hannah klaus hunter

Inscribing a circle

2012-02-05T16:42:00.000-08:00

I've been drawing circles since I was four, but my fascination with them as an art form dates back to to the 80's in front of an ashram in Oakland, CA, where, just outside the door, I saw a most astonishing drawing done in a rich array of vibrant colors all contained in a circle.

Ritual rangoli done in powdered pigments

These circles, called rangolis, were done for religious or healing ceremonies. As an artist, I ached to be able to do something like this and after some investigation, came upon the mandala (the Sanskrit word for circle), an art form with a long history across many cultures. Like the rangoli, it is art created created for ritual purposes in a circular form and these days, also employed in art therapy.

So, while I've been painting, collaging, and inscribing these geometric discs for years, nothing could have prepared me for the excitement about the circle that recently burst upon the art scene in the form of Damian Hirst's spots.

I started poking around and pretty soon I discovered that I could make a distinction between a circle and a spot. It's strictly my interpretation, but the way I see it is that the spot is just that: a rounded mark or splotch made by foreign matter. It seems to have arrived in a rather casual manner.

Spots tossed on a watercolor in the studio, photo by Amelia McSweeny

The circle on the other hand is a closed line, something inscribed in which all the points on the line lie at the same distance from the center. It seems intentional, elegant, something that shows up in nature, but also something that 3 and 4-year olds begin drawing as they enter into the world of representation. The circle is one of the early building blocks.

I looked up on my studio wall, where all three current pieces are iterations of the circle, so I tried to dig a bit deeper to see what was so fascinating-- and, what keeps me returning to them as a form decade after decade.

I'm reminded of something that another blogger, Gwyneth Leech, said in a recent post, "Spots Before My Eyes...:""...there is the infinite variety of things, then there is an infinite variation of one thing." A circle suggests eternity (think of a ring), something bigger than myself, time layered upon itself, the pleasure in creating a multitude of variations on a theme.

The idea that each circle can both be the same yet different; it's own infinite, elegant universe is powerful. A 3-year taps into these infinite possibilities without fear or the preconceived notions of adults. When I began this post I thought that I'd be arguing for the integrity of the circle, but now that I've experienced spots and dots á la Hirst (and, for a great post on spots, see Joanne Mattera's "Connecting the Dots), I'm looking to get rid of some of my trepidation and preconceived notions, and hopefully, adopt some of the spot philosophy too.

I know that many of you have had fun in the studio with circles, spots and dots--if you have any stories or images you'd like to share I'd love to hear from you.

Mindfulness at Play

2012-01-27T09:44:00.000-08:00

Have you ever felt the axis of your life shifting? Last year I was deeply focused on my artwork, with art therapy a bit out of focus.

As the year has turned, however, so has my attention. For many years, I relied on observations of my own children's developmental stages to help me understand the children with whom I worked.

Now, with my own children navigating the waters of young adulthood, I no longer have that framework to depend on. While the memories are there, I need to stay fresh in my art therapy practice.

With that in mind, I've been re-infusing my knowledge of art therapy and child development by lots of reading, particularly on the Art Therapy Alliance group threads on LinkedIn.

I've been particularly intrigued by the development of Cathy Malchiodi's "Trauma Informed Practices Institute." In her recent newsletter, she lays out some of the core foundations for integrating mindfulness practice and positive psychology into art therapy.

"Making art can help us become mindful in the moment, just like when one learns to be present in the moment through the practice of mindfulness meditation. In art therapy, we often speak of that moment in art making when "flow" occurs-- an experience of losing oneself in the experience, but at the same time being present and engaged in the process. Being in the flow state can help you become more relaxed and begin to observe yourself in new ways. Art expression itself is a way of creating something new from what you already have, but may not have fully recognized within yourself."

Observing the children on the unit, I would say that the flow state has more and more been relegated to the world of Wii, Playstation 3 and Nintendo. While there is value in learning to control the actions of characters on screen, I have a personal bias. I think it is just as exciting and possibly more so to be able to affect actions with one's own hands in our three dimensional world.

In other words, how do we help children find their way into the flow state with art, music, dance and other forms of creative expression? That's the question I'll be asking of myself in the next few months as I craft art activities which stimulate that sense of flow. I'll also be looking forward to attending Cathy's class this March in San Francisco: Enhancing Resilience Through Trauma Informed Practices: Positive Psychology and Mindfulness Based Art Approaches.

For a treat, if you click here, you will find a podcast containing a wonderful talk with Oxford psychologist, Mark Williams and a short 3 minute mindfulness meditation that made my day.

New Website Crowning

2012-01-16T18:18:00.000-08:00

As a parent who has recently experienced the empty nest, it's pretty darned exciting to have a project that I've been so involved with that it feels almost like my own child. Which, of course, means it's not without its joys or difficulties. The new child however, is a virtual one, my website.

As I've learned to work with the site myself--WordPress book at hand and Google at my fingertips, I've begun to experience a pride similar to what I felt as a young mother.

As they did then, the first few snafus catch me by surprise--like getting caught without extra diapers or wipes in public; but with practice, I've learned how to problem solve. And, like reminding a small child over and over again to pick up their toys, I've tussled with the never-ending chore of cleaning up errant links, and misbehaving formatting.

As with children, there is no stasis, no resting point where the process is over. As I introduce my website, I see it as a work in progress, something that has come a long way, but will continue to develop and grow as I do.

Without further ado, let me introduce my website: Hannah Klaus Hunter, Fine Artist, Textile and Paper Collage

I invite you to visit, to explore the different pages and I welcome your thoughts and observations. In a bit, I'll begin writing all my posts on the WordPress site, but I'm not quite there yet. More on that later.

Reality and Resolutions--#2012

2012-01-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

At this time of year, people talk a lot about resolutions, goals or even words they want to live by. My question though is "How are you going to do it?" Fortunately, you also hear about the scaffolding--the underpinning of the resolutions. Scaffolding answers the question of how do you get from point A to point B?

Last year I set myself the goal of creating a new website. I've had two websites designed in the past, and naively, I assumed that the work was in getting the site up and running. It didn't occur to me to factor in the cost of keeping the site up to date.

The Second Story Studio, my second site

Some years older now and wiser, I realized that I needed to create a site I could update myself. That meant keeping it simple without the bells and whistles attached--the really cool things that web designers come up with.No funky fonts, dark backgrounds with white type--just the straight stuff, in other words, "Gallery Minimal."

My first site: hkhunterarts

I decided to go with WordPress, a blog format that allows me to have multiple pages and, like this Blogger site, make changes and updates to my heart's content.

I hired an artist friend Chris Beers who does IT and design for our local gallery, the Pence, and together we figured out a way to create a clean site where the colors of my pieces sparkle. We even included two tutoring sessions so that I could learn to do it myself.

So there I was with my squeaky clean site and a host of new jpegs to load on. The only thing is, that between the time when I learned the tools (before the holidays,) and when I was ready to employ them (after the holidays ), I simply forgot how.

I remembered my secret weapon--a book Chris had recommended: Teach Yourself Visually: WordPress. I picked it up and decided to have a go at it. I dreaded the thought. Me and instructions...hmmm...kind of like my ninth grade Algebra course--never know where I'm going to end up...

Using an old study trick, I looked at my watch and decided to read for half an hour with studio time as a break. I kvetched inwardly. Oi vey, the terms: trackbacks and feedbacks and permalinks! The funny thing was, fifteen minutes later, I was swimming with the permalinks. I even got into it so much, I brought it along to a doctor's appointment with me.

So, I'm learning to load on the jpegs and pretty soon, I'll be able to launch my site...As Billy Crystal noted in Analyze This, "It's a process."

Welcome to my home away from home: an online studio where you can see my artwork,
ﬁnd inspiration and read about my double life as an artist and art therapist.

The new kid on the block: hannahklaushunterarts.com

'Tis the season to...?

2011-12-28T15:30:00.000-08:00

When this season rolls around, we know it's time to be busy--I'm reminded of my third grade grammar lesson in superlatives: busy, busier, busiest.

All this hustle and bustle comes at just the time when the light and temperature (in the Northern hemisphere) beckon us to to slow down, bundle up, and brew pots of tea and tureens of soup.

Each year I'm challenged to find a way to keep my balance-not to get so busy that I neglect the beauty in gorgeous orange globes of pomegranates, the migrating birds, and the friendly faces of my family. This year, I noticed that if I just did what was in front of me, I was OK.

Of course that had me doing everything at the last minute: buying Hanukkah candles the final day the synagogue gift shop was open, wrapping my families' gifts the day I gave them, and waiting until the holidays were over to begin my cards.

I love getting holiday cards--the sense of that person's warmth from across state, elsewhere in the country, around the world, never ceases to move me. They take time to think about me and my family, to sustain our connection in spite of the urge to let go, because in these days of e-mail, facebook etc., it's all too much.

So I argue with myself--do I make the cards this year? Do I use Shutterfly to get one of those composite photographic documents of my family life? (Hmmm...kids grown, still won't sit still.) I want to go be in the studio--so making the cards wins. I moan. Why can't I just keep it simple like most of the people I know who send cards? Then I realize that it's through their making that I feel connected.

After a while, a rhythm and logic develop and a flotilla of delicate rice paper snowflakes emerges; carefully glued on top of pieces of script. I love pulling random pages from old books, foraged from library sales (an act which distresses my husband), and discovering some synchronistic pattern like Charles Dicken's ode to his Christmas tree from a 1920's book on elocution.

Snowflake flotilla, photo courtesy of Amelia McSweeny

I discover that in cutting and unfolding, the shape of a Jewish star emerges in the center of the flake, surrounded by a circle of tiny people reaching out towards each other.

The star reminds me of my Jewish grandmother's Christmas cards. These were cards that she sent out in the twenties and thirties to her non-Jewish friends and although they were sent as part of an attempt to assimilate into mainstream culture, I like to see them as a bridge between cultures, a way of creating and maintaining a connection.

My grandmother Caroline's Christmas card, circa 1925-1935

All of which takes me back the beginning; maintaining connection--and what better way to do this than through art?

Clear Sight

2011-12-16T18:45:00.000-08:00

Bird of Paradise/Island studio

I’ve been doing some thinking on my vacation; going away is often a way of coming closer to myself, of discovering what’s been stored up inside me for lo these many months.

Landing in Kauai, I assumed I would magically relax into a state of being where one activity flowed into another--not the hurried hula I find myself performing on most working days.

While there were indeed many delicious activities; ocean walks, tropical flowers and rainbows, I was surprised to meet up with some of my oldest and most familiar demons; the ones that incessantly wish to compare myself to others who seem to be more, do more, achieve more.

Birds of Paradise in situ

A hold-over from childhood, these thought pests seemed more intense than usual, even creeping into my dreams. My sister, who had joined us, noted that sometimes in Hawaii, it seems that one’s stored up issues just seep out like lava--a kind of “detoxifying” if you will.

While the gremlins nibbled and morning doves cooed, I tried to set up a studio practice--sparer than my normal routine, but something to do in order to counter my inner detractors. I decided to sit down for an hour a day with watercolors and just paint something. I picked the simplest forms I could find; lemons and limes picked from trees growing in the yard and tiny birds of paradise that grew by the outdoor shower.

Bird of Paradise

As I painted, I observed my initial antipathy to mixing the color green. It brought up memories of phthalocyanine blue and viridian green oil paint in undergraduate school and my messy complicated affair with oils. I persevered and, finally, loosened my association of mixing colors which matched my mood and began instead to evoke a feeling of relationship with the fruits I studied.

What I also observed, as the days peeled off, was that after painting I experienced a feeling of clairvoyance--clairvoyance in the French sense of the word, which literally means: “clear sight.” The fabulous leaf and flower forms that surrounded me seemed heightened, standing out as if I were staring at an intricate Indian miniature. I experienced an intensity of seeing similar to the high that practitioners of yoga describe. I felt loose and clear headed. I breathed effortlessly.

Lemon Thoughts

I’d like to claim, after this time away, that I’ve returned to normal life with no worries, sustained clear sight and a pack of good watercolors. But reality, like river water after a storm, is muddy. Spending time with transparent colors and resplendent foliage allowed me to see the landscape through the mist; there are always more layers--I understood again that we can never really remove ourselves from the complex relationships of people and situations, the endless rich entanglements of this world. However, like finding a blossom in the Hawaiian jungle, I can always locate something to focus on.

My 7 Links

2011-12-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

I recently accepted Donna Iona Drozda's invitation to participate in a project: My 7 Links Project. For this project, each blogger chooses 7 different posts to fit seven unique categories and then invites up to 5 more bloggers to do the same, and so on, as a way of uniting "bloggers from all sectors in an endeavor to share lessons learned and...to... create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts..."

A timely invitation and one that I thought about because it seemed to me a perfect chance to look over the year's post, to form in my mind a gestalt of what I'd written, a means of seeing the road I'd traveled and perhaps the road I might choose to take in the year ahead.

Like the doors on an advent calendar, I invite you to open up one or more of these links and see what you discover.

Most helpful: Young Adult Bereavement Art Group/Art Therapy in Action: This post proved to be helpful in two ways; one for me, because the post reflects how much I learned about the grief process of young adults, but also because this information is useful to those people who wish to start an art therapy based bereavement support group in their own community.


Where I Live, ©2000, H. Hunter, 15" x 18", Acrylic &		Caran d'ache

Most popular: Finding Sanctuary: addresses our universal need to find a safe and sacred space. Nature + art = one of the most effective ways to find it.

Didn't quite get the attention it deserved: Timing is Everything: There's a lot packed into this little post with M.S. Merwin's poem. Spring opens our eyes with its fleeting beauty and we're reminded, once again, of the transience and beauty of life.

Most proud of: Art Therapy 101: No questions here. Art Therapy 101, about my daughter who was my first teacher in art therapy, wrote itself.

Peonies at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art

Most beautiful: Accidental Journey: Places of the soul--all of us have them and I accidentally traveled back to mine in this trip to Maine. Here I share images and thoughts of this magical journey, especially one gorgeous blush colored peony.

Surprising Success: A Different Kind of Summer: I had no idea when I wrote about spending the summer in the studio that it would elicit so many responses. At the hospital, when I'm asked what I did on the weekend, my answer is always the same: "I was in my studio." (And it's always a pleasure.)

Most controversial: New Beginnings: The controversy here is subjective within the quilting world--I suddenly felt confronted by an entirely different way of seeing the quilting process, one I hadn't considered and which challenged me to re-examine my approach to the aesthestics of art quilts.

And now some nominations--4 blogs with entirely different focuses--something to satisfy different parts of my personality.

From the Scattergood Farm: written by two teachers at Scattergood Friends School (my daughter's high school alma mater) where students both study and work a living farm. In this new blog, they present some radical new ideas for school lunch. Check this out!

Patricia Scarborough: I love Patty's posts--witty and wry and half a continent away, I love to read her observations and see her plein air plainscapes.

Dwelling Here Now: One of the first blogs I discovered, Anthony Lawlor takes a spiritual approach to architecture and the architecture of thought.

Blue Sky Dreaming: Blue Sky's open minded approach to her subject matter and materials intrigues and inspires lots of us in the mixed media world.

A Process of Trial and Multicolored Error

2011-11-23T09:22:00.000-08:00

Pomegranate: alizarine crimson/napthol red/burnt umber

I arrived at my friend Stacey's last week with a lot of questions. I wanted to hear where she stood on the matter of staining and non staining pigments, her thoughts on hot vs cold press paper and if there was a better pigment or paper to use.

Stacey obligingly pulled out a reference book, The Wilcox Guide to the Best Watercolor Paints by Michael Wilcox and showed it to me. On each page there was a precis of every shade of watercolor known to mankind. She offered to loan me the book but the sheer weight of the information was daunting.

When I pressed her for the essential facts on these issues, I could feel her resistance. She explained that rather than reading about pigments, she prefers to work with the colors herself, testing one, then another with a whole cadre of colors. She opened a black notebook to a two page spread with the most mouthwatering series of colors I've seen in a while.

Pomegranate: alizarine crimson/napthol red/burnt umber

What was most interesting about the samples she had painted was that there was no uniformity. You could see crystallization in some of the colors and in others, like viridian, there were speckles of plum and rust. "So, is that sedimentary?" I asked, pointing to the viridian wash. She told me that the paint water had remnants of many colors suspended in it--or, as she put it, "it's dirty water."

It was apparent to me that once again, I was facing the creative continuum of choice, trying to decide between two ways of approaching a painting or drawing. When I arrived that at her studio that morning, looking for answers, Stacey was telling me to experiment, to work by trial and error, always heading in the direction that that elicits energy and joy, rather than the road marked "I really should...."

Simply put," she said, "avoid the 'shoulds'!!
"If it seems like you have a choice and one way is going to bring joy, go that way."

Circles Within Circles

2011-11-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

When I last wrote about painting persimmons with Stacey Vetter, a number of people asked me to keep them "posted." I had the best of intentions but my production took a sharp downturn high up in the hills of Carmel Valley.

