Thinking About Making

 

I'm participating in Jane Dunnewold's class, Creative Strength Training (CST) this year. So far it's been very inspiring and I'm getting a lot out of attending the online meetings, working through the prompts and collage projects. Jane has been framing a lot of this work on archetypes, which are great ways to think about oneself and how we're internally constructed. She recently wrote and self-published a book, Damsel, Hero, Artist, Judge-Meditations on Archetypes and Creativity which I just started reading and working through. It's beautifully illustrated with interesting and thought-provoking fiber, collage and other artwork.

I am finding that there is a lot of value in the time I spend on thinking about my overall creativity whether it is done via meditating or journalling or sketching. It's fairly easy to just keep busy and make stuff I like in a surface-y non-thoughtful way. But spending just a little bit of time thinking about the "why" of it all is worthwhile to me too. I am looking forward to trying out the 35 meditations that are included in the book.