Category: Art Journey

Art JourneyContemplationsGrandmothers

You’re Invited!

Posted on by sue boardman

Dear Heart,

Welcome to the fireside of yet another dangerous old woman. Tribe of the Sacred Heart, as Dr. Estes would say. Many of us scar clan. More of us, in this moment, than perhaps any time we have known. And yet, still standing. Still dancing.

Which isn’t to say that it always feels like we’re still standing, let alone dancing!

When I was in nursing school, eons ago, we had a saying, if you’ll pardon me: Anything called a learning experience is sure to involve an enema!

I’m feeling pretty much the same way about the pandemic!

I have, however, been learning some new things. Or, rather, rearranging some old things in my head. All it takes is paper and markers, and a cup of something comforting. Oh, a Zoom hook-up! (Preferably updated to the new 5.whatever thing.) And some really good, really dark chocolate might be helpful, too!

You’re invited to join me! Our intention??? Accessing our super power strategies for unsticking stuck stuff.

Here’s a way to think about it.

Thirty years ago, when we were first married, Bill and I moved to Tennessee, where I had been called to serve my first church. A writer for the Nashville paper was running a series of articles on being an accomplished woman. (Feel free to roll your eyes!)

After the second piece I read, I had to tell Bill that it was hopeless. If, as the writer claimed, accomplished women need nothing Home Depot sells, it was never, never going to happen!

Now imagine, for a moment, that there is the mythical hardware emporium of your choice deep inside you, filled with exactly the tools you need just now. And you don’t have to trade in your great grandparents’ hand plane, which lives under a blanket of dust somewhere in your basement, to get new tools. You just need to engage with the stuck things a bit differently than you have been so far.

Really!!!

So, pick something that’s stuck. Or sticky. Or in the way. Then, email me to let me know you’re in for DATE, at TIME, for some tool shopping! A special first group only arrangement, limited to the first 10 brave souls, for a give what you can offering, benefiting International students at Columbia Theological Seminary, will be gratefully received via PayPal, or other arrangements by email request. No mask required! I’ll send your Zoom invitation, PayPal info and other details. BYO markers, etc…

You’ve so got this!

Dr. Sue Boardman

Author • Artist • Activist • Grandmother

suesvoice@gmail.com
Intentional Creativity® Teacher & Coach
www.sueboardman.com
Creativity Workshops, Coaching, & Art for Sale

Art JourneyContemplationsGardenGrandmothersPhoebe and Luther

New Perspectives

Posted on by sue boardman

I spend a lot of time pondering vision. Optical. Mythical. Mystical. It’s hard not to at our house where we’re constantly adapting for the very large Studio Angel who, literally, has no eyes, except in his heart. Living with Luther causes us to see differently. To see more.

The two most vital “obedience” commands at our house have become door and step. And, just between us, that feels a bit prophetic these days.

What, I wonder, are the doors in this moment which we may not see?

And what will it take for us to step through them?

Your answers are probably different than mine. One of the things, though, that helps me step through some of the doors in my world is the legend you’ve heard me share about Red Thread.

In the same way that Luther needs to be connected to a strong but stretchy lead to venture outside the world he can navigate alone, I find it comforting to be connected by this story that, as someone once said, is both true and may actually have happened.

Women connected through time and space, to those who will matter in their lives, by a red thread. I suspect it started when somebody noticed the red thread nature of an umbilical cord and spread through indigenous cultures and biblical times and, these days, in Zoom circles of daughters and sisters and mothers and grandmothers and friends without number.

In my world, it makes stepping through doors into places I can only imagine considerably more possible.

Today, I am Hearth Tending in the Red Thread Cafe Classroom which is the big group gathering place for Intentional Creativity® types like me. It’s kind of ironic for me right now.

I’ve spent much of the last week getting my contemporary hearth functional again and I may actually get there tomorrow when the new stove is delivered. Well, Friday, maybe. Somehow it’s going to have to be magically transported from a big box on the carport into the actual kitchen!

The gas line situation is almost under control. The hunk of scrap metal formerly known as the stove has been spoken for, having been properly thanked for its service.

I’m reminded, as I celebrate Works-in-Progress with my sisters, that virtually everything is in progress, even the things we think are done, or haven’t begun. It’s one of those perspective things!

Gardening is a great way to remind yourself that there is, indeed, a season for everything. And somewhere between predicted rain storms and gas lines and Zoom meetings and a visit from our dear friend and dog Auntie, the vet, I’ll be out picking the first salad greens of the season.

Not all creativity needs paint! (Though I’m planning time for that, too!)

Peace-out!!!

Art JourneyContemplationsFoodGrandmothers

I was a Romper Room Valedictorian!

