Mondays with Mira - Firefighters in the Dark and a little creative heaven

I had an amazing but exhausting weekend in creative heaven. First off was a truly fabulous Society of Children's Picture Book Writers and Illustrators conference on Saturday thanks to our awesome regional advisers Patricia Newman and Erin Dealey who happen to be super talented themselves, super smart and organized assistant RA Catherine Felt, my co-illustration coordinator Kris Aro McLeod, the many lovely volunteers and the fantastic speakers. Kudos to all (especially the leadership). I managed to film two of the editors (who I also fell in love with) asking penetrating and hopefully super helpful questions for my upcoming courses at the Picture Book Academy, and they were both super insightful and very generous : )

Then today I went to San Francisco with one of my students from the last Hero's Art Journey course and we took a class with Maya Gonzalez. Maya contributed to the Hero's Art Journey course and will also be featured in the Picture Book Academy. I did my first Mondays with Mira on her one of her books, My Colors My World, and absolutely adore her and her brilliance. Maya is also putting on what will be a fantastic mini conference on radical self-publishing May 12th in San Francisco and she even has some scholarships. Here are the links www.reflectionpress.com/conference and www.reflectionpress.com/scholarships

I've known and worked with Maya for over 20 years and everything she does is extraordinary.

I also want to give a shout out to folks about our upcoming Northern California Central Society of Children's Picture Book Writers and Illustrators Day in Rancho Cordova (near Sacramento). All I can say for now is it will be incredible and intimate. Here is the link http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e5iax92k36da453f&llr=bvqcu5dab do check it out.

The class Karen and I took with Maya was on Ink and brush as teacher. It was intense and brilliant taking both of us places we didn't expect to go. We spent the day drawing and painting hands but connecting them somatically to the rest of our bodies using inks, which are kind of challenging as are hands. We meditated and painted and discussed and if I have time, I'll post my pictures and tell you about the process later this week. Of course I'm super pooped but I wanted to get this up and out for your viewing and listening pleasure first thing on Monday.

So it's onward and upward to Mondays with Mira, First Seduction then Deconstruction - Pleasurable Picture Book Reviews!!!!
Today we're going to take a quick peek at Postmodernism in Picture Books with the delightful book Firefighters in the Dark, written by Dashka Slater and illustrated by Nicoletta Ceccoli. So settle down and have a watch, learn a little about Postmodernism and be prepared to go where you don't expect to go. You can find out more about Dashka at www.dashkaslater.com



I hope you enjoyed Firefighters in the Dark as much as I did and do check out the Hero's Art Journey half-off special here www.herosartjourney.com and let your friends know : )

Adventures in art and art classes • Other adventures in Northern California

I finally sent out my first email Newsletter last week. It was hard figuring it out but am pretty happy with it. Next I have to figure out how to do the join my newsletter button to put on here and my websites (www.mirareisberg.com and www.artspractice.com). I tried to make it as artful and heartful as possible, sharing art, and news, and info about my upcoming classes. Here's the header I designed and the info about the classes is on the right.
If you'd like to receive my next newsletter email me at miraguy@gmail.com  and I'll put you on the list.

Click on any image to enlarge

 
Other News
I'm so happy I've just about finished the full size sketches for an animal book I've been working on. Here's one of the funkier sketches that still has a good feeling about it. Below is a similar pic that I was fooling around with for ideas for my color sample. Today I looked again at hummingbirds and when their wings are up their tail feathers go down so will be tweaking that for the final. Oops.

text will remain a mystery for now

In the publishing world that uses 4 color process printing you're not supposed to use metallic colors as it's an extra ink run, but even without using metallic ink, I still think glitter looks great.

This lovely ceramic baby is going to my awesomely talented friends and former students Hugh D'Andrade www.hughillustration.com and Mati Rose McDonagh www.matirose.com whose work I both adore. Hugh was my teacher too when we were both teaching at UC Berkeley extension and I have him to thank for much of my web designing skills. I made the baby when I was  teaching in Illinois and learning ceramics was my big stress reliever. I learned to make the mold, which was ridiculously heavy and made 5 of these altogether. 2 have been completed and the other one below I'm either keeping or will be getting traded with another fabulous friend Maya Gonzalez, children's book author and illustrator extraordinaire http://www.mayagonzalez.com/html/books/books.html, fine artist and co-publisher of Reflection Press www.reflectionpress.org  Am looking forward to completing the other 3 but I don't think one of them will survive the firing process a 2nd time. Will see how it goes. The mold was accidentally thrown out so these are the only babies like this that will ever be made, I call them a limited, limited edition.

