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Circle Art Challenge

 ᎤᎵᎮᎵᏍᏗ  ᎢᏤ  ᎠᏕᏘᏱᏍᎬᎢ  U-li-he-lis-di  i-tse  a-de-ti-yi-s-gv-i /happy new year!

What's on your creative table in 2025?

For 2024, our pastor Erika Marksbury got a grant to use Bonnie Smith Whitehouse's lovely book, Seasons of Wonder, for inspiration and focus. The grant covered copies of the book for the congregation, plus supplies for our monthly Makers Meetings and funds for field trips; and we met in small groups for monthly discussion. 

I really enjoy Bonnie's approach of interweaving gathering as a circle (!!), sharing creativity, connecting with nature, each other and the Divine. I've ordered her Kickstart Creativity cards.

In the introduction, Bonnie quotes Steven Charleston,  'It is all a circle, the ancestors said -- an endless circle within a circle. The drum is a circle.  The dance ground is a circle. The earth is a circle.  There is no us or them, no top or bottom, no beginning or end, no lines of division -- only a seamless embrace. The answer is within... the stars will make their great circle of the heavens to make their way home.' - Ladder to the Light (Steven is Choctaw and Cherokee, and an Episcopal bishop),

I began following Bonnie on Instagram, and near the end of December, she wrote, 'instead of injecting the news into my veins right after my feet hit the floor, I got up a lot of the mornings of 2024 and spent just a few minutes drawing or painting something inside a circle  🔴 ... Anyone else starting their day with a low-stakes creative play?'

ᎦᏐᏆᎸ (ga-so-qua-lv) circle
In December, our Makers Meeting practice was to use junk mail and scrap paper to craft greeting cards, gift tags, and wrapping paper.  My friend JoAnn donated a stack of handmade paper her adult son Kyle crafted, using paper from their shredder! It's soft and has bits of colors and the occasional letter peeking through. 
It also seems the perfect surface for a coddle practice! 
January 1 - Ring in the New
Doing a creative practice early in the day stimulates our body's production of the 'feel-good' neurotransmitter dopamine, and is uplifting. Drawing and filling a circle is a sweet way to take Tea with the Muse.

  • Take a moment to center, pour a cuppa, light a candle, tug your Red Thread
  • Work on paper, canvas, your Smashbook / art journal, or on a card
  • Use a template to draw a circle (coaster, small cup, ...
Options:
  • Invite insights for the day
  • Metacognative drawing 
  • Neurographica 
  • Mandala
  • Go through the Color wheel
  • Choose a word for the week
  • Collage ...
January 2 - Spiral dance

Want to join me in creative play?
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