Service....last section in week 12 part 1
I will be packing up for my last class at LaGrange Art League today winter session is complete...Spring session will start back up in a few weeks...Which is a nice break for me. I will need to create some personal work for a few places I committed to..I mean personal as the misc that I've been creating has been for demonstration purpose...and I so want to get back to my Woman and Nature series and finish that up and my 10 piece I will be sending to Wis. I would also like to create 13 small piece for the ICE exchange...don't know it's a plan and I've not layed it all out so I'm kind of throwing it all up in the air and not panicking about and trusting that it will work out..
The Demonstration started out a bit shaky for me...I've got to get a good introduction..being critical of myself a bit yes but then I got in the sway of things and just couldn't shut up...Almost when over time...Poor people packing up their meeting waiting on me as I pack up...its hard to have them help...I get annal about that...I like to have it so I can be ready for the next one...Obsessive yes but in a good way as to keep the flow going. Well I believe I carried out the demo pretty good didn't have anyone fall a sleep or not many left and had a crowd around my display pieces and books behind me...and there was some interest on both parts to have a workshop there..mine and theirs.
So on to the last section of the book Service
In centuries past, art was made for the honor and glory of God. Viewed in this light a career in the arts was a career of service, not egotism. There is a cue there for us.
The dedication of our work to a higher cause than our own self-promotion frees the work from preciousness. It becomes not about how good we are but about how good we can be in selfless service to something larger than ourselves.
As artists, we are the bearers of gifts, spiritual endowments that come to us graties and ask only to be used. A gift for music asks that we give voice to it. A fine photographer's eye asks that we focus it. We are responsible to our gifts for the use of our gifts. and this is from a accountability too.
I can't help but think of every human being which if they think they are creative or not...that doesn't matter but what does is that we recognize that we do have these little gifts something that is extra special in each and everyone of us and it is our responsibility to share that, and I don't me push it on but when time calls for it use it...I want to not sound egotistical but I've felt a need to do service work with the different project/ideas in our art league...not so much fund raiser but just some good pure creative inspiration things.. there's such great things that happen along the way...the Connection with others and with the community that you belong in and around..and so much more that it's hard to describe... and what happens to other as they share with a project too.
Any time we elect to serve, we open the doors for higher inspiration. Asking to be of service, and to be open to the proper inspiration to serve through our work, we then become teachable, and when we are teachable, our work always improves.
When our work is made only in the service of our hope for fame and recognition, it is hampered by our self-consciousness as we wonder, How am I doing? When we are able to work with out such self-consciousness, we are able to work more freely and more fully. Our ego steps aside and is no longer a constrictive valve narrowing our creative flows and focus. we think less about "us" and more about "it" the work itself.
Julia shares, I have to remind myself there is something larger than me and my skill, some thing more important than my "ego's perception," the pianist confided to me. That's something is in art itself, the creative power that moves through us, healing and transforming those who encounter it.
This is often true for artists. Our "best" nights to others may internally feel our worst. Our perceptions must not be allowed to capsize our professionalism.. In a sense, the reaction of our work by ourselves as well as others is not of our business. Our job is to do it. We work, and the work works through us.
Not matter how accomplished and acclaimed we may become as artist, there is always, at core, this essential anonymity: We are in service of something larger than ourselves.
We have very strange notions about art in our culture. We have made it a cult of the individual rather than what it has always been, a human aspiration aimed at communication and community. We "commune" through art, both with the forces of inspiration when we work and with other humans who encounter us and those forces throw our work. To commune is to attune with an open heart, something impossible if we are thinking only of ourselves.
I feel as though when I'm in the classroom or studio space teaching I'm for sure not alone there..and yes because I'm solely standing in front of people sharing how to do things and my thoughts and experiences on how it works for me...I really do feel responsible to my students to do a good job and in order to do that I totally understand about staying open...not everyone will get it the same way or should they, their individuals and that can't be denied...but I see and watch the body moment's the sounds and how everyone is reaction to a lesson and I personal seek guidance to help them at lest achieve a better idea of how it works and it pushes me as their teach to seek inspirations... there is more welling up in me to come out and share about this but words are hard to come...I think it because I'm tired from the last couple of late night activities of meetings and demo's when normally I'm sleeping at 10:00 pm I've been coming in then and can't always calm myself down and go right to sleep so...a bit off kilter but I totally get the service work and concept.
