I started my day with the 21 Day Meditation Series sponsored by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. Today’s theme is “Creative Me.” The message of the day discussed how play opens the pathways for creativity to flow freely. It reminded me of two children I have been playing with in my work as an artist-in-residence for Smith Center for Healing and the Arts at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for the past two weeks.
Our creative play afternoon sessions have been filled with laughter, water color painting, coloring, clay sculptures, and colored pencil and magic marker drawings (see photos of our artwork above). They have opened my heart wider and inspired me to play more with collages in my life.
How are you adding more play to your creative life?
Today’s blog celebrates the 10th year anniversary of of Art Every Day Month.
Photo Credit: Leah Piken Kolidas
AEDM is the brainchild of Leah Piken Kolidas, an artist who is one of my digital diva sheroes and a 2012 Digital Sister of the Year (Creativista). Leah launched AEDM in 2004 as a month-long challenge that happens every November to encourage creating in all forms. The rules are simple. You are free to make just one piece of art per week or just one for the whole month. Leah says, “The idea is to bring more creativity into your life, not to make you feel overwhelmed, pressured or guilt-stricken.”
Photo Credit: Leah Piken Kolidas
She is also the founder of Creative Every Day Challenge, a challenge that was launched in 2008 to encourage individuals to add more creativity to their daily lives. Click here to learn more about the challenge.
Photo Credit: Leah Piken Kolidas
I discovered AEDM in 2008 when I was in the midst of a serious writer’s block. Making art each day helped me recapture my joie de vivre! It also helped me surrender to the creative process of making art without any judgment. After a few weeks, I was able to return to my writing with more clarity and energy.
The AEDM community is nurturing and supportive. Through their daily posts on the AEDM blog and Flickr group, they taught me how to create art on the go and to leave the judgment behind. I was able to see the beauty and fun in making art just for the sake of making art. The community reminded me how essential art-making is to my spirit. That’s why I plan to join the AEDM challenge this November to celebrate its 10th anniversary. I hope you will join us too.
Photo Credit: Leah Piken Kolidas
For AEDM newbies, be sure to check out the AEDM Survival Guide for tips on how to thrive throughout this 30 day adventure in daily art-making.
Today’s blog post discusses my creative style as an author. Earlier this year, I started collecting pictures from fashion magazines that illustrated what I wanted to look like as an author during my fall and winter Digital Sisterhood book events. I fell in love with gold jewelry, knit dresses with lots of zippers, leather wedge boots, colorful trench coats, and purses with funky side stitching.
Thanks to my incredibly creative and fashion savvy niece, Jordan, I knew I could find my gold jewelry — a funky ring and bangles from Forever 21 during one of my Labor Day sale adventures.
The black knit dress with zippers was a hard one to find. I started looking at my usual spots — Ann Taylor Loft, Macy’s, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx, but had no luck. While I was walking home earlier this week, my inner fashion goddess who lives inside my head whispered, “Drop by Dress Barn to see about the black knit dress.” So I listened (my inner fashion goddess is never wrong!) and found a petite black knit dress with gold zippers for $42. Yes, I said $42!
My Tahari black leather wedge boots were easy to find. I just had to look in my closet and find my boot container with boots I purchased two and three years ago. I had the heels fixed during the summer.
Looking for a trench coat has been a two-year challenge. I finally found one that fit my author creative style requirements (colorful), body size, and budget from Marshalls on a Sunday morning after church. It was love at first sight. Thank goodness Jones New York makes cinnamon double-breasted petite trench coats that end up in Marshalls for $60!
My black leather purse with funky silver side stitching is an oldie but goodie purchase I made at Violet Boutique (one of my favorite places to shop in D.C. — especially for jewelry, purses, coats, and jackets) in 2011.
The piece de resistance of my author creative style is my red tiger glasses by Oliver Goldsmith (OG), a London-based family run business that is synonymous with fashion and style. OG has been in business for the past 80 years. Fashion designers Christian Dior, Givenchy, and Vidal Sassoon, and actors Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Peter Sellers, and Michael Caine embraced OG eyewear early in their careers.
