Susie Monday

Artist, maker, teacher, author, head cook and bottlewasher.

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The art I make is the result of a life-long love of pattern, texture and color. How I teach is a skill honed by experience (I started teaching creative arts to younger kids when I was 12). After earning a B.A. in Studio Arts from Trinity University, I helped lead an internationally recognized educational foundation, designed curriculum exhibits for schools and other institutions, wrote and edited for a major daily newspaper, opened the San Antonio Children's Museum and then, a dozen years ago, took the scary but essential (for me) leap to become a fulltime artist and art teacher.

About This Blog

This weblog is about the maker's life. The teacher's path. The stitching and dyeing and printing of the craft of art cloth and art quilt. The stumbling around and the soaring, the way the words and the pictures come together. Poetry on the page and in the piecing of bright scraps together. The inner work and the outer journeys to and from. Practicalities and flights of fancy and fearful grandeur, trivial pursuits and tactile amusements. Expect new postings two or three times a week, unless you hear otherwise. 

To reach me, leave a comment after a post, OR email me at susiemonday@gmail.com 

 

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    « Majestic Ranch Art and Music | Main | Interview on The Dabbling Mom »
    Saturday
    May312008

    Being Me, Being You

     El%20Cielo%20Dream2.jpg

    One of Sue Monk Kidd's short essays -- I assume written first for Guideposts -- has really stuck with me this week -- It's actually a story from another great spiritual storyteller, so now I'm making it third-hand here with some helpful links if you want more background. She quotes a story from a Rabbi (sorry, I can't find his name right now) who told about a dream that he had about standing in front of the Judgement Throne and, contrary to his fears of being asked why he had not lived as Moses or one of the Prophets, he was asked, "Why weren't you Rabbi ...?" And so, Kidd knows her question is that same one: "Why were you not Sue Monk Kidd?" not "Why weren't you Mother Teresa or Thomas Merton?" For those of us on the artist's path, the question for me is a parallel, "Why weren't you Susie McAtee Monday?" not "Why weren't you Pablo Picasso or Dale Chihuly or Jane Dunnewold or Gwen Hedley or Corita Kent or Rufino Tamayo or Joan Schulze, well, the hundreds of other artists whose work awes and inspired me. (and that's just the artists -- I've got an entire lexicon of writers, thinkers, activists, all -- I no doubt  imagine wrongly -- standing in line with their hands up: "You could be great if you were just like me!")

    Resurrection.jpg 

    Finding our way to our true selves takes paying attention to our deepest longings. It means making choices about where we spend our time and energy and money and love. We owe it to our deepest selves to listen carefully to our guts, our impulses and our inner witness, the one who stands outside of the critic, the dictator, the people-pleaser, even the wild child who would like nothing more than to throw a temper tantrum and watch junk on TV all day, just to show you who's in charge.

    The next El Cielo workshop on June 13,14,15  -- Creative Jumpstart -- is  planned to help me, as well as the other participants to walk further with this question of being true to one's self. The exercises will include "formal"  investigations-- ie, the natural sensory vocabulary that each person mixes and matches into a personal brew of style, genre, materials, methods and process. (This is the part of the weekend that will deal with one's own voice in line, shape, color, movement, sound, rhythm, space, texture, and light.) But we will also use journaling and reflective meditation to design strategies that get us into our work, building new habits of "being one's self," and in seeing and taking the next baby steps towards our creative dreams.

    Workshop.jpg 

    Fiber and mixed media artist Pat Schulz and educator/artist Julia Jarrell think and work during a previous El Cielo Workshop 
     

    If you'd like to join the group, there's still room for one or two more. And of course, the retreat/workshop offers the beauty of the Hill Country and time to talk, laugh, share live's pleasures, swim and soak, sleep, take a hike -- even a Saturday night outing to Lake Medina for a picnic and kayaking, weather permitting. See the workshop page for details, price and time -- and send me a shout if you're interested.

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    Reader Comments (4)

    I love how I always stumble across your wisdom when I most need it, Susie! A recent detour from a muse-infested studio led me to do two twin quilts of baby clothes. They are finished and gone and the muse left before them. Now I leaf through piles of previously inspiring imagery,re-arrange fabrics and fret incessantly about the forgotten muse yet nothing happens! Art comes from the spirit and not from the brain, I do believe... I am making fabric postcards though, from the overflowing drawer of fusing scraps. It is both productive and potentially stimulating.
    June 1, 2008 | Unregistered Commentertallgirl
    Thanks Carol, You inspire me, too. Someday I want to come and visit you and get that lovely west coast inspiration. Susie
    June 5, 2008 | Registered CommenterSusie Monday
    I am very interested in this workshop...I think it is exactly what I need right now. Please let me know if there are any openings!
    Thanks!
    Lauri
    June 5, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterLauri
    I'm honored that this post is linked to one by Jay Linden --

    "Thanks to a post by Susie Monday I have found the cure. It is to be more of myself. This solution felt right, but I was unsure where this more was going to come from. I already felt like most of my life was spent being myself, ...
    Jay Linden: An Archetypal Journey - http://wwwjaylinden.blogspot.com/

    What an honor to be credited with good ideas.

    June 18, 2008 | Unregistered CommenterSusie

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