While my son Ben played golf on the tiered greens of Saint Lucia Preserve, I hid myself behind a Valley Oak and began to paint acorns and oak leaves. The sun was hot and rather than creating distinct layers, the walnut ink pooled on paper. After an hour, I had only a few clusters to show for my efforts. Discouraged, I decided to report my findings to Stacey the next week.

Stacey took a survey of my results and prescribed painting circles. "Circles??" I asked. Not one to stand on ceremony, she picked up her brush and began to demonstrate what she meant. As I watched her, I noticed that she handled the brush with a deftness born of deep practice. The brush seemed to swirl around with no hesitation.

I took up my brush, discovering that it intended design on its own--and performed the opposite of hers. Frustrated, I reminded myself of the revered book by Shunryu Suzuki: "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." "It's O.K." I assured myself. I have to work against my own grain when I put myself in a place where I know very little and I need to have a high tolerance for mistakes.

I decided to persevere. As I did, I began to notice little things: how as I came around the bend of the curve and the brush seemed to be running out of ink, it would disperse just enough ink to easily close the circle. Slowly, as I repeated the circles, I began to feel the delight I experienced as a child on ice skates when I figured out how to spin. Soon I was spinning the ink. Circles and more circles. On hot press. On cold press. On rice paper. On banana paper.

My next challenge was to create a shading in the circle. Stacey explained that I would need to paint a piece of the circle and then stop; making sure to leave an organic shape, quickly rinse my brush and then, with precisely the amount of water as I had just shed of pigment, finish off the circle.

A few days later at a studio time with my friend Linda, a landscape water colorist, I decided to try my hand at it. She sat down to complete a gorgeous landscape of Lake Tahoe and I brought out my circles. She glanced over after a while and noted that how boring it must be. Her comment caught me by surprise. I had become completely involved in the act of touching paint to paper and watching it react.

In its own way, it was as fascinating as observing a patient in her hospital room. How did the first stroke lay down? (Is the patient alone in her room?) What kind of organic shape should I leave? (What kind of expression does the patient have? What is the tone of their speech?) Does the paint granulate as it begins to dry? Is it a staining or non staining pigment? (Does she want to cover the entire paper or work in just a tiny corner?)

Like the beginning of William Blake's poem, "Auguries of Innocence," it seemed that I'd discovered "a world in a grain of sand."

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

After I explained to Linda what I was seeing, she too got caught up and soon we were both exploring the depths of her vast collection of colors. They were seductive, those circles, and she couldn't resist trying her hand at a few.

I'm not sure where these circles will lead and I'm sure a few of them will land in collage works. In the meantime, I'm taking time to relish the turn of the brush.

Sitting on My Hands

2011-11-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

I like to imagine that there are as many ways to say good bye as stars in the sky. Like stars, each goodbye is unique, with its own distinct light. This was the last week in our bi-annual Young Adult Bereavement Art Group that we affectionately call "YABAG." Perhaps its me, perhaps it's time passing, but it seems that each group gets better and better.

In the first week we ask what brings each person to the group. One young woman's response, "Art, Bereavement, Support," formed the personality of our present group. That's what we did.

Aside from piloting my way through my own childrens' teenage years, facilitating through the 8 weeks is one of the most difficult things I do, and, at the same time, the most subtle. The knowledge of when to speak and when to refrain from speaking, when to lean on someone just a bit so that they'll speak even without feeling pressured is as delicate a process as inserting an IV needle.

For 8 weeks these young adults came week after week to sit with us and wind their way through their dark tunnels of grief. Each week, after the evening was over, my co-facilitator and I told each other that we wanted to adopt each one of them. Certainly, I wanted to rescue them from their pain. And, since that wasn't possible, I spent a lot of time figuratively sitting on my hands.

During the last two weeks, group members paint clay masks that they've made several weeks earlier and construct a memory box containing images and symbols that speak to their memories of the person who died. Often these are not literal pictures of the person, but images they've found in magazines or pictures they've painted inside and outside of the box.

I think of this box as a tool kit. Alongside the memories residing invisibly inside the box, there is also the knowledge of the coping tools they've learned in the group; how to address the non-grievers, how to approach a holiday without feeling you're about to fall off a cliff and how there are others like you with whom you can travel. Going it alone becomes an option rather than a necessity.

As the group ended that night we sat quietly. My co-facilitator and I had said our goodbyes. Group members expressed their wishes that the sessions could continue longer ("I could paint for hours"), but I thought that as usual, they would take off quickly, disappearing into the darkness of night. But they sat. And sat.

I'm one of those people who have to take it on faith that sometimes the most important thing I can do as a therapist is to listen and be present. An old mentor used to caution me over and over: "Don't rush the river." But I've always found so much comfort in doing. It makes me feel better. But as I pondered these young people the next morning, I realized why they continued to sit for so long. There was comfort in simply being together. No words, not even images were necessary. They and their memories could dwell comfortably in the half-light.

Persimmons on Parade

2011-10-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

I began a new chapter of my life last week. Like many people pursuing a career, it's necessary sometimes to take matters into my own hands and sharpen my saw. For a while now, I've wanted to focus my attention on drawing--to begin as it were, a drawing practice. I decided to talk to my friend Stacey Vetter, botanical painter, illustrator and draftswoman extraordinaire. I'd taken a class with her a year ago through our local arts center and had loved it.

This time, I wanted to go a little further, so I asked her if she'd be open to a series of private lessons.

She asked what I'd like to focus on and I told her I wanted to reclaim my practice of journaling and use plants rather than words. And I wanted to turn the effort into a kind of meditation.

Stacey turned out to be my go-to-gal. I arrived at her studio to find a simple wooden table covered with a linen print cloth. On top of the cloth were placed a clutch of green persimmons. (They'll ripen steadily until December, when they'll hang on the tree like tiny orange globes, dangling miniature pumpkins.)

Next to the persimmons sat a flask of walnut ink which, Stacey explained, was created by a man named Tom Norton, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had formulated a lightfast ink resembling the ink of the old masters. At the time of Rembrandt, artists used real walnut ink which faded over time, becoming a lovely rich, dark umber that we see today. Now it's reinvented for all of us to use in perpetuity.

I discovered after just a short time, how similar the art of ink painting is to life. After explaining some possibilities, Stacey suggested that we start simply--and like any good builders, that we work on the foundation. (These were wise words, because already, as she spoke, I found myself lost in the crenellations of the persimmons' crown. )

Mu Qi, 13th century Chinese painter

She gave me three instructions: Slow down and surrender, accept what the ink is going to do and keep it simple. I've been immersing myself in persimmons and pomegranates since then, fascinated by how difficult keeping it simple truly is.

Several days after my first lesson, Stacey sent me a link to the picture above, a gorgeous study of persimmons by the 13th century Chinese master, MuQi. She also included this quote:

"Since birth we get accustomed to seeing and thinking at the same time. But I think that if you can turn off the mind and look at things only with your eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract." Ellsworth Kelly from Drawn from Nature

8 Women's Visions and 1 Woman's Details

2011-10-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

As the Jewish New Year passed last week with all the speed of a French TGV train, I spent ellipses of that time "wondering" my way back over the year. And I do mean wondering.

This past year, my goal was to create work for an art quilt show I'd been invited to participate in. Never mind the fact that prior to this, I had done very little quilting, when I dive into something, I'm passionate about it. I try to inhale as much knowledge as I can, trusting that if I do, it will carry me to a place that I can equally trust.

In the spirit of that quest, I gave myself the challenge of creating six 36" quilts in the space of six months. I liked the multiple of six and I thought that the time I'd allotted would be more than adequate. For traditional quilt patterns, this would be ample time, but because I was approaching quilting like collage, the time passed in the blink of an eye.

That's how the other week I came to find myself with six quilts, all needing to be bound and sleeves for hanging added as well. In some ways this might seem like the easy part of the process: choose a binding and off you go. But instead, using the collage process (cut out that piece, put it in, see if it fits, take it out, try another place, moving it until it fits and so on), it turns out that the binding is an integral part of the piece, and is much more than a quick intuitive decision.

After cutting the first round of bindings, I began to attach them and found myself making faces. "Yuck! What's going on here?" I asked myself. As I unstitched bindings and studied the quilts, I discovered that actually, the binding seemed to serve the same function as the final strokes of a drawing.

I also understood that I was facing my one of my own oft repeated laws of art: whenever I begin a painting, a drawing, or a collage, the choices are limitless, or, limited only by my own personality and imagination. With each step, the choices narrow because of the actions already chosen. When I get down to these last strokes--the challenge is to be concise, to choose the exact combination of colors that will allow my format to sing like Isaac Stern playing a Bach partita.

At the same time, it's the place of greatest risk. If I make the wrong decision, I stand to lose everything.

Early the next morning I grabbed my dilemma by its horns and headed up to the studio in my nightgown (that way, the quilt is taken by surprise, it's not sure whether you're serious or not...)

I began to cut and sew. After an hour had past, I'd past the test and made it through the rough spots.

I'd taken a risk and allowed the work, not my head to tell me what kind of fabrics were needed. A revelation indeed because at the eleventh hour, I often want to depend on my head not my eyes or my heart.

A week has passed since I wrote this. The new bindings are now sewn on, the show is up and I'm just about ready to head out the door to the opening. And like the bindings, I've learned that even though I may want to shortcut the evening (the biggest challenge of the whole process is showing up for the event) I'm thinking that by completing the circle and taking a risk, I just might learn something that will help the evening to sing.

New Beginnings

2011-09-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

Every day, like most everyone, I find a flock of e-mails waiting in my in-box. Yesterday, one of them stood out, catching my notice, the words evoked a turning, an awareness that something new might be on the way.

My friend Sara had written a description for a class she calls "Art Makers," a class for people who are curious about the process of being and becoming an artist. The class has been going on for a couple years now and each season, she changes the theme to correspond with her observations on the previous class.

She noted that this fall class would focus on process, "--on taking apart our work and putting it back together, on looking and seeing with "art" awareness, on re-affirming how we work best."

I'm taking those 5 little words "re-affirming how we work best," to heart.

All summer, I've climbed the stairs to my studio, a space where I cocoon myself and spin out my threads, watching them acrete until a small but perfect quilt emerges on the wall.

I like to cut quirky rectangles which can be only be matched up with persistence. When I finish, the last thing I want to do is to quilt the layers together. I decided to take the pieces to a professional quilter whose work I admire. After they were quilted, I showed them to an artist friend. As I laid them out, she cleared her throat. "Hmm...I think I should just say that I really like to exercise total artistic control. " That small pebble of feedback caused a landslide of insight.

Rather than seeing the quilting as a necessary step that needs to be added to properly finish the process (and God knows why I thought that since I'd already broken a slew of quilter's rules.)--I began to see the stitches on the top as a layer of drawing. That in fact there were four layers: the backing, the batting, the quilted pieces of fabric and the thread quilting on top. I saw it like an architect's model in which layers of drawings were placed on top of each other to convey the finished building.

Artmaking involves skills that can be learned. The conventional wisdom here is that while "craft" can be taught, "art" remains a magical gift bestowed only by the Gods. Not so. In large measure becoming an artist consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive. --Art and Fear

While I can't say that I became a sudden convert to this notion of quilting as drawing (in fact I even took the last two quilts, Miss August and Miss September, right back to the pro), I've tucked the knowledge away for a time that doesn't have a limit on it, a time when I can ponder these layers and find a way to connect them in a way that leaves my own mark, one of acceptance.

Art: Worth An Ounce of Prevention

2011-08-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at my desk at the Children's Hospital here in Sacramento. When I'm here, I'm firmly in my role as an art therapist, but every so often this role gets mixed up with my role as an artist.

I often feel like I lead a kind of double life, shifting internally between the person who keeps a curious eye open to composition and the way colors play against one another, and the person whose job it is to keep watch with another; one whose life has been compromised by illness, accident or abuse. I offer them the time and space, safety and support so that they can use the art materials and allow whatever wants to emerge to appear. We welcome the result as just right, true to itself, perfect.

Every so often, my roles get jumbled--like this week. I had been asked by our director of Patient Care Services to participate in an art benefit to help raise money for a local chapter of the Child Abuse Prevention Center. She wanted to create an event filled with art and combined with California vintners, to help support this worthy cause. For anyone unfamiliar with the impact of this issue, the Center's site posts an astonishing list of statistics:

Every minute in America a child is reported abused or neglected...One in five is sexually abused. Half a million children are reported abused in California each year. Every day in California at least one child dies as a result of abuse or neglect.

Each one is one too many.

These are startling and disturbing statistics and what brings these numbers home to me is the entry of one of these small "ones" into our playroom, carried in the arms of a nurse. The care and treatment that these children receive is superb and beyond that, the love that surrounds them is priceless. So many arms are there to soothe, protect and hold them as their injuries heal and the natural resilience of each child takes hold once again.

I didn't think twice before I said yes, because the request touched my heart. I knew that here was a way to give back.

I'll be showing my artwork with a number of excellent artists: Chris Beer, Mark Bowles, Beth Rommel, Andrew Maurer, Jane Mikacich, Wendy Nugent, Diane Poinski, and Stacey Vetter. I hope you'll take a moment to reflect upon this issue and consider what you might do in your own area to help. If you're going to be around the Sacramento area, I warmly invite you to the Pour for Prevention event on Saturday, August 27th from 6-9 p.m. For more information and details, click here.

A Different Kind of Summer

2011-07-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

Still Life With Orange, 2011, H. Hunter, 28" x 32," quilted fabric

It's been a different kind of summer so far. Though
it's been many years since the summer was mine to fashion as I wish, the illusion that I can do so stays with me.

Part of what makes this summer different was a decision I made to focus my energies on an art quilt show taking place in October at our local art center. Accepting the invitation was big; prior to this, my forays into the quilting world have been few. I've taken inspiration from quilt patterns, but to put pins into cloth and stitch one piece of fabric to another--now that is another feat altogether.

All of the normal fears and then some attended me (and I know that you know them well enough from your own work that I don't have to detail them here) but despite all of that, the process has been amazing. I made a goal of creating one quilted piece per month for six months. These are works in which I can exercise my love for detail and create small areas of fascination while working at a pace I can sustain with my art therapy practice.

I'm aided by the sheer hypnotic flow of long weekend afternoons accompanied by the sound of the fan and audio books: Ape House, The Coral Thief, The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo to name a few. While my mind is captured by a good story line, my eye is free to wander and choose patterns that the more critical part of me would probably veto. My focus is also sharpened by my long time partner in art crime, Beth Rommel. We met over a year ago in Alyson Stanfield's Blog Triage class and have become fast friends, going on take part in the Artist Conspiracy. It surprises me that sharing a goal with someone over the phone (Beth lives in Georgia, I in CA) creates such a strong degree of accountability, but there it is and I'm delighted by it.

Hallie, lending gravitas to our home

In the same vein, earlier in the year, I made a goal of creating a new website; one that I could fashion and refashion according to my artwork at the time. Spurred on by an art and wine event in August, Pour for Prevention, I decided to nudge my visual ducks in a row and explore WordPress. Re-writing my artist's statement and bio was challenging (I mean how many ways can I say where I went to school? And, since my children are grown, is it too much to add cat to the description: "She lives and works in Davis, CA with her husband and ?...")

So, as the current idiom goes, it's "good stuff," a rather rough way of saying that although this summer is different; no trips to the beach or lazy afternoons reading almost a whole book, it has been wonderful, and, and at this time of my life, a dream come true.

An Accidental Journey

2011-06-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Peonies at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art

When I was a small child of five, my family moved to Maine. My dad was finishing his PhD and got his first teaching assignment at Bowdoin College. I was just beginning kindergarten.

Is it possible to fall in love at the age of five? Because if it is, I did. I loved so much about Maine, beginning at the edge of our backyard. Behind our brown plank house, in a yard with clumps of birch trees whose bark made perfect "paper," lay a bog. It was a magical place where I discovered peepers, tasted my first cranberries and stood peering into the depths of the murky pond. I marveled at the frogs' eggs gathered in gelatinous blobs, the beginnings of my education in biology and reproduction.

We didn't live in Maine for long; just three years, but enough for the landscape of the place to imprint itself on my consciousness; stretches of land with rocky outcroppings, white steepled churches, docks and piers heaped with lobster pots and fishing nets, the smell of ocean and the clack of clamshells.

Rocky Coastal Beach, Hampton, N

The car-sweep of these images wove itself into my consciousness, so that even now, fifty years later, I dream of traveling back to Maine. In my dreams, I swim up a river banded by ferns and rimmed with pine trees; there is the promise of blueberries hiding within the woods. The dream is so vivid that I believe I am there and awaken with the sensation of just having returned from this faraway place.

Dogwood in the yard of a older home in Kittery, ME

It didn't seem so strange then, when I accidentally ended up in Maine last week. My family and I flew out to a wedding in Vermont and, wishing to make a small vacation out of it, I suggested we stop off at the coast for a day; in New Hampshire to be exact. Arriving at dinner time, we set off in search of sustenance other than McDonald's. After getting turned around on a round about, we crossed a bridge and came upon what looked to be an excellent taqueria. A man whom I asked in the parking lot noted that it was the best Mexican food in Maine outside of Southern California. We were in Maine, not New Hampshire!

Boats like clamshells at Kittery Point, ME

The feeling of delight that rose up in me was exquisite. We all looked at each other and began to laugh. Imagine that!! We had arrived in Maine by accident. What followed was a day and a half of intense exploration; of inhaling smells and remembering once familiar sights. I could tell you that we lingered at a dock, wandered through an art museum and mixed with the locals in a general store, but that wouldn't quite capture it. Throughout the hours we spent there, I felt that I had returned to something quite precious that I don't want to lose again.

Weehawken Sequence, John Marin, circa 1916, 10" x 12.5," oil on canvas

Is there a place in your life that calls to your soul, appears in your dreams, a place to which you've made a secret promise to return?

Home: Our Foundation

2011-05-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've pondered home as a symbol and a reality. In the wake of Japan's earthquake/tsunami and the rash of virulent tornadoes over middle America, the fact that one's hearth can be destroyed in seconds made me think about the various values held by the place where we reside.

Across our country, home prices have tumbled, particularly in areas deeply connected to me: California where I live, Florida where my son resides and Michigan, where half of my family originated. We've been lucky enough to maintain our home for many years but it has come home to me how quickly that privilege can be taken away.

As children, we moved frequently from state to state, house to house, apartment to apartment. While many kids dream about what they want to be when they grow up, I fantasized about having a home of my own (think:Virginia Woolf's A Room of her Own.)

Even as that vision took shape, my desire must have remained sublimated, because I also ended up making art about homes. Recently, I saw a message on my facebook fanpage from a collector, who bought one of my paintings nearly 20 years ago. The woman was kind enough to take a picture of the work and when I saw it, I recognized an early "home" piece.

That made me curious. I pored over my i-photo files and pulled out the "homes" I'd made in recent years. I've selected a few to share with you here.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on home as you've watched the images of devastation flash across your television screen or heard the news about another small town leveled. Has your art been affected by these current and timeless events? Are images of home on alert in your imagination?

I'll be posting intermittently this summer; I want to take advantage of long days and cool evenings in the studio and finish working on a chapter for Cathy Malchiodi's upcoming book, "The Arts in Healthcare."

I look forward to keeping up with you on your blogs and wish you a reflective Memorial Day weekend; visited by memories of the ones that have gone before you.

Timing is Everything

2011-05-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

This poem by W.S. Merwin in a recent New Yorker caught my eye, mind and heart. Perfect for spring, when newborn leaves emerge suddenly while you're inside, retrieving a paintbrush you forgot.

Turning

going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember

almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back

that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them

this morning the black shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying

Are you ready this time

Merwin ends the poem so abruptly--as if he's just turned his head to look down at his dog. Doesn't it often seem like this--that those chances to catch something very important pass by in the blink of an eye?

Art Therapy 101

2011-05-14T09:08:00.000-07:00

Liz & Partner: Viennese Waltz, Photo: Jen Gross

Normally, I spend these posts focused on my explorations in art and art therapy. However, behind all of that lies the beauty and wonder of family. Family is my foundation.

This year, in celebration of Mother's Day, I was invited by Claudine Intner, an artist, blogger and mom extraordinaire to join a Mother's Day blog hop. I accepted and chose May 14, my daughter's birthday, as my post date. I couldn't think of a better way of honoring Mother's Day than to write about being Liz's mom.

One of the great delights of my life, Liz came into it twenty two years ago today. A young woman who has faced many challenges, she has overcome them one step at a time.

In fact, Lizzie helped inspire me to become an art therapist. Being with my own daughter, I understood the need to have compassion, to help my child as she met the inevitable challenges of growing up. What an awakening; to discover that no one was going to be a better advocate for her than I. And, it was this same experience of advocacy which spurred me on later, to work with children, who might or might not need an advocate of their own.

Liz & Partner: Nightclub Two Step, Photo: Jen Gross

Years have passed since Liz's elementary school days, but at the time, I poured everything that I knew as an artist into my mothering. When school was frustrating, Liz hunkered down at a small table piled with markers and paper and pounded hard on sheet after sheet of paper, producing a series of pointillist mandalas. Later on studying art therapy, I learned the theoretical underpinnings of catharsis but at the time, Lizzie blazed her own art therapy trail.

When she reached high school, and I learned about SoulCollage^®, it was Liz who took it to new heights, carrying stacks of 5" x 8" cards and magazines up to her room and emerging several hours later with a fan of cards to share with me. (Before long, she began to assist me during workshops, adding her gentle presence and expertise.)

Together, her cards created the portrait of a passionate and deeply creative woman and I wondered what future form(s) this might take in the world. I didn't have long to wait. During her first year of college, Liz discovered ballroom dance. An incurable romantic, this art form fits her to a T. I've delighted in watching her emerge as a gorgeous woman, who continues to craft her life one step at a time. Today, on her birthday, she is performing with her dance team, "Spirit in Motion" and dancing a solo with her partner. I can't think of a more fitting way for her to enter her 22nd year: in motion.

To see more blogs on the hop, click on any of the links below:

5/1 - Claudine Intner http://www.intner.net/blog
5/2 - Melissa Liban http://melissalibanillustrations.blogspot.com/
5/3 - Lynn Krawczyk http://fibraartysta.blogspot.com/
5/4 - Ishita Bandyo http://www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com/
5/5 - Jeri Greenberg http://www.Jerigreenbergart.blogspot.com
5/6 - Kathleen Mattox http://mixedmessagesbykathleenmattox.blogspot.com/
5/8- Amanda Ruth http://bunnycarrots.blogspot.com/
5/9- Judi Hurwitt http://approachable-art.blogspot.com/
5/10 - Kathleen Murphy http://kathleenmurphydesigns.blogspot.com/
5/11 - Hannah Phelps http://hannahphelpsgallery.blogspot.com/
5/12 - Helen Hiebert http://helenhiebertstudio.blogspot.com/
5/14 - Hannah Klaus Hunter http://hannahklaushunter.blogspot.com/
5/15 - Claudine Intner http://www.intner.net/blog/

Prelude to Mother's Day

2011-05-06T14:04:00.000-07:00

It was Bring Your Child to Work Day last week, a day parents working at our hospital bring along their children, in order to explore careers in healthcare. We had speakers, tours and tables all set up to teach kids about a multitude of possible futures.

My assignment was clear: meet the oncoming wave of children, 50 or so, with a quick description of what it means to be an art therapist. A Twitter dilemma if I ever saw one. (Describe what I do in 140 characters or less.) In addition, I offered them an art therapy activity.

I wanted to engage the kids, find out what they might wish to do when they grew up, recognizing any answer is a work in progress.

To that end, I had a collection of muslin dolls, ready to be drawn upon in whatever way a child's dream might dictate. Most of the children wanted to grab the doll and go (and what would you want with a naked baby doll, I ask you?) I politely let them know the talk was part of the bargain. No art, no doll.

My invitation was often initially met with a blank stare, but when I motioned them over to join other kids at a table filled with fabric markers, more colored pens began to "tatoo" muslin skins, transforming the blank "canvas" of that doll into a future self.

It was marvelous and all types of dolls emerged--nurses and doctor dolls of course, but also singers, computer geeks and pharmacists. I was so happy that the children felt that they were able to supplement the ample information that they'd heard with a chance to internalize their knowledge. Perhaps some expressed a dormant desire, a curious inclination just waiting for the opportunity to emerge.

It's taken a long time for me to lean into my future. As a child on the playground, I was often stumped when we talked about what we wanted to be when we grew up. The presumed careers for girls, teaching and nursing, did not feel right. But sitting behind the table last week, wearing a bright pink sweater and sparkly earrings, I felt I was embodying the self that had been waiting all those years ago, an artist, who uses art as medicine.

Where Inspiration Grows

2011-04-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

I was reading one of my favorite blogs by Donna Watson, a post called The Search For Meaning: Self Awareness. The title alone called out to the mystic, the artist and the art therapist in me. As I read, I came to this question:

I eventually realized that there is more to a work of art. I wanted to find meaning in my work... I started making lists as I went deeper and identified my likes, my interests, and my strengths...Have you figured out your list?

As I read and looked at her images, it struck me that images themselves are a form of sanctuary for many of us--not only the creating of images, but the consequent viewing of our own and those of other artists.

Donna's words spoke to me. I've made plenty of To Do lists, mapping out my day, but never an accounting of where I find visual meaning. I wanted my list to include things that have inspired me through the years, things that fuel my work and which, I've discovered, help form my own inner strengths.

To that end, I'm making my list. I invite you to make your own and share it with us.

1. Quilts:

How I start to make a quilt, all I do is start sewing and it just comes to me. My daughter asked me the other day what I was making, and I said, "I don't know yet; I'm just sewing pieces together," and the quilt looked pretty good. No pattern. I usually don't use a pattern, only my mind. Lorraine Pettway, quilter

2. Sheer, unbridaled color:

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites. Mark Chagall

3. Mandalas:

When I began drawing the mandalas, however, I saw that everything, all the paths I had been following, all the steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point-namely, to the midpoint...It is the path to the center, to individuation. C. G. Jung from Memories, Dreams and Reflections

Thangka painting of Vajradhatu Mandala

4. Tree of Life:

Oh, I who long to grow
I look outside myself, and the tree
inside me grows. Ranier Marie Rilke

5. Indian gouache paintings:

The Goddess Shakti taking the form of a triangle brings forth the three worlds. Jnarnava, Chapter X

Rajasthan, c. 17th century, Gouache on paper

6. Ancient Manuscripts:

Without traditional wisdom, the language would be but a skeleton without flesh, a body without a soul. Zulu proverb from South Africa

Hebrew manuscript from the Bodleian Library, Oxford University

hannah klaus hunter: Finding Sanctuary

2011-04-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

hannah klaus hunter: Finding Sanctuary

Finding Sanctuary

2011-04-17T19:39:00.000-07:00


Where I Live, ©2000, H. Hunter, 15" x 18", Acrylic, Caran d'ache on paper

Where do you find sanctuary?

I began to ask myself this question after a Trauma Informed Art Therapy Course I took last week in San Francisco.

When working with trauma victims, creating a sense of safety, or in other words, a sanctuary, becomes your top priority.

But how to do that? How to find safety in the midst of physical and/or emotional pain?

There are tried and true art therapy activities, but I wanted to go a bit deeper. The word "sanctuary" made me think of the Jewish practice of Shabbat. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a 20th century theologian, wrote about Shabbat as "a cathedral in time"--a "place" in time rather than space in which a person could could learn to rest.

In other words, sanctuary could be a state of mind rather than an actual place. I began to ask people how they find sanctuary. Some of their answers:

"Sanctuary is being with my family, watching Dad make spaghetti and then sitting around the table eating it together."
"Sanctuary is when my whole family is home and I can close the blinds and we are together and the rest of the world is outside."
"Sanctuary is running."
"Sanctuary is my new kitten."

I took advantage of the art groups I facilitated and asked people to make collages of their sanctuaries and the guardians of these places. What emerged surprised me:

A gorilla with wise eyes staring out of the picture surrounded by bits of colorful pieces of quilts.
The eye of a tiger surrounded by spring green fronds of leaves.
The plain of a desert with two yucca plants in bloom.
A home built on the foundation of chocolate chip cookies.

In almost all the images, nature played a central role. It didn't seem to matter whether someone had ready access to nature, it was the time spent imagining and creating the image of a place that evoked a sense of restfulness.

It seems that with the ever increasing pace and pressures of modern life, this kind of sanctuary is more important than ever--a pause we take that allows us to touch base with something more primal and tangible. I'm curious how many of you use art as a refuge? If not, how do you find sanctuary?

Plant and Painting Share Common Roots

2011-04-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

Amaranth. I was walking up the stairs to my studio, trying to come up with a name for a panel I'd just finished and this name came into my head. Curious to see what it meant, I looked it up.

Here's what I found: Amaranthus, collectively known as amaranth, is a wide ranging genus of herbs. The root of the word comes from the Greek, "amarantos," or "unfading" and it combined, sometime in the word's history, with the the Greek work for flower, "anthos."

A small purple flower, Amaranth provides a sturdy source of nutrition and serves to support sustainable land care in Africa.

Unfading flower. I like that. At in this time in the world, when so much seems unsure in so many countries, the world, at least my world, needs some reassurance about those things that do not fade.

Amaranth, the flower

I think about the children with whom I work. Day after day this week, I ran my eyes down the census to see if anything had changed; a chance for a miracle cure. No, there were still too many children whose diagnoses were grim. (Isn't one too many?) I wanted to push against this--to create a moment of fun, a small space for healing. Although I am not a doctor or a nurse, I am an artist and the healing I can offer is moments of relief, spaces for joy, a dose of hope.

Into this space comes what does not fade: art, prayer, laughter and love. Amaranth.

New Leaf on Life

2011-04-01T08:19:00.000-07:00

This little panel is going on view next week at one of my favorite local art spots, The Artery. I've been experimenting with collage on hardboard panels, creating rectangles of stacked horizontal strips of paper juxtaposed with rectangles of various shapes and sizes.

These short stacks are reminiscent of books, books that I pile by my nightstand in hopes of making my way through them, one by one, before I fall asleep at night.


Arbor Vitae, ©2011, Hannah K. Hunter, 8" x 8," Collage (paper, leaf, watercolor)

The title, Arbor Vitae, or tree of life, refers to my obsession with the Tree of Life and also makes an allusion to the way in which Jews refer to the Torah as "Etz Chaim," the tree of life.

I've noticed that with the advent of Facebook and blogs, it's harder and harder to sustain my attention on a single book. I'm working on that, focusing more on the books surrounding my bed and a little less with the omnipresent white rectangle on my kitchen table. Books: sweet trees of life.

Give Love: A Community Art Project

2011-03-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

My blog friend and fellow art therapist, Phoenix Peacock is creating an amazing on and off-line art journal project about community: Give Love: A Community Art Project. She's keeping an art journal about her own community based project and created a means for others to participate. To find out how, click here.

Her instruction is to art journal about a community member who has positively influenced your life. This could be a teacher, student, coach, neighbor, a stranger, anyone who is not related to you. Your interaction(s) could have occurred at any point in your life. To learn more about art journaling, check out Kelley Brown's excellent blog: Art Journaling as A Creative Process.

I've been working on my own page during our daily art group at the hospital. As it emerged, I realized it was about my old and dear friend from art school days, Carol Spindel, a gifted author and artist.

This is what I wrote about my friend on the back side of the page:

I'm forever grateful to Carol for introducing me to the world of pattern because along with words and colors, it now forms the foundation of my art work. Cheers Carol!

Open the Doors to Healing

2011-03-19T11:54:00.000-07:00

The title of last week's SoulCollage^® workshop at the UC Davis Cancer Center was Renewal; Exploring the the way archetypes can help us to find renewal in the midst of our daily lives. Without knowing it, I was practically begging several archetypes to enter my own life.

I showed up promptly at nine filled with the news of Japan; its cumulative disasters of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear uncertainty. I walked up to the door and it was locked.

I wanted to wilt like a flower and go home. (But what had I experienced so far? An insurmountable barrier?) Instead, I called Plant Operation and Management.

As if by magic, a white truck drove right up the sidewalk toward me and a smiling women in a navy overall got out and opened up the building. "Did you get the call?" I asked her. "No, but I saw you standing there," she replied. My world was restored.

In order to get the group together quickly, I asked for help; putting participants to work unwrapping fresh pairs of scissors, cutting boards and x-acto knives. Even though I felt tongue tied by world events, I needed to keep going and talk about finding linkages in the heady and ineffable subject matter of archetypes. (Could you get a better set up for a trickster archetype to stick out its foot?)

We introduced ourselves by selecting an image that signified renewal. When one person showed a photograph of a red maple against what looked to be a Japanese garden, I commented how much that reminded me of her hometown, San Francisco, a place of renewal for her. Unexpectedly, the whole group began to laugh. "Hannah--can you see--those are the red rock walls of a canyon!" The gods were definitely playing with me today: A locked door, mistaking a canyon for the Japanese Tea Garden.

The women were game to explore the notion of how archetypes might play out in their lives to bring renewal. As they searched the table for compelling images, quiet took over the room,which deepened to an engaged silence as the work progressed.

We arranged the finished cards in a circle and walked clockwise around the table, readying ourselves for sharing. One woman commented that, "I can't believe it--all those pictures, just laid out on the table in no particular order--and out of that chaos, come these perfect cards that carry so much meaning."

It is my prayer that amongst the chaos of disaster in Japan, the people continue to recover pieces of their lives, bring them together and that healing becomes the order of the land.

Thread Talk

2011-03-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

How often, after all, do we take the time to look back, review and in this way, renew our relationship to our work? Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking to a local guild of embroiderers about my artwork. I decided that if I was going to share some history with them, I needed to do some digging.