Speaking of teaching and learning Mati is starting an online art course with her friend Lisa Congdon www.lisacongdon.com that should be fabulous. It's called Get Your Paint On. Despite slim finances, I've signed up because I think it will be grand and will both help me continue growing as an artist and nurture me in other ways. It starts Jan 31st - Here's the link http://www.getyourpainton.typepad.com/

Cabin Fever and a trip to Locke
Whenever my husband spends too much time indoors he gets cabin fever, so we went off adventuring and exploring to the California Delta and Locke in particular. It was wonderful. It's an historic area that hasn't been gentrified or commodified - Wow!  It was designed and built in 1918 following a fire in nearby Walnut Grove by Chinese workers for their own community. Up until fairly recently it was an exclusively Chinese town which is pretty amazing. There are still some Chinese families there but not as many as in its heyday of 600 people. Now the population is pretty small, definitely some artists, eccentrics, and maybe some outlaw types living there. There are also LOTS of street cats, including some very handsome and friendly ones that I got to pet. This made me happy. Here are a couple of pictures from Guy's cell phone (I forgot my camera).

Not sure of the politics of this one above but it was fun to do. The buildings are just what they look like on the highway side.

My beautiful brother-in-law Bruce and his wife Bernadette. They were here from Brussels where Bruce is in a band, performs in films and theater, and translates with Bernadette. Bernadette is also an artist and a joy to be around. They were here for Xmas but have gone back now. I miss them.

One of my beautiful and talented students Lakshmi with her mother. I couldn't get mom to smile but I loved their presence together.

The pictures below are from burning 1990s tax records. It was wonderful.

Transformational Arts Practice

My life-long journey as someone from a challenging background who has used art as a force for healing, making meaning, and helping others by creating multicultural picture books, murals, service-based art projects,  and teaching art and problem solving skills, have all led me to start the next part of my life where I "claim face" as Maya Gonzalez encourages, and my authentic identity as an artist/educator/transformationist as Kelly Rae Roberts encourages. I feel like I spent the last six years wandering in the emotional desert of academia where so much is the opposite of being authentic, with myriad hoops to jump through that get progressively higher and higher and institutionalized systems of regulation (me grading students, me being graded by those higher up on the totem pole). All these things that are so far away from what I really want to do - which is make and teach art in playful and empowering ways. A big part of this distance from my authentic self was being part of the "tenure" system, which I am now grateful to be out of. I know for many people it's not an issue, but for me it was.

So now, I am very excited to announce (drum roll please) that I am about to embark on a new period in my life teaching (in-person and on-line e-courses) in sequential art and problem solving skills through a transformational arts practice based on a pedagogy of pleasure. I have been developing this pedagogy of pleasure for many years and wrote about it in Studies in Art Education. If anyone enjoys academic writing visit http://www.mirareisberg.com/articles.html for some of my articles. Transformational Arts Practice teaches course members how to "tap" into left and right brain ways of thinking and doing to overcome blocks in specific areas with specific projects while also teaching traditional and contemporary art and crafts skills (something that many newer artists might really appreciate). I feel that my academic background has trained me in research practices that will be very helpful in providing background information and good pedagogy, while my artist's soul, sensitivity, and joy in making and teaching art will help me teach these things in a loving way. I am VERY excited about  actually launching SOON, but am finding it hard to decide on which blog button to use as this will decide how my new site will look. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated as it's very hard to see and critique your own work. If you can - do let me know what you think.

I am an artist, educator, loving, transformationist

I've been taking this extraordinary e-course with Kelly Rae Roberts and reading Maya Gonzalez's Claiming Face curriculum which provides an alternative pedagogy for teachers to engage students in learning through creativity and claiming their authentic selves (Kelly also does this in a very different way). So, here goes....

The animals are from my personal symbolic non-hierarchical totemic taxonomy (whew! Taxonomy is a cool word for a system of classifying). My animals are not in any particular order, but they do mean specific things. Beginning at the bottom - the snake is a symbol of transformation because it sheds it's kin, the turtle tells me to slow down and that I carry "home" wherever I go, crocodiles and alligators are ancient survivors and can live both on land and in the water - they also remind me that I need to have a thicker skin at times, elephants with their trunks up signify good luck - they live in herds (community) are very soulful, and also have thick skins. Birds represent flight, the imagination, fragility and the world of ideas, and a mouse with an elephant represent the Indian God Ganesh - "the lord of obstacles" because together they can go absolutely anywhere."  Finally, butterflies are the ultimate symbol of transformation emerging from their cocoons as caterpillars before shedding their caterpillar selves to be a glorious butterfly.

I am more in love with the concept of this painting, which is part homage to Mati Rose, part homage to Native American totem poles and partly based on the creation myth of turtles on top of turtles, than the image itself. The actual painting doesn't include the collaged word elements but I feel my background makes it too busy. I will simplify later.  But here I am, impatient to post, and here it is - imperfect but present. Hope you enjoy.