Working with seniors, trip to LA, birthday joy, teaching

San Francisco, LA, Orange County, Rocklin - these are some of the California hot spots I've been since my last post.

 

Me in LA wearing my cold weather hat (I became a wacky hat fan after illustrating Uncle Nacho's Hat - really, each book has a story that happened after it). I love the "so bad it's good" architecture and embellishments of this house. Anytime someone expresses heart, creativity, and individuality, I pretty much love it.

While there, I became a trained Alzheimer's Association Memories in the Making Art Facilitator for my Transformational Arts Practice work bringing art into senior care facilities where I work with independent, assisted, and memory care seniors. I LOVE it. Talk about getting onboard the love boat. One of my favorites is a woman, who I'll call B. She's a really extraordinary artist but is terrified of starting so we have this little ritual where I ask her if she'd like me to help her get started. She always nods her head and says yes enthusiastically, so I then ask if I can put my hand on top of hers, which she says yes to as well. I then guide her hand to make the very first mark and then I let go and say "there you are, let's see where this takes you" and she ALWAYS does amazing stuff - mostly abstract but with the occasional recognizable element like a wave or a tree. Her work is incredibly elegant and it inspires all of us in the group. Doing this work brings out my tenderness, joy, and amazement at the human spirit. I have people who have never done art before find this magical sweet spot and it is such a joy, or they just laugh at what they've done and that's wonderful too. I am so trained at training people that this is just awesome (literally) for me to be just in that place of tenderness and being present in the process while teaching those who want a few techniques. I love everyone I work with, including the grumpy ones, and this is also a source of joy and amazement for me to have this complete lack of judgement and just be in that place of unconditional love. I think part of the reason I am so drawn to this work is that I never had grandparents and my parents died young so being with seniors is really healing for me on some really profound level. Making picture books, teaching kids and adults literacy arts and all about pic books have also been incredibly profound on my healing journey. As the saying goes "it's never too late to have a happy childhood." I still haven't made my permissions release form to post seniors work but as you read on you'll understand.

I stayed with Antonio and his fab wife Olga. We visited Chinatown. Antonio doesn't realize the money sign is pointing to him. A good omen I hope. We all know how hard it is for artists to make a living.

 Some of Antonio's art.

 Another beautiful Antonio piece. It's about 4' across.

Not too flattering of either of us, with some mice that I needle felted (one for him and one for me, the mice look good at least). I took a  pic of Olga but can't find it right now. 

Antonio and I became friends at Mills College where we were both doing MFAs. His wife Olga is a public defender and she told me that prosecuting kids on a misdemeanor charge (for doing stuff that most of us did as kids) costs taxpayers something like $40K per trial. If the prosecutor is successful the kid goes into the dehumanizing juvenile system which will certainly not make them better adjusted, happier, less likely to commit crimes again human beings. Sigh and no wonder our economy is messed up. The courts are packed.

This was a beautiful young German woman I met traveling on the train. I think her name was Sabine. I worried about her vulnerability dressing like this in a big city like LA.

In San Francisco I celebrated my birthday with a fabulous group of people and we had a ridiculous amount of ultra loving fun.

Me trying on some of Maya's outrageous earings and pulling hair back to show them (they don't go with the heart, but Maya's convinced I can wear BIG earrings if I cut my hair short but I think I'm too small to pull them off).

Maya brought her husband Matt and her daughter Zai (Zai and I fell in love), Ashley Wolff brought her fabulous hubbie Sabin Russell who used to write for the Chronicle and now is writing about dark matter for Berkeley Laboratories (fascinating stuff), my beautiful friend Jane came briefly, Krista Lohr came as did my former assistant Anna Bonner, talented future children's book author and illustrator Indelisa Carillo and new friend Roxanne Davis, my friend Mitch who was the best man at my wedding and who I love dearly, and of course my husband Guy. I did a needle felting demo and let everyone have a go. We also did a show and tell of current projects, which was also lots of fun. Ashley (picture book author/illustrator extraordinaire) showed (and gifted me with) her latest book Compost Stew and it was just the most wonderful night.

 Really unflattering pic of hubby Guy and BMF Mitch

From back to front, Krista Lohr (if you see beautiful signs and built stuff at Rainbow Grocery, that's Krista's work - she's a fantastic artist and one of their maintenance people), Roxanne Davis author, check out her terrific book  We're Here Because We're Here: Growing up in Mid-20th Century Los Angeles , and Anna Bonner also a wonderful artist (and engineer - go figure).