After some searching, I came up with three separate images: a stack of books, a marsh and an Amish quilt. Pretty disparate images--but like reducing a fraction to the lowest common denominator, I had come up with the structural bones of my creative process, each one grounded in some vital part of my history.

The books: I often spent my summer days stretched out on a sofa or a hammock, after carefully arranging a pile of books beside me which I devoured one at a time.

Michigan Marshland

Marsh: a scene from early childhood in Maine where I spent time chasing peepers and later, growing up in Michigan, where instead of peepers, I gathered reeds for weaving.

"Amish Abstractions"

Amish quilts: when I saw my first one in the University of Iowa Art Museum, it struck me as a visual form of haiku. With only a few colors, a quilt conjured a landscape.

It tickles me that as I look at my present work, I find traces of the words, reeds and quilts which informed my early visual blueprint.

It makes me think that there is something something mysterious yet inevitable about the images which dwell within us and arise out of our experience, recombining in powerful ways that we cannot predict.

Succeeding experiences build upon each other and yet, as we work with them in our studios, they come into being, slowly but surely, like a photograph appearing for the first time in its alchemical bath.

Authentic Voice--Conversation Continued

2011-03-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

A little while back, artist Leslie Miller wrote an intriguing post which she titled, "Seeking My Authentic Voice." She wrote that: Voice isn’t style, voice isn’t principals and elements of design, voice isn’t content, but the language we use to express our authentic voice includes all of these. Authentic voice is something more elementary than this, it’s something closer to primal, closer to the earth, and it is uniquely yours.

A series of comments followed her post and carried the conversation in a variety of different directions. So many that, Miller chose to write another post based on the comments.

Titled "Artful Conversations," it included this one by Robert Kingston:

I always noticed an awkward, clumsy mark or move that kept showing up in my work and I felt that if I could just get rid of that my work would be so much better. No matter what I tried though, that clunky thing kept popping up again and again! It took me years until it finally dawned on me that that odd goofy thing was actually me! Everything else was just me putting on other people's clothes. Now I try to embrace who and what I am although it's still so easy to forget and to fall into emulating the flavor of the month.

His comment dug in deep.

I've been asking myself, what are my awkward marks? Lines that look like they've been turned inside out? The way in which drawing a circle, I stop just short of closing it? How about those dreadfully muddy maroons that reoccur over and over in my palette?

Could it be true that those odd goofy things are actually me?

Might it also be true that, within the awkward lines and idiosyncratic fingerprints we leave in our work, dwells a source of our greatest strength as artists?

If it is true that those awkward marks make us who we are--how can we maximize their contribution within our work?

I don't have answers to these questions, so I'm asking you:

What "mistakes" persist in your work that could serve as a source of discovery?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Young Adult Bereavement Art Group / Art Therapy in Action

2011-02-25T11:40:00.000-08:00

It's February and that means time for the winter session of YABAG--or "The Young Adult Bereavement Art Group". It began in 2009 as a collaboration across disciplines to serve young adults ages 17-24, who have lost a loved one. It has grown from an isolated observation into a dedicated vision of how to best serve this population niche, sponsored by UC Davis Children's Hospital and UC Davis Hospice.

The group started when someone in our Children's Bereavement Committee commented that there were no art therapy bereavement support groups for people this age. The heads at the long conference table all turned toward me. Me? Didn't I have enough going on? However the prospect of beginning a program is something I find irresistible and I was soon on board.

A neonatal nurse, pediatric social worker, hospice bereavement coordinator (tongue twisting titles-good peeps) and I began to meet and over a period of several months and planned the group structure, curriculum and found funding. Our first group met in February of 2009 and my world cracked open.

I and my co-facilitator, a man of great humor and compassion, found ourselves in the presence of persons who were grieving losses by more causes than we could have imagined. We discovered that what often gets individuals of this age to a support group is the confluence of tragic circumstances.

What we also discovered was the openness of these young people show toward one another. Once these young people show up, what follows is honest and inevitable. Our program takes them and us through an 8 week journey of art and talking and listening, all designed to parallel the grief process.

We've worked hard to spread the word about this program; seeding the local universities, community colleges and high schools with fliers and reaching out to police departments, therapists and social workers.

It takes time for word to take hold and grow roots. YABAG is offered free of charge and meets from from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m., beginning Monday, February 28th and concluding Monday, April 11th.

If you know of anyone in the Sacramento area who might benefit from this work, please contact us for more information at 916-734-1139.

Close to Home

2011-02-19T09:23:00.000-08:00

Last week I had the occasion to attend an opening for an artist friend whom I've mentioned frequently in this blog, Sara Post. Sara's exhibit, Close to Home, was up and ready to see in our local Davis, CA gallery, the Artery.

I had a particular curiosity about this exhibit because Sara had confessed to me over coffee several weeks back that she had one month to come up with the artwork for this show. When she told me this, I knew for a certainty that she would take the proverbial tube of paint and run. And run with it she did.

A couple of weeks later, I stopped by her house to drop off a book. When I walked into her studio, work was spread over the tables, hanging on the walls and arranged on the floor. Joyful abandon reigned supreme.

I'm fascinated by how specific conditions such as an imminent deadline can elicit completely different creative responses in people. Sara decided to look no further than her own backyard for inspiration.

A wise choice judging by the results. Sara honors the beauty of houses and gardens and the fascination that we bring to them. It's as if she's taken a magnifying glass to the world outdoors; exploring walls, windows, doors and rooftops; the spaces they create and the landscape they define.

Her work places itself in a tradition of modern landscape painters such as David Hockney and Cy Twombly.

As I gazed at the pieces I found myself drifting into an imaginary back yard where pools of deep turquoise water drifted in and out of focus and grasses blew in the wind, waving their tips of gentle gold.

I crisscrossed the gallery, picking up one observation here and dropping another there, imagining the possibilities that my own back yard might offer.

If, as Voltaire says in his novel Candide, "we must cultivate our own garden," this exhibit invites us to explore the abundant possibilities which may lie therein.

State of the Heart

2011-02-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

Shades and Tints

Valentine's Day approaches and I've found no better place to celebrate it than in the playroom of our hospital. It's a place where even the most jaded of hearts opens wide. For someone dedicated to the practice of maintaining an open heart, well, it's a gold mine.

To begin the festivities, I set out materials on the art table--scissors, glue and paper plus the exotics: papers printed with designs inspired by Kente cloth, Japanese silk fabric and Navajo rugs. For good measure, I added ribbons, sequins and pom poms.

Once we'd made our way through decorating some 50 or so empty glove boxes, we began to make Valentines and met up with the good old shape of the heart. It doesn't escape me as I'm writing, all the double entendres that pop up around hearts and hospitals: open heart surgery, infectious love, heart-felt emotions, heart palpitations...etc.

Fortunately, the kids put all that to the side when they come in, dragging their IV poles behind them. They just get to work like the serious artists they are. These last two weeks brought several Spanish speaking girls to the group together with their moms. At the beginning of our time together, they were all so shy, they would simply nod "yes" and "no" to my questions. Any attempts to start a conversation simply died away. I invited the mothers to join us and they also nodded "no" politely but firmly.

Glove boxes transformed

That lasted all of two days, when I decided to throw in a twist and add the concept of shading and tinting to the mix. Using oil pastels, I asked them to draw a heart and to color the inside of the heart one color and the outside of the heart another. The next step was to use a ruler and draw several lines that bisected the heart, going from one end of the paper to the other. This resulted in "a heart divided." Finally, I asked them to use a gray pastel to add shading to one half of each segment and a white pastel to add tinting to the remainder of that segment.

A great idea in theory, but I forgot to factor in manual strength. None of the kids present had enough physical strength to color in the outside. The moms took action. They couldn't let their children's hearts go empty. They each pulled up a small child size chair and began to color. It was only one more step to accepting papers for themselves and taking off on their individual heart.

By the end of this week, we'd made jewelry for the occasion and added several other young children to the mix. The girls were positively bubbly by now. Another Spanish speaking mother arrived with her able five year old boy and complemented me on my Spanish (which honestly is still limited to something like "quieres hacer un corazon?") I was touched and even more so, because after spending this time together, we had created our own community and as far as "making hearts," they had certainly made mine and it was wide open.

Taking Hold of Uncertainty

2011-02-07T18:26:00.000-08:00

"...vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue." Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

I've been following these words as I work on a challenge for an art quilt exhibit I'm participating in.

Our group of artists agreed to pick a photograph, which each of us would interpret in her own way.

It made me think of women quilters back in the 19th century, spurring each other on to greater heights of inventiveness, as they watched their neighbors take the same old shirt fabric and use it in entirely different ways.

We chose a photograph taken by Maura McEvoy, a stunningly simple shot of a mandarin orange and two dominos, sitting in a raku fired bowl on a deep teal colored linen background.

My first thought was to get as far away as possible from the photograph and create a quilt that looked nothing like it. Then I careened back with an almost comical desire to imitate the photograph in a very literal way.

Frustrated by opposing impulses, I decided to channel my imaginary 19th century ladies.

It seems to me that these women were the early forerunners of color theorists like Josef Albers, employing an understanding that colors appear differently, according to the colors around them. The use of color in a pattern created the spirit of the quilt.

Although I'm no slave to pattern (I usually want to break it as soon as I begin), I wanted the blues of my piece to pulsate around the squares, suggesting the delicate cracked bowl with the bright orange mandarin and the ochre colored dominos.

One week and many stitched together scraps later, I've begun to enjoy the process; stepping into the unknown, unsure of where the next stitch will take me and also not knowing exactly where the final stitch might reside.

Thinking of my ladies, both the real and the imaginary, I'm discovering the loveliness of uncertainty.

Color: STAT!

2011-01-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

About this time of year, I begin to get a bit squirrelly, especially with the tule fog of January (and February and March).

This dense fog, named for the tule grass wetlands of the California Central Valley, makes me feel cozy at the beginning of the season, all tucked into whatever world I happen to be occupying. But like snow in colder climes, the pleasure soon begins to gray.

I long for big splashes of color, wide skies of brilliant blue and the glowing yellow sunflowers of summer. Looking out the window this morning, I knew it would be awhile.

Of course, there is a cure for this: the studio. I go in and I want to inhale great gulps of color: carmine, fuchsia, tangerine, chartreuse, coral, jade and emerald green.

I've been working on a full size quilt for an upcoming exhibit. As I tried to work out the pattern for it, I began a smaller piece that could capture my color hunger and satiate it at the same time. I wanted the quilt to be irregular, with large "bites" of color, color that could explode inside me when I look at it; the same sensation that a child might have when she pops a Starbursts into her mouth and savors the eruption of harmonic sweetness that follows.

How are you coping with winter in your domain?

Allies in January

2011-01-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

I am a worrier. It's true. And when I found out that my SoulCollage^®

workshop for the UC Davis Cancer Center had 35 people enrolled, I panicked. I thought that 15 people would be a great success. But then, I'm also a risk taker.

In offering the workshop, I was taking on a new population, cancer patients and their navigators (cancer survivors who have gone through treatment and volunteer to help patients with the same cancer navigate the labyrinth of treatment).

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll remember that I taught a similar class for the Cancer Center last spring, only that time, none of the cancer patients signed up. This time, it was different.

I had agreed to provide art supplies at no cost for participants and so, as I flew back from vacation, I tried to calculate what my out-of-pocket costs would be as the plane flew over the Pacific. Most of the turbulence of that flight was internal.

Back on land again, I took matters in hand. I counted up my x-acto knives and cutting boards. I raided the supplies at UC Davis Hospice, and I still came up short. My friend Sara offered me her collection of boards and x-acto knives, I collected scrap matte board and in the end, spent nothing on supplies, a testament to the generosity of my community.

But what about the workshop? The women came in, one after another. The Cancer Center provided excellent spreads and my worries melted as the day unfolded. These women, and one man, were some of the most receptive people (in the adult population) with whom I've had the good fortune to work.

There is something about this illness, cancer, that makes one willing to dig deeper, a feeling that there is nothing to lose, and often pride over outer appearances takes a back seat to the need for authenticity. Our focus for the day was allies: those people or beings who act as guides, challengers, mentors and friends as we move through illness, or simply through life.

Whatever the case, this group of souls opened themselves to the process of searching through images, looking for the ones that conjured up the supporters, guides and all around lovers who are in their lives.

Group Member working on her card.

As they shared their cards, I felt I was seeing the nuggets of gold in each of their lives. I saw constellations of flowers, dogs, cats, children, mothers, fathers, husbands and even the Golden Gate Bridge.

At the end, my friend Terri, an oncology nurse, noted that programs like this one are as important to healing cancer as the the clinical interventions of medication, chemotherapy and radiation.

While she may have overstated the case a little, I do believe that this need to relate, to come together and to make something tangible and visible out of our challenges is what, in part, makes us human.

I met this morning with the director of the education and outreach program at the center and we are planing to offer 4 of these programs throughout the year. I'm looking forward to seeing how as a university community, we can create a climate of healing, nurturance and deep self-discovery in our lives.

New Year Unfolding--Straw into Gold

2011-01-14T10:46:00.000-08:00

Straw Into Gold, ©Hannah K. Hunter, 2011

The other day my sister Amelia and I spent our last morning of vacation exploring a small store in Kauai, which sold beautifully crafted jewelry and sarongs. Brilliant colors and patterns wafted in the temperate air, rivaling the nearby hibiscus. The store was called "Live a Little," ever a good motto for me.

We spoke with the owner, an enthusiastic and friendly man slightly younger than I. We exchanged first impressions of our home states and he told us a story of his first trip to the mainland in 1992.

He'd landed in L.A. during the Rodney King riots of 1992 and he described for us the empty freeways, the closed shopping plazas and the unsettling quiet.

I was both surprised by his candidness and embarrassed, hearing about this disturbing welcome to California.

Later on that day we were wandering through a small town when we suddenly heard a man's voice yodeling and looked up to see the same store owner waving to us with the shaka sign, a common greeting gesture in surfer culture. Surf boards were strapped to the top of his car, which was headed for the beach.

When I looked up this greeting, I learned that in Hawai'i, it expresses a spirit of friendship and understanding between the many cultures living in proximity there--in other words, the spirit of aloha.

Hawaiian Highway sign

I did some more looking and found that "aloha" not only means hello and goodbye--but also refers to a means of solving a problem, accomplishing a goal, or finding a meeting between mind and heart

This seems like a gentle and ease-filled way to go about meeting my goals; bringing together my mind and heart, finding my way to my Source.

That's what I'm striving for this year. All too often, 'Mind' heads off in the direction of her choosing and 'Heart' sticks around wondering "What just happened here?!?" Or, vice versa.

Surfboard Memorial for Andy Irons, 2010

The collage at the top of this post was made during my time away. I was thinking of the coming year and wanted to express my deep wish to spend as many hours as I can in the studio; making. I chose the hands of this older woman to signify the power that aging brings, the skillfulness brought to bear on materials and the absorption that is possible when you've given yourself over to your heart and mind's desire.

Good Things Come in Threes

2011-01-05T09:18:00.000-08:00

Thank you everyone who sent their thoughts and concerns about my dad. Your comments touched my heart and brought ease. I wrote it while waiting with my family for a flight to Kauai, a place that my father had introduced us to seven years ago and to which, paradoxically, we were returning shortly after his diagnosis.

Since I've been here absorbing sun, waves, and floral abundance, I've had time to think about my own art work. Often, when I'm thinking about a post, I'll pick an event or a thought that is clamoring for first place in the forefront of my mind. Pathos, pain, and or redemption claim my attention. Taking a break helps me to focus on quieter voices.

I finished this piece several weeks ago. Originally it was three separate 12" x 24" panels. After studying them out of the corner of my eye (best way so they don't know I'm watching), I decided to connect them. A risk.

For many years I've wanted to create tryptchs, having become enamored of them when I first discovered Jan Van Eyck's "Dresden Tryptych" in an art history class many years ago.

Periodically, I'd give it a try and find that I couldn't extend my attention sequentially over a series of surfaces. Perhaps it was because I was giving most of my attention to my children. Or, perhaps it was because I simply wasn't ready.

Whatever the case, I've discovered that in the last year I've been able to create and sustain a flow of attention across several surfaces. Is it because my children are grown and launched into their own lives? Or is it because I've grown? One of those proverbial chicken and egg questions.

No matter what the reason, I'm delighted and all the more so because this opens up a whole new suite of possibilities which I look forward to exploring in this new year of ours.

For you Dad

2010-12-30T09:48:00.000-08:00

My Dad's book

The last couple weeks have been filled with holidays; the brilliant candles of Hanukkah and the pungent sell of the spruce Christmas tree; the combined sensory experiences of an interfaith household. But, as Dickens noted in The Tale of Two Cities, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Sometime between the eight nights of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve, my father was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and began chemotherapy two days later.
A hale 78 year old writer, survivor of a triple by pass, my dad had just had his latest book, The Made-Up Self published in last October. Following its publication, it was reviewed in the New York Times and my father was thrilled. I got to thinking about voice and wrote this post which I never published, but came back to since his diagnosis. I offer it here as a tribute to my dad and his love of voice.

