The Maker's Space

A beautiful reflection on pursuing beauty and how it is an act of worship.  Check out her post on beauty on http://www.stephanierische. com/beauty-as-an-act-of- worship/

Our inner artist is a child and needs to be able to play.  Our artist brain is our inventor, our child.  It sees things and says "Wow!  I like that color, that pattern, that verse...."  Our logic brain is our Censor.  It says, "That's not right.  I can't do that.   It's too hard."   We battle to let the child come out by the Censor, an internal and eternal critic who resides in our left brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth.  But remember that your Censor's negative opinions are not truth.  It takes practice to let go of the negativity and allow yourself to play and fail.  With gentle, deliberate effort, shadow artists must nurture their artist child.  Creativity is play, but for shadow artists, learning to allow themselves to play is hard work. #1. " To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong."  Joseph Chilton Pearce Try something unsafe and let go of the fa

My friend Tanya found herself in New York City for the day and decided to go to MOMA, the museum of modern art.  She is also in the process of going through her children's art  keepsakes and wondered why some of these paintings looked as if her children had done them when they were in preschool.  "Someone needs to explain to me why my kids aren't famous?"  She was standing next to a stranger looking at this last painting of OOF.  He said, "Note the perfect shape of the O.  Its perfectly round."  Tanya responded, "The F's proportions are perpendicular to the O.  As a result, the word OOF seems to come alive!" Then they both started laughing.  Another gentleman turned around and gave both of them a disapproving glance.  LOL @ MOMA

LENT                               This was a puzzle that we gave multiple artists to paint their interpretation of                                           their brokenness.  When they all came together, it formed the cross. There are wonderful websites to check out for creative images to ponder during LENT. One is  http://www.covchurch.org/news/ 2014/03/05/online-lenten-art- series-questions-god-asks/ These are artists interpretations of questions. Another is a creative take on the Easter tree: http://www.theeastertree.com The Glen Ellyn Covenant Evangelical Church's SOUTH ALCOVE GALLERY is featuring Serbian artist Dragan Milosavljevic.  Dragan is classically trained from the Academy of Fine Arts of the University in Belgrade, is married to a Bosnian/Slovakian woman and they are now living in Slovakia. In a search for a new expression in painting, as well as for exhausted issues of life, Dragan found the answer to both in the Creator and Author of life Himse

"Personally, I think bad weather leads to better art.  You don't want to go outside, so you stay inside and work.  When I lived in Cleveland, I got a lot of work done in the brutal months of winter.  Down here in Texas, I get all my work done in the wicked hot summers.  (The Cleveland winter and the Texas summer last about the same length of time--half the year.)"   Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon