New discoveries at two very different museums

In the last 2 weeks I’ve been turned on by amazing art at the ICA in Boston and at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire. I am happy to share some of the memorable pieces I enjoyed.

The ICA’s current special exhibitions are outstanding. Nick Cave’s sound suits and his newer sculptural works knocked me out. The inventiveness of materials and forms, his colors and concepts, were delightful and exciting.

I also discovered the incredible work of South African artist, William Kentridge at the ICA. His pulsing Refusal of Time installation was fascinating and mesmerizing. If you get to the ICA, plan on spending at least 20 minutes taking it in. Equally exciting for me was seeing his monochromatic and varied works on paper. Imagine my delight when I visited the Barbara Krakow Gallery a few days later and saw another group of wonderful pieces by Kentridge. I intend to continue to explore the work of this marvelous artist.

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of taking a day trip to New Hampshire to spend time with a dear friend. She told me the Currier Museum would be a treat but I was surprised by their eclectic and impressive collection. My favorite discoveries included paintings done in the middle ages, including one portrait that looked amazingly modern. I loved walking through the gallery of modern art that included stunning works by Picasso, Matisse and O’Keeffe. And, we spent a lot of time in a contemporary gallery that included a standing mobile by Alexander Calder, a large Joan Mitchell painting and intriguing sculptures by Louise Nevelson and Marisol. Savoring a cup of tea was especially enjoyable because the dramatic cafe space was framed by a pair of enormous, colorful paintings by Sol Lewitt. 

I hope you can plan an excursion to a great museum or gallery soon. When you soak in the beauty I predict that you’ll start to notice and enjoy more of what is in your every day surroundings. And, your emotions can become fuel for your own creative expression.

Let me know if you come across wonderful new art and where you’ve found it.

Creative fun with kids!

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I was completely delighted to do an Intuitive Painting session with a great group of children at the Young Achievers Science and Math Pilot School in Boston. The fantastic team of City Year corps members who work at the school invited me to be a guest at their after school enrichment program. I loved working with all of the kids — 15 second through fifth graders participated.

After having everyone do a few free drawings, accompanied by upbeat music, I gave the kids individual assignments. These ranged from ideas like drawing confusion, to drawing a great dream, to dividing a page to show both excitement and frustration, to drawing a fabulous morning. After doing two assigned topics, they finished the series of 5 drawings with a free one — and the results were a blast. The kids created with joy and enthusiasm.

After everyone completed their 5 drawings we broke into small groups and several kids worked to create a single large drawing together. Each group had a different theme. It was great fun watching them fill the large sheets with color.

I am grateful to the staff at YA and to the City Year team for the invitation and for their help to make this a great experience for a great group of kids!

Desert inspiration

It was a great treat to be able to escape Boston’s brutal winter weather and explore the desert of Arizona for a week. Nature provided an amazing array of inspiring visual treats that captured my eye and will surely be fuel for upcoming creative adventures. 

In spite of the cold air back home, looking at these photos brings to mind both the warmth of the desert and the pleasure of coming upon each of these spectacular moments of delight.

Wow, what a day!

My second Igniting Your Creative Core workshop of this new year was a marvelous day!

Over 40 attendees have now participated in this workshop, including the amazing group of seven women who made Sunday’s workshop so special.

I am deeply moved by all of the incredible people who have come together to do this work. It has been an honor to see them open their hearts and embrace their creativity. The artwork from the latest workshop speaks volumes, and I think the energy is palpable when viewing this small selection of pictures that they created during the day.

Equally wonderful for me are the shared insights, reflections and ideas that emerge on the journey we take through the day. From our greetings in the morning, when everyone says what drew them to the workshop, to our conversations over lunch and closing reflections as the day concludes, the workshop is a wonder. I have been most fortunate to work with amazing people who really show up and allow themselves to be candid and authentic in all they share. They have enriched me immeasurably.

