Artists lives, friendships, collaborations, and art

I've been an artist for as long as I can remember. As a child when adults would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd say "artist" to everyone's horror. For most of my life, being an artist has been one step up from being a heroin addict or a serial killer. Decades ago a friend took me to her office party and the usual question of "what do you do?" came up - of course I said "I'm an artist." The looks were truly disdainful as if I'd said I had a majorly contagious disease, but then when my friend said, "Mira illustrates children's picture books" the change was amazing. Suddenly I was respectable and worth knowing. Faces were smiling. I'd been redeemed.

With the phenomenal rise in the information age and technology came a greater public valuing of images and image making and visual culture. Image making became more valued through this image driven media. And even though there's been a huge increase in respectability, and even money and status for some folks, and even though the emotional and psychological, intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic rewards are tremendous, being a committed artist is still a big struggle in terms of economics, security, health care, and the daily challenges of doing the work and getting paid for it.

For me, one of the biggest rewards of being an artist (besides doing the work and teaching others how) is meeting other artists. As an artist, children's picture book creator, and art teacher, I have become friends with lots of fabulous artists. I wanted to feature some of them here. I'm also delighted that brave souls who want to learn art or deepen their art practices will meet some of them in my upcoming fabulous global online art course Heros Art Journey on September 12th. Follow the kitty to find out more : )

I recently got to visit 2 wonderful artist friends Briana and Peter for their 30th anniversary. They are exceptional people as you will see from their art and home which was a total fixer-upper. Weaving their usual magic, they transformed it into a magical abode. I took a bunch of pics, which I'm randomly showing some of here. Peter makes wonderful recycled stained glass from glass plates and such and they both make fantastical talismans, sculptures, jewelry, and objéts d'art from recycled metals. Click on images to enlarge.

 

Something strange happened with my camera amidst all the socializing, so apologies for the weird color (sigh). Unfortunately you miss the glorious color of this stained glass piece which you can only imagine, especially when the light is streaming thru.

As I'm only focusing on 2D art for my course, Briana and Peter won't be featured in it, but the next artists will.

At the party, I ran into a dear friend Claire B. Cotts who had just come back from an exhibition of her work in Tennessee. Her work is brilliant (always has been) and while we were talking she "whoopee" agreed to be interviewed for my course! Knowing Claire - it will be fabulous. One of the things that is especially wonderful about Claire is her equal commitment to realistic narrative and abstract narrative in her work. The girl knows her stuff! Oh and she's also an awesome children's book illustrator.

One last friend I want to share today, who will also be featured in the course is my old mate Hugh D'Andrade (check back in a few days for more fabulous featured artist friends - too many for one blog post). I was lucky enough to be one of his students and then to have him as one of my students. I was also lucky enough to play a very small part in his and another one of my students falling in love in class and they are now both happily married successful artists. Yay! Am hoping Mati Rose McDonough will be in at as well but depends on whether her book projects' deadline is extended. Here's hoping she has time.

Don't forget to check back to meet Elisa Kleven, children's book author and illustrator extraordinaire, Elly Simmons another extraordinary artist (whose also done some children's picture books), Maya Gonzalez ditto, George Littlechild (hopefully), and more. Oh and here's my kitty if you want to register or find out more about this phenomenal course starting September 12th. Oh and can you folks who show up on my feedjit that someone really is reading this, help me out and do that magical exponential social media thing and help me get the word out about Hero's Art Journey? Thank you sweet things.

On Dying and Living

I just found out a dear friend from my time in Illinois recently died. I thought it was a bad-taste joke posted on Facebook about someone of the same name in Northern Illinois dying but it turns out it was her. She was someone I really loved and admired but we were rarely able to do anything together because she was determined to finish her dissertation, which had to be the greatest dissertation ever. Her husband was also frustrated by this but of course we all respected her wishes. And now she's dead. I'm not saying her dissertation killed her, tho I doubt that the stress and pressure helped (she died of a fast acting breast-cancer relapse). I looked up Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief and I seem to be somewhere between stages 1 and 2 - denial and anger (am not in the sadness yet, perhaps because of the distance and my continuing sadness over the loss of Guido). I have lost a ridiculous amount of people and loved ones in a relatively short time beginning with most of my relatives killed in the Holocaust before I was born, and caring for many wonderful men who died of AIDS. I have done many living and dying workshops including some fantastic ones with Steven and Ondrea Levine. For anyone dealing with loss, dying, or grieving, they have written some extremely helpful books including these -  Who Dies?  A Year to Live, and A Gradual Awakening and then there is Kubler-Ross's seminal text and Ram Dass's wonderful work (the original Be Here Now and the updated Remember, Be Here Now, and Still Here, Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying.  These folks helped change how we deal with death and dying and helped found the hospice movement which has helped many folks die consciously and with dignity. They have also helped me deal with death in a more present way. When my father-in-law and different friends were dying, I read guided meditations from Who Dies? and some of the other books mentioned here and I truly believe it helped both them and me in the process of letting go.


All this has me thinking about a meeting I had with 2 friends last week called a "Pressure Relief Group" where they help you create a roadmap to deal with your hopes and dreams and goals and relieve pressure from whatever is causing stress. I came all prepared with my little folder about the different exciting projects I am working on including the school for Transformative Arts Practice that I am creating, 14 different e-course ideas, my beginning business plan, and the what needs to be done to complete the 2 books that I am currently creating list. They looked at me and said "Mira you are doing too much." I knew this and told them about doing my PhD in a record 3 years while teaching a full load, publishing 3 articles, winning a teaching award, and graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA. I also mentioned that it nearly killed me. They asked me "What is the common definition of success in America?" To which I replied - "How much you do, earn, and have." They pointed out what a quantitative rather than qualitative criteria that was and asked me to redefine this definition for myself and of course the answer was having peace of mind and a high quality of life that included creativity, community, love, friendship, art, service, relaxation, exercise and so on. In other words - how to have more relational quality and do less. So have decided that my first e-course offering will be about "Self-portraits, self-knowledge, self-care." Will let you all know how it goes.

The image at the top is a portrait I did of Maya Gonzalez, one of the 18 pieces of original art that I created as part of my dissertation. I find it very calming. You can see more of my dissertation art on my website at http://mirareisberg.com/academic_art

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.