San Francisco with the Bay Area Bookies

Had the delightful privilege of going to San Francisco with one of my mega talented continuing students to a Bay Area Bookies meeting of amazing children's book authors and illustrators. Here's a group photo that Ashley Wolff of Miss Bindergarten and a squillion other beautiful books took. It was so wonderful being among my kin and sharing ideas, projects, art, and love. I was in piglet heaven.

From the littlest heads in the back left to right Katherine Tillotson (It's Picture Day Today! , When the Library Lights Go Out, Penguin and Little Blue, Songs of Papa's Island), Marissa Moss (Amelia's Itchy-Twitchy, Lovey-Dovey Summer at Camp Mosquito, Amelia's Notebook, Hannah's Journal: The Story of an Immigrant Girl, Amelia's Guide to Gossip: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The Pharaoh's Secret, Hannah's Journal: The Story of an Immigrant Girl and many more) Sharon Levin kid's book reviewer, Elissa Guest (lots of books - click link), Sarah Kline does great books with her sister, Jane Wattenberg, (it got to be too much work linking to all the books so am just linking to their book pages, sorry), next row left to right Susan Myers, Elisa Kleven, me looking VERY happy, Wendy Lichtman, Julie Downing, Lissa Rovetch. Bottom row left to right Bev Gherman, Jim Averbeck, Kristen Schwartz (up and coming author/illustrator), Maria Van Lieshout (and baby), Ashley Wolff (who hosted the party in her fabulous Bernal Heights home - when I have time will show pics), and Bob Barner. Just checked Ashley's link and they include Ashley Olson groan but they also include many of her books. You can also always just copy and  paste their names into a browser, remove any spaces, and put .com at the end to see their websites (a couple of which I designed long ago and now need updating.


OK I can't resist. Here are a few. The last ones show the "show and tell" we all did of recent and forthcoming projects. Having all given many school presentations, even the introverts did great. It really was a blissful day and quintessentially San Franciscan.

Sneak peak at the Transformative Arts Practice header and offering

Here's a sneak peak of my Transformative Arts Practice website header. If you can, do let me know you think.
The first offering will be a "self-portraits, self-knowledge, self-care" course that will be very powerful, fun, and empowering. I am reading and re-reading the following books to deepen the underlying theoretical perspectives and pedagogical approaches: A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, Teaching Visual Culture: Curriculum, Aesthetics, and the Social Life of Art  by Kerry Freedman, The Re-enchantment of Art by Suzi Gablik, Claiming Face by Maya Christina Gonzalz, which is a complete self-portraiture curriculum for educators (also available on Maya's website where she is currently offering a super dooper discount), The Art Therapy Sourcebook by Cathy A. Machiodi, The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard and Self-Nurture: Learning to Care for Yourself As Effectively As You Care for Everyone Else by Alice Dohmer and Henry Dreher. 
I am going to be launching the first in-person series in Sacramento at University Art on Marconi near Fulton on Saturdays 9.30-11.30 beginning July 24th and the online courses will start late August or early September. Am very excited to put it mildly. If you or anyone you know might be interested please forward this to them and have them contact me directly at artspractice AT gmail.com. I will have a registration form as soon as I have my TAP site up. 
Any suggestions/comments much appreciated.

Peace and love - Mira

Basking in the Teaching Afterglow (and books we're reading and using)

Another gorgeous sunny Sacramento day. It's the day after teaching one of my kid's book classes and am reflecting on what a joy it is to teach warm, funny, smart, talented people who are really happy to be there. We have a wonderful system of group teaching that is transforming the student's writing, art, and lives. We begin with the assigned readings. 


This semester we are using my Writing Illustrating and Publishing Kid's Books Handbook which also includes exercises the students didn't do because they are so passionate/obsessed about working on their own projects. I suggested they do them as party games with friends which would really be fun. They did however, read all the informative text (yay) and one student's young daughter drew all over the cover because she liked it so much (I felt honored). We are also using Writing Picture Books: A Hands on Guide  by Ann Whitford Paul, and the 2009 Children’s Writer’s and Illustrators Market by Alice Pope. In the past, we have also used The Writer's Guide to Crafting Stories for Children by Nancy Lamb, which was also very helpful. We are using the 2009 CWIM because by the time the current guide comes out many editors have already switched publishing houses (it's the only way for most editor's to get raises) and this is the main information in the book that is time sensitive. I also like a lot of the articles in that particular year and because it's not current it's much cheaper new or second hand for my students to buy. 


