Letters and Visuals

Combining words and images is the idea I’ve been chasing for about two years. I didn’t want to be middling-good with calligraphy. Hand-lettering is a better idea for me. Quotes from others are wonderful, but many other artists have done that, and done it better.

While scrolling through the images on my phone, I came across the photos I take of graffiti and marks put on the street by utility workers. Those interesting hieroglyphics make me think of alien alphabets. Alphabets that can be written, but not read. Suddenly, it came together. How we struggle to say what we mean and be understood. How we long to be heard and understood.

Here are the first three works in progress.

The abstract landscape is easy enough to understand, but what do the three lines at the top mean? It’s not a code; it is deliberately not explained. Just like much of what we say and write.

This night landscape can be calm or eerie, depending on what you interpret the letters to be. Meaning-making, the purpose of creativity, is always up to the viewer.

Is this an explanation for the abstract? Is that a waterfall? Is the sun rising over the left part of the landscape, or is it burning? All up to the viewer. All left to your imagination. Because I believe we all are imaginative beings.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer who teaches writing. She is also a creativity coach.

Sticking to Your Idea

Yesterday, I talked about working with what works for you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about your work, if you are making meaning in your life, if you are finding inspiration and growth,  you are on the right track. For you.

A few people asked me to prove my point by giving an example. Gladly.

Museum installation using styrofoam cups. © Tara Donovan.

The art on this page was done by Tara Donovan.  She works in plastic straws, Styrofoam cups, coffee filters, and steel pins. She tended bar and waited tables for six years while working on her art. She heard people laugh and suggest “real” art work. Maybe event a “real” job. But she didn’t do that.

You may know the feeling. You are working out an idea–on a book, a painting, a textile piece of creative work, and you begin to doubt yourself. “Who will ever think this is worthwhile?” you think. Maybe a friend or relative looks at your work and sighs. “Do you really think this is art?” they ask. And you begin to doubt yourself. Your work. Your life choices..

Most artists go through this, and many cave when faced with serious criticism or doubt. They move to something more acceptable. More popular. More understandable.

The artists who inspire me the most, who give me the biggest soul boost, are the

Tara Donovan’s installation using plastic straws. © Tara Donovan.

ones who stick with their work and perfect it. They let the criticism and doubt stay with the person who feels it–while the artist sticks with the creative work.

Tara Donovan graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in 1991, got a MFA from Virginia Commonwealth in 1999 and kept her day job till 2003, when she had her first solo show at the Ace Gallery. In 2008 she got a MacArthur Fellowship, often called a Genius Grant. And she still works with pins, straws and cups.

I find this dedication and constantly renewed creative energy incredibly inspiring. She knew what she wanted and she kept working at it. How many times do you think she heard jokes about tending bar and stealing straws? And she kept going. All the way to that Genius Grant and beyond.

It’s a good story to remember when you begin to question yourself.
See more of Tara’s work.

–-Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach.

Meaning-Making Books, and Giveaway

Meaning making is an important concept in my life–it is my life’s purpose. Fame, celebrity, happiness, or even a ton of money don’t do it for me, although I enjoy paying bills on time and meeting the mortgage. Past that,  the purpose of my life is making enough meaning to act each day in a meaningful way–and exactly what that is varies over time.

New World Library sent me two books to read and mention:

Life Purpose Boot Camp: The 8-Week Breatkthrough Plan for Creating a Meaningful Life, by Eric Maisel Ph.D.

Hop, Skip, Jump,: 75 Ways to Playfully Manifest a Meaningful Life, by Marney K. Makridakis.

Both of these books tackle meaning making in different (very different) ways. But both of them know that meaning-making exercises are important for your career, your personal growth and your peace of mind. If you want to skip to the giveaway, it’s at the end of the post.

Life Purpose Boot Camp, by Eric Maisel, Ph.D. New World Library, 172 pages. Maisel uses the boot camp metaphor as a way to rally yourself to your own defense. Maisel was a drill sergeant at one point, and he uses this no-holds-barred, get-yourself-into-action voice throughout the book. After all, it is a boot camp, and it’s time to get up and get busy.

