One of the key ingredients of my studio life is being a lifelong learner. I am constantly enrolled in a class or classes and learning more about myself and my arts. As an instructor myself, I also love the opportunity to learn from other teachers and to become an ever better guide!

Rather spontaneously I signed up for Ali Edwards‘ photography class Lens of Joy. I’ve so enjoyed the beginning process of exploring my relationship to photography, thinking about my own art history with this medium and also about my voice as a photographer.

In a whole new way I understand the creative and personal legacy of my mom, who captured our entire lives through her lens and who bought me my first camera.

I’m also taking Summer Pierre’s Writing and Drawing Comics. I’ve had a lot of fun experiencing drawing drills and starting to work within the frame of a comic. It immediately brought me back to when I first started blogging. After being at it for a while, my ideas, stories and imaginings started to fit themselves into the blog format. Blogging became a framework for my imagination. I wonder if the same will happen with comics.

I’m reading Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire and finding myself highlighting more than I’m not, including…

‘Many highly creative people can vividly remember a “moment, an encounter, a book that they read, a performance that they attended, that spoke to them and led them to say, “This is the real me, this is what I would like to do, to devote my life to, going forward,” says psychologist Howard Gardner.’

I have a moment like that, a moment when the light went on and I knew that I was a dancer. More to come on that later.

In the studio lately I’ve been listening over and over and over again to Build Me Up from Bones by Sarah Jarosz. The whole album is a treasure.

And no Studio Diary would be complete without visitation from at least one of the kittens. Enjoy this moment with Shibumi.

Creative Prompts for Your Studio (Remember, your life is your studio)

• What’s next on your personal curriculum? What do you want to learn?
• What’s your history with photography? (Or choose another art to explore)
• Have you had a “crystallizing experience”, a moment of creative awakening? Write about it.
• What music do you listen to in your studio? (Remember, your life is your studio) Is it time for a new music infusion?