Free Art Making at the Harmony Within Exhibition
This project is a collaboration with Crestline Creatrix Matrix and The 6,000 Circle Project
Reflection written by Beth Benson of Crestline Creatrix Matrix
Some to the deepest joys of my life have come from following the Transformative Art trails that emanate out of my MA Degree pursuits as hosted by the School of Arts & Consciousness that once hosted the degree. Colleagues met in that hallway, who graduated before and with me, remain my steadfast collaborators working to share some of what we learned together there, in their own projects and ways and movement waves that waft with the ideas, processes and permissions that permeated our work learning about Art & Healing.
For all the years since that degree pursuit, I’ve remained a steadfast collaborator with Art Break Day and Art is Moving–arriving, sometimes, to host and hold those events in various cities, and, when we couldn’t meet in person in the COVID years, still conspiring on line and in our ongoing conversations we share on how to make art free–or free the art–or make the intelligence and beauty alive in all people, surfacing as the visible unconscious wisdom available when grown folx play with art materials.
For the second year in a row, now, in collaboration with Lisa Rasmussen, MFA, co-founder of Art is Moving and partnering with West Hollywood’s Plummer Park through an affiliation with Lark Gallery, we’ve, together with Art is Moving, offered the making tables and supplies to enhance the exhibition experience for last year’s Art of Wellness and this year’s Harmony Within. Both exhibitions held in the courtyard outside the long hall, we’ve laid out the paints and the water and the brushes and the markers and the stickers and the invitation to joy, and we’ve watched what folx have done with it.
This, though often offered for children, is intended for the artists in the exhibition, the musicians bringing the concert, their partners, families and friends–in short, the grown people who haven’t sat down without their egos to PLAY for awhile. West Hollywood is an interesting place to consider this–as all the matrixed industries of film and tv and music and the art that fuels them all is, in fact, often how people in attendance make their livings, and that adds some layer of complexity and value to the public play–for two years in a row, “Maestro” has made masterpieces saved to auction for Armenian Relief Efforts.
This year, we offered watercolor paper circles for people to use as the base layer of their masterpieces. We did this, in part, to share in the brilliance started by another alum collaboration originating in the hallways of the Transformative Arts experience in Berkeley, circa 2008-12. The #the6000circleproject is a global collaboration of works made and offered to celebrate the divine feminine. Some circles were treasured and taken home, and some add to the collection of circles that will flow into our next exhibition offering a spotlight on this project and other works by the Transformative Arts Alumni we continue to expand with in reverberating circles of continued impact and joy.
Founder of Crestline Creatrix Matrix
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