Maisel bases a lot of his logic thread on his “natural philosophy,” his term for the style of atheism he promotes. Some of this is reasonable–Maisel posits there is no “Universe” that blesses or curses you, your fate is in your own hands. So you must focus on what constitutes meaning making.

Maisel writes, “Many things that upset us, sadden us, or make us anxious may not be things that genuinely affect our ability to live our life purposes. If they aren’t, let them go!” The how-to guidance Maisel gives is “. . .to ask yourself, ‘Are these among the circumstances that I can improve?’ If you don’t regularly ask that question, you won’t give yourself the chance to positively affect those circumstances that would allow you to help yourself.” In my opinion, many people are mired in their own disbelief and would not know an honest answer to the questions. If they could answer the question, they may not know what circumstances they should create. But those problems are in the first 80 pages of the book, and the book does give advice.

Maisel also writes,”If one of your life purposes is to write novels, it matters whether anybody is publishing novels and whether anybody is reading novels.  . . . To imagine that we can live our life purposes independent of reality, is well, fantasy.” To keep your meaning together, Maisel suggests a “Meaning Repair Kit” containing a reminder bell, an evaluator thermometer, a personality tap, an aligner level, an investment planner and a reality tester. Again, I find the applications for these devices’ use devoid of soul. Which is exactly the benefit of the existential life Maisel promotes. Oh, and on page 94 he tells you what he wants your life purpose to be. Spoiler alert.

Maisel has a huge fan base and has received only positive reviews (five of them) on Amazon for his book.

Boot Camp Chapter Titles:

• Creating Your Menu of Meaning Opportunities
• Creating Your Mix of Meaning Opportunities
• Upgrading Your Personality
• Dealing with Your Circumstances
• Naming Your Life Purpose
• Creating Your Life Purpose Statement
• Creating Your Life Purpose Icon and Mantra
• Living Your Life Purpose

*    *    *    *    *    *
Hop, Skip, Jump, by Marney K. Makridakis. New World Library, 282 pages.

On the other end of the spectrum is Marney Makridakis, a peripatetic creative who specializes in play, games, puns, jokes, and staying in action through activities that seem like fun. Makridakis, in the introduction, says that manifesting something “you see as being part of your meaningful life” is the likely reason people would read her book. The beginning of the book includes a quiz to help the reader determine if they are hoppers, skippers, or jumpers–different “natural inclinations to manifest.”

In her 282-page book, Makridakis talks about the importance of play, particularly to adults. She includes trivia, haikoodles (haikus that invite doodles) and AcroWhims (acronyms in which existing word functions as a magical abbreviations for a message), and Manifestingrams (an anagram with manifesting powers.

Example of  AcroWhim: PLAY = Purposeful Love, Activating Yes.
Example of Manifestagram: MANIFEST = “Amen” fits!

As with all her books, she brings her whole life into the book–her family, her experiences, her ideas and her thoughts. When you buy one of her books, you get the whole package. You are not required to read the book front to back, you can skip around and find parts that appeal to you. As a sequential reader, I found that reading it from front to back has a purpose–to explore different approaches to fun, find the way that works for you, and manifest meaning through fun.

The book is divided into three parts: Hop, Skip, and Jump. Each have a particular meaning, which she describes in detail.

There will be giveaway and assorted deals on Marney’s website tomorrow, Tuesday, November 11, 2014. To date she has three five-star reviews on Amazon.

Some chapter titles (there are 75 chapters in all):

• Playfully Pressing Your Reset Button
• Hopping with Hope
• Twenty-Eight Magic Minutes
• Play with Creative Blocks
• Improvisational Skipping
• Manifesting Mood Rings
• The Animation of Everyday Objects
• Leaving Some of Your Toys Behind

*   *   *   *

The Giveaway: I’m giving away Eric Maisel’s Boot Camp book. It’s not a preference for his book,  it’s practical: I never limit my contest winners to the Americas, and it is easier for me to send the smaller volume overseas, if that’s where the winner lives.

Leave a comment to qualify for the book. The winner will be announced on November 16, Sunday. Check back then to see if you’ve won.