Indelisa Carillon and Sabin Russel (I just discovered Sabin's blog and it is awesome, especially for anyone interested in science, politics, and life). For some reason it was a bit slow to load but well worth the wait)

Anna Bonner, me wearing birthday gift handmaid wild hat from Maya Gonzalez (picture book author/illustrator extraordinaire)

Gift from Maya. Fabulous scratchboard art

Maya looking funny fierce, Zai and Mathew

Zai looking intensely at her sundae, wondering wether to blog about it on her post it note.

Zai needle felting intently

Me and Zai bonding. I loved how she snuggled into me letting me know 

that she liked me (trust me it was very mutual)

Zai with her needle felted art piece

REALLY unflattering pic of Guy, and me (not too bad), at our old haunt 

the Atlas Café

In Rocklin I attended Spring Spirit, the California North Central Society of Children's book Writers and Illustrators conference. Many of my former students came which was really fun and I can't wait till they get published. Dominic Catalano was my favorite speaker tho I liked Christ Webster too. As our region's illustrator co-coordinator (try saying that fast 5 times) I got to hang out with the other volunteers and celebs at a wonderful dinner party, I also got to drive Dominic to the airport and hear his ideas on the conference and my students work (which he felt was some of the strongest work). He raved about my other half of the illustrator co-coordinator Kris Aro McLeod whose work is beautiful. She and I have some wonderful things lined up for the coming year that I will be blogging about after I learn to write much shorter posts. Problem is I get too involved in the post and over 3 hrs later here I am.

It's 2.30 (I started blogging before 11) Here's what's left of my day:
• Promote my upcoming classes at http://www.artspractice.com/current_arts_courses.html
• Prepare for senior center TAP art project by deciding on what project to do and make samples for it
• Prepare for working with adoptive and future adoptive or foster care moms at Lilliput Services on Tuesday where I'll be working with beautiful therapist Shelley Balla-Hawkins on teaching visual journaling (I need to start my own journal sample on the same paper and decide on very first project - too many to choose from)
• Prepare for teaching The Art of Children's Picture Books at the Crocker Art Museum, also on Tuesday - see if this link works too 
Oh and shower and cook and am actually having my first date in ages with Guy (He bought us tix for Sarah Silverman at he Mondavi center for my birthday)
Life is full and good (apart from having to do promotional stuff for my classes) - that is so Jewish having that little qualifier at the end (and so is the syntax of that last bit about being Jewish - it should be - having a qualifier at the end is very Jewish). As Martha Weston used to say "Rewind" - so I'll end with life is full and good! Am I being meta here?

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.

The joys of collage and the journey of making meaning, joy, healing, and transformation

Like for many artists, art has been a journey of making meaning, joy, healing, and transformation. This past year has been full of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the process of transformation through beauty, and art making. Rather than dwell on the difficulties (the bad and the ugly) I'd like to focus on the good that has come either out of the difficulties, or of its own. I have been forming community in Sacramento which has been wonderful, teaching art classes, also wonderful, adjunct university teaching which is partly wonderful (I hate grading and how it corrupts the learning process), making art, writing and illustrating kids books, and building my new business Transformational Arts Practice and its website http://www.artspractice.com One of the goals of TAP is to bring art programs into senior care facilities. I am very excited about this as I love being around elders and all that they have to teach. Another one of my goals for 2011 is to begin teaching online courses which if anyone knows how you do this, I'd be grateful to hear from you. You can see some examples of my classes and students work at http://www.artspractice.com/current_arts_courses.html I've also been making art which always makes my heart sing. These collages come from working on a very intuitive level and seeing what comes up.

This is from a beautiful Mary Oliver poem. I love her work and often use her poems in painting to poetry classes. I need to go in and credit her name on the piece. In terms of the art, I  love the weight of the rocks/mountains and the lightness of the heart. The first line in the poem is the name of the piece. I transferred it using both back and front painting. The woman holds a wand or flower which leads to a floating heart as a source or possible idea. The first line "I don't know what a prayer is" speaks to my own spiritual journey of finding peace, connection, and beauty in nature. The large boulders or mountains represent the obstacles I put in my way to get to that place of peace, connection, and beauty. Not sure where the Indian woman is from. If I find the source will go back in and credit.

I've been playing around with making stamps. This piece isn't finished. It's called "the flight of the bumblebees." It was fun and easy to make.

This piece about family of origin stuff (or FOO) uses an excerpt from Chuck Smoot's poem "Forgiveness." The decorative paper is used here as a dark sun or moon.

