Category: I Made This

May 5, 2014

I Made This

Remember when you were a kid & shared your creations with delight?

Maybe you even got to stick your art on the fridge for the whole world to see!

Let’s bring that joyful “show and tell” feeling back with…

I Made This!

What is “I Made This!”?: Each Monday here in the studio, I’ll invite you to share what you’ve made over the week before. It can be anything – a flower arrangement, a crocheted cap, a painting, a poem, a party, an outfit, a cake! Show what you made and tell us a bit about what the experience was like for you. What inspired you? What did you learn? How were you challenged? What did you love? And hey, if you want to share the inspiration, the pattern, the recipe, the kinds of supplies you used, we’ll all be the richer for it!

To Participate: Create an “I Made This!” post on your blog and add the direct link* in the Mr. Linky below. Be a sunbeam of love as you visit other makers, celebrating their creativity and sharing inspiration along the way. It would be great if you could also link back here as an invitation to other creative hearts to jump in and share. I’ve got a badge for you if you’d like to add it to your blog.

And please know, whatever you made doesn’t have to be perfect or beautiful or even finished – though it might be. I just want us to share what we’re creating with our hearts and with our hands and to remember how much fun it can be to say, “I made this!”

Let’s make this something wonderful!

*PS A direct link is when you share the address for the actual post instead of just your blog (e.g. http://jamieridlerstudios.ca/introducting-i-made-this-monday instead of just http://jamieridlerstudios.ca)

May 5, 2014

Painting As A Movement Practice

This weekend I was blessed to attend The Movement Basis of Artistic Expression, a Painting Workshop on Liberating Creativity workshop with Shaun McNiff, one of the founders of expressive arts therapy.

You know I’m all about liberating creativity!

Here’s Shaun (on the right) being introduced to us by Stephen Levine, one of the founders of ISIS Canada, which is where I received my training in the expressive arts. The minute Shaun stepped into the circle, he had us. We connected through rhythm, through sound, through movement, through colour.

As Shaun spoke, I wanted to gather every moment like a precious drop of water and share it with you. I know so many of us are hungry for this kind of experience, the aliveness we connect to when we let our creativity run wild!

Words, wisdoms and ideas Shaun McNiff shared…

You can never know at the beginning what something will be in the end.
If you can move, you can paint.
Creativity has an active nature.
Movement leads. The mind responds.
We all go too fast.
The simpler, the deeper.
The work will take you where you need to go.

Creating is an experience.

Every moment was a part of the creative process. Listening to Shaun’s encouragement to slow down, I took my time getting my supplies. I didn’t worry about whether there would be enough, whether what I wanted would be on the table, whether I was losing time painting. I just enjoyed choosing my brushes. I enjoyed looking at the colours and glopping them onto my tray. I didn’t want to miss a moment of the experience.

While Shaun played the drums or the kalimba, we painted. For the entire morning, we painted. No attachment to the product. No ideas, worries or expectations about how it would turn out, just being in the experience of discovery. Discovering the painting. Discovering our creativity. Discovering this moment. Discovering ourselves.

Process painting is powerful medicine.

In the afternoon, we continued to work with our paintings, exploring them with movement and witnessing one another’s work. We also had the opportunity to work with clay, to find the joy of discovering what wanted to arrive through clay in that moment. In the end, we gathered our creations in a beautiful ritual of celebration and closure.

This is exactly why I say that loving the arts is like loving the world. Each piece is an expression of the hands that shaped it, the moment they lived, the instincts they followed. This is sacred to me.

I’m sharing this as a part of I Made This Monday. What did you make this week?

April 21, 2014

I Made This

Remember when you were a kid & shared your creations with delight?

Maybe you even got to stick your art on the fridge for the whole world to see!

Let’s bring that joyful “show and tell” feeling back with…

I Made This!

Let’s make this something wonderful!

April 14, 2014

I Made This!

Remember when you were a kid & shared your creations with delight?

Maybe you even got to stick your art on the fridge for the whole world to see!

Let’s bring that joyful “show and tell” feeling back with…

I Made This!

Let’s make this something wonderful!

April 7, 2014

I Made This: The Fun of Drawing Shapes and Lines

I’ve always found myself impatient with drawing. I felt impatient with my lack of skill. Impatient with the time it took. Impatient with my progress. Impatient with my results. Perhaps my impatience was rooted in my discomfort– my fear of drawing, really.

But recently I’ve been rediscovering the simple joy of making marks on paper – with pen, with pencil, with markers. I’ve been enjoying the sensuality of it, the feeling of movement across the page, the flow of curves, the sharpness of angles, the bursts of little shapes quickly done.

Drawing is like a dance you create on the page, the pen marking the choreography.

Time slows down when I draw. Perhaps that’s another reason why I didn’t like it before. I was afraid of slowness. Life’s too busy. Life’s too short for something slow.

But now I find drawing meditative. It’s a blessing to give my busy mind time to engage with shapes and lines, to wonder what will happen if I connect this point to that one, to discover that a triangle can become a windmill and a flower and a tree.

I’m giving myself permission to slow down, to breathe and to play. I’m enjoying drawing for the simple pleasure of it and that is more than enough.

I’m sharing this post as a part of I Made This! If you want to share something you made this week, come on by and join in!

March 31, 2014

I Made This!

Remember when you were a kid & shared your creations with delight?

Maybe you even got to stick your art on the fridge for the whole world to see!

Let’s bring that joyful “show and tell” feeling back with…

I Made This!

Let’s make this something wonderful!

March 31, 2014

I Made This: Getting Over My Fear of Drawing

Drawing intimidates me. In fact, when I go through a list of all the arts I can think of, drawing would top the list as the scariest.

When did I get this fear of drawing?

I can so easily cast back to being a little girl gleefully making the most of my crayons, markers and coloured pencils. Hours upon hours were spent drawing trees and ducks and writing my alphabet. We had a little art table at the back of the family room and I can still feel what it was like to sit there, absorbed in creating.

The turning point was whenever it became clear that “representation” was the purpose for art, that if you drew a dog it should look like a dog, by which I mean, really look like a dog. How did you accomplish that? Nobody told me that part! If you were an artist, if you had talent, you would know.

Well, I didn’t know. And so drawing just dropped out of my repertoire. Forever.

Until this year.

If you follow stART: Creating as We Go, you know that my sisters and I are signed up for Life Book. We’re exploring our way through weekly mixed media exercises and recently did Carla Sonheim‘s lesson, which included drawing. At first I felt that old familiar dread. My body tensed up as I thought, “I don’t know how to do this.” But Carla’s exercises were imaginative and playful and I found myself easing in. After all, who was going to see these little drawings anyway?

Then I checked out Lisa Congdon‘s Line Drawing class at Creativebug* and for the first time since I was a little girl I was excited about drawing.

Drawing is just shapes?

I can do lines and circles and squiggles! In fact, I love doing lines and circles and squiggles! I could do that all day. And this week I did! I spent hours making circles and flowers and stars and having so much fun.

All of this exploration is helping me redefine what “drawing” is and to reclaim the part of it I truly love – the simple pleasure of making lines and shapes and squiggles on the page.

I’m getting over my fear of drawing one line at a time.

I’m sharing this post as a part of I Made This! If you want to share something you made this week, come on by and join in!

Psst… I’m going to be interviewing Lisa Congdon on Creative Living with Jamie. Be sure to keep an ear out for that!