Disclosures: New World Library furnished both books for me to review. Eric Maisel was both an instructor and a coach of mine, both over 10 years ago.

—Quinn McDonald loves to read about meaning-making, including books that are strict, fun, or thoughtful.

Creating Heart While Traveling

Being on the road is tough. Not whining, but opening the door of yet another anonymous hotel room, eating by yourself in another restaurant where the only thing on the menu that fits the diet and the budget is yet another Cesar Salad, and the reward after a day of teaching is driving two hours to the next venue–it makes you reach in deep and suck it up.

“Eating Bitter” is a Chinese expression of working hard for what you want, sucking it up and knowing that you chose this life and you are making meaning even if it is a lot more effort than you want.

One of the ways I get through the chore of eating bitter and find a bit of sweetness is creating routines–I make an effort to walk every morning, even if I am a thousand miles from home. When the world shrinks to classroom-restaurant-car, it’s important to have a camera. I photograph small moment that seem important and use them in my Commonplace Book. The photo is something that makes me smile, or that serves as a metaphor. I love doing this for many reasons–it connects me to a strange place and it is comforting to find some small shred of beauty in an everyday place.

From my most recent trip: photos and notes that I put in the Commonplace Book for further development.

Heart on a cactus. Look at that backlighting! Thorns make a halo. Combination of thorns and love.  Being tough can still work as soft. Being uncommon can attract the right thoughts.

Damaged heart. Look at that texture! Damage is dramatic, but can be beautiful, if you look at it the right way. Even nature makes a collage of color and texture. A cactus will root months after the piece breaks off. Life after damage exists, can even thrive.

Love the texture on the mid-century lamp. It warms up the whole photo. The flatness of the photograph makes the cactus in the background look like it’s outside, but it is really painted on the window. Illusion of paint–make it work and you believe in it.

Even the very ordinary items in a hotel room can be given a new perspective. This is the bathroom window over the shower. The “grass” is a palm tree, and the light is from a passing car. The moment was fleeting, but perfect. Glad I was there to see it and catch it.

A lot of comfort on a trip is creating a piece of life that is comforting and interesting, no matter where you are.

–Quinn McDonald has made friends with the road.

 

 

Beyond Art Journaling

Nothing against art journaling. I still love it. But I need a break from it. So many people have piled on so many products, paints, stamps, stencils, embossers, hole-punchers that I got dizzy and had to sit down.

A page of William Blake’s Commonplace Journal

I’m back to using my Commonplace Journal. The one that holds all the facts, ideas, quotes that pile up in my days. It’s so comfortable, like a pair of shoes that are soft and still can be worn to a teaching gig. My Commonplace Journal doesn’t demand painted pages, drying time, or planning. It holds whatever shows up. For me, that includes meaning-making.

Two deep loves for journaling (for me) is watching time pass on a big scale and nature. This time of year (fall for the Northern hemisphere) the days begin to get noticeably shorter. For Arizona, it is a huge relief, as the sun simply doesn’t pack the punch to crisp your skin in five minutes. The pool starts to get cool again. By the end of September, you will need hot water when you shower (in summer, the water comes hot out of the cold water tap.

Because my memory is keyed to weather, its hard for me to remember what happens when. It was easier on the East Coast–my memories were tied to cool weather or a coat I had on. Or mud season and black flies. But here, there is a giant blue bowl of sky above us 322 days a year, so I have to keep track of what happened, and when.

Calendar at the beginning of the month, pencil boxes still in place. Not much filled in.

In the Commonplace Journal, I draw a rough outline for the month on a page that starts the month. I use a pencil to do this. Then I use a pen and box in days in which something is caught. On the first and last days of the month, I notice the length of the day.  In September, the day of the Harvest (full) Moon, the autumnal equinox, and the progress of my plants. Maybe I add sketches, maybe not. Depends on what happens.

At the end of the month, I add color (if I want) and erase the lines on days that I didn’t fill in.

Feb. 2010, complete with what i noticed around the yard.

Keeping this calendar doesn’t replace writing, I do that, too. But it shows at a glance what happened outside for that month. It’s great for gardeners, nature lovers, and hikers.

