Monday, January 31, 2011

connections

it came to me when i was scribbling madness onto my morning pages. {which is the Reader's Digest version of how it came about...it was actually a week-long battle with Great Cosmic Forces and my penchant for being a bit slow at times.}

the even shorter version is i've realized this unschooling journey is exactly the same as our journey to art. well, it's mostly my journey to art -- children are born artists -- so says Picasso. and i happen to believe him.

i have learned that in opening ourselves to the creative source....we open ourselves to a place of infinite possibility.

kind of like unschooling

i was tidying up today and i came across a pile of Savannah's GIANT drawings. she creates complex scenes of fantastical creatures on the giant vellum Bristol that i buy for my big paintings.  and then she drops them in a heap in the hallway to be recycled.

occasionally there's one she loves and decides to tape it to her wall. or she'll gift one to one of us. but otherwise, she's done. in the moment, they are her Masterpieces; while she's working on them, they are precious. once they're finished  though, and she's shared the story behind them, she can set them aside and move onto the next thing.

assemblage of found objects {raiding the recycling bin} ~ Savannah

she is completely disengaged from the product*. it's all about the process.

kind of like unschooling 


so yeah, i'm done looking in other places for our extraordinary. it's clearly right here under my nose.

and so the drumming finds a rhythm.....and our haze of paint and poetry isn't such a mad idea after all.


*my next post will illustrate that this isn't always the case...;)

5 comments:

  1. Sometimes the more we think about things, the more uninspired or unproductive we get. I do love the process of "unschooling." That's the reason I stopped overanalyzing. I hope you had a great weekend, Mel. n

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  2. so much the truth there, mice -- we can easily get caught up in the thinking about things instead of just getting on with it! lol

    xo

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  3. I always think of it like this, "Do it like you wrote it."
    Because you are.

    You know? It's no one else's life, so do it.

    :) Empowered.

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  4. I knew I loved that kiddo for a reason - other than her apparent fabulousity - that is EXACTLY how I work, too.

    I go go go go gadget until it's done. And then - it's done. This is why I have so little of my own work. This is why I have no real active interest in publication. This is why I don't do the gallery thing. I have boxes of novels - completed - that are complete and done with. I can count the number of (my own) paintings still in my possesion. It's all about the doing. And then doing some more.

    And more.

    And moving on. And moving forward.

    But then again, I am uneducated anyway. Maybe I just don't know better...

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  5. Hooray! So pleased you have found the answer to your soul searching. I am also very selfishly pleased to see you blogging again, I do love to read your posts! We have done some soul searching here toom, re. our home schooling (or unschooling) journey, and have come to the conclusion that actually the way that we have always plodded along works best for us and we have returned to treading that path. I look forward to reading your next post!

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