I have a photographer!

Where the magic happens!

I love keeping this blog!  I feel like I have a lot of ideas and experiences to share, but the photos I take (on my phone) really aren't too amazing.  So I am pleased to say that I am now collaborating with the talented Aaron Goulding!  In the year of simplicity, it is the underground commerce known as barter or trade that has brought this opportunity my way.  So enjoy a step up (maybe a few thousand steps up) in the quality of the photos around here for awhile.  I am so grateful and excited to share these new images with you!

A Creative Retreat

Over the last few years I have been attending from time to time a special class called Creative Retreat.  The class is facilitated by Kate Fetterolf, figure painter and art therapist.  The class is a weekly gathering of women for two hours.  We all sit in a big group on an assortment of tables gathered in the center of Kate's light and airy art studio in downtown La Jolla.  At the beginning Kate offers us different bits of creative fodder, maybe a poem, a short exercise, some photos of art to inspire us... Then we get to work, open to use the varied resources of Kate's studio.  She will help us to get started with our chosen medium and we are free to create for about an hour an a half.  As we all work, Kate will observe and occasionally ask a little question or offer up a bit of guidance in using a particular medium. As we near the end of class she will start to corral us in, helping us towards some place of completion.  At the end we spend a few minutes looking at one anthers creation and discussing a bit our creative process.  The class has been so helpful to me.  I have felt my creative self opening up tremendously while taking these classes.  I enjoy especially witnessing the creative experience of the other participants.  Here are some of my artistic meanderings.  Kate is currently accepting new students for her Creative Retreat held at Outside the Lines studio in La Jolla.

Three Wise Woman, a video by John Francis Peters

A few years ago, a yoga student of mine, John Francis Peters, asked to do an artistic collaboration.  He had already experimented with making a video of one of his paintings, and asked me to work with him to create the musical backdrop for his newest painting video.  At that time I was chanting at the end of my yoga classes a variety of different mantras I was studying in both the hatha yoga and kundalini yoga traditions.  One version of the the Sat Siri Akaal chant by Nirinjan Kaur was a favorite of mine and I used that chant as a foundation for the chant I created with John.  It was a new experience for me, recording my voice, and I really enjoy the possibility of harmonizing with my own voice.  John used his laptop, a microphone and a headset in a quiet corner of my parents house to help me create these layers of my voice and harmonium.  It turned out quite ethereal and haunting...