Artist
Yayoi Kusama and her ubiquitous polka dots was a hit!In December, 2021, we completed our 2021-22 Artist Residency in bookmaking at the the Panorama City Branch Library, supported by the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
I say “we” rather than “I”, as this was a team effort with the Library Staff, and of course, the DCA, always supportive!
During our residency “CULMINATION EVENT” participants created “Vision Journals” to welcome the New Year, and help them set intentions and goals for 2022.
Our online event was well-attended, fun and inspiring.
A wonderful way to complete the Residency, the year, and gather our strength, resiliency, hope, imagination and creativity to move into 2022!
Our participants of assorted ages, cultural backgrounds and experience levels created “Moon Books”, exploring the meaning, metaphor and movement (or phases) of the Moon, inspired by this rich theme, their materials, and the fun and comfort of creating in community!
The results were inspiring too, investigating, celebrating and exploring the moon in (her) many facets through science/astronomy, story and the elements and materials of visual art: line, shape, color; collaged together into (folded and glued) book form.
Unfolding Possibilities, (front cover) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book
Unfolding Possibilities, (closed) 2021, 6+ x 78″ x 6+”, mixed media artists’ book
An initiative of the Los Angeles Count Department of Mental Health, Why We Rise LA took place in May 2021, supporting hundreds of Community Arts & Culture Projects which took place across all Los Angeles County neighborhoods, in partnership with more than 100 community groups, artists, grassroots leaders, healers and other LA County Departments. These projects and collaborations included mural making, ancestral healing workshops, a Countywide public literary art project, a Countywide chalk art program and more to celebrate the remarkable resources and communities in LA County and used arts-based strategies for healing and wellbeing.
I was honored to teach a workshop as part of Why We Rise LA 2021 in coordination with 18th Street Art Center’sArts Learning Lab @ Home: called: Bookmaking with Self-Compassion.
See the workshop HERE!
Nearly 70 online participants learned to create the “Flower Fold” book structure, then added embellishment, images, and words expressing their experience of the pandemic, where they are at now, what they learned, what they wanted to share, their hopes, wishes, dreams, cares , fears, realizations, trauma, expressing the full gamut of human emotions.
The range of words submitted was wide-ranging, thought-provoking and evocative….including opposite emotions and experiences and bits of truth-telling, realizations and wisdom participants seemed eager to pass on to others in other words, humanness in its multiplicity.
I took the words generated by this workshop, and requested from the community at large, and stitched them into an Artists’ Book I made as a community collaboration, entitled, “Unfolding Possibilities“. (“Unfolding Possibilities – Possibilities Unfolding”). Videographer Jeny Amaya created a video of the project which was screened during the 18th Street Art Center event, “Left/Right/Here“
Unfolding Possibilities, Possibilities Unfolding: the making of above.