This collage piece is pretty self-evident. I am such a huge hummingbird fan and paint/draw/collage them whenever I can. I've also become a glitter fan which appeals to the girly part of me.

Here's my personal transformation piece or "inner goddesses." That's me as a serious baby, the goddess that has arisen from this young child symbolizes spirituality and wealth in the forms of her multi-hued halo and the bowl of golden eggs represent creative fertility. My spirituality and wealth has always materialized in the form of art making (creativity) and the wealth of friendships and love. The halo points to a tightrope walker walking on a fine golden thread She is holding it together on this delicate journey juggling what might be golden balls, or a series of suns. The final aspect is the warrior goddess, seeking to do good or battle wrong. While armored, she carries flowers as she emerges from a unfolding peony - a symbol of riches and good fortune. Who knew this little girl had all that in her?

"Into the mystery" includes drawing, painting, collage, and handmade stamps. It's about head and heart connections, unfolding ( a re-occurring element), different kinds of wealth, and the miracle of the hummingbird. The figure is like a key hole or portal opening into a world of ideas and feelings.

Spy story tells a visual narrative about good versus bad. But is it really that simple?

This collage isn't finished. I have no idea where it will take me but am enjoying the ride.

Here's a recent photo where I Photoshopped in a picture from Baby Rattlesnake in the background for the Crocker Art Museum where I hope to be teaching in April. Being a Photoshop wizz, I also Photoshopped out the dark Eastern Europan descent circles under my eyes and softened some of my wrinkles. I commented in Facebook recently about struggling with the aesthetics of aging. I think it may be time to stop doing the virtual face lifts. Wish me luck.

Return of the Blog, cat loss and love, and loving Maya

I've been mourning my cats. Every time I came to blog and saw Possum's beautiful face I'd get so sad and wouldn't be up for continuing. With the passage of time it's getting easier but I still miss them very much. Am trying to figure out whether to get new cats or not as we want to move and having pets makes it way harder to rent. I love the freedom of not having pets but I miss all the loving, fun, and warmth that comes from having them. Sigh.

So, enough about pets. I wanted to blog about my friend Maya Gonzalez who visited recently with her hubby Matt. Together they run Reflection Press and Maya's Etsy businesses http://www.etsy.com/shop/mayachristinaprints and her jewelry and prints site http://www.etsy.com/shop/mayagonzalezhttp://www.etsy.com/shop/mayagonzalez. Maya also illustrates wonderful children's picture books mostly for Children's Book Press who published most of my books. Maya is probably the most authentic person I know in terms of being true to her own values and way of being. I love how outrageously she dresses, her gentle way of being true to herself, and what a wonderful artist she is. They came for the CA Library Assoc. conference where Maya presented a workshop based on their Claiming Face curriculum. I was teaching an acrylic, collage, and mixed media class so in the time we managed to spend together it was kinda feverish arts and crafts play and show and tell. We traded jewelry (I haven't managed to take pics of her jewelry that I got yet, but you can see her wearing some of my needle-felted flower pins in the poorly taken pics below, taken with a not so great cell phone).

The 2 flowers on the left on Maya's headdress are my needle-felted brooches and the embarassingly messy studio shows some of my old paintings (a family portrait and guardian angel), Ashley Wolff's Miss Bindergarten doll (Ashley is another awesome picture book artist) and a print of one of my favorite pictures from "My Colors, My World" written and illustrated by Maya.

I also want to blog a little about Children's Book Press who need support. They were the first publisher to publish multicultural children's picture books and have been instrumental in anti-racist education over the past 35 years. Like many non-profits they have been hard hit by the economy and are struggling to weather the economic storm. Here's a letter from the publisher and a link to donate any amount of money to keep wonderful books in print and publish new ones.

