This week’s guest post is by the energetic Danette Relic, life coach at The Drawing Board and hostess of creative self expression workshops. She’ll be teaching us about something I know very little about — Tantra — and how it connects to Creativity. I know you’re already intrigued. So Danette, take it away…

Tantra and Your Creative Energy
by Danette Relic

Let me guess, you hear Tantra and you think, 8-hour romp in the sheets with Sting.  Yes? But what is Tantra? What is Art?

Since beginning my studies of Tantra, I have learned that there is so very much more to learn.  The discussion of what Tantra is seems to resemble a beautifully tangled garden; there are theories about the initial source of growth, about all the influences that have shaped it’s development, and even those who identify which parts of the garden are valuable and which parts are weeds that have invaded it along the way. 

For the purpose of giving you a sense of Tantra before going on, I like these three points taken from a list of what Tantra is, from the book Tantra for Erotic Empowerment: the key to enriching your sexual life by Mark A. Michaels and Patricia Johnson. 

* Tantra is an ancient tradition that recognizes sexual energy as a source of personal and spiritual empowerment.  This sets it apart from most Western traditions and helps explain why most Westerners have reduced it to its sexual elements alone.

 * Tantra is the magic of transforming your consciousness and thereby transforming your entire being.  Your body is the most powerful tool for bringing about this transformation.

 * Tantra is the discipline of becoming yourself completely.  In the end, there is nothing at all to do.

Trying to find one complete definition for Tantra seems to be a lot like trying to answer the question, What is Art?

 Which makes sense to me, because I see Tantra and Art, or specifically, Tantra and Creativity, to be curiously linked up.  I’ve noticed them at parties, huddled together on the sofa, or giggling by the punch bowl in some secret exchange.  Of course they are.  Sexuality and Creativity splash around in the same orange chakra, the sacral chakra, located just below your navel.

There are 3 aspects of Tantra that also serve as juicy connectors for creative energy: Senses, Pleasure, and Self-Expression. Read the rest of this entry »

The publishing and writing schedule for Magpie Girl and Flock…as scribbled out during the kid’s gospel choir rehearsal last night. (Work where you can.)

I am on pins and needles waiting for my designer to upload the finalized version of our new endeavor – Flock with Magpie Girl. Flock is “a nesting place for restless souls” with lots of courses for spiritual nurture, all offered at one monthly price. Think of it as a spa for your soul! The bonus to this method is that it creates an on-going place for a soultribe to gather, and it allows for the kind of teaching-learning process I so adore. We can really fill up the giant pool of wisdom with the Flock!

I like knowing how artists and other creative people work. If you are intrigued by that too, here’s a peek into the process of starting our Flock.

Initially Flock started out as an idea for two Ecourses. But as I worked through 31 Days to A Better Blog and started on the elevator pitches for my Ecourses, I realized what I really wanted was an ongoing on-line soultribe. I’d already done some vocational work with my amazing life coach, Jena Strong, and knew that community building was a skill I’d been practicing for a long time. The short-term nature of Ecourses wouldn’t scratch my community building itch. Since reading Chris Guillebeau’s Art + Money, I had been thinking about opening a membership site. But I had allowed  the outside voices of Conventional Wisdom and Fear to negate my intuitive pull towards that option. As I embraced the membership site as a viable choice, things started moving into place.

Jennifer McGuiggan helped me move through the wheel of work, which made me realize I needed a partner to get through the bottom half of the wheel – the execution half. So I scraped my money together and hired Neil Sittler of Stickflower Design to help me get a website ready. This was important because my work with Jena had already shown me that “beauty” was high on my list of guiding values, and that if I didn’t have a esthetically pleasing site, I wouldn’t be able to tap into the right energy to sustain a long-term project such as an online soulcare community.

While Neil worked on the site, soulsisters Lisa Alexander and Jamie Ridler coached me on values-based pricing, so that I would not consider my pattern of chronically under-charging. I was still struggling with setting a price that truly reflected the value of my work, when Jen Lemen suggested I do muscle testing to connect with my inner wisdom on the matter. After a truly amazing round of muscle testing with my daughter Eden, I finally came to a place of  confidence with my pricing choices.

I also decided to face my fear of asking for help so I asked a few soulcare providers I know and adore to come on board as expert advisers for Flock. And while I cannot announce who quite yet, I’m happy to say that my dream team of (therapist, life coach, and dream analyst and more) is starting to come together for our “Ask the Experts” column.

Finally, yesterday I sat down and wrote out a schedule of what I’m going to be posting each day both at Magpie Girl and at Flock, and what day I’d have to write it in order to get it posted professionally, on time, and well-edited. Because my health is a bit of a crap shoot, I included a day to write “stockpiled” posts so I have something to keep the goodness flowing when chronic pain sets me back for awhile.

