Here’s an interesting Facebook page: http://bit.ly/bDA6C8. I am always so interested in seeing what environments artists set up in order to be able to create. My own studio, humble as it is, is a place where I feel good, almost without exception, and even when I’m not making beads. I know I am fortunate to have such a place! If you are interested in artists, their occupations and environments, go check out this group.
These women [and men - SCB] with their weekend gardenia plantings [hmm- I've never planted a gardenia - SCB] were fierce in their determination to sweep the corners free of dying where they could. Patients would return to their jobs, their wives, their toilets and bathtubs, their woodworking and law practices, their golf and kitchen chores. They were missionaries of common sense and decent morals. Armed with these they marched into bad situations to see what could be done. My encounter with the occupational therapists plunged me into a world darker than any I had lived in, a world that seasoned therapists traversed easily, full of practical good ideas. The existential and the commonsensical travelled side by side. (Mattingly, 1998, p. 52)
Just ran into one of my favorite former students today, who mentioned that he and some of the other OTs he works with read my blog. I have to say it felt good to hear that. He mentioned too that some of the things I’ve linked to in the past wouldn’t download for him, so I’ll have a look at that if I have time over the upcoming long weekend – wondered if that was a firewall thing, if they were reading from work, or something else …
In any case, this is just a shout out to all my OT colleagues, with one of my favorite quotes from Cheryl Mattingly, an anthropologist who has spent a considerable amount of time exploring OT thinking and practice:
“Initially, I saw therapists as I remembered my mid-west cousins – as extremely normal. Of course, once I got closer these initial impressions were something of an embarrassment; an awkward attempt to sum up a whole profession in tidy little statements… . Later I had to ask myself, if they were so full of common sense, so practical, why was there so much whimsy among them? Bartenders by night, secret landscape painters, former actresses, obsessed rock climbers, classical pianists who also loved botany?” (Mattingly, 1998, p. ix)
This article interests me: http://bit.ly/bSGkb3 . Apparently persons who are diagnosed with depression have reduced ability to perceive colour contrasts. I wonder what we’d see if we looked at art works made when the artists were experiencing depression? Time to look at some of the beads I made in my darkest times.
“I can’t sing!” I heard several students in a recent short course I teach on creative/expressive media say that. And we sang anyway! An interesting article for anyone thinking of using singing as a therapeutic medium: http://bit.ly/cPtsK7
This is a great post from Lori Greenburg’s Beadnerd blog on creativity and setting yourself up to be more creative: http://beadnerd.com/?p=606
Just back from an evening out in the studio with my friend/apprentice after a long hiatus. I wasn’t in the mood to make anything new, wasn’t even sure I was in the mood to light my torch, but did. Noodled around with a new colour – Kryptonite and made a few colour study beads and talked about life and teaching.
A good evening. I was reminded again just how important it is to keep up one’s practice, so that when inspiration strikes, you’ll have the technical skills to execute your plan. Next time in the studio – take one technique and work with that technique only for the entire evening.
I have been following Gretchen Rubin’s “Happiness Project” tweets. This one from a few days back really struck me:
“New Secret of Adulthood–obvious, but worth remembering: If I don’t really want something, getting it won’t make me happy.”
I don’t know why I remembered this phrase this morning. I used it years ago in the infancy of the web when communicating with other “early adopters” of Web 1.0 in OT. I made nametag stickers with a purple spider web pattern for one of the AOTA conferences so we could find each other more easily, as we’d never met F2F. Then I stopped using the phrase as a colleague claimed she planned to write a column with a very similar name. I don’t know if that came to pass, but I was thinking again this morning of all the ways my life is “caught (up) in the web” now. I think that Twitter and Facebook most epitomize this. I so enjoy sharing what we find interesting/helpful/puzzling/bizarre with people I admire. It helps me to stay caught up. And it often captures me, spending more time than I’d planned and perhaps encouraging my “random abstractness” more than other current media can.
Susan Burwash is an occupational therapist, glass artist, university professor and PhD Candidate.