Back in the Blogging World once again

After much more then several years, 2 knee replacements,  treatment for lymphoma...all of which occurred over 2 years ago, and now a major urban wildfire in my beloved Sonoma County, I am now coming  back to this blog.  

After the recent wildfire and being evacuated at 3:30 in the a.m, with flames shooting up into the sky in the hills behind my house, I got a horrible flu/ like cold.  I woke up one morning, vowing to start up this blog again.  So here I am.   

 My original focus when I started this  blog, was sharing the work and classes I did as an art therapist, instructor, creativity facilitator.  However, as I stopped this blog and time has passed, I have decided, even though I still teach and facilitate groups, to focus on my work as and artists here.

This year I turned 70, OMG, and realize if not now, when?  I am an artist and love making art.  I am obsessive about it do it all the time and what to make my living, or a good portion of it from my art, so it is time to come out of the teacher closet, and share it with others.  So that is what I am doing, here.  

All of these image are done with alcohol ink on tile and on glass.  I have fallen in love with the vibrancy of this media, its quick satisfaction and its expressive intense qualities.  

I have been doing this for about a year now, so I am sharing a few pieces as my  entry into the blog world once again.  

I am narrative in my work with alcohol ink and am always intrigued with the story that emerges out of my art.  My need to express myself quickly, loosely and playfully, while allowing what wants to emerge is greatly satisfied when doing these small pieces.  Also I am able to make a lot quickly, to sell at reasonable prices at shops and fairs for the holidays.  So here are some of what the ones I have been creating in the last month.  More to come, more to say.  Hello to whoever reads this and finds it of interest.  Stay safe, one never knows what comes next.  Caterina

Art Therapy Without Borders - So Far 10 Postcards...

So far I have only gotten a total of 10 postcards, from art therapists around the world who participated in the Art Therapy without Borders Project.  I have already posted 5 of them, and at this point I would be really surprised to get any more of them.  So I decided to post the newest ones for all to see and let it go at that for now. 

 This first one is from Renee Bond an art therapy student at NDNU in San Francisco

                             The above postcard  is from Christy Wolfram living in Northern Kentucky

 Natalie Coriell an art therapist from a small southern Illinois town sent the one shown above.  Natalie is the only one with links to an online shop and a blog.  nostalgicscraps on etsy ,  and urbannostalgicscraps blog...unfortunately her blog link doesn't work.  Oh well.
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 Be My MIrror comes from Christine Hennig in Omaha Nebraska

 And lastly, the one above is from Paul Lee and art therapist in Singapore.

I wonder if I will receive any more of these.  What do you think.  I obsessively sent out about 36 of them at the very begining of the project.  It was fun to participate, but whether or not I will do this type of thing again, I am not sure.  Should I?

Day of Creating Prayer Flags...in process

In my Medicine Art Womens Expressive Art group, we began creating our own Prayer Flags this week. Only 2 people came to group this week, but we all were so engaged, that it was nice having the space in the studio to work.  All I can say is what fun we had.. Here are some photos of our ongoing process.

 First we cut unbleached muslin into the size and shape we wanted.

Then we painted washes of Jaquard fabric paints on them and put them in the sun to dry.
Horray that it was a sunny, warm day.
The next step was using stencils of both letters and images, that we pounced onto the fabric...and wallah!  amazing things began to happen.

 Here you can see some of Roberta's in process.  We all got about 2 of them kind of done that day.

 This is Marcella showing off one of her prayer flags..

 These last two are the ones that I did that day.

 This will obviously be about a 3 session process, and with the other members of the group joining it
who knows how long we will be at it.  So many ideas are brewing in regards to this process.

Even my own entreprenurial mind is spinning, and I am thinking of doing a day long prayer flag workshop for others it was soo exciting and fun.

These are inspired by Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags, which monks hang so the prayers printed on them (traditionally in sanskrit with an image of the Buddha) can be whisked into the universe with help from rain, wind, sunshine. When we are too preoccupied to hope the best for the world at all times, the flags are a constant prayer. They're even left unhemmed intentionally, the quicker to disperse their  prayers.