Now I’m just waiting for the last odds and ends to get done on the website, and before Christmas we will have sign ups ready for our New Year’s launch! (Join my mailing list for a grand opening discount.)

As I write this post I realize once again how blessed I am to have this (almost entirely virtual) community around me. Those mentioned here, and others as well, helped me get past my sticking points and uncover the “ah ha” moments I needed to get through this process. I’m also struck by how Jen Lemen’s advice to “write to the tribe you’re starting to form”; and my mentor Ed Cook’s adage “you always preach the sermons you need to hear,” have both been proven true. All of the links embeded in this story were written by myself, or by Magpie Girl guests,  because I needed to hear them, and so did my tribe. Now I can see them as the work The Muse and The Universe were doing to get us where we need to be — that is,  together.

So thanks you so much, dear Magpie Girl reader, for being a part of this process. Your comments and visits have encouraged me more than I can say. I cannot wait until we are all gathered together in our Flock! Thanks for being here.

Much Warmth,

Rachelle

As many of you know, I am in deep blog crush with Susannah Conway. Not only did I gain many riches from her magically popular Unravelling courses, but she also keeps me company here on the other side of the pond as we Twitter our day away. I think you two should meet!

But before I let Susannah introduce herself, let me pontificate a little about the bounty that comes from her talented eye.

A gift of Susannah’s photographylet’s the receiver:

-step back in time.
-bring back gentility.
-capture the pretty.
-sigh a little.

Susannah’s photos-and-journal Unravelling courses help you:

-see who you are from the toes up.
-cherish your favorite things.
-honor your connections.
-feel accomplished.

What treasured gifts from a dreamy lady! Friends, meet Susannah Conway…

Artist’s Statement

Susannah Conway is a photographer, writer and the creator of the Unravelling e-courses; she is also a Polaroid obsessive, an extroverted introvert and a fake blonde. She spent many years as a fashion editor and freelance journalist in London, and enjoyed attending fashion shows because she liked to watch the people in the audience. In 2005 her partner died from a sudden heart attack and her entire world crumbled. She returned to the south coast to heal in solitude, and over the years has rediscovered her true calling though her passion for photography and writing. She now shares her wisdom with people around the world via her blog, Ink on my fingers, and her e-courses, and is currently writing her first book. She is proud to call herself a ‘family of one’ and likes travelling to far-off lands. Her superpowers are absolute truth-telling and shining the light.  She remains a work-in-progress… always.

Meet April Vega, one part of the trio that is Harp 46. April and I met when she and the band spent a year in Seattle exploring the Pacific Northwest.  Listening to April play her Celtic harp while our soulcare community lay blissfully on the floor is one of my all-time favorite memories of our house on Densmore street is. True, the harp is a lilting and peaceful instrument; but it’s April’s presence as a musician that brings relaxation and inspiration to every musical moment.

One of my favorite holiday albums is Harp 56’s Angels Among Us available to preview and for purchase at CD Baby, orITunes. (Don’t miss it, it’s amazing!)  And now April, along with her husband Nuc and brother-in-law Posido, have released an intriguing new album, Entanglement — a blend of world rhythms to enliven you day. I find  it to be energizing without being frantic — a rare gem for your listening pleasure.

In this Monday’s guest post, April talks about living the creative life when baby makes three, and how the collaborative process works for the band as they write new music. I love what she has to say about how parenting while creating focuses your vision, and how sometimes you have to change a project mid-stream when The Muse decides to take it another way. Here’s April…

I’ve always loved how song emerge out of your jam sessions together. How would you describe the process of writing a new songs together?
      
Harp 46 is as collaborative as it gets, artistically speaking.  It’s funny, this album actually started out as an idea that I had to finally do a solo album.  You know, I wanted to make the voice totally my own, have complete artistic control, really let myself go a little crazy.  But as I started writing the songs, and performing them in front of small cafe-type audiences, I couldn’t help but either hear other parts for Nuc and Posido; or hear weaknesses in the songs that I knew my rhythm section would be able to strengthen up.  I guess it just wasn’t the right time for a solo album!

Our writing process varies.  Some of the songs on this album, maybe half, were little song-zygotes that I composed during my son’s nap time.  I’d bring them to rehearsal and they would, inevitably, become more complex (and therefore more interesting).  The rest were just born out of extended jam sessions, where one of us would start playing a little snippet – maybe just a couple measures of music – and then we’d just follow the music and see where it led us.  That’s very much our style – just using our ears as a guide to write music.