You can, of course, track anything. Birthdays, school milestones, heights of your kids, grandkids or how long you walked the dog.

Calendars keep track of items we want to remember but not use up brain power remembering. A simple, hand-drawn calendar is an excellent journal page.

—-Quinn McDonald keeps journaling in ways that make meaning, whatever they are.

 

 

A New Way to Journal

Journaling is more than an art; it’s a habit. A practice. A way to process whatever happens in life; a way to become more self-aware. Art journaling is a wonderful way to add the visual to the words, and because I’m a writer, it i satisfying to add sketches, collages, paint to the written page. I’ve done it for years, and now it’s time for me to move on to a different way to journal.

Background in progress. Monoprint on watercolor paper.

The new way of journaling is immensely satisfying. It started as a solution to a teaching problem. When I teach, I like to show samples of my journals, but much of my journaling is private, not to be passed around in class. So I had to make samples to show. Some of the books I passed around had only a few pages of samples.

Landscape, in progress.

I began to work in different books at once–watercolor for wet media and collage, lighter-weight pages for pencil sketching. My life would jump around several journals. It made journaling while traveling hard. Which one to take?

I cut back on journaling to create samples.  That was unsatisfying, but it brought me to the answer.  Through years of practice, I can type fast–about 100 words a minute. Because I work at the laptop for many hours a day, I began to type a journal at odd moments, often in the middle of a project. Five minutes of typing makes an interesting break and makes returning to work easier.

For years, I’ve explained that handwriting is a different process and necessary for right-brain journaling. And I still believe that. But I also believe that typing a journal is better than not keeping one at all.

I print out what I type, and keep it in a small (9″ x 7″) three-ring binder. I also re-purpose binders that were once cookbooks or home-improvement how-to books, but that’s another post.

Collage from monoprints. The chameleon can hide from predators using protective coloring. It can also miss out on opportunities by blending in too thoroughly.

The binders are grist for studio work. I’ll read through what I’ve written, distill it, and polish out the thought or idea that is a handhold in the upheavals of life. Or an open window into a great insight. Sometimes what I come up with was better said by others. Then I write down the quote in my quote folder to use later.

My studio work is looseleaf journaling. Usually collage of some sort, combined with illustration and words. Always words and letterforms. Usually there is writing on the back–either a deeper explanation, or the rest of the quote.

Creating looseleaf pages allows me to work on several pages at once, have pages in different stages, and, because they are not connected, take some pages to class and leave others at home. I’ve created several ways to bind different size pages. Each page is dated, so I can always put them in narrative order to check on progress or problems that show up (again) or just what color seemed to be my favorite in 2007 (sepia).

This new way gives me freedom to write, process, make meaning, create, share and keep private, as is necessary. It’s satisfying.

—Quinn McDonald teaches journaling and writing.

Art Journaling Quotes

Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome.  —Samuel Johnson

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.              —Chuck Close.

Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out what you can make with what you have left. —-Itzhak Perlman

Class shock

This is not about class warfare, or even the one percent or the 99 percent. This is about taking scrapbooking classes. To be honest, my experience at the class I took yesterday.

I have to say right up front, that I am not a cropper or scrapbooker. I loved the original idea of scrapbooking as a gateway to creativity, but left the arena when I began to notice an alarming number of items, supplies, equipment and tools that were one-thing specific. A tool to punch a hole. Another tool to punch a larger hole. A tool to cut a 12-inch sheet. A tool to cut a 10-inch sheet. I began to see the scrapbooking arena as being consumed by retailers who want to sell you more and more equipment because you believe that your next purchase will make you an artist. This is a hard idea to overcome.

The products and tools being turned out for scrapbookers are lovely and tempting, but so many of them don’t encourage creativity, they chase it out of the room and replace it with accuracy and project completion.

In that way, scrapbooking mimicks office life. You had to be fast and accurate, and if you followed directions, you got a project that looked just like the one on the cover of the kit. Good job!

