My Creative Weekend So Far: FYV and Passport to Art

It's a long weekend here in the United States, and I'm taking the opportunity to get some creative play time. On Friday, I prepared an art journal for Shimelle's Learn Something New Everyday class by applying gesso to its 25 pages! I also started planning the pages to finish my Passport to Art altered book which I started in July in the free class offered by Bernice. To help me along the way, I checked in with the Find Your Voice Graduation Party hosted by Kristin.  The Graduation Party is full of challenges and inspiration, and I'm happy to report that I finished my altered book!  The final page is above. The journaling reads:
 "'People don't take trips.  Trips take people.' John Steinbeck. 
My life - my identity- who I am has been shaped by travel . . . the trips I took as a child, the ones in high school, trips with Paul, trips with family all have become a part of me and how I approach life. I hope to never stop traveling and making art."
Tonight I want to share three of the pages I made in conjunction with challenges at the Graduation Party. I'll be sure to share the rest of my pages sometime on my blog, and I'm hoping to find a way to show the book as a whole.

This page was made in conjunction with Challenge #5 to use story outline cards. The card was really helpful because there was a lot that I wanted to communicate in this page which was about the trip I took to Portmeirion, a village in Wales which had been on my wish list since I saw the PBS show The Prisoner, back in high school. I wanted to communicate a little about the village, a bit about its connection to the TV show and also tell the story of the ordeal the journey turned into when Clara and I took a train that we thought was going to the town but ended up over ten miles away.  The bicycle and #9 are from the TV show; the flowers and butterfly (and background picture) represent Portmeirion china and the village; the journaling and quote ("Even with the best of maps and instruments we can never fully chart our journeys.") capture the flavor of our trip (which included the train, a very local bus, and a long hike).

This page as made in conjunction with the color challenge (challenge #4). I was going to do a lot more journaling, but I think by focusing on the colors, I ended up with a stronger page which communicates what I wanted to about our love of water-y vacations.

And, finally, a page I was really struggling with about the attitude we take toward traveling.  My creative block was solved when I turned to challenge #1 (the quote challenge) and decided to tell my story mainly through quotes (with a little journaling thrown in). The quotes do a better job of explaining than I could, I think.  Here are my four quotes:
"A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it." John Steinbeck
"Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God." Kurt Vonnegut
"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." Martin Buber
"He who would travel happily must travel light." Antoine de St. Expery.
My journaling reads "We travel light by being patient, keeping our expectations in check and being nimble and light on our feet, as plans inevitably change. You can't control things - so just relax and go with the flow."
Tonight I plan to finish reading the Find Your Voice lessons (I stopped about half-way through), work on the other challenges for the Graduation Party, and check in on all the wonderful links in the Scavenger Hunt Link-Up from yesterday.  The link will be open until the end of September, so feel free to stop by if you haven't already.
Tomorrow, I'm going to work on some backgrounds for my LSNE art journal and start drawing faces in it. Thank you everyone who's linked up with the scavenger hunt, to Bernice for the Passport to Art class and to Kristin for the Find Your Voice class! Let me leave you all with one more quote from the layout at the top of today's post:
"I haven't been everywhere but it is on my list." Susan Sontag

FYV/PTA: Telling Difficult Stories

One of the goals I set in taking the Find Your Voice workshop was to find a way to tell difficult stories - the stories of times where I felt like crying or where I felt like my world was falling apart. Once I decided that I would use the workshop to explore the possibility of writing a memoir of my life during the last year, it became even more imperative to try to find both the courage and a style for telling difficult stories. It's hard (kindof like poking at a painful wound and then sharing the experience), and I'm not sure I will get there by the end of the eight week workshop.
Last week, though, I decided to try poetry as a first step in getting something on paper about a difficult time. And it worked. I'll post the poem I wrote later this summer. I promise. Once I work up the courage for that.
In the meantime, I was contemplating the prompt for Day 13 of Passport to Art which is about confronting hardships, and I decided to write a poem about what happened when my mom passed away during my summer travels. This week in Find Your Voice, the lesson is about trying different design styles. I decided to emulate the design style of Sian Fair of From High in the Sky (here's a sample of her work) and Julie Kirk of Notes on Paper (for example, this art journal page). Both tend to use printed text and a lot more white space than I do - they're also masters of clustered embellishments.
I wrote a poem and designed my page, with lots of white space and printed text (not a handwritten item in sight!).  I like how it came out and even though I haven't been able to write a full prose version of either this difficult time or the one I worked on last week, I feel like these poems are stepping stones to being able to tell the stories I want to.
Here's my poem:

When mom passed away
I wasn't there
I was
in Dublin.
Weeks before 
I had said my good-byes
I knew it wouldn't be long
But still
I left.
I returned home for the funeral
to say more good-byes
And then 
I left
for London
when mom passed away.

I welcome any input you have on telling difficult stories.

A Balalaika Story told Two Crafty Ways (FYV and PTA)

For Week #4 of the Find Your Voice Workshop, one of the creative challenges was to tell the same story in two different crafty ways. I chose to work on a story about getting lost along the Danube Bend when we took a day trip out of Budapest, Hungary.  I had already created this scrapbook page which has basic journaling: "After touring Visegrad, we took the bus to Szentendre. Unfortunately, we got off five stops too soon and had to walk a long way. Luckily, Szentendre was cute and relaxing when we arrived, and the boat trip to Budapest was lovely." Here's the page in in its two page spread:

For my altered book page (created as part of my book for the Passport to Art class, based on the challenge for Day #9 which was about overcoming difficult things and what was learned in hindsight), I painted over part of a picture in my book, collaged on some map paper and a copy of the same tower photo used above, and then added rock candy crackle paint over the trees and tower:

I tore the facing page, added some paint, map paper and embellishments, then told the sane story in a totally different way:
"Damn it!" We got off the bus too early.
"How early?"
"I have no idea."
"I thought it would be easy to tell when we got to Szentendre."
[It wasn't.]
Now we're wandering through the Hungarian countryside, hoping to stumble upon our destination.
It's hot.
[And muggy.]
"Just keep walking and stop complaining."
Everybody thinks it's my fault.
"If we stay along the road, we won't get lost."
"What's that noise? It sounds like balalaikas."
"Oh my gosh, they're playing balalaikas!"
"What a cute town."
"Yes, boys, you can sit in the shade and play cards."
[And eat ice cream. Or drink beer.]
"Yes, girls, we can go shopping."
Szentendre, Hungary
The moral of the story is written along the side of the page: 
A week later, people only remembered the balalaikas and good times . . .
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I think the second version of the story does a better job of capturing the emotions of the day and the lesson I learned (no one except for me remembered the bad part of the day, so I should let go of the guilt). As such, it works really well in my altered book about travel and the lessons learned. I think for scrapbooking, it would be unusual for me to incorporate anything other than basic journaling. I'm not sure why; it's just the way I do things. Do any of you incorporate unusual journaling in your scrapbooks?

FYV: A Story in Photos told 3 Ways

Take 1:

Scavenger Hunt Item #9: Something out of place

A dog. On a piano. On a bluff overlooking the ocean.

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Take 2:

Artist Mauro Ffortissimo's latest art installation. He has placed twelve pianos in various places along the Coastside. He encourages people to play the pianos and also documents the decay of the pianos over time. When I saw this piano, I thought it was perfect for the 2013 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt item #9: someone or something that is clearly out of place or doesn't belong. You can read more about the sunset piano project here. 

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Take 3:

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Lesson #4 in Find Your Voice is about experimenting with different story telling styles.  One of the creative prompts asks us to tell the same story in photographs a number of different ways by using different story telling styles.  Yesterday, I took Gypsy with me to take a photograph for the Photography Scavenger Hunt, and the photos I took lent themselves well to this assignment.

I really like Take 1. It is slightly different than what I would typically do for my blog. It leaves a lot to the viewer's imagination to figure out what is going on. It's kindof funny, and it's a well-composed interesting photograph. 

Take 2 is more journalistic and something that would be very typical for my blog. I made a collage in picmonkey and added text about why there is a piano on the coastal bluff.