Posted on by sue boardman

As you know, if you’ve been reading along, we moved a lot when I was a kid. According to family gospel, when I learned that we were moving from Cleveland to Pittsburg, I had questions.

Did they have corn on the cob? And, did they have Romper Room?

Assured that they did, I agreed to go. (Yes, you can laugh!)

Miss Whomever must have done her job well for I survived, in our next move, from Pittsburg to St. Louis, a world without Kindergarten.

It’s true. I never went. There wasn’t a public option and the private choices were all filled to their over-running waiting lists.

My mom, who professed to believe I needed a teacher, signed me up for dance lessons. The teacher had royal blue eyeshadow that extended above her eyebrows and she scared me.

Mom, who probably really thought she needed a couple of hours here and there with only one small child to chase, finally relented when I was given a beat up used bicycle, complete with training wheels, and insisted on staying home to ride.

By the time I reached my first day of first grade, complete with painful, slippery new shoes, a plaid dress with a Peter Pan collar from Sears, and a too-short haircut that closely resembled the mixing bowl-on-the-head do’s so popular in those days, I was way past ready to learn!

Sally, Dick, and Jane rocked my world! In a matter of weeks I was ready to make the leap from, “Puff is on TV, ” to the complexity of Betsy & Tacy, eating supper on the bench at the end of their street, while I made up the words I didn’t know.

I have been blessed with much learning to do since then. And, like the artist known as Michaelangelo, I am still learning.

It’s been a big week for learning! I suspect that’s because I spend a great deal of my time hanging out with a tribe of women, connected by a red thread, and bravely learning, too.

You may have heard rumors of my unintended learning experience with an enormous pot of gorgeous bird bones and a stove that quit working during the step of the process known as simmer, with bubbles gently breaking the surface, overnight.

I was heartbroken. And frustrated. Those were lovingly roasted, local chicken and turkey bones, sustainably raised by farmers with whom I’m on hugging terms which, in these days more than ever, isn’t a bad way to get food! At least they were until they became trash.

Enter the need to learn a whole lot about buying a stove, as we own neither microwave, nor toaster oven. Thankfully, I was already in possession of categories for success on that decision and the new, improved version should arrive late this week.

That done, it was back to the business of art. Literally, for I am engaged in several conversations about how to do healing art in the world where we now find ourselves. Here’s a short list of what I know now that I didn’t know before:

How to get the very skippy new email signature in my laptop to also work in my phone.

New uses for adjectives in writing invitations… and ways to decide which ones!

How to get my toys to work together so that I can lead a Zoom workshop demonstrating an art process while still seeing and being seen by others on the journey.

And, possibly best of all for empowering the future, a link between the name my parents gave me all those years ago, and the medicine painting on my easel just now, which looked, in the early phases, like it might have come from Romper Room!

The answer to the tech-y questions is, on the one hand, YouTube videos and, on the other hand, whatever changed inside me such that I believed I could figure it out.

The name thing is a story for a different day.

If you click here, you will be magically transported to the place with the videos mentioned above and a photo of my new tech-y miracles!

For now, I’d love to know what you’re learning in this place we’ve never been before which may actually be the place we’ve always been… a world that changes. There’s a place for comments if you scroll down a ways. I hope you will!

Art JourneyContemplationsFoodGrandmothers

The time has come, the walrus said..

Posted on by sue boardman

To talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing wax. Of cabbages and kings.

Well, sort of. The things on my list are different than those on the long gone list of Lewis Carroll. But, the time has, apparently, come.

This is a good thing, in the way that newness often is. And a challenging thing in the way that new things often are. You see, on this particular Wednesday, I am even more conscious than usual of being my own Work-in-Progress!

As you may have noticed, one of the owl eggs in the painting on the right is beginning to hatch!

But first, a bit of reflecting on a couple of other art forms. The massive bone broth cauldron is enthroned on the stove. No heat yet. Just raw bones bathing in very cold acidulated water. Bird bones, in this case. But no owls!

And, in addition to the beginnings of a pot of bone broth, quilts.

Last night I dreamed of the endless hours I used to spend, staring at quilt fabric strung across the back of my couch, trying to feel which ones belonged in a particular project and which ones needed to return to the stash for a different moment in the sun.

It seems I am doing that internally at the moment. And the scraps for the project hatching inside me are books and symbols and stories, collected over the last couple of decades, interesting individually and increasingly fascinating as they jockey for position in the mental quilt I am composing which will be called something along the lines of Making Sense Out Of The World.

Perhaps you are hatching such a project as well!

I hope so. I find comfort in the notion that there are many of us at work, creating new patterns and perhaps even comfort in the face of – well – current events.

And I’m really grateful for a host of brave and brilliant teachers through the years. I’ve shopped, in a sense, through classes and books and experiences, for just the bits of knowing that feel so much like brilliant scraps of quilt fabric in my heart.

