Postcard Assemblage!

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

How To and How Not To: Setting Up a Workshop

Have you ever wondered how to set up a workshop? At the end of a recent SoulCollage® class in my studio, my students asked to extend the class. I wanted to keep my Sunday afternoons open. What to do? I remembered what Alyson Stanfield had said about collaborating and asked for suggestions. One student who worked at a cancer center suggested using a space there. What a divine idea! I thought. "And you could offer it to cancer patients and their peer navigators." she continued. 

 Discovery #1•In need of new ideas? Collaborate with others.
My friend spoke to the outreach coordinator at the cancer center and soon, I had a meeting set up to discuss the possibility. 

Discovery #2•Follow up on ideas pdq/asap/stat.
The next piece was a bit trickier. I planned to offer the class free to cancer patients and their peer navigators and charge a fee for other folks. Win-win: I would be paid and the cancer center would be able to offer a brand new service. The tricky bit: could I use their facility (which opens you to great publicity channels) and still charge a fee? 

Discovery #3 (similar to #1)• If in doubt, ask until you get an answer with which you are comfortable. I ended up calling their compliance office and discovered exactly which policy allowed me to offer the class and charge for it.  I also e-mailed all the students to find out if they were still on board. Here I met my first whoops. I'd assumed
I had enough participants so I had not done much outreach.

Discovery #4 Always do your outreach, no matter what. Seek out all possibilities for spreading your word. Even if, like me, you are an introvert who would sooner crawl under a rock than pick up the phone. So what to do now? I read Rebecca Crowell's post about an entire day spent working on upcoming classes. I flew into action, collaborating with my husband and other colleagues to make a great flyer. Ready to go? Well, almost...
At the same time that I created a flyer, I'd written an article for an on-line newsletter and now I heard from the newsletter editor telling me about an error in my dates. 

Discovery #5: Check and recheck your dates. So now here I am, flyers corrected (and recorrected), article published, word spread and grateful for all the help I've received. We'll see what next week brings, but for the moment, I'm staying with this thought from Jack Canfield:"When you are in a state of appreciation and gratitude, you are in a state of abundance. You are appreciating what you do have instead of focusing on and complaining about what you don't have. Your focus is on what you have received, and you always get more of what you focus on." (p. 357, The Success Principles) Now I'll start working on my curriculum...
Top photo courtesy of Lynn Cohen