What got you through?

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

FoRest

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

What helped you rest and recharge in 2019?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

What sustained you, even through difficult times?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

What elements of sustenance would you like to carry with you into 2020?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest

I created a participatory community installation.

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

Here’s the blurb that went on the wall next to the artwork.

FoRest

was conceived, created and coordinated by Sally Swain

with the Older Women’s Network and

Newtown Wellness Centre community.

Fallen branches were gradually gathered from Kangaroo Valley, Nielsen Park, Annandale and Forest Lodge.

They were assembled into the FoRest sculpture during the 2019 bushfire emergency, when swathes of forest – plants and animals –

were lost around Australia.

Participants were invited to consider what helps bring them rest or sustenance, then to express this on leaf shapes

to attach to the branches.

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

Let’s together

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

build

creative community

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

to sustain ourselves,

each other and the earth.

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

FoRest participatory community artwork
Sally Swain
with Older Women’s Network/ Newtown Wellness Centre
What got you through the year?

So….what got YOU through?

What might continue to sustain you?

with love, art and soul

from Sally

PS In the vein

of sustain

of Sally Swain
Art and Soul Space

will not race

to post

the most.
At least until June, I intend to shift posting from fortnightly to the first Friday of each month. Reluctantly, I say au revoir until Friday 7th February. I look forward to hanging out with you again then.
If you wish to stay in the Arty Soulful loop, there’s always

the Art and Soul e-newsletter (just contact me to subscribe) or

Sally Swain Art on Facebook.

Night Trees, Sea Breeze

Posted on December 7, 2018 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

‘We hold you’, say the trees.

Night Trees, Sea Breeze
Sally Swain © art

I return to a beachside place of the heart. It’s been a while. The cabins that I used to stay in, to the north of the village, are demolished, erased. The whole camping ground is gone. It’s as if it never existed. I weep salty tears by the salty sea.

I walk and weep; walk and weep.

Other, more current griefs surface and spill. The long, slow, gritty grief of caring for elderly folk, in both my personal and professional life, unexpectedly surges forth. The bittersaltysweet release of tears is required regularly, it seems.

sea creatures create squiggles

I am able

Continue reading →

Between a Rock and a Soft Place

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

The Opposite of Anxiety

I’m breaking my own rules. Best kind to break.

Who wants to make a spinifex mandala in the desert sand within view of Uluru, Kata Tjuta, a sunrise and a moonset?

Instead of waiting an entire whole year to share another ‘Late Middle-Aged to Early-Old Crazy Art Lady’ adventure, here’s a tale for you a mere two weeks since the last episode.

It’s because I can’t resist shouting from the rooftops about Uluru and Kata Tjuta. I simply must extol the beauty, the majesty, the mystery.

The Rock close up has infinite shapes, folds, rifts, caves, dips, portals, layers….each of which tells a story.

I shall attempt to do my rooftop shouting quietly, however, with the minimal word-count induced by awe.

{By the way, if you wish to peruse a previous Crazy Art Lady story, click here: ‘Late Middle-Aged to Early-Old Crazy Art Lady Goes to the Beach’}

Once you’ve seen the desert colours, you can’t un-see them. They are in your fibres.

Let me just say, my first experience of spending time with Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (formerly known as the Olgas) was transformative. I felt that my Field of Vision was expanded.

And that

once you’ve seen this place,

you can’t un-see it.

Generally, I love lushness. Luminous green trees, ferns and waterfalls are my idea of gorgeousness. So I resisted the Red Centre, but now I am a convert.

Kata Tjuta (many heads) brims with bulbous body-like sacred formations. Powerful. Oh dammit. My words do not do it justice.

The rock has rocked me.

Both rocks have rocked me.

Exquisite Uluru ahhh

And hey. I happened to be there on the morning of the blood-moon-plus-long-lunar-eclipse, with a dash of rare planetary alignment on the side. How special is that?

It truly does glow. No human hand has performed colour mishmashing here.

The sun rose

Uluru Sunrise Slice

while the just-post-eclipse moon set over Kata Tjuta.

Just. Post. Eclipse. Blood. Full. Moon. Becoming. Crescent. Setting. Over. Kata. Tjuta.