There will be more to come about all of this.

Soon!

First, I need to learn a bit more about Zoom and what happens if my new project thinks it needs two cameras at once. Right after I ship some art supplies to Texas and Tennessee.

Should you happen to be a wise soul with knowledge of such unquilt-like wisdom, PLEASE leave me a comment, below, or email me at suesvoice@gmail.com

If ever there was a time when we’re all in this together, it seems to be now. Blessings for you and yours. And for the symbolic baby owls hatching in your heart.

ps… A very, very happy birthday to Kelly who “hatched” my favorite owls!

Art JourneyContemplationsGardenGrandmothers

Which Direction Will You Choose?

Posted on by sue boardman

According to the Enneagram personality type gurus, with whom I’ve been hanging out for just over 20 years, there are 9 personality types. I am among the 4’s, commonly know as artists or romantics.

One of the most helpful things I learned in Enneagram-land is the notion that we humans have two primary motivations for our behavior… or choices, if you prefer.

The first motivation is fear. Anxiety. We, being fairly clever sorts, tend to move away from things that scare us.

The second motivation is love. Passion. Enthusiasm. And, as you’re no doubt hoping, we tend to move toward those experiences. And people. (Also, dogs, but that’s a story for a different day.)

’tis the season, as the old saying goes.

Our current context feels overflowing, at least to me, with scary things. The Covid virus is obvious. Suggestions that drinking chemical disinfectants might solve all our problems. (Not! No way! No time! No how!) Masks, gloves, huge changes in schedules and habits we at least assumed were working before. I’ll give you a break on the rant about political groups filling my email with blatant attempts to get me to act out of fear… read this, send money.

This weekend, though, I spent hours in a group of women tapping into love, joy, enthusiasm and it was soooooooo much more helpful!!!

Intentional Creativity® types, focused on how to share the best of what we’re learning with the world. We worked on ideas for virtual workshops and even on (gulp!) business plans.

Business plans with color and images and reflections of the things that matter most in our lives. And while we worked, my girls kept appearing in my head. At one point, I even opened up my text messages to be amazed, all over again, by the photos of their recent artwork and the grins on their mini-artist faces.

And then the question found me, as all the really good questions have a habit of doing.

Which journey do I /You /We want our littles to see manifesting in our lives?

Okay… that’s not phrased very poetically. And I’m not saying it will be easy. We’ve all learned way too much about the other journey… the one away from fear.

We’re shaming and blaming ourselves for uncertainty in a time we’ve never known before, for comfort eating, for laughing and crying (which-btw-relieve stress, physiologically) and wanting to hide in our beds, preferably with flannel sheets, art quilts, and teddy bears.

I was tempted, too. Instead, just for a while, I made neat in the studio. I cleaned the screen on my magical transporting machine, aka laptop! I even got out my watercolors from Italy (!) and played along the path to the future.

I moved in the direction of love, passion, and enthusiasm, which, as you’ve probably remembered by now, means something pretty close to filled with God in Greek, because I get to choose.

Tomorrow will bring more choices. Sheltering in place some more. Finding a pattern for making masks. Sharing pantomime hugs with my neighbor when I’m out watering the itty bitty veg and herbs, along with flowers for the bees and butterflies, sprouting in the garden.

And planning new ways to share the wonders of creativity in the world we have.

Stay tuned for virtual workshops and for stories about paintings. Their moments in time and their symbols and codes…

The littles are watching!

 

 

Art JourneyContemplationsGrandmothers

Making Sacred Space

Posted on by sue boardman

A dear friend told me today that she was having a Marie Kondo tidiness moment during this inside-out (Or is that outside-in?) time we’re in.

I hear that!

I wish I was doing more than listening. Actually, I have been. Homework, to be exact. Lots of it! Making it. Taking pictures of it. Fixing it. Losing it. Finding it again. Dreaming it. Swearing at my laptop on behalf of it.

Part of me feels something approaching fulfilled.

Part of me wants very much to set the studio right. Not just neater. Weeded in the way that fills the recycling bin and puts homeless things on the curb with Free signs.

I want to dust baseboards. Really! Besides, the pollen already has me sneezing so there’s not much to lose!

I want ALL the paintbrushes clean. Not just the ones I use the most. Not most of them. Every. Last. One. And, when the new paint arrives tomorrow, I want a place to put it, all lined up according to my quirky system of which favorite colors go with which.

When all is said and done, I want Sacred Space.

I want room for new-ness.

Even deeper than that, I want healing. Me. You. Mine. Yours. Ours.

And “they’re” all ours in the ways that matter.

