Crazy Without Art • by Danita

I like a saying in Spanish that translates something like, “Share your joys to the world, save your sorrows to yourself.” Art helps me a lot to deal with my problems. I suffer from depression and I’m not on medication (I’ve tried it but I got a false sense of happiness … more like an “I don’t care” thing). I have my ups and downs and you can see it in my art. If you look at my flickr gallery and you know me you can tell exactly when I was happy or sad or angry … I receive a lot of comments from people telling me that my art is very expressive. I don’t just draw a face, I draw a feeling (or at least that’s my intention). I take art as a treatment. If I stop painting or drawing or doing anything creative for more than a couple of days I start feeling awful. I know what the remedy is. Create art and I feel better instantly. I know lots of people who think that art is just time and money wasted, but if they look closer they would see the benefits of it and think twice before saying anything … maybe even try it. Finishing a piece of art gives me a sense of accomplishment. It makes me feel proud of myself for being able to create something. It gives me peace when I use it to channel my frustrations. It gives me an incredible satisfaction when people like it. I can go on and on with the benefits; I just feel that art is so important and people don’t realize how important it is.

No Longer Inside of Me
I’m very sleep deprived, but I love that time of the night when nobody is awake and I can create with abandon, not thinking about the mundane things. I make a lot of pieces for myself and after I finish them I sell them. It’s great to be able to channel my thoughts or struggles to a painting and feel a lot better when I finish it. Then it’s not longer part of me and I can sell it, and the best part is that usually the person who gets it totally changes the feeling of it and turns it into something that reflects what he or she is feeling. The most private things go to my journal and are kept there. Sometimes when I want to get rid of a thought that is bothering me I write it in my journal very lightly, then paint and paste and scratch the page — I feel a relief after that. It’s there, but it’s not really there, but it’s no longer inside of me. Lately the city where I live has been very violent. Just last year more than 2600 people were killed (a drug cartel war). It’s so stressful. I would go crazy if I didn’t make art. I can sit in my chair and paint pretty things, peaceful places where I’m safe, where none of those horrible things happen. A place that is full of trick-or-treaters on Halloween who don’t worry about being abducted, robbed, or killed in the streets. A place with lots of love for Valentine’s Day. Girls with lots of animal friends. Pretty mermaids who swim safely in no contaminated waters. Girls flying without being scanned and seen naked first. A better, ideal place.

Art Will Save Me
If you looked at my art journals you would see that almost 80 percent of the pages are about something negative. That’s because when I’m very happy I usually prefer spending my time with my loved ones or going outside. Usually when I’m happy I tend to focus my creative energy in other things, like making jewelry or boxes using the images I already have. I actually have an entry in my art journal from more than a year ago that says “ART WILL SAVE ME” that I later covered with paint and papers. It was a really dark time for me — I was struggling with a horrible truth and a big family problem, and art helped me cope with all that. It has helped me a great deal and I think it will keep saving me as long as I keep creating.

Danita is a mixed-media artist living in Mexico. To learn more, visit danitaart.blogspot.com.

Portal for Healing • by Kelly Rae Roberts

Every once in a while I receive an email, like this following one, that takes my breath away and births a major awakening in my life:

My husband died 9 months ago. We were together for 10 years, married not even a full year. I am 27 years old and live in Wisconsin. On what would have been our first wedding anniversary my girlfriends took me to San Diego … to “get away.” I often wonder if one day, I will be able to actually get away. On my trip I saw one of your prints; I bought it, a gift to myself from my husband. My husband was a graffiti artist, and appreciated all art.

I call it my anniversary painting. I recently bought two of your original paintings! While I don’t have a lot of money, I was determined to do whatever it took to purchase your paintings. I just received the confirmation that they were sent and for a moment … I was happy.

Know, in my sad gray world, your paintings bring beauty.

Thank you for that moment of happiness,

Sarah

In the very instant that I finished reading Sarah's email, I realized something hugely important (in between tears): I create art to heal the pieces of me that need nurturing, and in turn, my healing experience (the actual art) becomes a portal for someone else's healing experience. And it goes on and on like a circle of healing … from one person to the next.

It was an aha moment, and I had to share because this is what we're all doing out there in the world with our gifts and our art and our words and our beings. We are nurturing and healing ourselves with our various work/craft/being, which then goes forward out into the world to become a part of someone else's healing experience. I can't think of a better way to live … we are indeed all connected inside this deeply meaningful circle of giving and receiving. It gives me chills.

My friend Andrea (superherodesigns.com/journal/) often talks about how we each bring our own medicine to the world. I love this concept and I suppose reading Sarah's email awakened me to the perspective that my art is the medicine I'm giving to the world. It's a medicine that I can offer up only because it's healed my own broken pieces during its creation. That's what art is. Whether it's writing, crafting, or creating a life lived well by loving well, then it's art. And art saves lives. Then, like grace itself, the art you put out into the world not only saves and nurtures you while you create and live it into being, but then it becomes a medicine for the world, for someone else to receive for their own healing. I can't tell you how deeply this has rocked my world — a deep aha moment for me, for sure. Thank you, Sarah. So much.