Voice. The singular thing that beckons us into and sustains us in a piece of writing. Voice tells the story, plays on our emotions, evokes our sympathies. What does this in a piece of visual art?

I struck out one night with my sister Amelia to visit the opening of a show at our local cooperative gallery, The Artery, and find out. I was a bit overexposed from a week of presentations at the hospital, so I didn't expect to be seeing clearly.

You know how it is when you've been teaching and lecturing too much and not writing enough? That's how it was. Fatigue doesn't seem to matter for Amelia. Put her in a gallery and she is immediately absorbed by color and form. I flit from one piece to the next searching for something that calls to me--could it be a"voice" I'm looking for?

Since voice must be embodied to be heard, which piece will speak to me? How will I know when I see it--what will it look like? Will it be clothed in quiet tones of umber, terracotta or ochre? Or, sparkling with brilliant patterns in red, black and gold? I'm on a blind date arranged by the gallery but I think somehow I'll recognize it when I see it.

And I do. The piece is located in a corner of the gallery and is made out of clay. Clay that is rolled thin like cookie dough and cut into irregular tile forms mounted on a birchwood panel and connected with thin lines of grout. On the tiles, in dark indigo, so dark that its almost black, are intertwining mandalas, circles with interconnecting lines that form the stamens and pistils of plants and reach towards crows who've alighted on these "circles" of plants.

Here is my friend. I stand for a long time, reading the artist's description and wondering how I can scrape together enough money to take my friend home so we can keep talking? Provocative isn't it?

New Year's Collaboration

2010-12-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

Often, when we think about the end of the year, we simultaneously think ahead to a new year and what we might want to create in the future.

At the beginning of 2010, I took a class with Alyson Stanfield, of artbizcoach.com. The Blast Off course was a fabulous way to begin the new year and led me in a variety of new directions, the likes of which I never imagined. My classmates and I created plans which spanned the entire year and during the last week, I've been going over them to see which intentions came to fruition and which shriveled on the vine.

This process got me thinking. I liked the concreteness of goals and dates, but it occurred to me that I was missing another piece. It came to me when I was reading Gretchen Miller's fantastic post on her altered New Year books. You can check them out here.

Gretchen focused on qualities she wanted to bring into her life in the course of 2010. Words like "balance," "transition," and "sustain" called out to me.

These words spoke to the qualities that often underlay my resolutions; aspects I miss while hurrying to get to the results (e.g.: exercise more, communicate more carefully, spend more time in the studio...)I forget to savor the experience, which eventually leads to my feeling of accomplishment, once I achieve my goals.

If, however, I focus on the underlying feeling of my goal, I may find that there is more than one way to get there.

In that spirit, I decided to cut to the quick and locate some words for myself. Not hard to do, because they were the feelings I most often find myself lacking.

I decided to start the process while I was at work and pitched the idea to a teen, who had been moved off the pediatric floor and was feeling bored and lonely.

Her disease causes her a great deal of pain and she has a reputation for being a bit ornery.I went in with the sheer enthusiasm I felt for the project, but was still surprised when she agreed.We worked on our pages side by side, giving each other suggestions and checking in on the progress of the television program she enjoyed watching.

We met each day this week and by the end, I'd compiled the six qualities I want to focus on.

My favorite one so far is "forgive." There are
many ways in which I "miss the mark." But most of the time, I haven't--its me wanting more of me than I can give. Thus, forgiveness.

Today, my teenage patient was asleep. It's raining hard outside and the dark gloom is conducive to sleep. We didn't have a chance to put our books together. It's o.k. We'll try again Monday.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear some words that you might be thinking of for the New Year. What are your favorites?

A Seed in Winter

2010-12-11T15:17:00.000-08:00

I walked up to the playroom door yesterday morning only to find it locked and empty. Unusual, but so was my being there first thing in the morning. After opening up, I set to work, laying out materials for an ad hoc art group; metallic watercolors, paintbrushes, lots of white paper. Soon enough several patients found their way there too. Andrea, a tall, lovely 14 year old with an endearing smile, announced that she loved winter. She told us it was the bare trees that charmed her. "I think you're channeling the East Coast, Andrea. Many of the trees here still have their leaves," I told her. "Yes," she agreed, "that's what I'm channeling." As I later thought about it, however, as she had checked in for her last in-house chemo, perhaps she was reflecting on the nascent possibility that she could be cancer free. Her body had stored up all the infusions over the last year or so and now having lost her own "leaves," she was there waiting for that inevitable spring.

In an odd way she was exactly right: this is what winter does-strips us of our leaves, our illusions and leaves us with the bare outlines of our inner and outer landscape. We have a chance to reflect on the structure of our lives. Do we want to prune them, encourage growth in a new direction? (Which one of us doesn't want to do that with the alternative being stagnation?)

That means it's time for an accounting, a consideration of the past year; what I've been able to achieve and what was left wanting. And where, after all this looking, do I want to go in my life? Usually, I start this process with a list, but after combing through my iphoto file this morning, I thought it might be fun to select some of my favorite 2010 pieces and share them in a slideshow.

Postcard Assemblage!

2010-12-04T13:48:00.000-08:00

I set aside a day over Thanksgiving weekend to try something new--constructing a series of 25 postcards, destined to be sent to 25 different places around the world. Art Therapy Without Borders had set up a world-wide exchange, asking people to sign up in order to create and send postcards about how each of us practices art therapy in our neck of the woods. The goal of this collaborative art project is to allow community members from the Art Therapy Alliance, International Art Therapy Organization and Art Therapy Without Borders to create a greater sense of connectedness throughout the world, as well as, to see how practices differ from country to country or even state to state.

I wondered where to begin. I could collect medical packaging for collage. That would give people a good clue about where my art therapy is located. (I didn't get too far with this because the wrappers are routinely tossed.) I also considered taking some of the drawings that children leave behind and adding them to the collage mix. The truth is, in the back of my mind, I knew that I would end up utilizing my "everything but the kitchen sink" method, where I grab papers and cloth and treasures from every part of the studio. I just wanted to pretend that I might be a more thematic and organized this time. But wait--there could be an organizing principle: the baby press.

I had received a baby press for the hospital during the last holiday season (courtesy of those good people who ask us for wish lists.) It had been sitting captive in its crate for the better part of the year. Never enough time or tools during the day to unpack it.

What better activity for Thanksgiving break than to get my sister and her big red truck to help me haul it to my studio and put it together? I could test it with these postcards. She was game for the adventure, and we wrestled the crate up my studio stairs and began to unpack it. Before long, with the help of various hex wrenches, we assembled it. Fabulous!

Filled with anticipation, I laid out 25 cards in rows and got to work. I cut up leftover postcards from earlier shows, a rice paper kite and slivers of the book that I had been altering. Throughout the process, I tried to suspend my own sense of judgment, that nemesis on alert, whenever I'm in artist mode. Instead I intended to follow the direction of my fingers and eyes, inviting in the critic only after the composition was basically there.

I wanted my images to allude to the art therapy work I do--not to spell it out in words and images (enough about that was written on the back)--but rather create a riddle for the viewer to solve. I've created a slide show of the postcards which you can see below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yh0JBuEkiU

Keeping Our Selves Warm

2010-11-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

At this time of the year in most parts of our country, the task is to stay warm, but even more that that, to keep our souls warm. As it becomes darker and colder outside, it's easy to find ourselves in similar inner spaces.

Instead, I'm seeking to turn up my inner heat and discover more of what lies within. With that in mind and my early morning warm-up shower behind me, I wanted to share a few things that have warmed my soul lately...

Multiple Passages was created in memory of a vibrant young woman with whom I worked; she was Fijian, by way of India and she had a spark in her soul that could heat up any room she found herself in during her time at our hospital.

In particular, I appreciated her fierce love of Bob Marley and the Jamaican flag which decorated her room. One day near the end of her life, I entered to find her choosing just the right shade of magenta that she and her nurse planned to dye her hair that weekend. Although she died a year and a few months ago, her presence continues to permeate my work.

This morning, in honor of Thanksgiving, I decided to excavate my bedside reading collection. In the pile, I found a sheaf of typewritten letters from my grandmother Caroline. She died at the age of 33 in 1938, years before I was born. I happened to turn to a letter I hadn't yet read, dated a few weeks before the Thanksgiving of 1937. At that time, she was for the most part, confined to her bed with the cancer that took her life. In this letter, she shares with her sister Leah her delight and humor over a Friday night Shabbat (the Jewish sabbath) dinner:

Friday night we had such dandy broiled white bass for supper how I wished you could share it with broccoli with drawn butter and lemon sauce. As if that were'nt enough fish in came Maurice with a jar of Gafilta fish. Of course I raved and raved about it, but it was so white and flat tasting. Maurice said see it was made with frozen haddock and you could'nt tell the difference. But I did'nt say so but just raved about it. Your really need fresh fish to make a jelly like stock to cook the balls in. You can't tamper with that good old fashioned gafilta recipe. (The underlinings are all hers.)

I love her exuberance and her kindness. And, while I have never liked gefilte fish, her excitement over good food helps me understand my own global enthusiasm for food and I am grateful that she lives on in me through our shared devotion to food, words and family.

Last, but not least, to see a video clip from an interview NBC Today show host, Matt Lauer did at St. Jude's Hospital this Monday, click here

You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...

What You Bring Forth

2010-11-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

"Honey, why is it that your memory is so good about unpleasant topics?" my husband asked me this morning. He was speaking about our upcoming biweekly housecleaning, but I think that my habit could be an occupational hazard, the cost of doing business so to speak.

This week however, began with a very pleasant ending, the last meeting of our 8 week Young Adult Bereavement Art Group. I've come to love the kids in the group. Although I stop short of wanting to adopt them all, in the process of following their stories I came to care for them immensely.

My co-facilitator and I sat at the table with group members as they worked on their last project; a memory box. He had inherited a file cabinet filled with wooden boxes similar to a cigar box and they seemed to suggest the perfect container for memories. I was thinking of the traditional art therapy "inside/outside box" where you can put the feelings you share with others on the outside of the box and the feelings you hold close to yourself on the inside. I also thought the boxes could become altars, or, simply a decorated box in which they could place objects reminding them of their loved ones.

Of course the kids surprised me with their own ideas-blew me out of the water in fact. As I sat there observing them, an idea occurred to me: I could take my i-phone and shoot process pictures. I had all their consent forms and if I shot below their faces I could capture some of the magic that was taking place in front of me.

I made my rounds about the table and and saw a confluence of images that I could not have anticipated. One young woman had written "wash away 2010" Another had a found a picture of a heart formed by the thumbs and forefingers of two hands coming together (try that yourself!). Yet another person had glued the traditional "corners" used to hold photographs in an album, back in the days when you would glue these tiny corners in an album and hope that you'd done it right so you could easily slip in the photograph.

I wondered whether this young man would be adding any of his photographs that he'd found of his mother. This would be progress indeed because several weeks before he told us he had them in a box, but could not look at them.

As our time together ended, we went around the table, each sharing a word that expressed our feeling of the moment. I heard words like "blessed", "understood" and "comforted"--and when they left, they asked us about the reunion in the spring. Unthinkable that two years ago at this time, we were putting together figures and ideas, hoping to get a grant. Today, I am immensely grateful for these young people who have shared their lives with us and for the support of our hospital and hospice, the UC Davis Children's Hospital and the UC Davis Hospice.

ATx á la carte speaks to this heart

2010-11-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

A Flock of Hands

What happens when you put hundreds of art therapists together in a convention center? I found out when the American Art Therapy Association convened their annual meeting this week in Sacramento. I'd been wondering what it would be like to enter a space filled with people who believe that making images and guiding others in the creation of images is a sacred, healing and deeply passionate practice.

One among the flock of hands

Riding up an escalator, I discovered a flock of hands covering vast areas of the lobby. Winding my way through, I found this one, whose message channeled the words of a 12th century saint, Julian of Norwich:"And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Filled with anticipation, I landed in a room in which several therapists were discussing grief and loss, my sphere of interest.

Elizabeth Stone, an art therapist who lives in France, works with cancer patients. Her presentation told the poignant story of a mother who had died of cancer and her daughter, who was grieving the loss of her mother. While showing us a series of images of both the mother and the daughter's artwork, she described the healing of wounds that reached back through 3 generations.

Art That Speaks, An Exhibition of Art Therapy in Oncology

Following her talk, another panelist noted: "You broke all the right rules." (Elizabeth had made several unconventional decisions in her treatment.)

Breaking the rules became my own theme for the conference. When I'm engaging in art therapy, I often find myself of two minds. One part of me is working from the "rules;" the theories and philosophies one studies in school. By the book, as it were. At the same time, the intuitive part of me is receiving ideas and images of what to do next in the session. Over the years, I've learned to weigh what I call my right and left brain options and then go with my gut. Some part of me knows then to trust my heart over the rules and understands that it is more important to nurture the relationship, whatever that is at the moment, than to stick by the book. Nevertheless, I've always been a bit embarrassed about advertising this because I work in an academic institution.

But today I let go of my qualms. A well known art therapist, Linda Chapman, got up and gave a talk on neurobiology in the clinical setting. After explaining the way that the brain receives and processes information, she told us about the case of a violent young man she had as a client. She described her process of "receiving images" as she worked with this teen. During the sessions, she found herself doing a number of unconventional things, including playing peek-a-boo with him. (Part of her developmental repairative work.) Many were amazed and stunned and I walked out of the session feeling validated for my sometimes out of the ordinary approach.

It's easy to get overloaded with all the "clini-speak" and I was. Fortunately, for we art therapists at a conference, there's a solution: an entire part of an exhibition hall devoted to art making. I headed down there and made this collage.

This week, I heard the first verse of a poem by Galway Kinnell, which speaks of this necessity:

St Francis and the Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing...

A Paradoxical Experience

2010-10-29T16:41:00.000-07:00

Writing a blog can be a paradoxical experience. On the one hand, you feel a bit like someone's watching you dress in front of a mirror, and on the other hand, you are by yourself (in your studio, office, cafe, fill in the blank...) and no none, even if they are sitting at the table next to you, can see what you're writing.

I'm often reluctant to write about process, because I'm superstitious. Superstitious. As if I write about art before it's made, it will be jinxed, or or more accurately, I'll feel bound to carry out what I said, rather than follow the ideas that come to me in the moment.

I'm breaking with that belief, because I'm playing with an idea. After listening to some of my friends talk about their grandchildren, I've begun to feel a sense of longing for my own grandchild, similar to what I felt when my friends began to have children some twenty years ago. The fact is though (much to my delight) my two kids in their early twenties show no signs of settling down and creating grandchildren anytime soon.

I've decided instead to create a piece for an imaginary grandchild, someone yet unborn, someone who in fact may never be born. (I told this to my daughter Lizzie last night and she wrinkled up her face as if to say, "Are you kidding Mom? That's just weird.") Weird or not, I'm pursuing it.

A Young Hannah, Age 1

I've been collecting fabrics; my daughter's old organdy curtain flecked with sequins, some pink polka dot pajama pants (passed on to me when Lizzie got bored with them), and pieces of cloth that are shimmery, and remind me of Lizzie, who's a dancer. Why not my son's castoffs? Honestly, he and I would both agree that polo shirts and wind jackets (he's a golfer) don't make for great quilt material.

Jill Ault, Remember Where We Moored the Boats

I began working with the fabrics I'd selected, putting up the organdy curtain on my studio wall, sewing quilted squares, and tacking them on, only to discover when I stepped back, that I'd left my own tastes out of the equation. I thought of an Aikido class I'd taken many years ago from Wendy Palmer, who helps people examine their lives from a variety of different perspectives using Aikido. She says that Aikido, a martial art, "is the perfect structure in which to learn how build powerful connections...and live life with an open heart." She also spoke frequently about the moment when you grasp your opponent's hand and how that moment becomes a blending of energies--"feel the blend and move from that point" she would say.

"Feel the blend." These words spoke to me. How could I blend my energy, the energies of my children and someone imaginary? I discovered an answer when I found the work of artist, Jill Ault. Ethereal and otherworldly, her work seemed to suggest the presence of something beyond what we can see with our eyes. It reminded me of the obvious: to trust the art making process, to return to my own intuitive way of cutting, painting, pasting and connecting all the pieces. To create connections between myself and others beyond what I can see on the surface, the invisible openings of the hearts and minds. Stay posted.

Healer, Heal Thyself

2010-10-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

I was determined to try and make this week's post about something other than the bereavement group but I underestimated the power of the group to affect me. I thought I'd learned how to leave the group behind me when it was over for the evening, ready to absorb myself in whatever awaited me next. We're such forgetful creatures, we humans.

Forgetful perhaps, but I think something else is at work here. The longer one does this work, the more one tunes in. You learn when to speak, when to wait in silence, when to make eye contact, and when to lay down your tools and acknowledge the force of the wave crashing over you.