Take 3 is a totally different style for me. I made a comic strip and told the story from Gypsy's point of view. I added the comic bubbles and text and made the collage in picmonkey.

So, which version is your favorite?

These photographs make me happy because . . .

I selected this series of photographs for the Week 3 assignment in the Find Your Voice workshop I'm taking which asked for a group of photos which make you happy and a list of five reasons that they make you happy. This is a series of photographs taken from the dugout at a baseball game.  Why do they make me happy?
1. They capture moments that are often invisible to baseball fans.
2. They capture the combination of boredom and joy experienced by players in the dugout during a baseball game.
3. They are unposed and authentic.
4.  Henry's shoes in the first one and his smile in the last one.
5. They border on photojournalism.
I recently posted a craft project (an altered book page) and a list of five reasons it made me happy. It is interesting to me that there is virtually no overlap between the lists! The only reason found on both lists is that they tell a story that I was happy to have record.  There's one more assignment left to do (write a story that makes you happy and list five reasons). I've decided what I want to write about (a travel story). I can't wait to see what similarities (if any) exist between my lists at that point. Do you think your photography makes you happy for reasons that are different from your other artistic pursuits?

The Story Behind the Story (Find Your Voice Lesson 2)

May 3, 2013
Cole: A Home Run Story

Rinda: A Photographer's Story
I've been very lazy about taking photographs this baseball season. For most games, I've left my camera at home or stayed in my bleacher seat watching the game instead of getting up and prowling the base paths or perching behind the backstop to capture the boys. My friend, Becky Ruppel, has made it easy for me to do this because she has been busy photographing the team and doing a spectacular job. I've missed many games because of work and other family commitments, as well. So, today, I was determined to bring my camera and take some photographs. And, oh my, did I get lucky!!! The weather and light were beautiful. The open dugout gave me a great vantage point. And the boys obliged by having one of their best games ever. The highlight? Being there to document every moment of Cole's home run. From the sweet swing, to watching the ball sail out, to the joy of rounding the bases and the final celebration with his team mates. This is why I love sports photography.
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This post was prepared for Week 2 of the Find Your Voice Storytelling Workshop. The assignment called for three different stories (one craft based - my Beijing adventure; one writing based - my fire engine story; and one photography based - today's post). For each one, I was to incorporate myself in the story or use the story to show something about who I am as a person.  In reviewing my posts, I think they each show something different about who I am (an adventurer, a civil rights advocate and a sports photographer). I'm sure they show some similarities as well, but I still have to figure out what those are! Any insights are welcome. 

My Beijing Adventure (FYV and PTA)

I'm really enjoying two FREE online classes I'm taking this month: Passport to Art and Find Your Voice. The altered book page above combines assignments from both classes. In PTA, the Day 2 prompt was about creating a passport and answering a question about whether you are adventurous when traveling or prefer a scheduled trip. The FYV assignment called for a creative project and story that showed something about who you are. 
This page has a pocket for storing my passport. You can see the inside of my passport which features some basic information about me and a Psalm. One of its lines has been stuck in my head lately: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made."  The left hand page has a picture of a mural in San Francisco and some hand-journaled quotes about adventure. The right hand page lists some of the many places I have traveled and proclaims "I am an Adventurer! I am fearfully and wonderfully made!" On the right hand side, I decided to write about an adventure I had while in Beijing. I could only fit a condensed version of the story, but here's the full version for your enjoyment: 