7 minutes of brilliant creative inspiration!

On a trip to New York over the weekend I was tipped off by a friend to the Dance on Camera Shorts Program at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. I am a dance lover, but never knew about the emerging art of dance captured on film. That’s where the appeal of attending the program began.

There were 12 excellent films in the program, but one completely blew me away (and garnered the loudest applause from the packed audience). Boris Seewald’s short film, Momentum stole the show.

I was excited to find the film online and I am thrilled to be able to share it with you.

The film is 7 minutes of pure genius. It’s a great film creation, but the reason it excites me so much is the story it tells (and shows!) about how creativity can start from a moment as small and insignificant as picking up a tortilla chip. Really. Incredibly.

I hope I've peaked your interest, and hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

(I think you'll also enjoy seeing more of Boris Seewald’s work, which I was glad to experience.)

Great energy at the January workshop

What a treat is was to join with another amazing group of participants for my Igniting Your Creative Core workshop yesterday. We did more Intuitive Painting and writing than ever, including individual and group projects. And, in addition to sharing a beautiful and healthy lunch, we shared experiences, insights and ideas that are related to creativity and our lives — including many hopes and dreams. The group has already reached out to continue the conversation and to provide support for building more creativity into day-to-day life after the workshop. 

Here some photos from the day: the participants in the midst of working on a project, and one of the incredible pieces of art done in the morning.

I am looking forward to my next workshop on February 23rd, and I will soon schedule workshops for April and May. I’d be delighted to see you at one of them!

New creative adventures

I belong to a small group of creative friends that meets monthly (or as close to monthly as our busy lives allow). We’re now into our 6th year together, and the ways we spend our time has changed over time as we’ve changed.

Each member (there are 4 of us) does professional work related to creativity. One sold her ad agency and has been a full time (and very successful) artist for over a decade. One is an architect with a thriving practice. One recently gave up teaching in an MBA program at a prestigious university to be a full-time artist — something she was just starting to explore when we first formed the group. I transitioned from my design firm to my current creative coaching practice. Our journey together has been marvelous.

This year we have paired up differently to plan new creative adventures for each of our 3-hour meetings. For this week's meeting, we each sent in a piece of music we loved, and were told to come with an assortment of materials to share for making sculptures — something totally new for me. Here’s a photo of one of the three sculptures I made. It was created while listening to Tigerlily by Natalie Merchant.

I’m also including a photo of a collage I made at our session in December. I'd helped to make the plan for the collage project. Each person started by picking a topic from those in a hat (the topic for my collage was “pain”). To make the collages, we selected images from a stack I’d saved from my design firm days — wonderful samples provided by printers and paper merchants — and applied them to wooden panels. As at our sculpture session, everyone's collages were marvelous and quite different.

If you’d like to learn more about the experiences my group has had, or how you might start a similar group, get in touch. 

Wire and light — a magic combination

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While on a wonderful holiday trip to Paris, we spent the afternoon at the Pompidou Center and nearly wore out our feet visiting the museum's amazing, enormous contemporary collections. Alexander Calder has always been a favorite, and when I came upon this wire sculpture, Josephine Baker IV, vers 1928, I was simply delighted. Next to the piece, an old movie clip was playing of Baker in performance. The sculpture, together with its shadow, creates a sense of Baker's dance moves and distinctive personality that we saw in the old film. 

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Among the many other delights we came upon was a large work by Alighiero Boetti, an Italian artist, whose dramatic and varied work we first experienced in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in the summer of 2012. The scale, color and detail in Tutti (Everything) are fantastic. The 1987 work is part of a series that was embroidered by Afghan refugees in Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of their own country. Boetti entrusted the execution of his design to the embroiderers, distributing 84 colors and a finite amount of thread for each.

And, seeing a marvelous portrait by Henri Matisse, Fillette au chat noir (1910), that was new to us, was a treat as well. Matisse was a master of color and this portrait totally charmed us.