Nuc and Posido have this compositional approach to things – an approach that is both endearing and maddening – where they like to have one piece of a song that sounds really good, and then they try to find the most odd, incompatible thing they can play either superimposed on it, or right next to it.  They do that during rehearsals, and then I’ll generally state my opinion of the sound (not usually positive) and then we just work on getting that odd piece of the puzzle to fit in.  It’s a little confrontational, actually. So we have a lot of that mixture-exploration in all our music – a gospel beat under a Celtic jig, for example, or a hip-hop bass line that emerges from a middle-eastern sounding tune.  Eventually we play with it and it works.  I guess that’s how we create our own little challenges to overcome!

I’ve been listening to your music for a long time now, and it’s a delight to see your work evolving as an artist. How does this album vary from your previous work?

You know, I wasn’t expecting this, but when we first heard the album after being in the studio for a few days, I was just knocked out by how mature it sounded.  Not “mature” like, old lady music, but just that the music had so much more depth and intricacy than our previous albums.  I’m not saying I didn’t like our earlier work – I really do like it all – but this album is just a different step for us.  For one thing, the compositions are much more complex.  There is also clearly a lot of improvisational “conversation” going on between us – it’s much more akin to how we sound in a live concert situation, I think, when we are just letting loose and having fun with the music.  I had no idea it was going to sound like that, by the way.  Sometimes the microphones hear a lot better than our own ears!

How has your creative process changed and adapted now that you and Nuc are parents?

Oh, it is just so much more difficult.  I’m sure that won’t surprise you or any of your readers!  I don’t even know how we got the thing done, to tell you the truth.  It’s half miracle.  We had babysitters galore for a few weeks when we were in the studio.  We tried to rehearse after our son’s bedtime (he can sleep through anything) but sometimes needed those day-long rehearsals too… so much juggling.  And now, with album promo on the front-burner, let me tell you, it is impossible and I’m not doing enough of anything.  My immune system is taking a major beatdown.  All of this used to be so enlivening for me and now it is just crushing me!  Amazing how much work those little people require.

I guess if there’s one positive influence on my creative process it would be that I have more ability to just sit down and get it done.  Time is such a commodity, as any parent will tell you.  I don’t have time to meander through thoughts and ideas – although that kind of time may very well be beneficial to me! – so there were several times with this album, particularly in the beginning stages, where I would sit down with the harp and just kind of force myself to spit something out.  Good, bad, mediocre – didn’t matter.  That’s another benefit of the collaborative nature of a band – I could take something half-baked to rehearsal and we could fix it up and make it sound good.  I guess having a kid around made me a lot more dependent on the rest of the band, which seems to mirror life in general – I know I’ve certainly become a lot more dependent on practically everything in our community now that I’m a parent.

If you were the virtual DJ feature on my Zune, what three songs/artists would you mix into a playlist with this track?

Hmmm.  I would probably go with Lossby Al Petteway and Amy White , Kothbiroby Ayub Ogada (this is on the Constant Gardener soundtrack), and Jump!by Van Halen… but that’s just because I dig Van Halen :)

You can find April’s music at the Harp 46 website. Give someone you love the gift of music this season! Thanks for being here.

L’Orangerie, built specifically for Monet’s last great work, his waterlilies series.

Paul and I both love Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. We’ve traveled the world to worship at Impressionists Temples: The Getty Museum, our Mecca in Los Angeles. The Art Institute in Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Even the tiny Impressionist room in the Glyptotek in Copenhagen, with a painting by Renoir of our neighborhood park. And now, at long last, the Musee d’Orsay and L’Orangerie in Paris.

As a teenager I would see posters and calendars full of pastel reproductions of Monet’s waterlilies or Van Gogh’s sunflowers and think, “Ick. Too pretty.” Then I went to the Art Institute of Chicago, walked into the enormous Impressionist wing, and nearly fell to my knees. The impact of those pieces in real life, the depth of the paint strokes, the vibrations of the color — there’s no way to reproduce it. No way at all.

The more I’ve learned about the Impressionists–and perhaps even more so, the post-Impressionists– the more I’ve come to feel a kinship with them.  Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and dear, broken Vincent Van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Latrec: I adore them all. I feel if I could meet them today we would be like siblings: all bickering and laughing: remembering and reaching. These painters, who we now see as little more than producers of decorative posters, were once brave, bold radicals.

In the last 1800’s, there were two ways to succeed as artists: show in the Salon, or show in the Academy. Both French institutions presented perfectly executed works of art. And, both institutions insisted there was only one way to create and present said art. “Real” art, said the Institution, was neo-classical art. These acceptable pieces depicted the same set of myths and Bible stories, all portrayed with familiar, formulaic precision. It was pretty, perfected, and above all tame.

The Impressionists saw another way, craved another way. Truth came at them from odd angles, and they wanted to express the impressions reality made upon them. But the Academy and the Salon had no room for exploration. The new work was considered ugly, inappropriate, and misconstrued. So the new Impressionists broke away. They left paying jobs and secure posts. They gave up the professional credentials and the assured success that  came with membership in the Institution. They risked everything. The Impressionists were reformers — not to make a name for themselves — but because it was the only way to be themselves. 