After we've discussed the readings and how they relate to where students are with their projects - it's critique time! The students bring enough copies of their stories for everyone to have one, and those that haven't been critiqued recently get critiqued. Because this is early in the course we are focusing on the stories, although one of the students is working on illustrations that I have assigned her to meet criteria that editors look for in portfolios, and another brought a story that was almost complete and we are bringing her illustrations up to a publishable level. I cannot describe how much fun this all is, or the intense concentration and focus required to almost psychically tune into how that particular author or illustrator can fix whatever needs fixing, tweaking, clarifying, or playing with. What is also amazing is how far the stories go from beginning to end and how wonderful it is to witness this and be a  part of it. 


For the critiques, we divide up the remaining time between the number of students needing critiques, and that's how much time they get. Someone reads the story out loud and we follow along and jot down notes. Then we read and proof the story and include suggestions before we discuss it as a group. I usually lead the discussion and everyone else jumps in to help solve issues or problems or with suggestions to make it stronger or funnier etc. The class is designed to be a gestalt and everyone is bonding beautifully.

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

Totemic taxonomy update

 A couple of posts down I wrote about my totemic taxonomy painting and what each of the animals signified or represented for me in my journey to "claiming face" and authenticity. I also described how I wasn't happy with the overall piece and that the background was too distracting so here's the final piece. I'm much happier with it now and have prints available on my etsy site at the low low price of $16 plus shipping.

Before posting this I was goofing off looking at friends' blogs and I saw Mati's posting about elephants, butterflies, and transformation from yesterday around the same time as I was posting about this totem. Our styles are totally different but we are conceptually connected, or is this all just part of the collective unconscious floating around? My image is an homage to/inspired by one of Mati's totem-like stacked animal paintings, as well as the extraordinary indigenous wooden totems from Pacific Northwest indigenous artists. Here are links for both
Mati and Pacific Northwest totem poles

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.

Art Addiction and Studio Lies

I've been thinking about addiction and the many forms it comes in. For me it's art supplies, children's picture books, art books, other books (spirituality, history, novels, yiddishkeit) collecting art, making art, and a tendency to work too hard. Today I tried to sell some of my squillions of beloved social theory, art education, and qualitative research books today at our 2 local book buying places, but they weren't too interested. May make a posting here in future and see if anyone wants any cheap. Am really trying to pare down and do more with less but just watched this terrific video from Claudine Hellmuth on making art with beeswax (a simplified form of encaustic)  http://www.artworkshops.tv/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=39&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=102  (it's free but you have to sign up and register) and now of course I want to buy all those supplies. My studio in Sacramento is the smallest that I've had in decades which means I need to get rid of stuff rather than getting more. Sigh.

The other thing I was thinking about was a conversation with my friend Caron Dunn who is another needle-felter and an exceptional teaching artist for all sorts of art forms. She too has a small studio in which she creates a lot of work and like mine it has a fair to excessive amount of chaos and mess. Anyway, we started complaining about our messy studios and comparing it to all those gorgeous artists studio you see online, when Caron exclaimed "Those pictures are lies! No one's studio is that tidy. They wouldn't be able to get any work done!" This instantly made me feel much better although tomorrow I am hoping to clean up my studio a little, even if it only is for a few precious days before I get down and dirty with my supplies.

Guido 1991-2010

The results came back and they were very bad. The night before we were almost giddy, feeling somehow that we might have cheated death the way Grandma Beetle does in Yuyi Morales's Just a Minute book. When I told my 84 year old extraordinary mom-in-law about this she said in her Zen Buddhist way "no-one cheats death." Yesterday we put Guido down and buried him near the redwood grove in her yard. It was unbearably painful. He was between 96 to 100 years old in human years and as Guy often pointed out, he had a better life than many humans do. I have wonderful pictures of him from kittenhood on but can't find that darn album. Here are some pictures of him that I could access.

 Guido and Guy

Guido and Possum

 Guido and art. Our old cat gallery on left, and Guido's delight in jumping onto my art table, especially into wet paint, with which he would then gleefully run tracking throughout the apartment.

Guido in art. Guido snuck into this painting detail from a commission I did of someone's Pacific Height's view (it was a much larger painting). On right, Guido (and Possum) in Just Like Me

 Some of the many faces of Guido starting with the "I know I am a little cat but I want to dominate you" look. He also had an incredible range of vocalizations from tiny little squeaky sounds to loud disapproving yowls. He was a brilliant communicator with both his voice and actions.

Guido's last day. I hope he's either in kitty heaven climbing trees and chasing birds and butterflies, or that he gets to come back as the human he always wanted to be in a really good life.