Hi ~
Hope you are having a good week, with a great weekend planned ahead. Welcome to the latest edition of Articulation. We might as well call this issue "Prize Central" because there are lots and lots of notices about bonuses and gifty-things included below. Happy reading!
Note that if you did NOT receive last week's newsletter on the topic of "Riding on Rejection", you can see ithere. We seem to still have some problems with ISP blocking, so we want to make sure that our recent back issues are available for you!
If your email program does not display this newsletter in its proper colorful formatting, you can view it on the Web here.
Are You Out of Your Mind?: A Mini Article
One of the biggest problems that we run into when we are creating something is that our minds get in the way. They push and shove their way around, bullying our precious imaginations from shining through.
The thing is, we TRUST our minds. Our minds get us through all the things we need to do every day. We make decisions, take action, meet our challenges...all because of our minds. So we have learned to be grateful for them and to depend on them.
But our minds - smart as they may be - can REALLY get in the way when we are creating. They can limit, squelch, criticize, inhibit, and diminish our creativity. As we grow older, our minds seem to become even more stubborn (notice that most children don't have a problem with creating without inhibition. See this former Articulation art-splash for a celebration of the creative spirit of the child.
To complicate things even further, any training in a particular creative form can make our minds all the more pushy in the creative process. But if we all took ourselves seriously as artists, writers, and creators, I think we would realize that our true creative gifts are much bigger than our minds.
Creating from our imaginations, rather than our minds, is certainly not the only way to create, but opening ourselves to this level of creativity is an incredible exercise and experience. If you put your mind aside to create something raw and spontaneous, you may not care for it, technically, but dipping into the well of saturated, bare creativity from time to time will intensify all your creative experiences.
If you're asking yourself, "How in the world can I get away from my mind, since it's with me all the time?", I have a few suggestions to share:
1. Acknowledge the separation between your true soul gifts and your mind. In his book, The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle shares his powerful transition from being suicidal, homeless, and hopeless to becoming enlightened and inspired to follow a devout spiritual path. He explains that there was one fatal night where he was ready to commit suicide, painfully feeling that he could not stand living with himself one more moment. In articulating that thought, he realized that if he could not stand living with himself, somehow he was not his mind; there was some kind of division in who was. If there was a part of him that could not live with himself, that part was pure and longed for something more.
2. Create a ritual. If you can create some kind of special ritual that you consistently follow to invoke your true creativity when you begin the creative process, your mind will get the picture. Light a candle, meditate, visualize yourself as a spontaneous child, pray, fingerpaint. Whatever your ritual is, make it a habit. Teach your mind that when you invoke this ritual, you are transitioning out of everyday life into a sacred process.
3. Sigh, surrender, and give yourself up to "It". There are many quotes from brilliant creators who have known that they were not in charge. Figure out what your "It" is; that is, determine the force that is truly behind your creating and give yourself up to it. Everyone's "It" will be different, but the point is that we must truly absorb the fact that we are not in charge of what we are creating. For some people, the art form itself holds the power. For others, it is their personal Muse. It also may be God, nature, the universe, the inner child, a powerful symbol, the memory of someone who has passed away, or anything else that you feel can be a vessel for your raw brilliance.
Author Madeline L'Engle says, "The story knows more than the artist knows."
Painter Pablo Picasso said "Painting is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever it wants."
What do YOU say?
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MINI-MUSINGS- When you think of surrendering to something larger than yourself, how do you feel?
- What is your greatest wish, related to your creative work? Is there some way in which your mind is inhibiting you from obtaining that desire?
- Think about the work that you have created of which you are most proud. What was the role of your mind in creating those pieces?
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THIS WEEK'S ART-SPLASH!
This week's Art-Splash, Mind Games celebrates a wonderful victory over the mind's obsession with perfection. Here is the link to view Mind Games. I hope you enjoy it.
If the above link doesn't work, copy and paste this into your browser: http://www.artellawordsandart.com/artic73.html
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ARTELLA NEWS!
1. WealthcareTM Program begins June 7! Our newest and most unconventional e-course yet, The WealthcareTM Program: Radical Reform for the Right Livelihood of Creative Spirits launches on June 7. Come dive into this highly unique, one-of-a-kind program that will forever change the way you think about dollars, art, and life! Details are here. Come be a part of this community of creative folks who are making radical changes!
2. Boost your Goalar EnergyTM! The current session of the Goalar EnergyTM e-course began last Monday, and yes, for those who are still wondering, you can still enroll and easily catch up. Take a moment to listen to what former participant and Coach Alicia Forest said about Artella's wildly popular Goalar Energy course at this link. (And go to Alicia's Web site to see the special offer she has made for Articulation readers to take a complimentary trial of her upcoming Personal Freedom Program teleclass series.)
To sign up for Goalar EnergyTM, visit www.artellawordsandart.com/workshops.html.