It had nothing to do with creativity, it had nothing to do with meaning-making. It had a lot to do with peer pressure. Scrapbookers became brand loyal. If you had the blue one, you needed next year’s pink model. You bought the pink model although the blue one still works just fine? Good job! We love you! And like getting a nod from the boss, it is deeply satisfying. And has nothing to do with creativity. Or with meaning making.

Why do I say all this? Because I took a scrapbooking class.  I was the  only one who did not arrive wheeling a suitcase of equipment. The instructor came in, put five plastic boxes, one in front of each small group, and returned to the front of the room. I’m not pretending she represents all scrapbooking instructors. She did mention the brands she represents. And then, to my amazement, she recited the assembly instructions for all five kits, one after another. She moved smoothly from box to box, picking up the completed piece and describing how we were to peel this sticker and apply it to that transfer sheet and then transfer it again, noting sheet colors and decorations by brand name. I began to take notes and she told me not to. “Just follow what I say. As soon as you know what to do, start.”

Women (there were no men in class) jumped, snatched kits out of the plastic boxes and applied themselves with a fervor and concentration. Tools flashed. A woman next to me asked me where my tools were. I held up my journaling bundle. She shook her head. “You’ll never keep up with just that.” It seemed the goal was keeping up and completing. It was not a technique class by my definition, it was a multi-project class.

One of the coloring steps was interesting. I applied a color I like. The instructor was suddenly over me, tapping my transferred sticker and saying, “Pink. This is not supposed to be indigo, it’s supposed to be petal. Start over.”  I nodded, and waited for her to leave. I’m not a fan of pink. I continued on the indigo. The woman on my right looked at my work and shook her head. “That’s not right,” she said kindly, “You are doing it wrong. You’ll be here till midnight.”

I am not criticizing the women or the instructor. Many women left with completed project that looked just like the completed kits at the front of the class. I felt I’d spent two hours in a factory, failing at lining up the chocolates.

For me, this is not creative work, it is assembly work. It fosters perfectionism and obedience. It doesn’t allow for variation, play, or exploring.  For me, there was no meaning making.

Maybe a few people who are scrapbookers want more play, more exploring, less dependence on tools, more on intuition. Maybe they want a way to discover who they are, and what skills they have and how those skills can be important to them. If so, I’m interested in you. I’d like to know what your next step to creativity is. I’d like to know what you love about scrapbooking and what you don’t. I’m interested in meaning making and how we experience it.

–Quinn McDonald is the author of Raw Art Journaling, a book for people who want to make meaning but don’t know how to draw.

Happy New Year 2012!

New Year comes at an odd time of year. It’s mid-Winter,  the shortest night of the year is past, but the coldest months are ahead. Spring makes more sense, when determined shoots push out, and so does Fall, when the harvest is in. But no one called me to ask, and Romans messed around with the calendars until it worked to their satisfaction, and so Filofaxes were invented. (I’m skipping a few years between the two. I learned that from Timeline on Facebook.)

Thumbnail moon from space.desktopnexus.com

In the years you start celebrating New Year’s at home because it’s more comfortable to tipple champagne in your jammies, you look at each new year and begin to wonder. If you will still be here next New Year. If it’s time to start working on your bucket list. What kind of regrets you might have if you woke up to very bad news. (Add your own here, we can scare ourselves best. Just don’t leave them in the comments, thank you.)

The question I ask myself more often is, “Have I really done what I was supposed to do?” A lot of my life seems routine, but it was a responsible life–earned a steady income while I was a single mom, went grocery shopping, cooked healthy meals, kept the house clean, oversaw homework, polished shoes, didn’t date seriously till I knew what I wanted.

Now that those days are over, I ask myself, “What do I need to do to live a life with no regrets?” It’s another variation of the question, “What is the purpose of my life?” (I don’t waste time with the inconsequential stuff like “What’s for dinner?”)

I decided I didn’t have to have the answer to that, actually. I turned the question around (I have a 5,700 year heritage is answering questions with questions), and said, “What does life want of me?” It seems easier looked at from that perspective. Life does not ask one thing of us. There is a different answer every time we ask. Just as there is not one “right” answer to “what is your favorite color,” or “what is your favorite song?”, there is more than one right answer to “What does life ask of you?”

