and materials giving rich expression to the vision carried ‘out of the cave’ and into the light of the spring/summer.
I invite you to be part of the March circle:
Earth Mandala, Sarah Myers, Creativity Salon Retreat, Cuyahoga National Park, Ohio, 2008
Roots & Wings: A Retreat Studio
March 12 & 13, 2016
Explore your ‘Roots & Wings’. The old adage of “first give them roots and then give them wings” is a basis for parenting. ‘Roots & Wings’ for us is also an entrance point for the individual creative process allowing the invention of a framework for fresh, personally edgy work.
Saturday: plant a seed vision, nurture your concept through research and experimentation with diverse materials, put a stake in the ground and choose your direction, then observe your seed ideas ripen through your creative process.
Sunday: reflect, review, give your project wings and fledge into the possibility ahead.
Presented by: Donna Iona Drozda:
Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art
2200 Parks Avenue, Virginia Beach, VA, 23452
Museum Members $100, Nonmembers $115
March 12 & March 13
Saturday, 10am-4pm
Sunday, 11am – 3pm
W1620 2-day workshop
Register Online
Virginia MOCA Retreat Day, 2015
If you are unable to attend consider setting aside a Retreat Weekend event of your own design…let me know if you would like support in creating your circle gathering.
Now in its 26th year the art/life ‘Creativity Salon/Retreat’ concept offers communal joy in a setting of focus as the magic unfolds.
Interpreting the Natural Calendar Wheel, Drozda, Creativity Salon/Retreat, 2015
Monthly Keywords:
January-Clearing
February-Renewal
March-Purify
April-Clarity
May-Wisdom
June-Illuminate
July-Growth
August-Trust
September-Love
October-Experience
November-Introspection
December-Strength
CreativityRetreat Journal Page, Drozda, 2012
An additional tool for enhancing the ‘Roots & Wings’ Retreat weekend is the information and inspiration found in The Lifecycle Forecast: 20th anniversary edition. Read it as you prepare for The Mystery opening the door to renewed creative relationship. Consider why collective creative energy and dynamic scenic overviews enhance the art/life trail ride.
WISE WOMAN OF THE WEEK
In the second week of the month I’ll spotlight an artist who has stood the test of time…Renewing the world with gifts and contributions for decades past and to come…
Welcome our Wise Woman companion on the art/life trail this week:
Faith Ringgold
Faith Ringgold, 84, learned how to sew as a child from her mother, Willi Posey, a fashion designer. Her early pieces included hooded masks with fabric, beads and raffia; she also made dolls and life-size soft sculpture. Her signature work is her evocative series of “story quilts,” which include both imagery and handwritten text.
‘Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemima’, Faith Ringgold, 1983, Painted Story Quilt
Ringgold began her career in the early 60’s as a painter, an art activist, feminist and an educator.
Her protests, events, happenings and exhibitions of the 60’s and 70’s took a stand for Freedom of Speech and equality, she broke ground and opened (museum) doors for artists of color and women.
Today, she is best known for her painted story quilts and her illustrated children’s books.
