Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~robert frost

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what happens when old and new friends gather…

yummy food and drinks are added…

topped off with creative messes of all sorts…

MAGIC!

thank you all for making it so wonderful…

maya, kat, miranda, anna marie, jill, jess and tina

and extra special thanks to jenica and nina for being such fab hostesses!

you ladies all rock my world…xo

by jenica mckenzie

When I get asked what you should do at your own RAW night, I always smile and say, “Whatever you want!”

The point of Random Art Workshops is to bring creative individuals together in a space of open learning and sharing.  And while the group has changed and shifted as people come and go over the years, there is still the thread of creativity that binds us together.  In finding activities to do as a group I had to ask myself what really nourished my soul and what I’ve always wanted to try.

Whatever feeds your creative self is something worth doing at a RAW night.  I spent one raw night on a beach, painting rocks, watching the sunset, and then going to an Italian place to continue conversation.  Another time we made dioramas from children’s toys and giggled all night.  A group of daring women filled water balloons with paint and played Jackson Pollock for an evening.

Because my roots are entrenched in paint, our Utah group has done a lot of painting.  But we’ve also had times where we took turns hosting the event or the activity to be accomplished.  We’ve used our collective hands for art journaling with writing prompts, photo walking, word-of-the-year canvases, collaborative paintings, poetry, yoga, exploring textures in art, collaging, music appreciation, jewelry and beadwork.

The longer our group has met, the more activities we find to do because every one of us has a talent or craft worth sharing. When a group of artists come together the pool of talent works synergistically.   Each of us have our thing we do, our creative outlet is there, and it’s worth sharing with others.  I wanted to continue to learn as an artist but felt intimidated by the idea of taking college classes.  Cozying up in someone’s house and learning among friends has given me the space to learn a plethora of awesome new things.

The basics of a Random Art Workshop: good peeps, good food and beverage, good music, and something new to learn. So get going, you can do it!

“Perhaps one of the biggest things the Society has done has been to bring many people, and some who were rather lonely, together who otherwise might never have met, and to have them mean so much to each other…”

~ Emily M. Morgan, Letters to her Companions

yesterday i was right in the flow of… something… collective energy? …connective resonance? …a desire see and be seen?  whatever it was it manifested in several unexpected conversations, a few wonderful surprise emails and calls, and happy banter with an unusual number of family and friends about upcoming plans, dates and get togethers.  i felt the communal tides rising.  maybe it was my own necessity pulling and tugging and compelling me to reach out that reflected back what i’m longing for.  maybe it’s the cool turn of the seasons that has my slowed and cooked engines finally firing again.  i felt embraced and filled to the brim with the happenings of this life.

i’m happy to see fall arriving when i look out my window.  the marsh grass is yellowing, the mornings are dark once again when i wake, the birds are flocking everywhere i look getting ready for their long flight for warmer ground… wow, maybe that is it!  natures imperative this time of year, to gather together the strength of the flock, to fly safe in the wake of a friend and fellow wing man, to seek together the warmth and exhileration of the wild blue yonder!

more in my journal here…

by kate swoboda

I wrote here (http://wishstudio.com/2011/03/02/courageous-conversations-surrender-again/) about how my beloved cat Poppy had cheated death.

But now, here I am.

And now, she is not. She crashed suddenly, and hard, in July–her liver failing.

They called me while I was on retreat at zen center–imagine the irony, to be on retreat at a place that focuses so heavily on the concept of impermanence, and get a call to drive home and deal with impermanence.

–To drive home and take a living thing in to an office where she would no longer be living, and by my hand.

At home, I had a few hours with her before the appointment. She laid on the floor, sick and struggling to breathe. I cried into her fur and breathed in her smell and tried to memorize it. Sometimes she would put her head in my cupped hand and rest it there. Other times, I picked her up and held her against my chest the way I would every morning–it was our routine, you see: I got out of bed, she was waiting at the bedroom door, I’d sit on the couch to do my breathing practice, she’d crawl up onto my lap to tell me that she didn’t care about that because, why, it was time for breakfast!

So I sat in that same morning spot with her, on the couch. I kissed her ears. I whispered that I was absolutely sure that there was a kitty heaven and that in kitty heaven, you can eat whatever you want, there are no diabetes injections, and most certainly no scary vacuum cleaners.

I held her and thought of how many parents sit in hospital wards every day, holding sick children and praying that they’ll get better, and that that must be ten times worse than this, and this feels like agony–so how in the hell do they do it? I wanted to hold every parent of a sick child, and cook them meals, and rub their shoulders, and tell them that they were strong and could do this, and take care of them, somehow.

We took her in. The vet said before the injection that it would “take a minute.” Somehow, I thought that this was a figure of speech. The liquid in the vial was pink, of all things.

It literally–quite literally–took one minute.

I was holding her head in one hand while she lay on the table at the vet’s office. The interesting thing was this: I could feel when she left. It wasn’t the weight of her head. It wasn’t blood pressure. It was, literally, the passing of energy–the energy was “there” and then suddenly, “not there.” I felt the change.

I don’t fully understand the connections that life brings us. I couldn’t tell you why I got so attached to this cat, rather than that cat, or unlike any other pet.

I can only tell you that her loss is very real to me–and that it would be lovely if the inner critic voices would stop telling me that I’m lame to be sad over “just a cat.”

In service to owning where I’m at, I confess:

I am sad.

I miss her.

When I come into the house from running errands, I still look for her, before I remember.

I haven’t put away her food or water dish. They sit, filled, in the kitty corner.

If there’s a noise, for a split second I think it’s her.

I think irrational things, like, “Surely she could have pushed through, if she’d just tried.”

This is loss. I know that.

This is surrender. I know that, too.

No lesson, no wise words of wisdom wrapping it all up–just being here, now, in it, with what-is, with loss.

–And I think that the raw honesty of that is a “courageous conversation,” indeed.

she’s coming!  and we will gather, laugh and make some seriously messy art in true RAW style

join us tuesday evening, september 13th

interested in coming? rsvp here for info and details

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