Spurred by beauty beyond words, I suddenly spontaneously gathered loose strands of amazing, hardy spinifex (Tjanpi) and made a mandala in the red orange glowing desert sand.

In those moments, I was not anxious, fearful or stuck in my head trying to solve nitty-gritty problems. Believe me, I know the Art of Worrying inside out. As a friend said, in these moments, my softness of being, my presence and expansiveness was the Opposite of Anxiety.

Late Middle-Aged to Early-Old Crazy Art Lady Goes to the Desert

The funny sun-dial type sand and spinifex mandala?

Twas an offering of gratitude to the elements and to all who allowed me to be there.

I wish to close by expressing gratitude and deep respect to the Anangu traditional owners of this country – to Elders past, present and future.

with love, art and soul from Sally

Late-Middle-Aged to Early-Old Crazy Art Lady

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

Goes to the Beach

Here’s my annual piece of recklessness.

I am poised to turn sixty.

59th birthday. That was last year.

Poised? That makes it sound elegant and uncomplicated, which would be untrue.

Don’t get me wrong. I am exceedingly grateful to be a privileged, healthful artist, creativity coach and art therapist, with wonderful people and opportunities in my life. Yeah.

On the other hand, if you are a young sprite of ooo 37, or 51, even, there are quirks, aches and creaky crevices of the sixty year old’s mind, body and circumstance that you haven’t even dreamed of. Nor do you need to. That’s my oblique grumble for now.

At nearly sixty, I am ready to share with you my fabulous afternoon of a year ago.

The Nest of the Sacred Egret – what can this mean?

I enthusiastically upheld my own recent tradition of random, spontaneous, organic and focussed outdoor art-making. The tradition involves an I-don’t-care-what-anyone-else-thinks-of-me attitude, which is refreshing for one who was an acutely shy teenager.

Bodily echoing the shape of the sculpture. Yes. Definitely Crazy Art Lady stuff.

I loved making this sculpture.

Driftwood and seaweed and

Crazy Art Lady at Play

It truly was a case of

Continue reading →

Second Hand Rose

Posted on March 2, 2018 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

They call me Second-hand Rose….

Using up the Leftover Paint
acrylic on calico
Sally Swain

I never get a single thing that’s new.

Even Jake the plumber, he’s the man I adore

He had the nerve to tell me he’s been married before

Everyone knows that I’m just

Second-hand Rose

From Second Avenue.

{Lalala deedoodeedoo}

Where did that song-burst come from?

Some quirky corner of my brain stores lyrics from 1920s and 30s songs and pops them out at appropriate or inappropriate moments. Gosh. Maybe I’m more like my clients with dementia than I realised.

There is a reason.

There is a reason the Second-hand Rose fragment emerged holus-bolus.

It’s because

Continue reading →

For Humble Magic, Just Add Water

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

A tale of art therapy in residential aged care

I am delighted.

I’ve just run an art therapy group in a psychogeriatric unit.

I’ve had an unusual level of support, with two whole entire art therapist helpers.

It feels like a dance. We three weave in and out of being with different aged care residents at different times, each with our own energy, skill and strength. It is an elegant Jane Austen era dance; maybe a minuet or a quadrille.

One art therapist sits

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Middle-Aged Crazy Art Lady Strikes Again

Posted on August 11, 2017 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

This time, she’s more like Late Middle-Aged or Early-Old Crazy Art Lady.

She’s just turned fifty-nine. Fifty-nine.

How can that be?

Her Inner (and often Outer) Child

is seven.

Beach character
What could his or her name be?
Sally Swain crazy-art-play with driftwood, feathers and seaweed

Two years ago

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What bird are you?

Posted on December 23, 2016 by Art and Soul Creativity Coaching since 1993

We have reached

Solstice,

which leads directly to

Christmas and Chanukah,

which lead directly to

New Year.

What bird are you in this possibly frightening or despairing time in world politics?

What bird are you in this possibly delightful or joyful season of festivity?

I am not a victim
Sally Swain © original art
You saw it here first! I tucked the painting away out of view in case of appearing too grumpy. It’s time for this particular bird-woman to show herself.

I had the privilege of

Continue reading →