Contemplative Making
October, 2013
This is a new page in process. I'm trying to find the right words and tones to ...
We are using natural materials as a portal into a pre-conscious state of mind where we then "say" something. As yoga teacher, Patty, puts it: "Express and Release" and my friend Judd, the fishing guide, puts it: "Catch and Release".
We are not making "art" but looking to catch and express and release something through this card-making. So don't get stuck on the techniques of this right now. Gather your glue, markers, papers... and start to compose.
We are looking for materials from the natural world to help us say something about the interior world, something about the current state of nature and your human nature:
Approaches or 'Portals' to The Creative Unconscious:
It has something to do with Day Dreaming:
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
-Edgar Allan Poe
Do several objects at a time. That way, no one becomes too important. The process is protected. (see # 16 below)
FOR THOSE CARDS:
1. Limit your card-making to just a few colors of tissue paper. This allows for a depth of expression using just color, texture, form and the endless possibuility of overlay. Tissue paper is semi-transparent when moistened with glue.
The colors of the Four Directions: Red, Green, Black and White
2. Start with a band aid and a card. Where do you go? Do this five or ten times. What happens to your Wound?
3. We are not never alone. We are part of a web, a matrix, a pattern.
Be quiet and start to recognize the Others attached to you in this loom of life:
who are the people? the animals? the experiences? the trees and rocks?
Make cards to recognize them.
4. Choose a single form of joinery. Hold things in place with just paperclips, or staples, or a gluestick, or gravity, or hot wax, or tape, or only sew things to the card.
5. Read about The Magical Other. Make some cards for your Magical Other.
6. Muse Cards: See which Muses stir some response in the form of a Card
7. Archetype Cards: What do you know about the archetypes?
8. Spices Cards: Start with a smell or color or texture
9. News Cards: something in the daily news that upsets and touches us.
10. Make an ID... Make an object/Card that IDs who you are. What do you know about your prominent characteristics that you can realise in an object or a card?
11. Make another ID... what aren't you telling us? What's that part that's deferred, tucked away. I suspect your first card/object may have been flattering or celebratory. Good! ... And, now? What else?
12. What about your family, birth or mated.
13. What about your clan. What you know or feel of your ethnicity?
14. Divide the card in Thirds: 1/3 of a card for an icon/image of You in the World: what you do; what you are proud of what you are recognized for. This is your name tag. People will recognize you by thisFill the other 2/3s with materials to express some of your "other" characteristics:
Something about your family, your clan, your country
Something about your shadow: your fears, secrets, shames (these can be hidden and covered over. This is whereI use those corners of envelopes and band-aids)
Something about your future and your past
Something that you've discovered, learned, hard-earned about life
15. Fuse-Associate what seem like opposites... Get access to that enegry!
Yin: Dark, small, ornate, horizontal, curved, rounded, soft, low, cool, cold, floral, earth, moon, feminine. anima
Yang: Light, large, plain, vertical, straight, angular, hard, high, warm, hot, geometric, sky, sun, masculine animus
16. I've been doing cards on a single sheet of 5"x7" paper... that's really four cards. I estimate where the exact borders will be when (and if) I cut them apart.
17. Start with something that reminds you or connects to events, times, people that provoke a sense of regret or mistake. Doing this kind of prompt on a larger 4-up card allows for subtle variation is getting it. Jung talks aboput the healing being in the hurt. Explore the wince
COMMENTS
Making these cards is like being in a pool. This is not a lap pool, or an Olympic pool; Actually, it's a swamp. It requires patience with your self, with all your voices. It may require a accidental or coincidental contact with someone, some place, some thing... that scratches you into a new awareness... We are looking for portals that are never in the same place. Alertness is your ally.
BEYOND CARDS: Try an Accordian Book
MORE:
http://community.livejournal.com/artist_cards/
http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/newstuff.html
http://www.artist-trading-cards.ch/
http://www.europeanpapers.com/ supplies, papers, sleeeves for Cards
http://www.imaginalinstitute.com/imaginalcards.htm