My Beijing Adventure 

In 1994, my best friend Molly and her family moved to Hong Kong for a year. I went to visit, and during my stay, Molly and I went up to Beijing, China for a short week. At the time, Americans could only go if they booked as part of a tour, although we did have some freedom to wander on our own. We went with our tour group to see Tienanmen Square, The Forbidden City, The Imperial Palace, The Summer Palace and The Great Wall. Midway through our hike along the Great Wall, I stopped and purchased an official certificate boasting "I Climbed the Great Wall." The vendors had a huge round stamp, which they applied to  my certificate and wrote my name in Chinese characters.  Molly didn't want a certificate, instead she convinced the vendors to apply the stamp to her bicep like a tattoo. She refused to wash her arm that day, as she wanted her kids to see the stamp when we got back to Hong Kong.
On our last morning in Beijing, we had some free time to wander on our own. I was determined to go to see one of the museums in Tienanmen Square that I had read about in a guide book. We took the twenty minute cab ride from our hotel to the Square, planning to get back to the hotel in plenty of time to meet our tour group and head to the airport just after lunch time. When we got to the Square, the police were out in force. Many were dressed in riot gear, and there were metal barriers blocking the entrances to many of the buildings.  Undeterred, I insisted to Molly that we go to the museum. We located it on our map and walked towards the building, which had a pair of armed soldiers and and several metal gates in front of it.  Optimistically, I held up my guidebook and pointed to the photograph of the museum.  One of the soldiers raised his hands in front of his face, brought them slowly together and said "Lopen."  
"It's open?" I asked.
"Lopen" he replied, again slowly moving his hands together like doors closing, not opening.  
I was about to ask again if it was "Open," when the other guard started talking excitedly and pointed at Molly's "tattoo."  They grabbed her arm and kept talking. We had the feeling they were asking us questions, but not speaking Mandarin, we really weren't sure. Molly tried explaining it was from the Great Wall, but they didn't seem to understand her. At some point, I said the magic word "Badaling," which is the town where we started our Great Wall tour. 
"Aaaah, Badaling. . . " one of the soldiers said, examining the stamp more closely. 
Then they laughed at us and moved their attention elsewhere. 
Molly looked like she wanted to hit me when I said in all seriousness, "I wonder if any of the museums on the Square are open."  She had clearly had enough of the Chinese police, and we decided to head back to our hotel.
We stood on the side of the road trying to hail a cab for about twenty minutes. Plenty of empty cabs rushed by, but none of them would stop for two American tourists now worrying about whether we would ever get back to the hotel in time to catch our flight.  
Finally, a cab stopped. We jumped in the back seat, showed him the business card for our hotel, and he took off. Just as quickly, he was pulled over by the Beijing police.  Were the police still following us? Had we done something wrong?  The driver and officer got into a long, heated conversation. The driver was pulling papers out of a box and showing them to the officer.
Molly glanced at me, pulled a wad of money out of her purse, put it on the seat and said, "let's go."
We jumped out of the cab and ran across the street. We raised our hands to hail a cab. Immediately, a cab stopped and we hopped in.  We got stuck in traffic on the way back to our hotel and arrived just in time to join the group as it headed to the airport.
On the flight back to Hong Kong, we tried to unravel what happened. The newspaper revealed that it was the fifth anniversary of the Tienanmen Square Uprising, which accounted for the strong show of force. We think the Police may have thought Molly's "tattoo" was a sign of protest. We now believe that we were trying to hail a cab in an unauthorized zone (or going in an unauthorized direction) and that the first cabbie got stopped for violating a traffic law.  We hope we left him enough in the back seat of the cab to cover his fine!

Finding my Voice in a Scavenger Hunt Photo

2013 Summertime Photography Scavenger Hunt Item #15: A Fire Truck or Police Car

As I was walking to work  the other day, I spied a fire engine and hurried to snap a photograph for the scavenger hunt I am hosting this summer.  If you look closely at this photograph (clicking on it to enlarge it might help), you will see that both the driver and officer sitting next to her are women. As they waved at me, I stopped to marvel at their presence in the engine. Suddenly, I heard a conversation behind me . . . two older women had also noticed the crew and were chatting about how unexpectedly wonderful it was to see female firefighters.

I smiled and thought back to an earlier time in my career. I thought about my friend Shauna and the work she had done as part of a group of civil rights lawyers to integrate the San Francisco Fire Department. I became friends with Shauna when we were both transitioning from legal practice to law school teaching. Today, I teach Employment Discrimination law. I am motivated by training the next generation of lawyers to go out and create more everyday miracles - like the one captured in my viewfinder.