Losing Possum/Life without Cats

When I first got Possum  from the SPCA, he was only a few months old. He was one of those gorgeous tuxedo cats with long white whiskers and while all the other kitties were madly scrambling about he just sat there looking at me calmly. I had wanted a buddy for Guido, and Possum looked like he'd be a good match. So, I took him home. At the time his name was Eggbert (cruel) and he'd already been adopted once and returned so I knew that I couldn't do that to him again. I called him KrishnaPossum for his calm demeanor. I kept him in a separate room so that Guido would get used to the smell of him and told Guido repeatedly that I wasn't much interested in this new kitty but that he was for him and whenever Guido wasn't watching I'd sneak in and love up that little creature. They became best friends in an intense homoerotic love-fest sleeping with their paws around each other, grooming each other, taking turns chasing each other from one end of the apartment to the other and then turning right around and reversing chaser and chasee. When it came time for Possum to get neutered, no-one warned me that he would smell alien and evil to Guido and Guido kept hissing at him and trying to bite Possums tender regions. I had to keep them in separate rooms and the trauma changed Possum's personality. His nickname became "no sudden moves" and we dropped the Krishna and he became just Possum. It took Possum a long time to realize he was safe and relax more and toward the end of his life he became really mellow and friendly with strangers. While Guido adored Possum, he wasn't so crazy about my adoring Possum and would get really huffy when I pet him. I definitely favored Guido and felt incredibly guilty about this, compensating whenever I could. When Guy came into my life, things got easier and Possum kinda became Guy's cat while also still being mine. At first Guido was really jealous of Guy but he came to love him too.

The cats suffered 3 moves, from San Francisco to Washington State, Washington to Illinois, and then back to California and to Sacramento. Each move was absolute misery and they let us know it the whole way. By the time we moved here Guido was 19 or 20 and Possum 18 or 19. Guido started failing and then died a few months ago. Possum missed him a lot and we gave him all the attention he could ever want but then he started to fade too. We took him to the vet early this morning as he was obviously in distress and put him to sleep. Our cats gave us so much love, laughter, fun, affection, and beauty.  It's insane how much loss hurts and I can't imagine life without them. Winters were always especially wonderful snuggling with them under the covers. What can I say? My heart is breaking. R.I.P. Possum. Later we will bury you in the yard beside Guido.

Teaching teaching and fabulous course starting October 3rd

I've been caught up in the world of teaching, both university and kid's book classes. Am preparing samples for upcoming classes on Enjoying acrylics, collage, and mixed media. Very excited about it but swamped right now. Will post more info and pics as soon as able. Meanwhile, here's a flyer for the upcoming course. Please forward this link to anyone you know who might be interested. It should be a delightful and empowering experience.

Old Art, New Art and Awesome Picture Book Editors

Good bloggers blog frequently and briefly, bad bloggers blog irregularly and blog long. Guess which one I am? Sigh. My husband used to say"most people have too much time in their life - you have too much life in your time" and it's true. I love my life but I tend to cram too much in. I'm grateful that I'm grateful everyday for having meaning and purpose and art and love and that I'm in Northern California, a place that makes my spirit sing.

Last Saturday some of my students and I went to a SCBWI (society of children's book authors and illustrators) illustration conference in San Francisco. We went down on the Friday and I stayed with some friends who I hadn't seen for 7 years while I was off doing my PhD and then teaching in Illinois.  Jane and Jerome are art lovers and have loved me and I them for decades now. A LONG time ago Jane was my vocational guidance counselor and helped me go to school to get my BFA. While I lived in SF they came to every exhibition and major event in my life (wedding, birthdays etc.), they came to my fundraiser to help pay for my MFA and my fundraiser to help pay for my PhD and over the years they collected my art. When I visited them I saw pieces that I had completely forgotten I'd done and said "No wonder you still love me, your house is full of me." One of my favorite pieces was actually a gift. For Jane and Jerome's 40th or 50th wedding anniversary (they're not young but they are young) they paid to rent one of those ceramic places and invited their nearest and dearest to come to paint ceramic pieces for them. Of course I did 2 big plates as a "relational piece" - a kind of diptych where if they were getting on well they faced each other and if they weren't they turned away. I had completely forgotten about this but they hadn't. It was such a joy to see them and be in their beautiful home and near their beautiful energy. Here's some of the art.

Jane and I in the doorway of her house early in the morning (normally Jane is a very snappy dresser but here she looks like someone in a Paul Bowles book).

and now for the lovely Christy Ottaviano, children's book editor extraordinaire. Can you tell I'm having a really bad hair day? I thought I had a pic of Dana Goldberg - beautiful Children's Book Press editor - but somehow I don't. Most editors are young, female, ridiculously hard working and very gifted these days. Oh to be young beautiful and talented again. Guess I'm still talented but the rest is tough.

Final pic is of a new painting. After it was finished I noticed that the back leg is a bit long but I still love it cos it tells me what I need to hear right now and I was so happy painting it.
Inherent in "do less" is "be" more. Looking at my own art I see how many themes continue but my style of making art has shifted from working primarily with pattern to working more with texture and line. Am so grateful that art is a place of refuge, joy, and transformation for me.