Module 3- Form, Texture, and Sculpture

Read:

      • Conscious Grieving, Part Two through “About Shame and Stigma” (p. 48-84), and Appendix, “Meeting Yourself in Grief” (p. 208-212)

          • see reflection questions below

      • Spirituality and Art Therapy, Chapters 4 & 6

      • Art is a Way of Knowing, Chapters 6 & 16

View/Listen:

      • This artist created “Healing Boxes” after the death of her brother. If this process is inviting to you, create your own healing box with found materials over the course of this module. I like old cigar boxed for this type of project, but you can also use a shoebox or other box.

      • Creativity in Grief, podcast with Claudia Coenen (search Crazy Grief on Apple podcasts, episode 16) *note, I have not been able to find this on other platforms*

      • Making Art Through Grief (21 min), youtube video of an artist as she shares and creates following the loss of her beloved pet. She uses the practice of slow stitching in her art journal.

          • she closes out her video expressing that her practice didn’t really help much. Do you believe the time was still valuable? How does this interact with your beliefs about processing through art? What feelings linger?

      • Processing Grief Through Art (6 min), TED talk by an inner city teacher guided her students to design and create an art installation to express their grief publicly

      • The Nature of Grief (15 min), TED talk by an artist who has spent her career exploring loss with sculpture and natural materials

          • create a practice for yourself that is inspired by this artist’s work

Suggested Materials:

      • air-dry clay, sculpey, and/or model magic

      • fabric scraps, embroidery or other thread, needle

      • found objects, cardboard, tin foil, stones, sticks, leaves, etc.

      • sandpaper of various grit levels

      • gel medium or other thick adhesive

      • craft or carving knife

      • sticks or pencils of charcoal

      • blending sticks (you can find these at a craft store near the pastels/charcoal)

      • twine

Create:

      • spend time in nature as much as possible during this module. Create your own collection of items, especially those that seem to meet your grief by their texture, form, shape, or stage of life and death. Let yourself live with these items over the module and listen interiorly to the ways you might want to create with them– prints, sculpture, carving, stacking, painting, destructing and reconstructing. Leave little memorials of this process around your home as visual and tangible reminders of your process.

      • take some time wandering through an antique mall or thrift store. Look for vessels of various sizes and shapes and notice what qualities speak to you in your grief. Are you drawn to vessels with or without lids? with wide or narrow openings? modern or vintage? What would it feel like to have a space, a hollow, that uniquely fits your inner experience? Bring a few vessels home and leave them out where you can see them. Over the next couple of days, use them as a still life to paint or sketch, or create a vessel out of air-dry clay that can accompany those you purchased. Break one or more of them and use the pieces to create a cairn or sculpture or mosaic. Write a haiku or two that meets you right where you are in your discovery.

      • create a mosaic of sandpaper scraps/squares/strips in various grits on a large piece of mixed media paper. Maybe you want to make a mosaic with a random pattern, or maybe one that begins rough and works its way to smooth, or vice versa. Leave areas blank with only the underlying paper showing to create contrast.

      • create a fabric mosaic instead of or in addition to the sandpaper one above

      • paint a piece of driftwood as a memorial to your loved one. Use their favorite colors, or write a quote from one of their favorite authors. Leave this piece out where you can see it and hold it in prayer or meditation.

      • using sticks, shells, or driftwood (you can purchase bulk driftwood on Etsy if you don’t live by a body of water) and twine, create a wood remembrance mobile to hang in your home or on your porch. Paint each piece or decorate with paint markers, write the names of loved ones or draw symbols that remind you of them on each piece.

      • take a piece of clay or model magic that fits well in your hands. Work with it with your eyes fully closed. Shape the clay until it is warm and pliable, and then create the shape of your grief by feel alone. Do this multiple times over the course of a week and notice how your inner experience of grief and outer expression of it changes.

      • visit a local cemetery with tracing paper and a piece of stick charcoal. Spend time in quiet and meditation, feeling the energy of the place and your own inner experience. When you feel grounded, create rubbings of some of the grave stones, noticing the feel of the process and the emotions that emerge in the process.

Reflect:

    • “It is like a handclasp between two living hands, receiving the greeting at the very moment that they give it. It is this speech between the hand and the clay that makes me think of dialogue. And it is a language far more interesting than the spoken vocabulary which tries to describe it, for it is spoken not by the tongue and lips but by the whole body, by the whole person, speaking and listening. Sometimes the skin seems to be the best listener, as it prickles and thrills, say to a sound or a silence; or the fantasy, the imagination: how it bursts into inner pictures as it listens and then responds by pressing its language, its forms, into the listening clay. “― from "Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person” by MC Richards

        • What does this quote say to you about the different languages we speak in creative practice? Is there something in your life that feels this way to you? A practice or activity or medium? What part of you listens when you engage this activity?

    • What are you noticing about your inner experience of grief as you spend this time listening to it in a new way? How is it connecting you to your loved one who has passed? Is it inviting any changes in how you engage with your grief?

    • In reading “Meeting Yourself in Grief” in the book Conscious Grieving where do you see yourself reflected? What creative practices come to mind as you learn about different orientations toward experiences of grief and mourning?

    • What practices and prompts thus far in this course have resonated the most? What have you resisted? Are there any underlying beliefs that you have uncovered over the past month?

Christine Hiester