This week we made clay grief masks. I love introducing this process. We pound the clay, tear it to bits, reassemble it and poke holes in it. By this time, I'm sure you've guessed we're not following the orthodox method of kneading clay to remove the air bubbles. No matter. People love it. Permission to pound the clay to bits has had tables absolutely vibrating.

Watching their faces last night as they worked affected me deeply; eye sockets became deeper, eyebrows arched higher and tears were etched into the clay.

The next day I had a headache of monster proportions. "What's up with this?" I wondered, checking off my mental "self care" list: eating--check, sleeping--check, exercising--yeah. Nevertheless, cracking a smile seemed like just that. An impossibility.

Halfway into the day, I felt tears stinging my eyes. I sought the refuge of my office and called my husband, wondering between snuffles what was wrong with me. After some probing, oh yeah, the group. That little thing about being gentle, going easy with myself. Permission to cry was what I needed and what I received.

But that was only half of the equation. Today in art group, I found the other half. As we sketched large ghosts on white paper with oil pastels, we drew small things inside the ghosts that move us or scare us. Besides bright purple pigtails, my own ghost had a broken heart and dragged a long set of chains. As heavy as the chains appeared, their acknowledgment lightened my load considerably. Putting the burden of that grief that I was carrying onto paper, gave me comfort in a way I often espouse though perhaps too rarely allow myself to experience.

Mapping the Trail of Grief

2010-10-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

Last night was the third meeting of our young adult bereavement group. It's an evening where we spend time thinking, talking and drawing out how grief manifests in our bodies. It is one of the most fascinating and potentially powerful nights of the group.

It's typical after the death of someone you love to experience a variety of physical symptoms; lethargy, stomach aches, headaches, exhaustion, lack of appetite, sleeplessness, the list goes on. For me, a particularly powerful moment is when I pass out a list of words, "feeling words", we call them and I ask group members to circle all the words that apply for them at the time. I caution them that many of the feelings may be contradictory and that's o.k.

This circling of the words is a cognitive exercise--it's not too hard, the words are provided, they just have to circle them. Then we take it a step further. I ask them to mark the 4 or 5 strongest feelings. That takes some consideration, but it's somewhat of a relief to circle them. Putting words to feelings makes them more concrete, less nebulous. I take it one step deeper then, handing them a page with an body outline drawn on it, asking them to chose a color to correspond with each of the feelings--as if they were making the key of a map. Here's where it picks up emotional speed.

After people have selected colors for their feelings, I begin to explain what a metaphor is and how we can use symbols to express feelings. Everyone knows about butterflies in the stomach, how a headache can feel like a hammer and how a heart can be broken. With these simple suggestions, the group takes off.

I never cease to be amazed by the variety of symbols that people come up with; locks on mouths, fire streaming red and hot from out of a pair of hands, gray clouds that encompass the whole body. I become silent in the face of these symbols, which open up doors soundlessly so that people can speak about their grief in a way that would not otherwise be possible.

I have a tendency to want to talk and help. Drawing does the work instead.

"The body weeps the tears the eyes refuse to shed." William Osler

Quilt Road or, Taking the Long Way 'Round

2010-10-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

I'm setting out on a year long journey. In November of 2011, I'll be participating in a group art quilt exhibit at the Davis Art Center along with seven other wonderful women artists and quilters. It's been awhile since I've been part of a group exhibit in which there is such a long lead time. While short notice provides the challenge of creating under a deadline, this longer advance notice affords an opportunity for a luxurious thought process.

My first reaction to being invited was me, "Me? I know how to quilt, but I've never been one for large scale pieces." One of the seven other quilters, Diana Connolly, creates lively geometric works and doubles as an ER social worker at our hospital. She's used to much tougher cases than my soft skepticism. When I voiced my doubts, she looked at me with an expression which could only mean something like: "Get over it and get on with it!"

So I have, backing into it in my own way. I'm connecting 12" x 12" Ampersand panels (which happen to have gone on sale today at Daniel Smith) and creating large collage pieces with allover patterning and funky quilted borders (I'm having fun stitching together border pieces which play on the idea of the traditional quilt border). Quilts often tell stories and one of the works in process is an homage to a patient, whom I became close to before she died last year. I spent a lot of time learning her family history, a classic story of immigration from the Far East to America.

Composition V11, Deidre Adams, ©2007, Cotton fabrics, rayon and polyester thread, acrylic paint

I also decided to immerse myself in another way. Opening tomorrow at the Pence Gallery in Davis, Ca is a fabulous show entitled: 12 Voices, a collection of art quilts traveling the country and organized by the Studio Art Quilter's Associates. I volunteered to lead some docent tours so that I could learn about the quilts in detail. What a great decision! I was treated to a tour by Pence director, Natalie Nelson, and found my way into pieces that would have remained strangers, without her well informed descriptions of process and extensive information about the artists.

Truth and Fiction, Joan Schulz ©2008, (48" x 98") Glue transfer process. Pieced, machine quilted

Over the next year, I'll be writing posts about my progress with my "quilts", their inspirations and mediums as well as descriptions of the artists' work (sneak peeks from our monthly meetings...) Hopefully, in the process, we'll be able to engage in a dialogue celebrating creativity of all kinds.

Walking into Autumn

2010-09-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's Fall again. The students have flowed into our town like salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Its 99 degrees and rising. I drive downtown in search of a icey treat. The frozen yogurt shops have lines streaming backwards all the way to the "tart original." In order to slake my hunger, I grab a couple of the tiny pleated paper cups, fill them up with pecan praline and french vanilla and slurp.

I'm preparing myself. The next day is the beginning of a group that I help to facilitate each fall and winter, our hospital's "Young Adult Bereavement Group." Tucked into that title and invisible to all except myself and the other facilitator is the word "art."

When we first conceived of this group back in 2008, we wanted to create a space for people who didn't quite fit into a childrens' bereavement group, nor on the other hand, in an adult group.

Because the alternating need for privacy and sharing in this age group, 17 to 24, switches on and off like a strobe light, art bridges the gap--literally between silence and speech and figuratively, between childhood and adulthood.

I approach the group with caution, knowing that for the next 8 weeks, I'm immersing myself in the multiple worlds of these losses--attending to nuances so subtle that they could easily pass unnoticed. It's a prolonged meditation on attachment and the slow, inevitable letting go.

It's exactly this sort of attention to detail, as if we were all creating an exquisite painting, that allows me to follow the thread of each individual story, pulling here, tweaking there, hoping that in some way, the unfolding of their stories slowly, almost imperceptibly, leads to healing. The process reminds me of a biblical quote that I read many years ago in a yoga publication, "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1)

These words conjure in a haunting way, the reality of loss--that as we make our way through--or perhaps more accurately, fumble our way through, we can only cling to something we cannot see--the hope that there is something on the other side of loss.

Stitched Identities

2010-09-22T10:41:00.000-07:00

The other week, I received an e-mail with a subject line that was strange to me: "B & B blog tour." A bed and breakfast tour on blogs? I was tempted to delete it right away, but somehow, the name of the person sending the note rang a bell: Kesha Bruce.

As a somewhat suspicious person, I'm inclined to ditch things first and get curious later, but in this case, I'm glad I didn't. It turned out that Kesha, a young artist living in New York City, was organizing a rather unusual series of artist exhibitions and she wanted to know if I'd write something about the artist.

"I don’t if you’ve stopped by my blog lately, but if so, you already know that I’m working on a really exciting project called Baang and Burne Contemporary We’re hosting a series of one-night-only art events where, unlike at a traditional art gallery opening, artists, art collectors, and members of our mailing list are invited to attend a small intimate exhibition event in a private home or a hotel suite. We have events planned for New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland."

"Small and intimate," that got my interest. Now to check out the artist--Stitched Identities by Jane Zweibel is the first in a series of Baang and Burne’s one-night-only art events.

Zweibel's "stuffed paintings" are sewn, stuffed, and lusciously painted sculptural objects that challenge and blur the boundaries of sculpture and painting. The resulting soft sculptures allude to childhood stuffed animals and dolls, while suggesting cartoon figures, spiritual icons, and effigies.

When I looked at Jane's work, I was struck by the strength of the painting countered by the fragility of the pillow form. (How many pillows have you seen coming unstitched at the edges?) My second sensation was that of discomfort--if I were to lie upon these stuffed sculptures, the surface would be hard, repelling.

Jane speaks to this, saying "these pieces are paradoxical, in that they both invite and repel touch...My hybrid personas embody the conflicts, losses and connections between childhood and adult lives."

Zweibel's work appears to point to harsh and painful truths that we are faced with in urban life; abandoned, decaying buildings (which we can guess house similarly forgotten people) right next to beautifully painted spring flowers, alluding perhaps to flowers planted in a thriving suburb outside of the city where services are alive and tended to--or perhaps an allusion to spring and hope and all that flowers springing up out of the ground suggest.

I was fascinated to find as I read Jane's interview to find out that she works as an creative arts therapist.

"The materials and concepts I develop in my studio transforms into what I do with my clients as an art therapist. Conversely, my creative process is strongly influenced by my work as a mental health professional."

Her work suggests a direction that promises the flowers of hope that she depicts in her paintings; the blending of art and healing.

An assemblage of diverse elements

2010-09-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about what it means to create a collage; to take papers, cloth, diverse scraps from the mind's eye and bring them all together in order to create something new and heretofore undiscovered. In other words, to create new territory where there was none.

During this time, I've been listening to Divisidero, by Michael Ondaatje, in the studio and as I drive to work. The novel is a pastiche of exquisitely drawn characters, connected to each other in inextricable but mysterious ways. He uses the metaphor of collage to describe their connections:

"Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross."

It makes sense to me, this notion. As I make my way across the collage I'm working on, I encounter shadows of several patients I've worked with, a memory of filtered autumn light through studio windows and my earnest musing about appropriate titles. The name of a former piece echoes through several years, to me, this Virgo and I glue layer after layer of myself and my history onto a large and heavy panel. I listen to Ondaatje's words:

"Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said...For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the occurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell. "

What a pleasure it is to be back in the studio again, cutting and pasting cloth and words.

When Finger Painting Becomes a Rorschach Blot

2010-09-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you just know it's time for a break. I'd been planning to take some time off when suddenly, the vortex of life began to whirl around me.

A child on our hospital floor who had been hanging on to life for months, died. My son, who'd appeared to be settled nearby, seized an opportunity and drove off to Florida to pursue his career. With characteristic decisiveness, he totally relocated his life within three days.

It all left me a bit breathless and teary. Sad for the patient, happy for my son, sad because after a great run of years, my active role as a mom is coming to a close.

As I stared down at a finger painting I'd done in our pediatric art group, I saw the proverbial writing on the wall. Time for a change. Time for a break.

Time to pick the figs off our tree and dry them, appreciating the slowness of time passing when it's not being calibrated by a Kronos time clock.

figs ready to dry

Time to enjoy these early days of fall with a book in my lap instead of a keyboard beneath my fingers.

What I'm going to read

Time, most of all, to discover where my intuition has been hiding.

For much of my life I've operated from that "still small voice within." Working in a hospital run on a 24 hour clock, punctuated by electronic medical record keeping, tends to dull that inner voice over time.

Dream time--quiet time--is exactly what I plan to give myself during the next 10 days. I want to see if by taking some time to listen, I can find that hidden voice.

Last night I dreamed of ocean waves crashing in the distance while I floated in nearby still waters, gray pebbles beneath me and the beach just a short distance away.

I'll be taking a break from my blog for the next week and look forward to checking in with all of you very soon, renewed and refreshed.

10 Things to Love at a Gallery

2010-08-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

I was taken with this recent review of Lessons from Things in our newspaper, the Davis Enterprise and asked Melissa Hiatt, the author, if I could repost it for you to enjoy. It's not every art review that includes lines from William Blake together with a pancake spatula! I was grateful for her comment about my work, and, I think you'll get a kick out of the metaphors she uses to introduce the show.
I also included photographs of pieces I love, but were not included in the review.

By Melissa Hiatt
Enterprise art critic
August 19, 2010

The little things can really get under your skin: the gummed-up, crusted-over toothpaste that slowly oozed out of its hole in a desperate attempt to reach for its lid; the milk left out on the counter, which clearly establishes a horridly sour smell ... and the simple fact that another trip to the market will be necessary, in order to facilitate morning coffee and continued existence.

They say that we shouldn't sweat the small stuff.

I think they might be wrong.

Just who are 'they' anyway ... and what do they want?

Who would knowingly prescribe 'failure to pay attention' as a life philosophy? After all, a great deal of spiritual counseling advises noticing all things.

Entire practices can be devoted to the art of present observation.

And there's William Blake, and this passage from Auguries of
Innocence, which says it all:

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Everyday, ordinary things cannot only be transformative; they are, by their very nature, formative. The things we use daily offer cadence to our movements, rhythm to our methods.

Imagine flipping pancakes without a spatula.

While this last reflection might be received with a tone of triteness, rest assured, that isn't my intention. Pancakes are covetable and highly prized in our house.

Little things can become so much a part of our lives that we fail to notice their significance: whether they serve to annoy, dole out convenience, or provide the placebo of peace of mind.

Artist and curator Sara Post is determined that we stand up and take note. This month's Davis Art Center Tsao Gallery exhibit is filled with art centered on everyday things. Post's concept refers to a lost curriculum practice from French primary school, regarding the study of objects: their history, their evolution and their uses.

'Lessons from Things' houses the works of 16 artists who've approached both natural and manmade objects, and transformed their imagery into works of art through painting, collage, ceramic, printmaking, encaustic, fiber and mixed media.

According to Post, 'this exhibit offers an opportunity to slow down, to focus, to be with and perhaps to add to our understanding and enjoyment of objects that surround us.'

The participating artists are Chris Beer, Marcia Cary, Magdelena Crivelli, Barbara DeWein, Julie Haney, Hannah Hunter, Diana Jahns, Jose Moreno, Sondra Olson, Sara Post, Tom Post, Laura Reyes, Adele Shaw, Alison Smith, Stacey Vetter and Stacey White.

Sara Post is a nationally exhibited artist, and she shares a studio with her husband and fellow artist, Tom. While she has one piece in the show, 'Les Animaux d'Ivoire,' which bears her brush and hot wax signature of encaustic, she also shows three companion pieces that are a clear departure.

While her work of late has reflected lines fluidly carved out of deep layers of wax, she now brings the form of lines and edges to a flat surface with a collage of pencil, paint, wax and digital prints.

'Jar,' 'Umbrella' and 'Shell' depict these singular objects within a surreal environment and rest them ethereally, without the force of gravity. Their suspension creates both tension and intrigue. By removing the object from a traditional setting, the viewer is forced to consider
it solely on its own.

Jose Moreno's 'Bell' rings from his found object series. Moreno sees 'the object as a tool for expanding one's understanding of surface and light.' His tremendous skill shines through. Moreno's definitive realism
is imbued with a rich, warm light and tender sense of antiquity.

His works are a singularly dramatic highlight. The juxtaposition of 'Coffee Container' with 'Praying Figurine' and 'Toy Dog' works seamlessly to inspire reverence for Moreno and his choices.

The list of things to love is long. Christopher Beer's pill-popping pieces are both witty and intriguing. Hannah Klaus Hunter's collages
consistently radiate a vitality and evolution that are intensely emotional. Julie Haney's 'Pie Spatulas' are a surprising favorite. Her choice of monotype led to an extraordinary representation, wherein the
purpose of the object fades completely when faced with its design.

The message is clear: It's time to consider the things we so often dismiss.

Lessons from Things, on view at the Tsao Gallery in the Davis Art Center through September 3rd.

Elul, Or, "Back to Our Senses"

2010-08-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, the month of Elul. In the Jewish calendar, Elul is the month that comes before Rosh Hoshanah, the Jewish New Year. During Elul, a shofar (an elegantly shaped ram's horn) is blown in synagogues all around the world announcing the beginning of this time. Its otherworldly sound is said to call us back to our senses--in other words, it's a wake up call.

These next 40 days through Yom Kippur are the season of t'shuvah (or return), of returning to our essential selves by fearlessly examining our lives and choices. In the Jewish mystical tradition, the senses are the gateways to the soul.

...How better to begin the practice of t'shuvah than to mindfully observe our responses to the input of our senses: noticing the bombarding array of sights, sounds, fragrances, touches and thoughts, discerning which ones to attend to and consciously choosing our reactions. --Rabbi SaraLeya Schley

My approach to practicing Judaism is a spiritual one. I spent many years as an active seeker and my road to Judaism, the religion of my father's family, took me on a journey not unlike that in the movie, Eat, Pray, Love.

When one takes a roundabout route, it inspires questioning and re-examining everything, which is exactly what Elul is all about. This time of soul searching coincides (in this hemisphere) with the end of summer, harvest time, when we gather in the yield of all that we've sown and tended over the previous year; whether it is plants in the garden (harvest that basil girl!) or the relationships in our lives, our work or art that we've created.