Hand-marbled paper © by Rosefirerising

To dig out the answer, I put it in the surrounding that Victor Frankl, the philosopher and therapist did: At this moment, I can give the answer as if I were living a second time, and had made a wrong choice before. What choice will I make this time? This choice is made as if I can return to the past and make the change that alters the future. All by changing my perspective now. What life asks of me is to be responsible for my own answer.

And what’s the purpose of that? Here is what Frankl says:

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself . . . . you have to let [success] happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run. . . success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”

I have the freedom to pursue the work of my heart, because the work of my heart makes meaning, and when I am making meaning, I know what I’m doing. I know where I am going. I’m striding out into 2012 not to pursue greatness, but to make meaning. How does that translate into action?

I’m choosing to teach classes that won’t please everyone, that won’t gather a huge audience. I’m not going to teach classes that let you walk away with a product–a pretty journal, or a gift for your sister-in-law. I’m going to teach classes that will give you an ink-stained heart, and write yourself whole.

I’m teaching classes that put you in touch with your creativity, that allow you to make meaning. I want to do this. I don’t have time to waste. You’ll leave the class with a new vision of your own, with having discovered your own creative heartbeat.

I’m a little scared, because it’s not what’s out there now. But I started with Raw Art Journaling, and I have to support what I started–that making meaning is the force behind living an artful life.

–Quinn McDonald is available to teach classes in meaning making through journaling. She has two classes scheduled in January.  She’ll teach others if asked.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosefirerising, under an Creative Commons agreement.

Classes in California–Mark Your Calendar

Give yourself a gift of meaning-making for the holidays. Or give your best friend, sister, or someone you value a gift of a raw art class. I’ll be in California in January–on the 21st and 22nd. (Saturday and Sunday). If you are going to CHA (Craft and Hobby Association), you may want to break away and do something for yourself.

iHanna's confetti lines

Saturday, January 21.  9 a.m. to 1 p.m.:  One-Sentence Journaling
Location: STUDIO CRESCENDOh
207 N. Broadway St., Studio L
Santa Ana, CA 92701

What will you do in class?

My classes are a little different from other classes–you won’t walk out with a pretty gift for your sister. Instead, you’ll walk out with ideas that will fill your life with explorations of your world and meaning making in your journey.

If you’ve started a dozen journals, but have never finished any of them, if you have always loved the idea of keeping a journal, but haven’t ever kept one, or if you have kept a journal but don’t find it satisfying, this class will make your heart glow.

You’ll start with one word and grow it into a pile of words and a box to keep them in. You’ll chose a word and use it to start your journal with just one sentence. Two, if you are ambitious.

This class is about the power of words you use every day, and the words you want to use on your journey through life. You will laugh hard and write deeply, one sentence at a time. Raw art is part of the mix, and your pages will have color and design on them to help you stay connected with your writing.

At the end of the class, you will have completed at least five journal pages
and have enough ideas and techniques to last you for years to come.

Price: $88. Register at the bottom of this page on Jenny Doh’s website.

Bubbles, by Quinn McDonald

Sunday, January 22, Journaling for Perfectionists.
Location: Zinnia
1024 S. Mission St. South Pasadena, CA 91030  Phone: 626.441.2181

What Will You Do in Class?
Started a bunch of journals but never finished one? Don’t want to start a journal because you will “ruin” it? Join me–a journal-keeper and recovering perfectionist– to play in your journal. You’ll learn ways to start your journal, ways to save a “ruined” page, and intriguing ways to write in your journal regularly and be satisfied with your work. If you are new to art journaling, even better, because we will be adding color to the pages as well.
Be prepared to laugh a lot, too. At yourself, and at the odd and bouncy walls we build around our lives with perfectionism.

How long:
2.5 hours–11:30 to 2:00 on Sunday, January 22.
Price: $55  To register: Call Tamara at Zinnia– 626.441.2181 or email her at Tamara@Zinnia.biz

Come join me in a class–I’d love to meet you and help you find your story!

–Quinn McDonald teaches what she lives. She is the author of Raw Art Journaling: Making Meaning, Making Art.