Photo Credit: OliverGoldsmith.com
I discovered my red tiger glasses during one of my summer visits to Dupont Optical, the place that has helped me select signature eyewear for over 20 years. Dupont Optical owner and optician Ben Herman recommended my red tiger glasses and another very cool pair of casual glasses I can wear as sunshades.
What are you wearing this fall to express your creativity?
If you are in Washington, D.C. on October 19, please plan to attend my author talk and book reading from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, 1632 U Street, NW (three blocks from the U Street/Cardozo Green Line Metro Station). Click here to register for the event. See you on October 19th!
In the art world, Hashmi is known as Zarina. She is originally from India, one of my favorite places in the world. Her Paper Like Skin exhibition explores her artwork and career since 1961. It is an impressive collection of 60 works. My favorite piece is Shadow House. See photo below.
I am drawn to her work because of her minimalist style, feminist spirit, and the magical way she uses paper. As a printmaker and sculptor, she transforms paper pulp into abstract woodcuts, etchings, drawings, rubbings, and casts. Her work also tells stories of dispossession, exile, and making new homes in different places such as Thailand, Germany, France, and Japan before settling in the United States. When she moved to New York City in the 1970s, she became a prominent figure in feminist art circles.
Creativity is one of my life’s passions. I believe we are born with a spark of creativity that can awaken us to an amazing life. Throughout life’s journey our creative spark needs nourishment, guidance, and support. One way we can nurture our creative spark and gain support and guidance for our dreams, ideas, and endeavors is with the support of a creativity coach.
Since 2009, I have served as a creativity coach and helped clients to identify, understand, and embrace their inner critic (the inner voice that tells you cannot or don’t have what it takes to create, build, or fund your dreams, ideas, and endeavors). With my support, they have been able to confront and overcome their fears, doubts, and obstacles that prevent them from creating, building, and funding their dreams, ideas, and endeavors. They have mapped out their goals and timelines, and developed a strategic plan to accomplish them with my guidance. Watching my clients succeed brings me great joy! That’s why I am offering one-on-one creativity coaching to Blogalicious Weekend Conference attendees on October 3-5 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta.
For Blogalicious Weekend Conference Attendees: If you have a burning desire to launch a new idea or endeavor or you feel uncertain, doubtful, or fearful about giving birth to a dream you have been holding onto for the past month, year or decade, sign up for a 15 minute creativity coaching session with me. Click here to register for a session (LIMITED NUMBER SO ACT SOON!). Once you have registered for a session, please complete the short SurveyMonkey questionnaire (9 questions). Your responses will help prepare me for our 15 minute session. All sessions will be held in the “Vinnings” conference room at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta. If you have additional questions, please email me at kiamshaleeke@yahoo.com.
Artist Victor Ekpuk and friend at Morton Fine Art exhibition on 9/13
Happy Creativity Thursday!
Today’s blog celebrates the artwork of Nigerian contemporary artist Victor Ekpuk. Last weekend, I started my Autumn Artist Weekends with a visit to Morton Fine Art to see a solo exhibition of Ekpuk’s artwork, “Reminiscences and Current Musings.”
Victor Ekpuk chatting with people at Morton Fine Art exhibition on 9/13
My favorite piece in the exhibition is Idaresit (Joyful Heart). See photo below.
Idaresit (Joyful Heart) by Victor Ekpuk, 2004 – Photo Credit: Victor Ekpuk/Morton Fine Art
I discovered Ekpuk’s work this summer during one of my visits to Morton Fine Art. I was immediately drawn to his use of nsibidi “traditional” Nigerian graphic symbols and writing systems in his work. The symbols refer to abstract concepts, actions, or things. When they are used, they facilitate communication among peoples speaking different languages. Nsibidi is indigenous to the Ejagham peoples of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon in the Cross River region. Ibibio, Efik and Igbo people also use it. Click here to read more about the meaning of nsibidi.