Most of my reflections have to do with being an artist. I'm sitting here in the studio of my good friend, Linda Clark Johnson. It's a friendship that's come to fruition over the last year after taking Alyson Stanfield's Blastoff class. After that class, I got out of my studio more often and got to know other artists- meeting for coffee, doing trades, talking about work and exhibits. It is a rich and ongoing process.

Also as result of Alyson's classes (I took both the Blastoff and the Blog class), I've nurtured a regular partnership with an artist in Florida, Beth Rommel, a mutual support system made possible by a handy combo of e-mail, internet and good old fashioned phone talks. We've seen each other through good shows and bad shows, as well as times, also good and bad.

A special gift is my blog and my blog friendships with all of you. I've been introduced to artists from around the world and seen a variety of work I could previously only dream of, not to mention having actual conversations with some of you. It's all very exciting to me, a person, who as a five year-old, could not walk across a school stage without bursting into tears of anxiety.

When I began this post, I thought that I was going to write about the process of self-inquiry, looking at where I'd missed the mark. But I do that every day of my life and maybe there is a wider definition for this time of t'shuvah. Perhaps a more generous approach is to appreciate how we did it right, where we were right on target.

The other day in art group I had just one patient, a young boy wearing a leg cast up to his hip. He could move, but just barely. We created a target a la Jasper Johns, with many different, colored concentric circles. Once finished, we put the target on the wall, blindfolded him with a bright bandanna and played "hit the target." The first go around, he missed, placing all the arrows on the outer perimeter. On the second try, he touched the center two out of three times. It strikes me that most of the time, we get second chances to get it right. This is the season to try again...

"Plant Dreaming Deep"

2010-08-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

"Plant Dreaming Deep" is the title of a journal by the poet, May Sarton. In it, she details her restoration of a house in New Hampshire where she began planting what turned out to be a series of spectacular gardens.

I read over the lists of flowers and trees she chose, my lips moving silently, as if I was reading over a mouth watering menu. When I first read Plant Dreaming Deep many years ago, it was my safe place to go, my retreat when it seemed like the critiques and sharp barbs of graduate school threatened to tip over my craft.

I'm closer now to May's age when she began her journal and I've turned my mind to a dream of my own planted those many years ago; botanical drawing.

I'd heard of botanical illustration and wanted to take a class, but never did. 30 years later, flipping through our art center catalogue, I read a description for a botanical drawing class. It noted that "The emphasis will be on careful observation of our subjects with a playful, open-minded approach."

The words playful and joyful hooked me (because who doesn't need more of that?) and I arrived at the first class, my DeYoung tote bag filled with bright and shiny art supplies including sumi ink brushes, bamboo pens, waterproof black ink and a thick black bound journal of creamy watercolor paper.

Our first class began with a blind contour drawing of a flower--a multi-floral rose. Now you need to know that drawing is not my strongest suit. I studied it, took classes in it, but its finer points have always eluded me.

Stacey, my friend and instructor, advised us that we should approach the flower as if we were taking a trip with our pencil, curious about each bend in the road. I gulped, began--and loved it.

Stacey emphasized the practice of non-attachment to the results, straight out of Yoga and Buddhism. I could relate to this. I found my pencil slowly wandering along the petals, getting lost in the contours and subtle serrations of the leaves.

I was surprised how quickly the time passed and surprised too by the result, the wavering lines which overlapped and crossed each other, nonetheless conveying the feeling of a rose.

As my pencil continued to explore, I felt extremely relaxed and peaceful, a kind of peacefulness I hadn't experienced for some time and to which I connect the feeling of meditating. Meditation--one of those activities that I know is "good for me" but is hard to get to. The way my mind can spin! But with this drawing, there was none of that, no swirl of thoughts that accompanied my sitting meditations.

Could it be that I had found my own form of meditation? I'll find out as the class continues, but for now I'm resting my mind in the luxurious feeling of my sumi brush as I slowly brush the ink onto the paper. I've found a retreat. And I think I'm going to go back and reread Plant Dreaming Deep.

Happy the man who can long roaming reap,
Like old Ulysses when he shaped his course
Homeward at last toward the native source,
Seasoned and stretched to plant his dreaming deep.

-May Sarton, after Du Bellay

Sneak Peek and the Last 2 Questions

2010-08-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

Here we go: last thoughts on this matter of Lessons from Things.

5.) Can you provide a little information or "sneak peek" on the pieces you've included in the show? (I.e., how long it took to make, what materials you used, etc.)

I've been working on the pieces in the show for about a month. If I had to break it down, each piece probably took about a week in time, although some came quickly over a number of hours and others over a period of days. Over the years, I've created a studio practice, spending several hours in the studio each morning before I shift identities and change from an artist into an artist therapist.

When Sara asked us to provide an image for the show, I put together a still life of objects from around my home that I love: a white raku vase, a jade-colored porcelain beaker and a palm-sized, brass Aladdin's lamp. Although I began with what I thought was a traditional still life approach, it quickly morphed into an exploration of the shapes through juxtaposition of fabric and paper, trying to create animated but believable forms. It was a lot of fun.

6.) What would you say to all of the other aspiring artists out there?

I had difficulty with this questions because it seems to presume that I've arrived somewhere when, in fact, I feel like I'm constantly striving myself. The answer below is what I deeply believe.

Persistence, persistence, persistence. Very little happens overnight and real progress occurs over years. Never give up. Always believe that you have a unique voice, unlike any other artist. Have the courage to believe in this voice. Malcolm Gladwell makes this point about persistence in his book The Outliers. In it he talks about the 10,000-Hour Rule, saying that the way to success in many fields is, to a great extent, based on practicing a specific task for a sum total of about 10,000 hours. I haven't been counting--but I may be getting close.

For the complete article as it appeared in the Monday edition, check out the California Aggie.

Fresh Impressions: Part 2

2010-08-03T21:06:00.000-07:00

Today's Part 2 focuses on the exhibit, Lessons from Things and the process of working on the still lifes that are part of it.

3.) What makes this exhibit stand out from others that have happened here locally in Davis?

Sara Post has gathered a wonderful group of artists together and given them a traditional subject, namely, familiar objects, and added a twist that is particularly hers, looking at art-making through the lens of another culture.

"In our object-rich culture, there is a tendency to skim over the presence of things, to cease to see them because of the sometimes overwhelming amount of objects in our lives. This exhibit offers an opportunity to slow down, to focus, to be with and perhaps to add to our understanding and enjoyment of objects that surround us," notes “Lessons” curator Sara Post.

Within the structure of the exhibit, she weaves in an educational component, so that the viewer comes away with more than an encounter with the works of art themselves. The unique quality of Sara's lively and provocative themes set her exhibits apart.

4.) What do you hope to gain from the exhibit (in any aspect, whether, spiritually, emotionally, or if more aimed toward the community)?


Lake Okoboji, ©1977, watercolor

The greatest gift so far took place in my studio. In order to create these still lifes, I've been reaching back into my days as a young student and drawing on my youthful enthusiasm. It was a magical time; so much seemed possible and everything was fair game for the canvas: a plein air landscape, the view from my apartment window, pieces of fruit placed on a worn wooden table.

Recycled take out containers for colored papers

As I've re-explored the subject of still life, I've been able to tap into that enthusiasm and ebullience. But there's a twist. I am older and the experience of the life I've lived since that time filters into these collages as well. I see it in my approach; the willingness to take the objects I've studied "out of the box" and off of the linear plane. I experiment more freely with media and feel confident in the way that I handle the colors and patterns; letting them come together in a sort of seeming randomness that is actually the result of working with composition for so many years.

The beige take out container has it all

I also look forward to the reception for the exhibit, to those equally random moments when I watch other people study the artwork on the walls and hear their exclamations as they move around the gallery. I love seeing so many people that I know from so many times of life here in Davis. I've never lived anywhere as long as I lived here: 22 years. That creates a rich tapestry of friends and acquaintances and you never know whom you're going to run into or what you might end up talking about. Perhaps I'll meet a new artist friend or even find the thread for a new series of collages.

Fresh Impressions: An Interview in 3 Parts

2010-08-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

Lessons From Things, postcard front on the "fridge" gallery

I've been working on a series of still lifes for a group exhibit entitled "Lessons from Things" at the Davis Art Center, in Davis, CA,
August 2 - September 3.

Last week I was approached by Lea Murillo, a reporter from our University paper The California Aggie. Lea asked me if she could interview me for the exhibit curated by Sara Post.

I embraced the invitation, knowing it was one of those opportunities that Alyson Stanfield, in her book, "I'd Rather Be in the Studio," recommends for those of us who prefer to hang out with our paint, paper and brushes rather than write about them.

I'm reprinting the questions and my replies in the next three posts, because most of the time, I don't get the chance to read what an artist has said as he or she said it--simply because another person, the journalist, is doing the writing.

Lea asked me to answer the questions according to how they apply to me, the exhibit, and the connection between the two. Hence the segue between myself and the exhibit.

1.) How long have you been an artist and, what does your artistic background consist of?

I've thought of myself as an artist since the age of 21, 33 years ago now. I received a B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Iowa (where I spent most of my time in the weaving studio) and an M.F.A. in Textiles and Sculpture from the California College of the Arts (where I spent much of my time crossing the campus between the Textile and the Sculpture studios).

I've always been interested in the intersection between media so that in both undergraduate and graduate school, I focused on textiles, painting, writing and sculpture.

Throughout my career as an artist, I've tried to blur the lines between the disciplines, or, another way to say it is that I try to find the liminal zone where two or more media come together.

When Sara curates an exhibit at the Davis Art Center, she engages in a similar quest; she becomes interested in a particular area, such as collage, and offers artists an open range for exploration.

In the current exhibit, "Lessons from Things," the title immediately produces a cornucopia of ideas. According to Sara, the title "refers to what was once a part of the French primary school curriculum—the study of things or objects and how they came to be what they are—their history, their evolution, their uses. It is a way of looking deeply into an object and seeing what is there."

That same title takes me back to first grade when I learned that a noun is a person, place or thing. From there, I begin to think about how I want to document some "thing," which leads me to thinking about which "things" in my environment inspire me.

2.) What inspires you?

Baby pomegranate

I spend a lot of time studying the natural world around me: ripening fruits, flowering oleanders, rows of sunflowers, furrows of rice fields off the causeway.

Oleander on the way to work

I also love to study patterns in architecture, quilts and words.

I distill all of these observations into the form of a collage.

I also draw inspiration from my work as an art therapist at the UC Davis Children's Hospital. Much of my recent work (although not in this exhibit) is a response to my involvement with various children and their effects on my life.

More to come tomorrow. I'll be posting about my experience of working on the still lifes.

A Code of Many Colors

2010-07-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Every so often, the worst thing imaginable happens. A woman's voice says in clear distinct tones: "Code Blue, Davis 7"

My heart skips a beat, waiting to hear the floor. "Please," I say inwardly, "not Davis 7." That's our floor, the kids' floor.

Code blue is called when a person's heart stops beating. Doctors, nurses, a pharmacist and a respiratory therapist are paged to do their best to revive the patient.

From the point of view of the people involved, it's a team effort. From the point of view of an observer, it is an otherworldly event. When it is successful, the rest of the day is spent picking up the pieces, literally and figuratively.

A code blue took place on our floor recently and by great good fortune, the patient was revived.
In this instance, as an art therapist, my role is strictly that of the picker upper, one of many who helps put the pieces back together for a family. In this case that meant working with one of the child's siblings, a ten year old girl.

I looked into my internal Mary Poppins bag of tools. What to do? What project would allow this child to process the swirl of emotions taking place inside of her and yet preserve her dignity, her anonymity?

I came up with the "Inside Outside" box. It's a standard art therapy directive, using collage materials; magazine pictures, Mod Podge, buttons, gems, pipecleaners, stickers, feathers, small wooden tiles (everything but the kitchen sink.)

We spread these materials on a table along with small boxes. The idea behind the project is that you put images on the outside of the box that express the part of yourself that you feel comfortable showing the world, and on the inside you place those images and objects which are private; images that represent the parts of yourself you might share with family or friends, or perhaps no one.

I watched amazed as this girl took the small tiles, carefully wrote the name of each of her family members and added a colored gem to each tile. She then glued them to two sides of the box and added some feathers on the opposite sides. It looked very ceremonial, like some kind of memorial marker.

Next, she turned her attention to the inside. I looked over as she was about to flick the contents of a brush heavily loaded with chartreuse green paint. "Whew!" I thought, "caught her before that went ALL OVER everything." Knowing she had a huge amount of emotion stored inside of her after the code, I taught her how to "point and flick." She spent the next half hour flicking every color of the acrylic palette into the box. I could not have imagined a more perfect way for her to express and capture her fear, helplessness and uncertainty.

That's the magic of art therapy. Behind a seemingly simple set of directions, lies an opportunity for a person's psyche in a pure, uninhibited yet protected way. (Provided these simple directions are supported by appropriate training in art therapy). It's one of those moments where all the study, hours of supervision, and my effort to keep faith in the process bears fruit.

Perhaps fruit isn't the right metaphor. I'm a Virgo, one of the most service oriented signs in the zodiac and I'm guided by the one of the tenets of my Jewish faith, "tikkun o'lam, " which means repairing the world. In a vulnerable moment like this one, peering into this small maelstrom of a box, I feel a piece of our world has been mended.

Pictured above is one of my first "Inside Outside" boxes made in 1999 during a class in medical art therapy. I call it "My Father's Box."

First time around...

2010-07-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

When my first SoulCollage® class at the UC Davis Medical Center ended, it was time for some reflection. Time to see where we'd gone as a class and where I might steer the class in the future.

It was our last meeting--a makeup class in fact. People came eager to share the vision boards that they had been working on and the cards they'd created in the intervening week.

Our class included women ranging from their late twenties to their early fifties, but despite the age differences they shared something in common.

They were peering around the corner in their lives, seeking the sense of adventure that they sensed lay hidden. Whether it was the courage to recover the brash physicality of girlhood, finding a new direction after divorce, or reconnecting to a rich cultural past, each was searching for a fresh perspective.

We set out slowly, some of us skeptical of the power of images to guide. Over the weeks we flipped through a virtual surfeit of images, learning how to let our eyes and intuition pick out images rather than just our picky minds.

"... instead of cogitating about familiar images, scout for the unfamiliar. Your mind can't do this. Your animal/angel self can. Just page through a magazine (and walk through the world) noticing things that trigger physical reactions: a heart thump, a double take, a gasp.
The only responses involved should resemble these:
"Ooooh!"
"Aaaahhhhh."
"Whoa!"
"!!!!"
"????"

These 'thoughts' register in your stomach, your heart, your lungs—anywhere but your head. You can't produce them in response to cultural clichés or abstract ideas. Nor can you always know why your body reacts to an image." Martha Beck

The women created cards that tugged on my heart in their poignancy and beauty. Toward the end of each group we would surround the cards we'd made, studying and slowly finding our way to the heart of the meanings they contained. At first, some would profess that they had no idea what the card held and as I stared at the images, tears would come to my eyes; there was so much beauty in front of us just waiting to be seen and acknowledged.

Since it was our last session, I asked those who had finished their vision boards to make a card that they would give to someone else. Little did I know what I had unleashed.

Yesterday, one week later, I met with the director of our Cancer Outreach and Research Program, which had sponsored the class. I'd asked Liza, the volunteer from our group to join us. A bit reticent initially, Liza warmed up as the meeting went on. Suddenly she piped up, "Hey Hannah, Alisha said to give you a message." Alisha is Liza's good friend from childhood, an engineer who's used to depending on her logical and well organized left brain.

Alisha had spoken frequently throughout the class about her desire to go outside of the prescribed boundaries of her life. She'd also questioned the likelihood that something so seemingly simple as gluing images on a piece of matte board could hold unexpected power. Nonetheless, divers jumping off of high rocks and dancers leaping in a night sky appeared upon her SoulCollage® cards. I wondered at what point she would gather the courage to jump herself.

"So, Hannah, Alisha left this morning and she's on her way to Canada with her vision board in the back and the SoulCollage® card that Anne Marie made her in the front."

"Oh my goodness. Alisha! The one afraid to set sail. "

"And she hasn't made any plans. She's heading to Vancouver." Vancouver, the city she'd made a card for last week: a big bright nightscape of a city. "Vancouver," she told us. "Vancouver is my soul place."

It takes a lot of courage to break out and break away. People asked me afterwards if she could leave her job, "just like that." I'm betting she didn't--that she was just in need of a vacation outside of the lines. She took her SoulCollage® card back to her soul place.

We'll be starting a new class, beginning on Tuesday, September 23rd. For more information about this class, offered free of charge to cancer and cardiac patients in my area (Sacramento, CA), you can e-mail me at hannah.hunter@ucdmc.ucdavis.edu.

Top image: 4 Fold Path, Amelia McSweeny, ©2010
Middle image: Aloha Nui Loa, Amelia McSweeny, ©2010
Bottom image: Pink Dahlia, Amelia McSweeny, ©2010

Is the Past Younger than the Present?

