Studio L I B E R T I N Y

Studio L I B E R T I N Y

Artist/Designer Thomaz Libertiny offers a framework and collaborates with hundreds of bees who produce an honeycomb amphora. I love the idea of collaborating with the natural world, though I'm not sure the bees had a choice to be there or not. As the process was repeated, each successive project revealed variations on the design.

Families Gather for Kim John Payne

I sat with Kate in the Middle School Auditorium on this cool, rainy, Pacific Northwest evening.

South Whidbey Island parents turned out to hear consultant Kim John Payne this evening. He brought a gentle, genuine tone to navigating some of the challenges with our young ones. After a historical overview noting how the pendulum swings over the decades for parenting fads, Kim demonstrated with humor.......and always respect..........how to shift the dynamics that lead to challenging behaviors.

Kim invited a simulated discussion with Adam, a Waldorf father/parent coordinator, to model how to manage a child's typical bid for attention while parents are conversing. He demonstrated how to stay invested in the conversation while signaling "stop" to the child, then breaking eye contact and giving a clear message that a choice for "a NOW " answer will always be "NOW without the W." Clever...make them think! But clearly, the cues would be taught at an earlier time, because "in our family we don't interrupt." Teach teamwork as part of family values. Kim John Payne designed a three-fold model that involved teaching to willing, feeling and thinking capacities of our young ones.

Check out his site: www.thechildtoday.com. I'll be adding more...................

Working Definitions

Grace:

*Seemingly effortless beauty, care, form

*Honor, Refinement

*Gentleness freely given

*Divine love

Meridian:

*Zenith, highest point

*Channel through which energy flows

*A Great Circle encompassing wholeness

*Highest point of development

G-3 Residency

Taking a Ferry to School

See that land mass across the Puget Sound? That's the Olympic Peninsula, home of a couple of temperate rainforests, beaches that touch the Pacific, and Port Townsend. A cluster of us gather to work on an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts with the west coast cohort of Vermont's Goddard College. The residency is held at Centrum campus on the grounds of old Ft. Worden.

I take the Keystone ferry from west Whidbey Island to Pt. Townsend. Upon arrival the last February, eagles were circling our quarters. We live in the old non-commissioned officers houses. There was a full moon. Deer were grazing on the green between our residences and where classes are held. Faculty, students and guest artists offer seminars during the eight days. The planetary weather will provide a lunar eclipse and full moon as we settle in for the week of classes, set up the "Considered Spaces" gallery, and begin designing study plans. I think of it as a school for nomads or a theatre. You arrive and set up, and then you strike the set and go home to work all semester.

Each semester has a focus. We have completed Person, Place and Practice. We have just wrapped up Liminal Spaces. Now we begin Sustainability and Social Justice: Our Presence in the World. I need to get back to packing!

Changing Patterns

Seems to be a shift calling for a new formation. I will watch for the Perseids meteor shower after 2am on the 12th. Shooting stars are always a wonderful show, encouraging us to move in new ways or into new territory. Here's to the spiral of life!

Creative Harvest of Lughnasadh, Lammas, First Harvest

August opened with a new moon in Leo. Now is the time for creativity (isn't it always time?) and confidence. Grace and gratitude cushion the path. The birds are having a convention in the cherry tree in the garden. They are harvesting the little bing cherries. A mother robin feeds her young one - who, with its speckled breast, is as big as she is. It stands on the walkway flapping its wings, nagging its mama with an open beak. Some intergenerational gesturing is universal! Oregon grape, filbert, and crocosmia lend autumn color. I made Lammas bread for art group that met at the end of a winding road that turned to gravel and then to mud and back to solid ground.