Saturday, December 12, 2015

Emily on Art

During the years of my children's early life I dedicated myself to childhood. I've been running various programs in my community, from Mothers' Place to Nature Club family outings, to the Wild Art program. As an explorative learning facilitator I teach art and wilderness exploration in various settings, both to children and to adults as parenting courses and professional development workshops. Empowering others to reach out, express and explore has been my passion for over twenty years, and it's a wonderful feeling to know that my work is making a difference.

But I've never only been teaching. I've been making art since I was too young to speak - it's the way I communicate, and increasingly the way I live in community. Every art installation I've done in my adult life has somehow been an effort to bring people in and give them space to engage. My Dad died this year, and I did the only thing I could do to work through the grief: I painted. And drew. And wrote a lot of poetry. I may have nearly painted myself out of studio space, actually. Art and writing has always been my healing process. Now it's working its way into more of my daily life, and impossible to deny that I should be writing about art as much as I do about explorative learning and family life. After all, my own art practice is just another facet of my life and exploration.

Rickshaw Unschooling has been the main public face of my writing, and will continue to be active, but I'd like to start writing more about art, as well, and so this blog begins. Emily on Art. I get a lot of questions about why I do what I do, and I wrestle with a lot of concepts and ideas in my art life. This is the place I'll talk about these things. So send me your questions, comments, and big ideas. Let's explore and see what we can discover!