Creative Consulting

Featuring my first ever journalling prompt at the end!

It’s another incredibly hot day in Edmonton. I carry a heavy, handmade basket down the street to Labo Coffee. The basket overflows with art supplies: scissors, glue, coloured paper, magazines, pastels, pencil crayons, felt-tip markers, etc. I don’t feel as nervous as I do for music performances, so I’m grateful. I remind myself of why I’m doing this.

Since graduating from art school, I find it so difficult to maintain a creative social network. School provides a safety net and tons of support like critiques from professionals and studio space for all-nighters and close conversations. Being surrounded by other artists made me feel completely at home — safe, like I could be as weird and outrageous as I wanted to be. In fact, it was celebrated. I recall moving freely from the editing lab, to clay, to music, to cooking for my friends in the studio kitchen… But those dreamy days are for another blog post … or youtube video!? 😉
I am trying re-create this sweet spot of creativity, safety, and play for us all.
The artist mixer series is a place to start – in a casual setting, over coffee and crafts.

People need third spaces. This event offered quiet parallel play in community without judgement or pressure. A place to access creativity without the pressures of perfectionism or a sellable product. Everything we made was gifted and traded.

Art-making can be simple and quick with accessible materials. Anyone can participate; there is no prerequisite to making art. Sometimes I hear people say, “I’m not a real artist,” but there are no real artists. There are just people and scribbles and doodles and experiments. No one needs to prove themselves here.

I wish I asked my guests how they felt before and after making artist trading cards. To me, people were more relaxed, happy, and excited to share something they made in a tangible way. We aren’t sharing an instagram post for friends to like and for strangers to peruse. We made real-life ephemeral art that we will likely never see again!

What would you like to do at the next event?

Ideas for future themes and activities:

• BAD ART
• Exquisite corpse
• Zine
• Telephone pictionary
• Blind contour portraits and still-lives
• Writing prompts
• Collab on a new poster for next season of Artist Mixers
  

The first EVER journalling prompt from me to you :

Do you think you have an artistic style? How did you find your style?

This Blog was written in 1 hour without the use of A.I.