Artual (Art + ritual) for living Wendy Hollender

Wendy Hollender Drawing

“A weed is but an unloved flower.” 


― Ella Wheeler Wilcox


“It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.” 
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden


“Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion.” 
― Eudora Welty

Acorn by Wendy Hollender

A month ago, while I was at my writing conference, T planted tomatoes and peppers. T had grown them from our southern window over the last two months. Saddly my worries came true. I was afraid they wouldn't make it out in the community garden. I wasn't concerned about the last frost date in Ohio (Mother’s Day Weekend), but the heavy rains or lack of rain. Baby plants are fragile. The poor things were taken out by a hail storm.

I love spring in Ohio. The trees are white and purple with blossoms and last week some trees glowed with a green mist: buds about to burst into leaves. In April, T and I had planted potatoes, onions, salad food, and peas. T finds the gradual covering over of potato shoots meditative. I’m in the garden experience for the eating of beans and peas off the vine. The garden is thriving in June and unusually un-weedly for us. 
Several weeks ago, I watched an interview with Wendy Hollender, a botanical artist, teacher, and author of Foraging & Feasting; A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook. Her medium of choice is coloured pencils and uses watercolour as an underpainting. See above is one of her drawings -- very realistic. She is a teacher who puts her students at easy, because she taught viewers her method to draw an acorn. However, what really interested me was her dedication to a plant per year.

Wendy described how she chooses a plant or tree to study for the year. She introduces herself in the fall and gives a gratitude offering to the plant. This is a plant she will visit daily on her walk. Wendy next showed the viewers several pages of her oak tree study that moved through the seasons. The fall showed a branch with leaves in various stages of drying out and nutmeg and cinnamon colors. There were several acorns and around the drawings questions: How do the leaves change and why? How many oak trees are there in the world? How old to they get? She treats these as interview questions to get to know the plant better.

Artual

Get outside and adopt a plant or tree for the season. Provide an offering to it and say hi. If you are bold sketch the plant and ask questions. On the red line, share the name of the plant or tree you have adopted.

Resources

See Wendy in action in a One Minute Video “How to Draw a Cherry Tomato.”

“How to draw an acorn”

Soulandalas: Coursera Final Project

This is my artwork I created for Healing in the Arts offered by Coursera.  Following my soulandalas you will find a narrative of how I created these pictures. 

Joy

 

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
― Rumi

 

“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”
― Shauna Niequist



Connected

 

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
― Herman Melville

 

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
― Brené Brown

Confidence

“When someone tells me "no," it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them.”  Karen E. Quinones Mille

 

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
― Lao Tzu

 

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit”
― E.E. Cummings

 

“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth." (Journal entry, 14 October 1922)”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield    

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Hope

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson

Divine Mystery

“Because you’re a creation of God, you reflect the Divine qualities of creativity, wisdom, and love.”
― Doreen Virtue

“We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch of Portobello    

 

Laughter

“I love people who make me laugh. I honestly think it's the thing I like most, to laugh. It cures a multitude of ills. It's probably the most important thing in a person.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.”
― Maya Angelou

“Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables    

Self Compassion

“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
― Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life    

“Talk to yourself like a cherished friend. Treat yourself with love and care. You are perfect, just as you are.”
― Amy Leigh Mercree, The Compassion Revolution: 30 Days of Living from the Heart    

Strength

“Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.”
― Maya Angelou

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations    

Worthy of Love

“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn't have the time to sit around and talk about you. What's important to me is not others' opinions of me, but what's important to me is my opinion of myself.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“When you're different, sometimes you don't see the millions of people who accept you for what you are. All you notice is the person who doesn't.”
― Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart    

What did I do for my project?

I have been contemplating my next career journey.  My path will come to a fork in the road within seventeen months.  During this time, I’ve been exploring “What’s next?”  There are many possibilities to choose from that weren’t available when I was twenty.  In January, I began a year-long class: Come to the Fire (Heidi Sequoia Moondancer).  It is an on-line intentional creativity class to discover our sacred self.  Each week, I’m given a creative journal/art prompt.

Back in January, this month was devoted to my intentions for the New Year.  I wrote in my journal about where I was and what I wanted to bring into the different aspects of my life (e.g., spiritually, family, career).  To develop affirmations was an output of this exercise.  Since January, I have continued to explore these affirmations including what my life would be like if I embraced them fully.

You might say, this class fell into my lap.  Again being open to Spirit, I signed up.  I saw it as another way to explore my “words” by using different forms of art (i.e., music and dance).

Table:  Concepts to bring into my life:

Words                      Ideas Holding me back

Divine Mystery      Disappearance of Spirit

Laughter                      Sadness

Confidence              Distrust, Doubt and Uncertainties

Hope                      Pessimism

Joy                              Depression, Unhappy, Serious

Worthy of Love      Unloved

Strength                      Weakness

Self-Love              Self-hating and Indifferent

Why I chose my project?

My project is a combination of journaling and drawing mandalas or Soulandalas.  Soulandals is a concept that Jackie DeBlasio coined.  Mandalas are drawn over journal entry.  The design is a way for the soul to express visually what is written.  She writes drawing the repetitive designs often reveal messages that one might not recognize through word.  This art form, she believes allows one to look at the messages of the inner critic and identify if stories are align with what one wants in life.  Creating a mandala can change the story and provide a visual of what is possible.

Confidence

I took my words (see table above) and began creating soulandalas for each of them.  My journal entry discussed what was holding me back, but I also wrote what my life would be like if I had this in it.  I would start the “word” off by reading quotes from Goodreads.  For example within my journal entry for self-confidence is a quote from Karen E. Quinones Mille: “When someone tells me "no," it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them.”  I would also look up symbolism and colors associated with the words.  Again, referring to my “confidence” soulandalas, I used gold and blue associated with confidence and a peacock feather design that symbolizes: vision, awaking and (inner) guidance.

An outcome of the project is twofold.  One, I have beautiful representations of my intentions.  Secondly, as a writer I have discovered that my writing is dark and lacks in joy.  Additionally, it has identified places that need healing and a new story needing told.  The drawings have moved me to bring color into my life and to try write on different subjects.