Some of the work is begun. The floors are splashed with creativity. The walls are dotted with prayers. Images my girls helped make rest here and there. And, close inspection is likely to find some Studio Angel fluff in the hard to reach corners.

The studio has become even more my sanctuary in these days. Paintings are asking for hearts and prayer dots and tears on their cheeks. Or, perhaps, they are offering to hold them for me.

And, when you get right down to it, all that homework which has been messing up the studio has been creating sacred space inside me where I can share it even in these days of Compassionate Distancing.

Art actually may save the world!

ps… I just pushed the magic button, dispatching all the homework, probably to California. Watch for updates… Maude, the Storytelling Ape is hatching new possibilities!!! (And she told me her name!) Blessings…

pps… Many, many thanks to Leisa, Natalie, Molly, Cherie, Hobby, all the brilliant Musea gang, everybody else, and the Legendary husband!!! It takes a village to finish Motherboard!

 

Art JourneyContemplationsGrandmothers

Crossing the Bridge!

Posted on by sue boardman

It’s been quite a while since I was a Brownie Scout. I’m sure there are many things I’ve forgotten. Here’s one I remember:

When my friends and I “graduated” from being Brownies all the way to becoming Junior scouts, there was a ceremony. The ceremony involved a small wooden bridge in the gymnasium of the local elementary school. Each of us walked onto the bridge and stopped in the middle to say the magic words. Then we walked the rest of the way across, newly minted “big kids”. My mom always swore my dad cried!

Oh! The magic words…

Twist me and turn me and show me the elf. I looked in the water and saw myself!

I’m reasonably certain you’re wondering what on earth brought this to mind, let alone to blog-land. That’s easy! I crossed another bridge today. But, before I tell you more about that, there are a couple of things you need to know.

If you’ve been reading along for a while, you may have noticed occasional mention of a mysterious thing called Motherboard. Translation: Intentional Creativity® Coaching. I’ve been learning and practicing and pondering, not to mention buying markers by the truck-load since late last summer, to be a certified one of those coaches and graduation is looming before us, soon!

I have no idea whether an actual bridge will be involved but there have been plenty of figurative bridges along the way. The one I crossed today was one of the figurative kind.

Here’s the short version…

In the ICC pattern, two real, live people sit down together, often in the mythical world of Zoom, with some large-ish sheets of paper and an assortment of pens and markers. (Paint takes too long to dry. Chalk smears too much.) The photo, above, will get you in the ballpark.

One of those two is the Coach and the other is the Client. (These roles are fluid in the learning stages and may flip flop back and forth.) Today, it was my turn to be the Client.

After a bit of deep breathing and some gold “roots” in an imaginary journey, we moved along to, “What wants un-stuck?”

Wow, did I have an answer! It had to do with talking about what I do in the context of life in the Covid virus days.

My partner, the Coach, offered me a tool that was new to me. Again, the photo, will fill in the blanks.

Bottom line… externalizing (my language) all my inner yelling about what felt stuck. Swearing permissible, but not necessary.

Then, what I’d choose, intentionally, to say, having gotten all the ranting and raving out of the way.

I won’t bore you with the details.

I’m hoping you’ve gone hunting for a piece of paper and something that makes marks. Eye liner, if necessary!

Here’s the bottom line, or what I learned as I crossed the bridge from stuck to un-stuck…

I have lots of the power that gets things done. Starting with a business card, all designed, and a big reminder that the more my girls see me using my power to get things done – to get unstuck – the more they’ll take a chance on having some of that power of their own!

This was an awesome day’s work!!! And I am hugely grateful to Natalie, my partner, and to our mutual teacher in IC land, Jumpin’ Jenafer Joy who introduced Natalie to the magic spiral thing.

I kind of wish the story of this day had ended there, but it didn’t. When I emerged from Zoom land, I discovered that Bernie Sanders had suspended his campaign for POTUS. I wasn’t surprised. I am heartbroken.

You can fill in the blanks according to your particular perspectives.

Here’s what I know. Bernie is a guy with YUGE power to get things done and I’m beyond grateful for all he’s helped me see and learn and live. And I’m grateful for the fact that, in many ways, Bernie has been and will be leading the USA through the Covid crisis and into the future.

A future in which, as Bernie (echoing Nelson Mandela) said, we must believe that we deserve health care and education and civil rights, etc., etc., not just personally, but as human beings. There was more, but I’m crying again.

And holding on to my power, not over others, but to get things done. We have more bridges to cross. And I have a very important hearth to tend in the Red Thread Cafe Classroom this day.

 PS… My friends at Learning Strategies and Centerpointe are offering a free sound meditation for days such as these. All you have to do is click Surviving Chaos and you can download the meditation to your device and listen to it as often as you please. I downloaded mine this morning. Now seems like a good time to go soak it up!