Offering HeART and SoulCollage® workshops to inspire your creative spirit |
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In Nature Everything Feels Right With the World |
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Greetings!
This summer I am feeling so grateful for the beauty that helps distract me from all the heartbreaking social, political and environmental news. I just completed my annual wilderness quest in the Inyo National Forest with the hundreds of years old junipers, pines, and aspen groves. I named my questing place at Johnny Meadows "The Big Quiet." Being there was like time out of time. Long, lazy, warm days and a shimmering full moon at night. I was even visited by a coyote that sauntered by my campsite one evening. Time alone in nature makes me feel like everything is right with the world.
When autumn comes and the trees begin to lose their leaves, I know I will feel the usual melancholy that comes when the weather turns and things die back. In October I will facilitate the Kintsugi Breaking and Mending Retreat where a group will gather together in community and ceremony to honor our brokenness and turn it into a unique piece of art. This, too, has a way of making things feel more right with the world.
The Kintsugi ceremony is the most important work I do in the world right now. Grief needs community. We need to know we are not in it alone. We need to speak it, break it open, and mend it back together with gold.
This is what Kintsugi is. There is a very real emotional context as one moves through the mending of the broken bowl and its relationship to mending one’s soul. Breakage and repair encourage the acceptance of change and embracing the knowledge that nothing is permanent in this life. We are all connected like pieces of shattered pottery. Through coming together, we can help mend ourselves and our Mother Earth.
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Here is a lovely poem my dear friend, Susanne, wrote while we were in the Inyo.
Ode to Jeffrey
by Susanne Peterman
Jeffrey,
most poetic of conifers,
most photogenic – if I were
a painter I’d reach for yellow
then temper it with purple.
Who
could fathom
those clumped boughs
that bow and bend
in a section of sky
we will never occupy –
No one can know the days you live
how slowly
and how deeply alive to your core
caring in the darkness
underground for your many children.
I breathe what you exhale
like lovers we are
nose to nose
oxygen to carbon dioxide
and vice versa as I roll
and struggle through my days
made larger by you,
gentle Jeffrey.
Out of your rifted bark
you exude.
the faintest whiff
some say of cinnamon
others vanilla
but I say
J E F F R E Y
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Kintsugi Breaking and Mending Retreat
in the heart of the red cedar forest
Friday evening October 14th through Sunday afternoon October 16th, 2022
Come join us as we engage in the ceremonial art of Kintsugi to explore the brokenness that lives in ourselves and in our Mother Earth, and find the beauty and gratitude that resides there.
Many of us are living with broken hearts. We accumulate grief and carry it with us, often unseen and unexpressed. But grief can be a storehouse of power, a way to reconnect with what and how we love, and honor what came before. Grief can help us find the beauty in our brokenness, while opening us to loving more and being of greater service to the world.
Our broken and mended bowls become a gentle, visual reminder to embrace imperfection and look for beauty in brokenness. Learn more here
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Art and SoulCollage® Gatherings at the Down to Earth Studio
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SoulCollage® Gatherings
3rd Fridays 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
GG's Down to Earth Studio
September 16 - Body as Truth Teller
October 21 - Kintsugi SoulCollage®
November 18 - Abundantly Yours
December 16 - Old Stories into New Stories
Sliding scale fee: $20 - $35 (includes all supplies and the 3-hour session)
Those new to SoulCollage® can come one hour early for an overview. Newcomer Fee for the one-hour introductory overview + all supplies + three-hour gathering is $65.
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Shrines for Hope and Healing
Saturday, September 10, 2022. 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
GG's Down to Earth Studio
$25.00 material fee
Shrines are ways of showing in tangible form what might be happening in our hearts and spirits. We will gather and put these mysteries into visual expression by creating our own personal shrines for hope and healing. Your shrine can be dedicated to the environment, diversity of all species, return of the great feminine, your higher power, your spiritual practice, or to simply heal your broken heart...whatever moves you.
No cost for the workshop instruction; this is my love offering (a $25.00 material fee will cover materials and supplies). Participants may want to bring additional totems, talismans and charms for their personal shrines. Register with GG here.
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Eco-Dyeing on Paper and Fabric
Saturday and Sunday, November 5-6, 2022
9:30 am to 4:00 pm
GG's Down to Earth Studio
Workshop fee: $245.00 (see list below for all that this fee includes). I will accept a payment plan.
Come and explore the serendipitous world of eco-dyeing. Eco-dyeing is a technique for printing on fabric or paper with the natural dye color present in leaves, flowers and other plant materials. It's a totally serendipitous process because you never quite know what you'll get. The fun is in the reveal.
Day One: We will spend the day experimenting with eco-dyeing on paper and silk.
Day Two: We will make journals and greeting cards from our prints.
The workshop fee includes high-quality printing paper, one silk scarf, greeting cards and journal-making kits.
Register for the eco-dyeing workshop here.
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When Women Were Birds Art Show
Thank you for all the kind comments about my art show at the Elsinore Gallery, 444 Ferry St. SE, Salem, OR. The show will stay up through the end of July.
I call this show "When Women Were Birds," borrowed from the title of a favorite book by one of my favorite authors, Terry Tempest Williams. Here is an excerpt from the book:
"Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated."
The gallery is open 9-6 Monday - Friday and 10-5 on Saturdays.
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GG's Art in an Upcoming Anthology
Crisis edited by Stephanie Raffelock.
Here is a description of the book: Art keeps good alive in the worst of times. In the face of ugliness, pain, and death, it’s art that has the power to open us all to a healing imagining of new possibility; it’s art that whispers to the collective that even in the ashes of loss, life always grows again. That’s why right now, in this tumultuous time of war and pandemic, we need poets more than we need politicians.
Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis will be published in June. You can order a copy here or at your favorite local bookstore. |
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"Being Held in Deep Grief and Unbearable Beauty" art print for sale.
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"Beyond the Veil" art print for sale.
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Gift Certificates for GG's Down to Earth Studio for SoulCollage(r) baby showers, birthday parties, products, classes, or art doula services. Contact GG.
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from my creative heart to yours, |
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The Art Doula is here for You!
Come and explore, discover, and birth your unique creativity.
This offering has really taken off and I couldn't be more thrilled! I now have seven art mentoring clients -- some in person at the studio and some on zoom. We are having so much fun breaking old patterns and birthing new artistic endeavors. I love being an Art Doula. : )
Are you a tentative artist, or maybe a wanna-be? Do you feel the call to create something but don't know where to start? Have you heard yourself say the words “I’m not a creative person?” Or, maybe you think of yourself as only a painter, or only a crafter.
Let’s debunk those myths! I am an Art Doula, here to help you explore, discover, and birth more of your unique creativity. I'd so love to work with you to help your creative life blossom. Zoom or in-person doula services available. Contact me for a free 30-minute preliminary consult. More information on my website here.
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