Wednesday, July 21, 2010

oh, god of second chances...

and so there is opportunity to begin again, and a class assignment to have a blog, read others, make comments. and so i revive what i began the very first night of the jfku experience as it made it self up with me. i begin after coming to this part of the end--this beginning of the end of the gradual school journey. god, i am so dramatic. i am always talking about beginnings and endings as if they are somethings--some threshold, which i suppose they are--some way of starting something. gotta be starting something, gotta be starting something. it's interesting the way the brain works now--with youtube videos and the ding, clang, ring of bells and the sounds, always the sounds, of the ambient noise of my surrounding life. i think of it all in terms of transformative art. i am forever talking about john cage. i like the whoosh and boom of it. i like the sounds of the songs that can not be sung as songs. i like the web of interconnection punctuated by footsteps down a long hallway while a noisy keyboard tries to keep up with the synapses firing their sing song nothingness as play. meaningless play, that means everything.

i am spending my days with my collaborator at the sun gallery in hayward turning 6 and 7 and 8 year olds onto transformative art.

there are lots of old school teachers who taught it their way that sort of hang around wishing we were more obviously structured--or so i imagine.

and there are kids and parents who get their own kids and just need and want a place to let their young artists come alive.

and there's us. arriving in my painted mobile studio. raven carrying one of his many animals. we arrive, sit in circle, be ourselves, do what we do, open the cupboards, provide inspiration and permission, and notice the flow of energy that comes up from these 21st century kids.

they are smarter, as they arrive, than we will ever be.

i should speak for myself.

i watch them put themselves together, replay for us what they've heard at home, find their amazement at the answer, which is always (if they're asking me), yes. yes. yes, you can do that. yes, you can make this. yes, you can use this. yes. yes. yes. yes. and no, i'm not going to tell you how to do this, how to make this, but if you ask what you're making how to make it, it will tell you.

i say this.

i say this often.

i say this multiple times a day.

i notice that i am forever in the play of this.

i notice *this* as transformative art--whatever this is--some combination of yes, permission, freedom and everyday art materials and the story journey that takes place privately in the act of making inside each precious being who journeys toward making. these story journeys are sometimes shared--sometimes evident--but always recorded in the making of the making of the thing of the thing.

it is always collaboration between the hands and the imagination freed and the space that sets the stage for this freedom.