Of course, I responded to Sarah's letter and we've exchanged a couple of emails telling one another our stories and both thanking one another for the other's medicine (she gave me permission to share her email with you). I wish her eons of comfort and love during her grief journey and I am deeply honored to have played a small part in offering her a moment of relief and happiness with my art.

So today, more than ever, I'm aware of my medicine. Your medicine. And how it creates a wide circle of healing and nourishment for one another as we go about our days, some of us in the very center of the hardest part of our journey. I am so thankful for all of it. It's the brightness in our lives that we hold close …

To learn more, visit kellyraeroberts.blogspot.com.

Haiti by Hand • by Rebecca Sower

Haiti has been a part of my heart and my life for several years. To date I have only traveled to Haiti once, returning back home eight days before the earthquakes of January 2010. My husband and daughter have each been twice, and it was the photos from their first trip that planted the seeds for Haiti By Hand. I would look at their photos brought back from Haiti, focusing on the faces of the women and mothers. And I couldn’t look away. Even after the photos were tucked away, the faces of utter hopelessness and resignation appeared in my head, usually in the middle of the night. But what in the world was I supposed to do to help these women? I didn’t know exactly, but I knew I had to do something.

I have no medical training so I couldn’t help them in that way. I am not an educator so I wouldn’t be able to teach them. I do not have millions of dollars stashed in a bank account, so I hadn’t much to give financially. I am an artist, a creative person … how in the world could I make a difference? What could one woman do that would even matter?

Like most creative people, my desire to create is as real and physical as my desire to eat when I am hungry and sleep when I am tired. For example, much of my artwork is textile based, featuring detailed hand stitching. When an idea for a piece appears in my head it works its way down to my fingers and I cannot rest until I go into my studio and pick up my needles and threads and linens and begin creating. When I am running low on a certain color of thread, I get in my car, drive to the store, and buy more.

I was standing in the aisle of a large craft store one day, letting all the colors of the threads make me happy, when everything came rushing together in my mind: What if? What if, when I felt the need to stitch a piece of artwork, I didn’t have a needle or threads or fabric? What if the same desire to create was there and I had nothing to create with? What would that do to me emotionally, mentally, even physically?

And standing right there, in the aisle of Hobby Lobby, I began my work to help at least one or two women in Haiti. I vowed to provide them with what they needed to get in touch with their creativity. I prayed it would be the path toward providing them with a glimmer of hope.

And so, just after Christmas 2009, my 18-year-old daughter and I, along with our fearless leader Matthew (a young businessman from the States who is doing an incredible work helping the Haitian people become self-sustained) boarded a plane for Haiti. We took suitcases full of beads and threads and all sorts of art and crafting materials.

For several days, my daughter and I sat and crafted with a group of women in Despinos, Haiti (about 15 miles from Port-au-Prince) at the Haiti Gospel Mission. We laughed and sang and stitched and beaded. We prayed and hugged and bonded. And by the end of the week I was told that we had given these women something they had been void of for a very long time. We had given them hope.

I came home from that trip bursting with excitement to go forward with my plan. Haiti By Hand would be an artisan group formed to empower these Haitian women toward earning even a small income to help support their children. Just bringing in a few dollars now and then makes an enormous difference for these women — many of whom are single mothers who cannot leave their children to find jobs — and could literally be life-transforming.

In spite of the earthquake disaster, we are determined to go forward with Haiti By Hand and establish this artisan group. Our dream is to build a small structure on the compound of the mission to showcase their wares and handcrafts to sell to humanitarian, medical, and mission groups who come through at least weekly.

These women want to create. They want to be self-sustained. They want to provide for their children just as you and I do. And sometimes in order to do this, all they need is a needle and some pretty threads.

To learn more, visit rebeccasower.typepad.com.

Art: My Constant Friend • by Pam Garrison

Ahhh, art. Isn't it great? I have loved creating my whole life and will continue to, I'm sure. No matter what I'm into at the moment, creativity is a constant companion. To expand on that thought, I'll give an example.

Not too long ago I found myself feeling really hurt by a friend. It caught me very off guard and left me feeling unusually vulnerable. I never expected that from this particular friendship; I never saw it coming. I had thought she’d always “have my back” as they say. Someone I could count on to be true blue. But then that someone who I assumed would always be there for me was no longer. When this feeling sank in I felt a bit lost. If she wasn’t there for me as I thought, was any friend really? It was a lonely feeling.

I picked up my journal and started writing, and in doing so was struck with the realization that my creativity is a true blue friend. It is always there for me, to listen, to feed me, to soothe my soul. My art, my creativity, is one of my very best friends. It doesn’t matter whether I’m in a dry spell artistically either, because I’ve had enough of those to know that it always comes back if given the opportunity. It was very comforting that day to realize how much of a companion art is for me. To know that, no matter what, I can count on that friendship. No one can take it away from me. That’s one small way, everyday, that art saves me: I am connected and safe and loved by the friend that is my creativity.

Pam Garrison is a mixed-media artist who is passionate about creating and inspiring others to create. To learn more, visit pamgarrison.typepad.com.