Victor Ekpuk’s artwork
I love how Ekpuk’s work incorporates aspects of his ancestry. It makes me think that the spirit of his ancestors are embedded into his artwork. The placement of the nsibidi symbols in his works creates soulful, lyrical poetry that speaks silently to my spirit. Perhaps that’s why the poet in me feels so connected to his work!
Victor Ekpuk artwork at Morton Fine Art
If you are in the D.C. area, I encourage you to visit the exhibition at Morton Fine Art. It ends October 8. The Artist Talk will be held on Saturday, September 28 from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Hope to see you there!
Today, I want to share some of my favorite writing wisdom quotes from writers I adore.
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Joan Didion, European American author
“The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.” Toni Morrison, African American author
“Writing becomes a way to embrace the mysterious, to walk with spirits, and an entry to the realm of the sacred.” bell hooks, African American author, poet, professor, and cultural critic
Right now I’m a writer who is in the midst of a long creative stretch.
One that involves birthing a book every two years.
My journey is both passion and paradox all at the same time.
At times it can consume me and keep me living on my own planet with enough rice milk, granola, ginger tea, honey, strawberries, bananas, apples, and split pea soup to last a lifetime.
This path has called me.
And I can’t begin to explain to folks what that exactly means because I am living it.
So I hope they can just get the meaning by watching me be me.
#2
I write because language chosen from deep within me liberates my hidden thoughts and gives life to my dreams.
I write because it is one of the best ways I know how to access freedom.
I am talking about the kind of freedom that brings all aspects of my existence into one room so that I can appreciate the fullness of my complex beauty.
The words that express my thoughts and describe my dreams make their way into phrases.
Some find homes in sentences that question and answer.
Others join the gospel choir in my mind and participate in call and response.
A few dangle as sharp, shooting fragments with meaning.
And then there are those that cast their net wide and paint wildly sensational murals on the canvas of my life.
Today, I am celebrating the power of art and fashion by featuring Tanekeya Word, one of my favorite artists who has created artwork and a personal brand that celebrate fashion, popular culture, and her life experiences. She is also a fellow Howardite (Howard University, Class of 2006). I discovered her amazing artwork and purchased several prints in 2008. Word defines herself as a Hybrid Chic Afrofuturist Visual Artist. Currently, she serves as the managing editor, creative & art director, and literature & culture editor of neonV, a biannual magazine for the contemporary peculiar woman that provides a compelling storyline of traditional and innovative content by exposing the cultural and subcultural continuums in fashion, art, beauty, and travel. Click here to learn more about Word and her incredibly stunning work.
Today’s blog is wrapped in the creative spirit of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the Civil Rights and Feminist movements, and the phenomenal artwork of Faith Ringgold, one of my creative sheroes. Visit her web site and read her blog for more information about her activism, art, and authentic way of living.
After seeing the paintings for a second time, I can now say the Black Light Series is one of my all-time favorite groups of Ringgold paintings. Her use of African masks in the design of people’s faces and the way she weaves words into her paintings dazzle my spirit. Each time I see the bold colors of red, black and green in the paintings, my eyes sparkle and my heart travels back to my childhood when my parents taught my brothers and I about the “Black is Beautiful” movement. I am madly in love with the Black Light Series #3: Soul Sister (I mention it in my novel, Love’s Troubadours – Karma: Book One). I also adore the Black feminist activist series of four political posters, Women Freedom Now, Women Free Angela, Woman Free Yourself, and America Free Angela.
Free Angela America by Faith Ringgold – Photo Credit: FaithRinggold.com
If you are in D.C. between now and November 10, treat yourself to a morning or afternoon visit to see Ringgold’s fantastic work at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. For more information about Ringgold’s work in the 1960s, click here to read her daughter Michelle Wallace’s Ringgold in the 1960s blog. Enjoy!
Ananda Leeke 