Emotional Landscapes, process video + Art Club this Friday 🏞
join us for virtual community meetup ✨
hi frens! before we dive in, happy lunar new year (gōng xǐ fā cái!), new moon and a quick note that i’ll be offering another online Art Club gathering for paid subscribers and patrons this Friday at 4-5pm GMT (time converter here)
To join, simply hit reply to this mail!
If money is tight but you want to join us on Friday, reply to this mail and I’ll link you with the deets.
Hope we get to be in real-time company together soon 💜
Last Friday, i held space for my LA crew to gather for Art Club. my attempt to offer some space in a not-so-spacious time, and channel some energy into art as a therapeutic practice. a practice in showing up, a practice in cultivating joy, a practice in channeling what is there and expressing it to whatever medium-method-modality it wanted and needed to take.
Here’s a bts vlog post-practice (i’m also still recovering from being wretchedly sick since December - anyone else?! - so my voice audio is a little quiet along with my phone almost packing up and glitching but - it’s an honest little post-event-moment for the archives!)
After arriving and ‘landing’ in space with excited check-ins, i led a brief embodied art practice. it was (as usual) take-it-or-leave-it, offering tools which i tap into, and have been deeply leaning into, not only in my personal daily practices and rituals, but also in my research.
Many of you have been on this art + embodiment spacemaking mission with me for a long time, and for that i’m so grateful. it’s an honour to journey with you. There are many here who i’ve been lucky enough to spend time with in community classes, workshops, discos, installations, freewrites, participatory sound walks, retreats, post-practice tea + chats, whether irl wherever we were in the world, or online.
All spaces where we gather hold a lot of meaning, and are important to me. Community has always been a cherished and necessary part of my art making practice. I know community can be banded around a lot. for me at least, it’s a gathering of Beings in intentional space. How we engage with space, ourselves and each other are part of how we practice co-creating movements for meaningful change.
I’ve mentioned a lot over the years that my approach to social practice but in fact, all practices, is that i see it as a co-creation. sure i make stuff, i plan, prepare until the cows come home, do my research which continues long after an ‘event’, tend to my own practices so i can meet my work from as grounded a place as possible, ‘prep my own canvas’ so-to-speak, that is, the dedication to the work of holding space intentionally... But when we meet, i surrender any ideas about what i think a thing should be, and instead try to Be with what’s there. I then do my best to offer tools, resources, space for co-creation as well as reflective room for our personal practice with focussed quiet time.
On Friday, i didn’t plan a heap of stuff before the session (for a change!)
a little bts for context: i’m usually hyperfocussed on planning in the lead up to any event. often this means i’m light on sleep a week before which… isn’t ideal! you might have noticed more recent events have been a little more spontaneous as i’ve been exploring ways to support my nervous system with that imbalance, but also, to hold space for the difficult things i’ve been moving through which has made planning until this moment particularly tricky
No references to readings, media, theories, ideas, odes to pets of Eastenders circa 1985-1997 (please refer to tribute here).
Instead we met and exchanged offerings from our own emotional landscapes. Our reflections were on the local, regional, national and global and how it’s in relationship with our personal. It can be a lot holding the weight of the world along with our own personal challenges. The day to day things, the stuff we need to do to survive. The wrestling with balancing how we show up for ourselves and others and what capacity feels like.
What i’m reminded of is the spacious potential of this being held in a group. The bolstering of not feeling alone in your way of seeing/Being in the world. Mirrors of shared dreams and fears but also tangible actions which are moving collectively towards something hopeful…hope as a practice…
i’m paraphrasing, but we spoke about how each of us, navigating our own stuff, shares resonance in our experiences trying to survive fascism.
The threads and tangled roots of this poison are long, and I’d add, those who are ever-present in and with the affects of colonialism being something very-much present can attest, in worlds which are determined to crush you, we survive by building together. by Being, more than ever.
i was touched by the sentiment and passionate shares from attendees that (again paraphrasing) we need art more than ever, especially in these times. i found myself emotional. i know for some time how hard i’ve found it to return here, to this space, writing to you (not for want of trying so perhaps i mean pressing ‘send’!). the impossibility of things and yet… showing up for myself and community (ourselves and each other) offers me so much and Art Club ended up being exactly what i needed. even though taking that first step to be more ‘public’ was super scary. i won’t go into reasons of what’s been going on bts, but i will offer a little bts embodied drawing chaotic process video a little lower down hehe.
i’m thinking about the…
“…celebration of each interconnected part, each role we play in our interdependent ecosystem”
So back to this embodied art-making offering. we checked in with ourselves. and i led a brief grounding practice before a short art + embodiment practice, taking a snapshot of our inner emotional landscape.
…i wish i’d taken a picture of my ‘before’ at the end of the one minute markmaking practice, but i did record some process of adding to what i made.
Emotional Landscapes
the aforementioned bts embodied drawing chaotic process video………….