2-part series

Part 1:
We’ll start with exploring mark-making with a light touch, SLOW, less controlled… making marks across multiple sheets of paper, holding our materials differently, travelling across the page differently. Slow as a space that we can give ourselves to pause, express, process, integrate, regenerate. Slow as a space to be curious about.

Part 2:
Working with the piece(s) from the first week, we’ll walk through a couple of chapbook (mini book) folding/cutting processes, and then continue our mark-making on/with our transformed objects …having a meander in and around the different pages, and reframed terrain.

In this workshop, we’ll be crushing …smashing, smudging, mucking with …our leftover (or intentionally created) nubs of pastels, crayons, dried paint chunks. With a rock.

We’ll also be reframing some of the stuff that comes up around this sort of process …perfectionism, preciousness of art materials, productivity, what it means to CRUSH something …how it FEELS to crush something.

This workshop will incorporate slow-stitching as a mindful & meditative creative practice …with a conversation about water, how we locate ourselves in, on, and near water… physically & emotionally.

I’ll walk you through some slow-stitch basics, and a few water-inspired prompts …we’ll have time for a check-in, some music accompanied making/stitching, and a check-out.

We will explore “visible mending” as a metaphor for considering our flaws, broken bits & wounds. Adorning our imperfections. Strengthening our understanding of our needs, and supporting (and reinforcing) our capacities to repair and connect …and find our voices. Patchwork as a creative and regenerative practice of self care.

5-week series.
We will explore ways that we can show up in our lives that feel in alignment with our beliefs. That feel supportive and supported… in our relationships, communities, and our BODIES. Ways that we can be fueled by our values, not our fears. Ways that we can move forward with curiosity and creativity.

5-week series
Slow-stitching. Hunkering in to some self & collective pause & integration. Focusing in on how we’re managing to make the space for the pauses, and reprieves – the moments that we need to regenerate ….to integrate all that we’re learning (and unlearning). Showing up for and stepping into community care; pausing to breathe; regeneration; integration; asking each other questions; sharing stories; talking about what’s working and what’s not; and MAKING while we do it.

This workshop is NOT about drawing, painting (or otherwise creating) a picture of what your body looks like, or how it’s shaped. What you will make isn’t going to look like you. This workshop IS about pausing & giving some thought to our bodies as experiential. Being curious about the ways we can translate and express the experience of being in our bodies onto paper. Into the ways that we make marks, and engage with shapes …with layering, and connecting. Being curious about the different ways we can use our art materials… whatever we have… to explore sensation, colour, tension, movement, discomfort, stillness, breath, shifting, emotion… anything, big or small, that we FEEL.

We spend so much time thinking about how we SHOULD feel… and comparatively little on how we actually DO feel. So that’s what this will be. A conversation of sorts with your body.

8-week series
We’ll be exploring different art materials and processes… reframing some old stories about what rest is… getting creative and curious about what it can look like, feel like, be like. Imagining and maintaining a practice of CREATIVE REST. …understanding rest as a creative practice …understanding care (for self & community) as a creative practice.

We’ll be exploring different art materials and processes each week, chatting and working with the theme of CREATIVE INTEGRATION. Making space, and building creative practices to support us in and through ALL that’s going on …in the world, our lives, our relationships, our bodies. So that we can keep showing up for all of the things we care about, with creativity and curiosity.

We’ll be exploring slow-stitch (intuitive embroidery) with leaves that you’ve gathered outside before our session together. We’ll practice noticing sound, texture, and how we FEEL. We’ll practice understanding SLOW as a space that we can give ourselves to pause, express, process, integrate, regenerate.

5-week series  | 1.5 hr sessions
PLEASE NOTE: You must be a practicing art therapist OR art therapy student to join this group.

Informal chats about things like: the business parts of being in private practice, self-care & burnout prevention, facilitating online sessions and workshops, imposter syndrome, personal politics & values …and busting out of some of the problematic norms of the therapeutic field …the therapist as expert, neutral, unbiased, unpolitical.