The-Not-Strictly-Artist-Date

Says Julia Cameron, superb Artist’s Way originator:

‘The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic” —

think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination.

They spark whimsy.

They encourage play.

Since art is about the play of ideas, they feed our creative work by replenishing our inner well of images and inspiration.’

So…off I go to the annual celebration of art and nature that is Sculpture by the Sea Bondi. This is not strictly an artist date, as I am not solo, and it’s certainly not weekly, but it sure is replenishing.

Grand heroic monumental type sculptures? They were there aplenty. You won’t see them in this blog. In this year’s Sculpture by the Sea, I enjoyed small pieces (with a touch of the domestic)

Sculpture by the Sea

But it’s not my Rubbish?
Monique Bedwell
Sculpture by the Sea

tucked away in crevices

Sculpture by the Sea

But it’s not my Rubbish?
Monique Bedwell
Sculpture by the Sea

I loved whole ecosystems

Sculpture Sea

The Reef (Earth Mothers to the Rescue)
Ian Swift
Sculpture by the Sea

Sculpture by the Sea

The Reef (Earth Mothers to the Rescue)
Ian Swift
Sculpture by the Sea

made up of small components.

Sculpture by the Sea

Karda-Megalania
Elaine Clocherty & Sharyn Egan
Sculpture by the Sea

Here – a mixture of

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Scraps, Glorious Scraps

My friend entices me into a fabric shop. I am on a different trajectory of busy-focus and lunch-hunger, but I allow myself to be diverted.

red gold fabric flower art

Sumptuous

My friend asks if they have remnants. They do. I proceed to spend half an hour – or is it a week? – rummaging through remnant bags. The bags are organised according to colour.

fabric cloth scraps

textures and edges

I am a kid in a lolly shop. I am an artist in an art shop.

I am caught in a fabric fragment web

of divine daydreaming.

All else fades away.

It is a surprise Artist Date.

I think of the art-making potential. I love incorporating threads and tissues into paintages.

I think of my elderly art therapy client who

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Washing machines and Watercolour pens

Art and Soulie Spot 10
Stories from the Creative Path

Presenting the beautiful writer:

Kerry Littrich…

I vividly recall the first creative playshop Kerry attended maybe ten years ago.
I remember her uncertainty about what was on offer. Once she felt more sure that this was to be a safe space, she gave herself 700% to the process. She let her big heart shine. She willingly shared her intricately woven fictional characters, who, over time, became as real to me as any of the playshop participants. Maybe we needed extra chairs around the table for Kerry’s living breathing human creations.

Here’s her website: Imagine365

Over to Kerry for a small adventure…

The day off

I am a writer.

I mostly write fiction but I also write non-fiction articles, blog posts and run a whimsical website called imagine365. Sometimes I write copy for other people’s sites or help them create business materials. But today I’m not going to write because I worked late last night in a different job and

I’ve given myself the day off.

            So I start propped up in bed, pillows all around me and a cup of tea to hand. My miniature fox terrier, Rupert, joins me but don’t tell my husband.

dog photo

Kerry’s Rupert

I speak to my sister on the phone,

there’s no hurry.

We catch up for 45 minutes. I spend almost an hour longer in bed meditating with a second cup of tea.

            When I do get up, there’s

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Sculpture by the Sea

(Bondi)
is a collaboration between

Sculpture by Sea

High Tide
Tsukasa Nakahara

art, nature and community.

An endless stream of all types of people

views, talks, walks

along a divine stretch of coastline. 

Sculpture by Sea art

Great Southern Noongar
Janine McAullay Bott

Some sculptures

consciously collaborate

with the elements.

They change dramatically

over the days.

art collaboration nature

Rise and Fall
Small Ocean Collaboration with Jeremy Sheehan

This figure perches

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Where does a bunch of Art Therapists

working in aged care

go for a collective artist date?

Hidden exhibition

Hidden exhibition
Drops, (for Eva Hesse)
Rox de Luca

Why. To a cemetery, of course.

Hidden exhibition
The Storyteller (detail)
Teffany Thiedeman

Not just any cemetery.

Hidden Rookwood Cemetery Sculpture Walk

commemorates 150 years of ‘the Sleeping City’.

Hidden exhibition

Hidden exhibition
Mandir: Shrine
Lee FullARTon

‘HIDDEN is an outdoor sculpture exhibition that takes place amongst the gardens and graves in one of the oldest sections of the Cemetery. The exhibition invites artists to ponder the notion of history, culture, remembrance and love and allows audiences to witness creative expression hidden throughout Australia’s largest and most historic cemetery’,

Hidden art exhibition

Hidden exhibition
Meditation Forest
Peter Hardy

says the website.

Was it morbid? This art expedition to a place where members of my very own family are buried? Was it creepy? Melancholic? No. None of the above. It was actually lovely to go to Rookwood NOT for a funeral.

(The exhibition is viewable til 24th September.)

EAT.

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Responsiveness Fatigue

Is this a thing?

Have you heard of it?

No, I haven’t either. Compassion fatigue, yes. Outrage fatigue, yes. But these terms don’t describe what I periodically feel.

I have decided to call this species of ennui: Responsiveness Fatigue. I manage it by allowing myself to completely tune out here and there, when I can. Some do it regularly. It’s called ‘the Weekend’. That’d be your normal person who works nine-to-five Monday-to-Friday and chills out on Saturday and Sunday. But I am not normal.

tree root photo

a wise old tree with vertical roots
ahhh

My art, therapy, coaching, caring way of life has forgotten what a weekend looks like. I choose to live a not-normal life, which has multiple benefits and generally, I’d rather be ensconced in a quiet frenzy of paint and paper on a wooden dining table than be out on the bright harbour water-skiing.

It’s just that sometimes I require a particular type of downtime, which involves

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Middle-Aged Crazy Art Lady Strikes Again

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.

art play beach

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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New eyes, anyone?

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

(I’ve always loved this quote)

I head into town for a publishing seminar called Forest for the Trees. It’s a collaboration between NSW Writers’ Centre and Sydney Writers’ Festival.

art journal Forest for Trees

Forest for the Trees
Sally Swain
art journal page-in-progress

This is kind of

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Self-fullness? Huh?

temenos art vision Swain

Temenos Vision
a treasure map 
conjuring up what I wanted to  invite into my Art and Soul Creativity Coaching practice in my then new space; a space which has been
called the Temenos Centre since mid 1980s

Feed your soul. Create the space

to dream with paint. It’s not a race.

 

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Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady

What will YOU do on your artist date?

So I’m in the middle of a national park, in the middle of a bad hair decade. Decade.

I can’t avoid the fact that I’m a Middle-aged Crazy Lady wearing baggy pants, collecting plastic junk fragments from the beach. Plastic junk fragments.

Not to throw away, like any Sensible Middle-aged Crazy Lady does, but to PLAY with, as any Unsensible Middle-aged Crazy Art Lady does.
Plus oyster shells, seaweed and string. Treasures.

Beach Mandala found object sculpture

Beach Mandala
plastic, shelly, junky, funky, probably smelly and washed away by now

A gaggle of teenage girls walks past and

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