3.NEW! Join Focus Groups and get great stuff! Participants in the first session of Create Your Own YOUniversity (aka YOU * U) are presenting focus groups to test out samples of the e-courses, eBooks, and teleworkshops that they are creating in this course. I am very excited to invite you to the opportunity to participate in these groups! Not only will you get to enjoy their offerings before they are announced to a wider audience, at no charge, but in addition, every participant will receive a bundle of TEN different thank-you gifts from me and the participants, AND be entered in multiple drawings from which the winers of ten MORE great prizes will be selected! These are truly wonderful individuals, and I'm really excited about the work they are bringing forth. Please support them in their fine work! See which ones Focus Groups you'd like to join, and read about the goodies you'll get,right here.
4. NEW! Artella Scavenger Hunt Announced! To celebrate the anticipation of e-Artella #e-6, due out at the end of May (you can pre-order it here for $4.95), we've created a Scavenger Hunt of e-Artella #e-5! Every participant gets really cool gifty-things, AND the first person to find all the answers wins even more stuff! See the details about the award packages and all the instructions right here! Happy hunting!
5. Winners of Weekly Poetry Contest! Here are the winners of this week's Weekly Poetry Contest:- 4th Place - Jan Bartlett, author of "Doors", wins a 1 month Artella Membership!
- 3rd Place - Eugenia Toledo-Keyser, author of "Collage", wins the above PLUS the Artella eBook, ExerSIGHS: A Self-Esteem Workout for Writers and Artists!
- 2nd Place - Naomi Sandweiss, author of "Tumbleweed", wins all of the above PLUS The Artella eBook, Those Who CAN, Teach!: Uncovering the Workshops Inside of You, and guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue!
- 1st Place - Terre Sadler, author of "Fireflies", wins all of the above PLUS featured listing on our upcoming poet's page, and enrollment in the Writes and Passages e-course.
Congratulations to all our winners! The current week's contest ends tonight, midnight EDT. Details are here.
6. Pre-order Artella issues! You can pre-order issues of both e-Artella #e-6 and Artella 7, Theatre & Cinema: Beyond Make-Believe, at www.ArtellaWordsAndArt.com/ZineIssues.html. Our super-special price of $10 for 1 issues, or 2 for $15 is good on both Artella 6 and 7, so go ahead, try us out!Or subscribe to Artella and save over $20 over the price of individual issues.
7. "Elements" Altered Book Collaborative pages due June 15! If you received Artella 6, The Elements: Ancient to Infinite, I hope you will jump in and participate in the fabulous altered book collaborative presented on the "Art Workshop" page. The cut-off date for your pages is June 15, so go ahead, get alter-happy!
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SHOPPES' CORNER
Our featured artist this week is Tejae Hall, whose sterling silver charms (personalized, too!) are just $15. Check out these amazingly high-quality, sassy charms!
Take a browse at hundreds of handmade items at The Shoppes of Artella, or make a quick stop to our Specials page for a list of all our current sales.
My favorite discount?: Diane Armstrong's Cultivate Life cards are on sale through the weekend (wahoo! Very cool offer!) And save 20% off the inspiring collages of Zura Ledbetter, one of our best sellers ever!
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ART TIP OF THE WEEK!
If you have some unused papers in your collection that don't necessarily inspire you, paint over them with paints and glazes (like Golden's gel) and paints to get an entirely new look. You can also cover the page with a think coat of gel medium and paint and then use a comb or other objects to create patterns in the paste, allowing the original paper's design to show through. Or use your fingers...which also happens to be a really great way to tap into a pure, uninhibited creativity and get your mind out of the way!
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WRITING TIP OF THE WEEK!
Try mixing up the actual physical act of writing, just to get yourself out of the left-brained box. Write with your non-dominant hand, type with your eyes closed, write lying down in the grass, or write blindfolded. Do this for a full 20 minutes, without caring what you are writing...just keep the words coming, even if you are repeating the same thing over and over. Then, transition into a current writing project you're working on. Notice if the flow of words feels any different to you.
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ARTFUL LINKS!
1.Scrapbooking and Beyond Magazine is a brand new magazine that Deb (Artella's "Administrative Assistant and Waaaay Beyond!") has raved about. She saw the premiere issue of this new magazine yesterday and was raving. It seems to be successfully making the crossover from traditional scrapbooking to collage and altered art. So if you're a scrapbooker, or want to try your hand at it, check it out.
2. Alteredpages.com offers really cool, and affordable vintage collage sheets for altered books, scrapbooking and collage. Really great stuff here!
3. And while you're Web-shopping for supplies and such, be sure to visit the amazing Manto Fev Web site. Manto Fev is an art supply store in Nebraska with an awesome online inventory, too! We love Manto Fev!
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Sending you an imagination that can knock the intellect down flat in a celebratory heartbeat!
~imaginawhimsically,
Marney
Artella Founder/Editor
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