I'm Baaaack! This time with clay

Gosh, it's been a whirlwind Spring, Summer, and Fall. Between parental care and two weddings, mine being one of them, I had to let Soul Art Studio take a back burner. Luckily, I have good friends who embrace the joy and discovery hidden within process art as much as I do. They have helped me circle back into a mode art making. It's time to have some classes!

I have wanted to play with clay for a long time. For me, it brings wonderful childhood memories of making clay out of flour on the stove top, and adding food dye to get colors. I remember the smell of it, the feel of it, eating a little bit of it while shaping it, and the hard crunchiness of it when it dried. Fast-forward to this project, and well, I wasn't so ambitious as to make my own clay, but we certainly had fun with the new spongy-foamy clays you can buy today.

This was a challenging project for me. Often an image will pop into my head, or the direction of my art will unfold rapidly... I will see where I am going, and I know what I need to do. Every so rarely, I will have no idea what I am making until the final product appears. This was one of those times. I had to embrace the ambiguity, and keep checking in with my "Guides". "Ok.. I'm listening.. What next??" The next thing to do with the clay would pop into my head, and nothing more. It took a lot of trust. I had to deal with the fear that I was only going to make a multi-colored lump (not that there would be anything wrong with that in Process Art).. What unfolded was exactly what I needed to see, and it drew me into my challenge for the month. For 30 days, I am committing to meditation everyday. So far I've made if 5 days in a row!

I don't know if my other fellow artists struggled so much with their creations, but I certainly enjoyed seeing what unfolded.