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Lesson Two in the Find Your Voice Storytelling Workshop is all about examining who you are as a person and as a storyteller. There's a series of wonderfully revealing worksheets to fill out and three great creative prompts. I plan to complete the three prompts, each of which  deals with situating yourself within a story. Today, in response to one of the prompts, I have shared a short story about a recent event. Soon, I'll blog a photo essay (about a home run) and also an art journal page (about an adventure I had in Beijing).  
Doing the lessons for this class has made me consider the possibility of working on a memoir about my life in the last year. Our family has been through so much that I think there's a compelling story to be told. I am fairly confident about my skills as a writer and story teller, so I feel like I might be able to tell the story in a compelling way. I'm not completely sure about the undertaking; it would definitely push me outside my comfort zone (one of the goals of the workshop). If I do, I think I will set up a private blog and start writing chapters there. It's a scary thought, but one I am allowing to roll around inside my head. I would never have even come up with this idea without the Find Your Voice Workshop, so thanks Kristin for pushing me in this way. Have any of you ever started a major writing project like tha?

Finding Your Voice, Week 1 Part 2

Part of the first week assignment for the Find Your Voice workshop is to take 5 photographs a day. I've been doing this and today I went through the photographs and jotted down some potential stories from the photographs.  The first two are easy:

These are items which I will use as the basis for my contributions to Storytelling Sunday for July and August. If you haven't heard about Storytelling Sunday, you should check out this link where Sian of From High in the Sky explains what it's all about. It's a wonderful practice for anyone interested in story telling.

Next up: the story behind the stacks of shoe boxes in my son's room; the story of my car (a 25th Anniversary present); and a picture of "flat top"(the local sight for teen age mischief; I think it can be a jumping off point for some stories of my own teen age years).  And three more:

A shot of the board at the animal shelter where I volunteer. I'm thinking about telling a story from the perspective of a dog. Baklava from the Twilight Cafe (a neighborhood cafe near my place of work) which can inspire the story of when I started my job and first found the cafe (as well as other job-related stories). Finally, Aria the dog who chews. She ate my ipad and is now busy chewing up the washing machine. There's definitely in story in there.

Finally, I have a story to tell about this fire engine with a female crew. I'll tell that in a post related to the photography scavenger hunt I'm hosting this summer.
For those taking Find Your Voice, have you been taking five photos a day? If so, what have you been doing with them? And for everyone, which of my stories are you most interested in reading. The lesson for the second week of Find Your Voice is at this link. It's not too late to join in the fun!

Find Your Voice: Beginning Thoughts

Today was the first day of a new, free online eight week summer story telling workshop called "Find Your Voice," offered by rukristin.  It looks to be a really interesting and challenging class. Today's assignment was all about getting set up: thinking about how you will approach the class; articulating your goals for the class; and beginning to think about story telling. I'm taking the class because I have found story telling (accompanied by photography or art) to be one of the most rewarding parts of blogging. It's what I love about Sian's Storytelling Sunday, Alexa's Simply a Moment, and why I decided to start the "My Photographer's Eye" series. So, in this class, I hope to push myself to become a better writer and story teller. I plan to use a new journal (illustrated with drawing, stamping and water colors) and my blog to tell my stories. I also plan to use the class to finish an art journal called "In My Wildest Dreams," which I started for the Shimelle class "When I Grow Up." 

Kristin encouraged everyone to take five photos a day, and, of today's photos, I have selected these three as ones for which I have a story I want to tell sometime during the workshop. I'll be posting my photos on instagram at #findyourvoicemlo if you want to follow along.  There was also a worksheet today to record thoughts about story telling. One of the most interesting questions was about which story tellers you admire and and what you can adapt from their style to improve your own story telling.  In my blogosphere, I really admire Sian of From High in the Sky (here's a good example of her story telling, and here's another one) because her spare style requires readers to fill in the blanks and because of the feelings conveyed in her stories. I also love Stacey of Havoc and Mayhem because of her use of humor (see her post here with lots of  links to previous funny posts).  And then there's Ladykis, whose stories (like this one) are told with a humble simplicity, yet take me to a different time and place because of their richness of detail. 
Is anyone else participating in the workshop? If so, what are your initial plans? 
And, for everyone, let me know which bloggers you admire for their story telling talents. I'd love to go check them out.