Take for instance Edgar Degas, a privileged child from a family of wealthy bankers, who painted successfully in the Academic style — until he met the Impressionists. Or Edouard Manet, formally trained and accepted into the Salon, who threw his “opportunities” aside and instead surrounded himself with artists experimenting in new techniques. Or my favorite, Vincent Van Gogh, a seminary student with a guaranteed career in the church, who left it behind to follow the deep pull art, truth, and post-impressionism had on his heart.

I suppose by now you are seeing the parallels that draw me to these rebellious souls. I too had a career which was controlled by two great institutions — the Catholic and the Protestant. I too was set up for immenent success within that system. I too fell in with a crowd of outliers. I too left it all behind to follow a pull towards something “post.” (In this case, post-modernism as opposed to post-impressionism.) Like Van Gogh I battle depression. Like Toulouse-Latrec I work around a broken body. Like Monet I tend to circle around the same source material over and over again.

These are my kinsmen, these heretics we. And in their stories I find comfort.

What great artists are your withmates? Who in history partners you on your journey? Do tell in the comments below. 

Stayed tune for my next Post-Impressionist post: Vincent Van Gogh and The Terrible Need. Join the mailing list or follow me on Twitter and you won’t miss a thing. Thank you for being here!

I feel a little hesitant to write about Rowena Murillo’s work, because I feel quite unsure about how to describe how it effects me. I’ve been thinking about this the last few days, and the only thing I can come up with is that Rowen is so in it. She doesn’t stand outside her work and create what she thinks will sell, or even what she thinks people might need. Instead she creates what is present. And you know what? It is exactly what people — at least what this person, needs.

I think part of it is that Rowena has a naturally perfected balance of  the show and the tell. She doesn’t  show us too little, making it impossible for us to get at the meaning. And she doesn’t tell it too us to straight, which would make us resistant to the obviousness of the message. Instead she gives us just enough direction to get us into the rabbit hole, and the pull of wonder takes us the rest of the way.

Speaking of rabbit holes, don’t miss what Rowena is doing on her blog right now — a new series of Flying Girls as an altered book, rooted firmly in the words of Miss Alice of Wonderland. And as you do your holiday shopping, please remember her well-stocked Etsy shop with affordable prints.

Someday I will have a datebook with page after page of Rowena’s goodness. Someday I will have a painting as large as my living room wall of  Flying Girl Swims, or Explore Undiscovered Lands. Someday we will share opposite sides of a second-hand table, painted red, and make wonders. But until that day, I think we all should say a little “hallelujah” for the way Rowena and her Flying Girls help us live in our own skin. Can I get an “Amen?”

Artist’s Statement: Rowena Murillo

 ”I almost never know what I am going to paint until I put the brush to the paper.  Or perhaps I have an idea of where to start, but the process of creating transforms the concept, the idea, and the artist.

Visions don’t come real. Accidents detour the plan. Unexpected happenings change the goal. Synchronicity picks the path.  But I keep going. I keep looking at what I have and seeing what I could have.  I am guided by the process. 

My philosophy on life is much the same– follow the serendipity and acknowledge the beauty, and through that, find meaning.”

Sometime Twitter yields real treasures. Such is the case of Naoko Stoop, a beautiful artist I discovered via a kind tweet. Naoko’s beautiful images transport me to magical world. Handcrafted scrapbooking goodness combined with fine draftsmanship make each image a delight to the eye. After viewing this slideshow of her work, I feel like I’ve been submerged in a warm bath.

Naoko has beautiful prints for sale on line, as well as perfect, understated hoilday greeting cards. You can find her at ther site Brown Paper Bag, or at her Etsy shop. And you can learn more about this clever artist in her statement below. Thank you Naoko, for bringing warmth and whimsy to our winter days!

Artist’s Statement: Naoko Stoop

Hello, I am Naoko Stoop, a self taught artist, based in Brooklyn NY. I love to read fairy tales from all over the world, and live in a magical world myself. 

Since I was little, I was fascinated with creating things on used paper: old books, newspapers, magazines, wrapping paper, letters and envelops.

My “Brown Paper Bag Collection” came from this fascination. I use recycled folded brown paperbags as my canvas. They have already had a sense of purpose in their previous forms. It is like detatching them from their old roles and combining with my mischievous drawings to create something new form something old. After a lot of experiments with paper and various inks, I have established a way to draw on used paper bags without losing the color and texture of the medium.

I also draw a little girl with a red knit cap. This series is playful and cheerful with colorful paint on wood panels.  She is not someone but she is everyone. She is a childhood image that everyone has in her or his mind. I am trying to create images that project the beauty in life.

Please visit Naoko Stoop at her website and her online shop. Tell her Magpie Girl sent you!