Thanks so much for such a wonderful experience! I was inspired and impressed by everyone in this class. Just to hear you all talk about each persons art was such an education. I now look at art, especially transformative art, with a new appreciation and a new language. Art that used to confuse me or pass me by now holds a place of intrigue and respect in my life. I loved that all our installations were so unique and held such a wonderful array of experiences within them. Thank you all for your honest and very caring comments and encouragements during this class. I really enjoyed spending this time before my final project in your department. I hope to see you all again, whether through your art or another creative realm!

Cheers and Appreciations!

- Colleen

I have lived my art this week... I am a transformed, destroyed, and emerging new being as a result of this project. What an interesting week!! I went to Tilden on Sat. afternoon to collect some sticks to make the final pieces for the installation. Came home and spent a few hours putting them together before heading to bed. Little did I know that I would wake in the morning transformed. The sticks turned out to be old dead poison oak shoots. My face and arms were of another world. To make a long story short, I had to go to the emergency room twice in the following 3 days for medication and steriod shots. This is the first time that I have been even slightly able to do something productive this week, and even now I am heavily sedated with benedryl... What a project - I plaster myself, prepared to put myself on display and then end up transforming my actual body into a painful, horrible, swollen blister - whew... Will be interesting to process this when I get my head on straight... but for now, bed and dreams...

"Movement, change, light, growth & decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials & weather, the earth as my source. I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just the material itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within & around it. When I leave it, these processes continue." - Andy Goldsworthy

Wow - it has been an amazing week of plastering! It is such a weird process to make myself and then put myself together. And each morning when I wake up, I see myself sitting on the table, a little more complete than the day before. Today, waking up, there I sat, completed - with an expression and gesture of awe and amazement in my position. When I walk through the room "I" am sitting in, I sometimes forget that it is just a plaster form. It sometimes startles me, sometimes makes me smile, sometimes gives me a lift, sometimes makes me proud. My roommates have had similar reactions - enjoying coming home from work each day to find a new part has been attached. Amazingly, they haven't even minded the mess the process made. In fact, one of my roommates said she was so glad that I did it at home so she could see the whole thing.

What a great metaphor for relationships!! It's amazing how much people just like to be involved in the process of growth - sometimes helping, sometimes just witnessing. They appreciate it and are inspired by it. There is no need to even be afraid of the mess it makes sometimes (of course I have really good roommates!) It's just been so nice to have the whole day to create and then to have my friends come home and enjoy the process with me!

As much time and detail it has taken (and it's been rather a lot of both) - it has been an amazing process. I am very interested now in the showing of myself to you all ... and then to the community. Kinda scary, kinda exciting, kinda wonderful!

BEFORE...(yes that is a tortilla bag)

DURING...
AFTER...don't be jealous..

Oh daylight rise! Atoms are dancing
Souls, lost in ecstasy, are dancing.
I'll whisper in your ear where the
dance will take you.
All atoms in the air, in the desert,
They are all like madmen, each atom,
happy or miserable,
Is Passionate for the sun
of which nothing can be said.

Rumi

First Blog Ever...

So this is an interesting forum to talk - blogging... I've always wondered what blogging was all about. Why would anyone want to read what I'm thinking about? Why would I want them to... but, I shall give it a try!

The art process with these pieces has been new and interesting. I really enjoy thinking about making art to evoke a feeling in other people - rather than just making a beautiful piece or try to make a statement of my inner feelings. But it is an expression of my take on these emotions - I assume that my experience of the piece will be the same as the see-er - in some ways we are all connected and share the same consciousness - but at the same time we each create our own experience every moment by the way we perceive the world - interesting to think about... we each have a unique perspective of the world that is a result of our one and only life experience AND we all go through the same things as a culture - unique and shared at exactly the same moment... anyway.. that was a tangent

The art making process has been fun! Having the opportunity to make art with a goal in mind but without any rules along the way is wonderful - I love to break art rules - In fact - art is anything.. I HATED when my art teachers in school would come over and "CORRECT" my art - what is that? How can you correct art? Art just is.... So - I have loved this process! It was a little intimidating to start making my piece on Saturday in studio surrounded by people who do this as a profession and full time study - but once I got started I just enjoyed the process - As much as I believe that anything can be art - I am still critical of it - so my process is to create something of beauty, without rules, creative, and new AND be confident that it can stand on its own - it just is - there is no better than me or wrong -

And the truck photo - I walk past this truck all the time and don't think much of it. It was amazing to look at it the other day as an artist - it's such a wonderful experience to walk the same streets as I have for a year now through the eyes of art moments!

I'm looking forward to starting my art journal tomorrow as well! I was thinking about it today as I was searching for scrap wood on the back streets of Oakland and started to get excited about it! This class is giving me a great opportunity to practice what I preach! Taking time out to just create - for myself - just for fun! I'm excited to see what it brings into my life - I'm looking forward to it!