2010-07-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the breakfast table, Monty, my husband, spoke about shooting a web video for a towing company which was his assignment that day as a videographer. An artistic soul, he was wondering how to coax inspiration out of this rather dense subject.

A picture arose in my mind's eye of our son as a three year-old, beaming as we drove down the streets of Berkeley, pointing with enthusiasm as he declared "guck, guck!" I'd look to see what he was pointing at and invariably it was a large, liberally enhanced truck.

I shared my image with Monty and we talked about re-inhabiting the mind of a three year-old for the job.

Later that morning I sat drinking jasmine tea with a woman interested in buying my work. We drank our tea from flowered cups, a Villeroy and Boch pattern I remembered from long ago. She shared a small, leather bound photograph album of her recent trip to Chicago. I leafed through the pictures, imagining myself back in Chicago, walking along Lake Michigan, heading toward the Art Institute.

That imaginary walk on the pier came back to me during our art group that day, as a young boy worked on notching skill sticks together to create three interlocking towers. To him, they were an imaginary surf shop. To me, they were the buildings I passed as I strode toward Millennium Park.

There is tremendous power our imagination, that as artists, we are constantly drawing upon. I'm trying to put imagination and memory to work in this same way in my studio. My assignment: to create a series of paintings of "objects" for an upcoming exhibit entitled: "Lessons from Things."

Not normally a painter of things, I've had to reach back in my memory to my student days when anything in my surroundings was grist for my mill. Whether it was kitchen tools on a pegboard, two fine russet pears, or an arrangement of bottles a la Morandi, painting my life onto canvas was as fresh as my son spotting a tow truck.

I'm reaching back into those days now and drawing out the enthusiasm, pulling it through a tunnel of years into my present. I absorb an elegant little still life I've set before me consisting of a white raku vase, jade-colored beaker and a palm-sized, brass Aladdin's lamp. The magic begins.

Still Life with Jug, ©2010, Hannah Klaus Hunter

Shining Star

2010-07-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Arms filled with supplies for that afternoon's art group, I arrived at our hospital's playroom. Three children and a grandmother were waiting by the door, champing at the bit to come in. Regretfully, I told them it would be a few more minutes, that I had to get some more supplies. They looked at me woefully. And after another few minutes of shuttling supplies, I explained we were short staffed and Grandma explained that they were having a hard time getting through a 10 hour surgery for her grandchild.

"Trumps my story! Come on in!" I said. Seriously though, its a constant balancing act between staff and patients. Shortly after the siblings arrived, in skipped Natasha, nine year old sibling of Jeremy who's been hospitalized for the last several months. It's rare that we have siblings coming daily for several months but it does happen. Natasha is a joyful child, always skipping, looking out for new friends in the children that arrive and depart, and unerring in her observations about me, noting my quirks with a shrewdness often reserved for one's own children.

Because of kids like Natasha, I try to keep the projects for our art groups varied during their stay. This requires some fun sleuthing on my part and I recently discovered the blog creative jewish mom. This former Manhattan designer turned Israeli citizen has a fantastically cross referenced blog, easy to navigate and filled with inspiring and eco-friendly projects for kids (and adults).

I picked out a sunburst project--it seemed day camp like. Although many of our kids may not have been to camp, nevertheless we like to pull in familiar associations to summer; ice cream, water play, lemonade and the like and use these to create experiences that evoke a camp style comaradery and closeness between kids.

With a little fast glue gun work by my colleague and I, we created a series of 10 or so sunbursts and opened up shop. The kids came crowding in, eager to dip their brushes into the paint and cover the rays of their suns in rainbow hues. For one five year old hadn't painted before, the discovery of paint's ability to cover a surface was revolutionary. Another three year old considered each choice of color like a seasoned pro, painting the spokes with his favorite shades of green and blue.

My focus was on Natasha. She takes each project to heart, finding a way to tailor it so that she can later present it to her brother. It tugs on my heart each time I see her brother's initials or name appear. After the initial rush was over, Natasha and I sat together painting. It occurred to me that I knew very little of what she does after the staff and volunteers leave for the day. I don't know why I hadn't asked her before, but I did then.

She told me that she often read to her little brother, or drew in his coloring books for him, or simply watched a movie together. Her words touched me immensely and I woke up this morning thinking of her.

Instead of wondering about "what I had to do today"--or which things might not be going my way, or even what I might be able to accomplish, I thought of this child's courage, her indomitable spirit and her ability to remain hopeful, inspired, inspirational and loving in spite of all that she's seen.

I recently read something the Dalai Llama said, "It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come."*

*Many thanks to Iona Drozda for this quote

SoulCollage® card above by Anonymous

The Birth of Impressionism

2010-06-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

No matter what season it is outside, I've learned that after a show, it's time for me and my studio to lie fallow for a bit.

It seems contradictory. Fueled by the adrenaline rush of preparation and the reception, I used to rush back into the studio, but like a cake without the leavening, the work I made fell flat and I learned to say, "Vacation time!"

I'd love two weeks in Paris so I could drink in art and a few cafe au laits, but there's that small matter of my other job and my bank account--so I've been wondering,

What do you do to refuel? I'd love to hear some of the ways you restore and refuel yourself after an exhibit or teaching a class.

Without the time or the money to visit Paris, I figured the next best thing would be to visit the Birth of Impressionism exhibit, an hour and a half down Interstate 80 in San Francisco.

My sister and I piled into the car with lots of water, and munchies and headed off. It was a beautiful blue sky day and a whopper of an exhibition.

The DeYoung Museum is the only museum in the world to host this show from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The exhibit is arranged so that you can trace the artistic movement from the French Realist style (approved by the official Government Salon) to the original and inventive style we now call Impressionism.

My sister and I walked through galleries painted a deep salmon and hung with paintings by Courbet, Manet (that challenger of tradition!), Pissaro, Monet, Renoir, not to mention Berthe Morisot and Cezanne.

In the past, I've walked through galleries with the feeling that people who lived and worked before me simply belonged to another human race entirely, but this time was different. There's a piece of growing older that helps me to understand my place in the parade of human history and human art history.

As we left the museum, surfeited by our visual feast, we entered out into the brilliant blue San Francisco day. The sound of a brass band issued from a nearby band shell and we went over to investigate. In front of the shell, a couple waltzed and a young child spun around, twirling to the music. The band in their red uniforms with navy blue epaulettes played on.

It was almost unreal, the clarity and perfection of it all. Had I popped up in the middle of Mary Poppins in the park with Burt?

As I look back, it occurs to me that clarity is the gift that paintings offer us. They give us a very personal and distilled view of their world. If we in turn, give the paintings our own sustained looking, we are gifted with this clarity.

I took it in, my invisible gift and carried it home with me to the small Central Valley town where I live, rich with possibility and almost but not quite, ready to begin again.

If you live near San Francisco, or are planning to visit there, The Birth of Impressionism continues until September 6th, If you're not, what visual feast is going on near you?

Pictured above: From the top: The Swing, Pierre Auguste Renoir, View of the DeYoung, Still Life with Soup Tureen, Paul Cezanne, Entrance to the DeYoung with me and a mysterious stranger.

Send in the Archetypes

2010-06-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

Do any of you remember that Leonard Cohen song, "Send in the Clowns" Judy Collins sang in the mid seventies? It began to play in my ear last week for no reason that I could think of. I used to listen to Judy Collins as a teenager, but I thought Clowns a mournful, depressing song. What to make of this?

After several days of hearing this soundtrack in my head, I was in the shower (my modern equivalent of a cave in the Himalayas) when I remembered a SoulCollage^® class I had taught the previous week on archetypes.

For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, archetype is a word that has been around for a long time, but was popularized by psychologist Carl Jung. He wrote about the muses, guides, challengers and gods who dwell in the realm of the invisible. Present across time and culture, they originate in our collective unconscious.

The best way to give form to these presences is through images-which is what I was telling the class when all of a sudden, mid-sentence, I looked up, towards the "EXIT" sign posted above the door. I could have sworn there were half a dozen invisible presences swooshing through the entrance.

Call me crazy, and I'm sure several students thought that, but I had the idea that we were about to have visitors and I confess, I was very curious to see who might turn up. Have you ever wondered who is dwelling in your inner abode?

Pat B. Allen, in her excellent book Art Is A Spiritual Path, notes that:
Guiding images are waiting for us if we choose to receive them...These images may at first feel unfamiliar and startle us. In fact they come to restore balance...Our task is to learn to dance with, to flow with, these images...The images all arise from the place of infinite possibility, and that place is the core and basic home of every person.

I asked everyone to browse our collection of magazine images and the thick, fat magazines we'd collected and to let the images choose them rather than the other way around. By holding the simple intention of wanting to discover our internal guides, an amazing thing happened.

Six distinct archetypes emerged on the cards over the next hour and a half. I was delighted to meet my own Alchemist Buddha (pictured above). As I looked at the others' images and listened to their descriptions, I had the feeling that the class was somewhat shocked. It was a bit like the tale of Aladdin and the Genie. They had no idea that something so powerful would emerge when they glued images to matte board.

One student, Jeanette, who had imaged the Indian goddess Durga, discovered after googling her over and over (just to make sure), that the qualities ascribed to Durga were exactly the qualities that had sent Jeanette back to graduate school and straight into her new career. As I watched Jeanette grab her hair and repeat "WEeeiiirrd..." I had the feeling I was witnessing the beginning of a great new relationship.

I'd love to hear about your experiences with archetypes.

Pictured above:
Alchemist Buddha, ©2010, Hannah K. Hunter
Mom Goddess, ©2005, Hannah K. Hunter
Seer, ©2008, Hannah K. Hunter

Scavenger Hunt

2010-06-10T09:49:00.000-07:00

Each week day afternoon, I offer an art group for patients, siblings and any other family members who might wish to attend. Coming after "rest hour," its a welcome activity, providing a chance for parents to chat and kids to get up to their elbows in whatever we're doing that day.

Yesterday we only had one child, eight year old Sonya whose brother has been hospitalized for some time. Sonya loves the art group. Lately, though, as her brother's days in hospital have accumulated, she seems restless. What to do? Organize a one person scavenger hunt!

I found some small give-away toys that we keep, hid them carefully and came up with a list of funny clues about where they were placed, ex.: "Where would you go for a good cup of tea? (Why the dollhouse in the shape of a teapot of course!) As I hid the toys, two more kids joined us, six year old Sam and nine year old Jamie.

As the kids worked out the clues, their smiles were contagious (I mean that in the best way possible.) The hunt went so well I decided to auction off all the "found" toys with Sage, Sam's mom as the auctioneer and using Monopoly money for the bidding process. The kids loved it, getting into bidding wars and flashing goldenrod and sky blue colored slips of paper. (I kind of worried that some administrator would hear the noise and think we were gambling!) When the last stencil set was auctioned to the highest bidder at $600, everyone sighed with relief (they all came out even), pulled out their dragonfly, star and ladybug stencils and began to paint.

In some ways setting up this show, "Striking A Balance," has been its own kind of scavenger hunt. I found an unexpected treasure in my e-mail box yesterday; a post by my friend Beth Rommel about my work in her words. What a gift that was, the opportunity to see myself through another's eyes. Thank you Beth.

A good many of the pieces in the show were created last year when we lost a number of beloved patients. At the end of my rope, I decided to make memorials for each child. I went to work, collecting materials and scavenging for fabrics and images that resonated with each of the children I was thinking of. I quilted pieces of fabric together in colors that I associated with each child and stretched those over a 6" x 6" x 2' frame. Early on, I realized I couldn't keep each of the pieces true to that child. I had to go further than the notion of "their favorite color or toy." At that point, I let go of the notion of portraiture and to my surprise, the true nature of the relationship I'd had with each one of them emerged.
Pictured above from top to bottom:
Fan, Please, 2010, ©Hannah Klaus Hunter
Zig-zag Path, 2010 ©Hannah Klaus Hunter
Change Your Buddha, 2010 ©Hannah Klaus Hunter

Striking a Balance/ Take 2

2010-06-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

I was lying face down on a dock this morning, peering through the space between two weathered gray boards. Water rippled beneath me and I could see the sepia colored sandy lake bottom. A momma merganser and her flock strolled on the nearby beach.

Me? I found myself wondering once more about this elusive thing called balance.

I'd arrived in northern Minnesota two days before to celebrate my in-law's 60 wedding anniversary. I'd worked up to the time of my flight, trying to bring closure to my upcoming exhibit, "Striking A Balance".

Before I left, I went over to my artist friend Linda's house with several collages. "Are you crazy?" my sister Amelia said to me. You're leaving tomorrow and you've got to focus!" I pleaded temporary insanity and thought about the need for a good visual editor.

Over the years, I've developed a healthy respect for a judicious critic before a show; someone who loves your work and can tell you the truth about what's missing. It's a means of seeking balance, because in the process of exploring a new direction its easy to lose your way. I also wondered if I could use Linda's suggestions to tweak my own inner balance and find my way back to the center.

Linda took one look at the rice paper covered panels I'd made for mounting my collages and prescribed multiple, multicolored glazes. I mixed the washes and began brushing on layers of deep yellow, olive and sepia. After several hours, I was about to leave when Linda pointed to the collages I'd brought and stated definitively: "That one's finished, that one's finished, but that one's not."

"Oh my word!" I thought to myself. It isn't crazy enough that I'm trying to do this all today, but she's gone and found another fly in the ointment! It seemed that I wasn't going to find my elusive inner balance just then. Back home, I picked up a Diet Coke and headed upstairs to the studio.

Four hours and 10 matte medium covered fingers later, I emerged, satisfied with what I'd acheived.
I plopped down on my bed and riffled through "Sacred Therapy," a book I'm reading, and found this passage:

Healing into our wholeness involves learning how to gracefully navigate our lives between these opposite poles of yesh and ayin, form and emptiness.

Intuitively, those words sounded right at the time, but they didn't really make sense to me until today, on the dock. Stripped of my "doingness" in the studio, I'd discovered ayin, or emptiness, right here in the space between the weathered boards on the dock.

Striking a Balance Take 1

2010-05-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me recently: "Why did you choose the name "Striking a Balance" for your exhibit?

Have you thought much about the balance in your own life? As I live my way through a day, I find myself at the nexus of many continuums: action/inaction, giving/receiving, cleaning up/making a mess, teaching and learning. I'm always in search of the balance, and like the see-saws of my childhood, I seek the miraculous middle.

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a young woman of 20 who had been in treatment for cancer a good part of her life. She was referred to me with the thought that I could offer her ways of expressing all of those inexpressible wishes that fill the heart and mind of one with such a diagnosis. When I receive a request like this one, I rely heavily upon the balance between my intuition and my years of training, trusting that both are there to support me.

An article I'd read in the latest Oprah on Vision Boards sprang to mind. I explained the concept to Sarah (not her real name), and talked about how to look for pictures that could paint a picture of her deepest desires. It was absolutely alright to hope.

As Martha Beck noted in her article " To really work, a vision board has to come not from your culture but from your primordial, nonsocial self - the genetically unique animal/angel that contains your innate preferences." I explained that by choosing images and creating a collage, her choices would impress themselves in her mind, helping to guide future choices.

She understood all this and quickly went to work. I scoured the pediatric floor, collecting magazines for her inspection. With the help of several volunteers her own age who supplied companionship, she created a board beyond my imagining.

Framed by a narrow border of leopard print which she had painstakingly drawn and painted, lived the images of a future life: a rose garden, a husband, her present and future family and the words "Love the Divine Life."

The board astonished many of us including her doctor. There is always a delicate balance in these rooms. Will the treatment work? Is it o.k. to talk about one's dreams? How do you strike a balance between the turbulent voyage of treatment and the possible outcomes? How do you create value and meaning, when to the person in the hospital, their room seems to contain anything but that? This last question often means uncharted territory, but the board broke that wide open. For all of us who work with Sarah, the collage became a doorway into her soul. And, for that moment, she had helped all of us strike a balance.

Balanced Rocks Photo courtesy of: Michelle Meikeljohn, http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=901
Photo of Red Rose courtesy of: Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Fateful Meeting at the Pence

2010-05-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Scene: Downtown Davis on a Saturday afternoon. We had just raided the "money machine," it was a lovely spring day, and I needed to use the restroom. "Oh Mom!" my daughter kvetched, "really?" "Really."

We headed despite complaint into the nearby Pence Gallery where I ran into my artist friend Chris Beers. "Hey, Hannah, long time, no see, what's up?" Now I couldn't just rush past him to the bathroom, so I told him about my upcoming exhibit at the USE Credit Union and asked his advice on e-mail announcements.

As a designer for the Pence, he has a lot of experience. As he explained the details, he suddenly said "Why don't I make one for you? If you like it, then you can hire me next time." A moment of grace I couldn't turn down.

You can see his lovely announcement above with all the details about my show. I'll be sharing some more about the title of the show "Striking A Balance" in my next two posts.