The Demonstration started out a bit shaky for me...I've got to get a good introduction..being critical of myself a bit yes but then I got in the sway of things and just couldn't shut up...Almost when over time...Poor people packing up their meeting waiting on me as I pack up...its hard to have them help...I get annal about that...I like to have it so I can be ready for the next one...Obsessive yes but in a good way as to keep the flow going. Well I believe I carried out the demo pretty good didn't have anyone fall a sleep or not many left and had a crowd around my display pieces and books behind me...and there was some interest on both parts to have a workshop there..mine and theirs.
So on to the last section of the book Service
In centuries past, art was made for the honor and glory of God. Viewed in this light a career in the arts was a career of service, not egotism. There is a cue there for us.
The dedication of our work to a higher cause than our own self-promotion frees the work from preciousness. It becomes not about how good we are but about how good we can be in selfless service to something larger than ourselves.
As artists, we are the bearers of gifts, spiritual endowments that come to us graties and ask only to be used. A gift for music asks that we give voice to it. A fine photographer's eye asks that we focus it. We are responsible to our gifts for the use of our gifts. and this is from a accountability too.
I can't help but think of every human being which if they think they are creative or not...that doesn't matter but what does is that we recognize that we do have these little gifts something that is extra special in each and everyone of us and it is our responsibility to share that, and I don't me push it on but when time calls for it use it...I want to not sound egotistical but I've felt a need to do service work with the different project/ideas in our art league...not so much fund raiser but just some good pure creative inspiration things.. there's such great things that happen along the way...the Connection with others and with the community that you belong in and around..and so much more that it's hard to describe... and what happens to other as they share with a project too.
Any time we elect to serve, we open the doors for higher inspiration. Asking to be of service, and to be open to the proper inspiration to serve through our work, we then become teachable, and when we are teachable, our work always improves.
When our work is made only in the service of our hope for fame and recognition, it is hampered by our self-consciousness as we wonder, How am I doing? When we are able to work with out such self-consciousness, we are able to work more freely and more fully. Our ego steps aside and is no longer a constrictive valve narrowing our creative flows and focus. we think less about "us" and more about "it" the work itself.
Julia shares, I have to remind myself there is something larger than me and my skill, some thing more important than my "ego's perception," the pianist confided to me. That's something is in art itself, the creative power that moves through us, healing and transforming those who encounter it.
This is often true for artists. Our "best" nights to others may internally feel our worst. Our perceptions must not be allowed to capsize our professionalism.. In a sense, the reaction of our work by ourselves as well as others is not of our business. Our job is to do it. We work, and the work works through us.
Not matter how accomplished and acclaimed we may become as artist, there is always, at core, this essential anonymity: We are in service of something larger than ourselves.
We have very strange notions about art in our culture. We have made it a cult of the individual rather than what it has always been, a human aspiration aimed at communication and community. We "commune" through art, both with the forces of inspiration when we work and with other humans who encounter us and those forces throw our work. To commune is to attune with an open heart, something impossible if we are thinking only of ourselves.
I feel as though when I'm in the classroom or studio space teaching I'm for sure not alone there..and yes because I'm solely standing in front of people sharing how to do things and my thoughts and experiences on how it works for me...I really do feel responsible to my students to do a good job and in order to do that I totally understand about staying open...not everyone will get it the same way or should they, their individuals and that can't be denied...but I see and watch the body moment's the sounds and how everyone is reaction to a lesson and I personal seek guidance to help them at lest achieve a better idea of how it works and it pushes me as their teach to seek inspirations... there is more welling up in me to come out and share about this but words are hard to come...I think it because I'm tired from the last couple of late night activities of meetings and demo's when normally I'm sleeping at 10:00 pm I've been coming in then and can't always calm myself down and go right to sleep so...a bit off kilter but I totally get the service work and concept.
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Thank you for support, interest and viewing my inner life with my outer life on this Blog. Wishing you many creative blessings and peace to you and yours,
~v~Laura