Allen - Art Is a Spiritual Path

ABOUT THE BOOK

Art is a spiritual pathnot a religion, but a practice that helps us knit together the ideals and convictions that guide our lives. Creating art can be prayer, ritual, and remembrance of the Divine. And the sharing of this creativity with others in small groups can serve as sanctuary, asylum, ashram, therapy group, think tank, and village square. Pat Allen has developed a reliable guide for walking the path of art through a series of simple practices that combine drawing, painting, and sculpture with journal writing. Designed for readers at any level of artistic experience, the book shows how to:

• awaken the creative force and connect with the divine source of creativity
• access inner wisdom and intuition about life issues, including both personal and community concerns
• find a path to meaning that includes honoring, celebrating, and giving thanks
• explore the images and symbols of traditions such as Catholicism, Judaism, shamanism, and Goddess worship
• join in spiritual community with others who are following the path of art
• discover that artmaking can help us live our ideals and be of service in the world

Detailed examples from the authors own practice of art, plus the stories and images of several other people, are presented to illustrate how art becomes a spiritual path in action. At the authors virtual studio, www.patballen.com, readers can post their images and writings, communicate with the author, and subscribe to an electronic newsletter. The site also contains an archive of the images in this book in full color.

PAT B. ALLEN, Ph.D., ATR, is an artist and a registered art therapist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She produces workshops, events, and collaborative projects around the country and directs an online image community at www.patballen.com, where readers can post their images and writings, communicate with the author and one another, and subscribe to an electronic newsletter.

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SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2005 by Pat B. Allen

All photographs are by M. J. Rinderer.

Cover art by Pat B. Allen

To find out more about the artists whose stories appear in this book, to contact the author, or to learn about opportunities to experience the studio process firsthand, please visit www.patballen.com. The site also contains an archive of the images in this book in full color.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allen, Pat B.

Art is a spiritual path / Pat B. Allen.1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2325-9

ISBN 978-1-59030-210-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Spiritual life. 2. Art and religion. I. Title.

BL624.A54 2005

203.7dc22

2004025879

Contents

When I finished my first book, Art Is a Way of Knowing, I had the shocking realization of how isolated I was as a person and how artmaking had kept me alive. My experience this time around is vastly different. For the past ten years, working in and teaching the studio process described in this book has served to connect me to a vast number of people in profoundly important ways.

The Creative Source has been exceedingly generous in sending me companions along the way. I am deeply grateful for Dayna Block and Deborah Gadiel, my partners in the original Open Studio Project, and Kim Conner, whose loyalty, support, and loving witness made both the existence and the demise of Studio Pardes a central blessing in my life. I thank the artists whose stories appear here: Annette Hulefeld, Dave King, Lisa Sorce Schmitz, Sallie Wolf, Barbara Fish, Kim Conner, and Dayna Block. I thank my daughter, Adina, whose images weave their way through my life like golden threads.

As I began to think about whom I might mention in these acknowledgments, I became overwhelmed remembering all the fellow artists, many dear friends, children, and teenagers, some of whom only came once to a studio session, others who have made intention, art, and witness a central part of their lives. I despaired of coming close to naming all the people whose images and witness writings have instructed me in the studio process, all the colleagues who have engaged in formative discussions of these ideas, and all the students and workshop members who have welcomed, embraced, and enlarged my work. You have all made real for me the beautiful image of life as a net of interconnected threads, each of you a pearl at a crossing of lives.

I am honored by the work of Kendra Crossen Burroughs, who is exceedingly knowledgeable about all spiritual traditions as well as all things editorial, and that of her colleague Jacob Morris, who sharpened and helped to shape this book into its present form. I am also honored to be published once again by Shambhala Publications.

Finally, I thank the Creative Source for my husband, John, who has provided unwavering support of my work since the moment we met and has been an active participant in the studio process as it has unfolded in our lives.

This work grows directly out of my first book; Art Is a Way of Knowing (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995). There, I recounted my own journey through art, and the nascent concepts of intention and witness in relation to artmaking were first explored. Just as that book was published, the Open Studio Project in Chicago came into being. For six years, Dayna Block, Deborah Gadiel, and I experimented with how to make art and be of service. Along with many others who came to our workshops and joined us in this journey, we were graced with direct transmissions from the Creative Source. In that way, we received the studio process described in this book. Open Studio Project was the crucible in which the process of intention and witness was refined. For four more years at Studio Pardes, in my hometown of Oak Park, Illinois, I was privileged to develop my thinking, share the process further, and write the present work. Open Studio Project, now located in Evanston, Illinois, continues to provide the studio process to the public as a vital arts and social service agency; Deborah Gadiel continues to evolve the process in a mental health setting. Studio Pardes has evolved into a virtual studio online at www.studiopardes.org that encourages the participation of everyone who chooses to travel the path of art. The Creative Source continues to guide all these manifestations of Its unfolding as well as new ones that appear every day. My piece is to articulate the studio process as a spiritual path, which I believe is its fundamental purpose. From that place we can enrich and enliven any work in the world we are called to perform.

Artmaking is a spiritual path through which we are most able to explore Divinity by participating in the act of creating images. In the broadest sense I have discovered three aspects of artmaking that we are invited to explore, which seem to grow out of the very delight of the Creative Source with Itself:

Inquiry: