A whole new decade!

Hi Everyone 2020 is right around the corner my friends. Not just the end of a year but the end of a decade! At Wild at Art we tap into the energies of the season and so in January we focus upon the New Year and seek out what deep soul dreams are calling us for the year ahead. We look at our yearnings, visions and goals as we help those come to life. The hands on art-making of a Vision Board helps our inner thoughts and wishes become visible which gives us an opportunity to see what we desire and what we need. By using our hands to manifest what is in our head and heart we create a powerful conduit for change. With paint, collage and design details, we will bring to life our very own Vision Board. For some of you this is an annual ritual as we share your previous boards and marvel at the many magical moments.

Roz’s Dreams And Visions Story! In January 2019 I created a collage with Katie that was deeply heartfelt but being kept deep inside. It wasn't until I was at the workshop that I realised this desire and created a beautiful orange papaya filled with the seeds of the future. We were provided with magical collage materials so perfect for my dreams and before I knew it, I'd created a perfect symbol for the life I'd been aching for. This is powerful medicine indeed and being administered by the best Art Surgeon in town! Dreams are so important! As the famous song goes, "If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?" so I highly recommend Katie Flowers and her Wild At Art event. I've been going every year and love the process of bringing visions into being and bringing those deep desires of the heart into consciousness and making them more visible for ourselves to focus on. Once we have articulated and created an image of something, it's far easier for the subconscious to aid us in reaching the goal. Here's my papaya :

Come and join us for one of the 3 x 2020 Vision! workshop dates : Saturday 11th  9.30am -1.00pm ( $550)  4 x places left Thursday 16th  6.00-9.00pm (Full) Saturday 18th 9.30am -1.00pm (Full) You will meet our lovely Wild at Art Community of creative’s for this blessed annual event! All of your pre prepared booklets and art materials are most lovingly provided.

Vision Board Magic is REAL! Above you can see the the 2002 Vision Board that I created at the start of a one-year counseling course. As well as it being a place of gratitude for the strong amazing people and presence that I already had in my life at that time, you can see I was definitely seeking a lovely chap, a bigger home and seemingly a few fish! ? Those of you who know me well, will know that I met Mr S on the last day of that one year counseling course......we subsequently moved into the Po Wah Yuen house pictured bottom right on the board, and of course Mr S is an ardent fisherman......nuff said! Its good to be specific sometimes even if you don't know why!

January also sees the start of  New courses at the studio including: Mid Week Mindful Sketching Reflect and Restore workshops Three Art Journaling opportunities. All dates and details are on the webpage. http://wildatartstudio.blogspot.com/p/wild-at-art-studio-offerings.html

Booking for all workshops can be made directly to me on: wildatartweekly@gmail.com See here for map and directions http://wildatartstudio.blogspot.com/p/contact-me.html Artfully Yours from Katie

Feel Good Arty Saturdays

Hi Everyone

This week I would like to introduce you to some creative pathways to your very own happiness!  At Wild at Art we know that making art makes YOU feel good and helps you to build and reinforce your Happy Habits! If you are a practicing art maker you will have already experienced your Happy Hormones being triggered in a few ways as you make and create !

Here’s a short neurobiological guide to your body and your art :

The joy of anticipation! That wonderful “ feel-good hormone ” dopamine surges in anticipation before you actually start your hands on art making, your brain and body know that you are about to experience a reward trigger, this can help you to concentrate and to maintain motivation as you focus on your art making just by signing up to a workshops at WAA you can start to feel good!

At the same time when we actually engage in hands on activities, there are specific parts of the brain that are affected and this is thought to increase  the chemical messenger serotonin that acts as our mood stabilizer.  That in turn helps with the stress hormone, cortisol, which as we already know, is public health enemy number one !

I chatted a few weeks ago about ways that elevated cortisol levels interfere with learning and memory, as well lowering our immune function, it can elevate blood pressure and can lead to heart disease... But guess what ?  Art making can actually reduce our cortisol levels as we engage in self-regulating activities such as doodling, drawing, making mandalas and other  kinds of art making that takes us to what we call a FLOW state !

Last of all our cuddle hormone oxytocin is triggered when we are in a ‘herd’ and trust is formed, so come and join the Wild at Art ‘herd’ and enjoy your oxytocin boost and your endorphin rush as you laugh, chat and make friends in a community and atmosphere of fun and creativity !

So you see there are many reasons to come and enjoy our Feel Good Arty Saturday workshops each month………….they are very very good for your health !  

Why not come and sign up for the marvellous Geli Plate printing workshops with Jules white on the 12th October.

Its a half day workshop and it will give you a fabulous flavour of the play and experimentation inherent in printmaking, the what ifs and "I wonders" of making art ! This workshop is a fun way to make images and if you are an Art Journaler then you can make backgrounds for your journal pages as well. 

As Jules says :

Gelli printing takes mixed media art to the next level. creating your own one-off and unique work. You will be layering colours and including multiple textures. There is not a right or wrong way to create these works, and I will guide you through the process. Let your imagination run wild, and come and explore the fabulous art of Gelli printing.

Saturday 12th October 

10.00-12.30

$400 per person inc all materials
Register now with me on

wildatartweekly@gmail.com

Jules is the Elementary Art Teacher at Carmel International School, she has also taught in Shanghai and Bangkok, her classroom is fabulous and her approach is accessible to everyone no matter what your starting point ! Do come and join us for this Feel Good Saturday ! 

Artfully Yours

from

Katie 

The Iceberg.........

Hi Everyone Welcome to Wild at Art news;  This week I'd like to talk a little bit about one of my favourite metaphorical images: the Iceberg. I use the Iceberg as an image to explain the unconscious mind and its relationship to the conscious mind. Many of us spend much of our waking hours up there in cognitive brain, which represents that small part of the iceberg visible above the surface of the water. Whereas down under the surface, the most powerful part, the unconscious mind, remains that unseen huge mass below the water: the place of our memories, feelings and thoughts that are just out of conscious awareness. Everything we have seen or smelled, dreamed or worried about, every muscle memory and pre conscious experience is stored in that deep deep filing system!

The exciting part, is that right at the water line of our metaphoric iceberg is where we imagine and dream. We could say that our imagination is rather like a membrane through which processes happening in the unconscious mind come into conscious awareness. Our dreams and our art making practice allow access to those deeper realms. As Art Therapist Sean McNiff says "Depth is on the Surface"! Imagination is a slightly elusive word isn't it,  perhaps nearly as difficult to define succinctly as the word love. ……it’s our place of possibility, our playground of what ifs…..its how we form new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not yet present to the senses……..its the seat of our creativity. Next week at the studio we see the launch of two exciting initiatives. Not just one, but TWO Katie’s who bring you some powerful and magical techniques to lead you straight to the seat of your creativity, would you like to safely take some diving lessons and discover ways to access the messages and stories which are just below the surface? Come and reconnect with your own imaginal realm....the place where all is possible and we can bring something previously unseen into reality.

Creative Depth Coach Katie Larson bring us “Vision-Quest: A Conscious Journey”. This is a 4-week  deep-dive into all aspects of the self. We will meet on 4 consecutive Tuesday evenings in September to discover how to create visual maps of our conscious experiences. Katie will help us to devise a translation dictionary so that we can reconnect with our symbolic-world and we will also create a card deck that captures aspects of US! Through art making, we will capture exactly what we have been longing to know….   Vision-Quest: A Conscious Journey Articulating the self through creativity brought to you by the wise and insightful Katie Larson 6.30 - 9.00pm Starting next Tuesday 3rd  -24th September ( 4 x weeks) $1,500 for 4 classes inc all materials Follow your inner artist on a Vision-Quest deep inside yourself. Explore your unconscious and discover the colours, patterns, and symbols buried within. Play with mixed media--paint, pencils, pastels, and collage--and bring visual form to your non-verbal knowings. Create a dictionary to bridge the gap between your verbal and symbolic world. Design a card deck showing the wide spectrum of your persona, and create beautiful 3D models of "The Big Picture" (the universe as you know it) and "The Small Picture" (your whole self as you know it).

The next " Intro to Art Journaling" course starts on Wednesday: Find your Voice Introduction to Visual Art Journaling 6.00-8.30pm Wednesdays 4th, 11th, 18th, 25th Sept 9th, 16th Oct Register with me on wildatartweekly@gmail.com Exploring personal stories through art making can help us to reframe challenges, develop new perspectives and articulate our inner world. Come and use your art-making to listen inside! Working on personal themes you will be guided to experience mixed media art journaling. It can be the start of a transformational journey as you uncover insights and find ways to let your inner voice show you the way. " One of the best gifts I ever gave myself was signing up for your art journaling course last year. Highly recommend!!! "  says Ilene Appel Levy

I look forwards to greeting you very soon at the Wild at Art Door! Artfully Yours from Katie

🌻🌻🌻 Are you ready to Loosen Up ?🌻🌻🌻

Hi Everyone Welcome to this weeks Wild at Art news. Have you ever heard yourself say these words?  “I can’t even draw a straight line, I wish I could do art, but I was no good at school!” Sound even slightly familiar? Isn’t it hard to get back to hands on stuff, when we are beguiled by these myriad devices, such as the one I am writing to you on right now! My loved laptop! But there is a yearning, I hear it all the time, a longing…and this may also seem familiar. People desire to reconnect with hands on artmaking, in all sorts of ways and we are slowly getting past the notion that only certain “gifted”  people can make art ! Of course there are many reasons to create and we are often motivated by different drives, we may desire to represent an object in a sketch, or we may need to draw a diagram to better understand something, other times we just want to doodle and drop into the quiet place of our flow state.

Often just starting with the sheer joy of playing with materials, just like our younger selves did, can lead us right where we need to be ….and can be a direct hotline to the imaginal realm and that’s where the GOLD is! Interacting with various art media stimulates the primal areas of our brain. We can engage in a purely sensory experience, the process can be rhythmic, tactile, and sensual. Sometimes functioning at this level can allow us access to memories or to exploring our emotions.  So I have chosen to bring the Loosen Up process which provides this  approach, to our weekday artists, since people kept returning on Saturdays to do it again and again! So what do we do? We get to use all of our senses as artmaking prompts…..we listen, we touch and we close our eyes!  We explore line, colour, texture and layering techniques to see what our intuitive self responds to and is drawn to. We seek out some of your own personal motifs and symbols, and mostly we experience play….experiment and letting go. This is pure sensory pleasure and a wonderful way to learn more about YOU !

Loosen Up Painting  Mornings Wednesday 31st July-  Aug-21st 9.30-12.00am Be bold! Be Brave! $1,500 for 4 x classes incuding all materials Come and find your own inner artistic voice by exploring line, colour, texture and layering techniques to create intuitive paintings which will change and evolve over time ! You will be encouraged to be bold and fearless, to experiment with colours, to explore your mark making vocabulary, to find out how take creative risks and decisions, while allowing a process to unfold. Yes, come and trust the process, let whatever it is GO!! and follow your intuition.

!!!!!  Resuming this Wednesday !!!!!  at the Wild at Art Studio Lunchtime Destress Doodling  12.30-2.00pm Wednesdays $150 per session Do you sometimes feel it’s all just too much? WhatsApp me for the door code and come on in!

Our very next Art Journaling course starts in one month : Find your Voice Introduction to Visual Art Journaling 6.00-8.30pm Wednesdays NEW GROUP 4th September- 16th October ( 6 x weeks) Register with me on wildatartweekly@gmail.com

Vision-Quest: A Conscious Journey Articulating the self through creativity brought to you by the wise and insightful Katie Larson 6.30 - 9.00pm Tuesdays 3rd  -24th September ( 4 x weeks) $1,500 for 4 classes inc all materials Follow your inner artist on a Vision-Quest deep inside yourself. Explore your unconscious and discover the colors, patterns, and symbols buried within. Play with mixed media--paint, pencils, pastels, and collage--and bring visual form to your non-verbal knowings. Create a dictionary to bridge the gap between your verbal-world and symbolic world. Design a card deck showing the wide spectrum of your persona, and create beautiful 3D models of "The Big Picture" (the universe as you know it) and "The Small Picture" (your whole self as you know it).

I look forwards to greeting you very soon at the Wild at Art Door! Artfully Yours from Katie

🌻🌻🌻Wild at Art Studio News! July 9th 🌻🌻🌻

Hi Everyone Welcome to this weeks Wild at Art news. Earlier today I saw this headline on a facebook post and since I am a great advocate of the ways in which art making can positively impact our daily health and wellbeing, I felt prompted to expand further.   “Stress-related hormone Cortisol: lowers significantly after just 45 minutes of art creation”   In my work, I  meet all sorts of people who share stories of the stress levels and the anxiety that can be inherent in various workplace environments, it’s become increasingly apparent that both of these affect more people than ever before. Hong Kong is a place with an exceptionally demanding work ethic, it’s a fast paced / long hours work environment, and workplace stress is not uncommon.  This probably sounds familiar to you already ! Excessive stress can lead to a myriad of adverse effects, both physical and psychological; such as sleeplessness, increased heart rates, panic attacks, endless negative self-talk and self judgement as people strive to live up to expectations and may find themselves in extremely competitive settings. I am however greatly encouraged by the rise of mindfulness and yoga in Hong Kong and the many new ways that people seek out wellness solutions for themselves. This is a great testament to the groundswell of change, people are realising that they can play a part in personal self-care on a daily basis.

Wise Ancients have always known this, and now current research reveals the ways that art making can offer us so many healing pathways, Girija Kaimal, EdD, MA, assistant professor at Drexel University states that employee burnout is a significant problem across all industries. She goes on to state that the act of making art—including doodling—stimulates the senses and engages different areas of the brain and can in fact reduce stress. “Giving employees the opportunity to safely and creatively express themselves has tremendous physiological and psychological benefits ”. Her recent study included 39 adults, from 18 to 59 years old, who were invited to participate in 45 minutes of art making, cortisol levels were taken before and after.  The researchers found that 75 percent of the participants’ cortisol levels lowered during their 45 minutes of making art. With that in mind, Kaimal has gone on to suggest that employers could help their workers by keeping a small activity nearby that can be used throughout the day, such as knitting, woodworking, or having a small notebook on hand for doodling, this can improve concentration and relieve stress. Imagine that ! All of the workshops I have created over the years focus on ways that art making can offer pathways to emotional health, well-being and creative self-care. Many offer opportunities for the kind of mindful art practices that do lead towards stress reduction and self regulation which in turn can lead to reduced anxiety. For example :

Resuming in August at the Wild at Art Studio Lunchtime Destress Doodling  12.30-2.00pm Wednesdays $150 per session Do you sometimes feel it’s all just too much? WhatsApp me for the door code and come on in!

Our summer workshops and new courses can be found here :  http://wildatartstudio.blogspot.com/p/wild-at-art-studio-offerings.html Our next Monthly Mandala Meet Up  " Celebrating Summer " will be on Thursday 6.30-9.00pm  July 11th

Find your Voice Introduction to Visual Art Journaling 6.00-8.30pm Wednesdays NEW GROUP 4th September- 16th October ( 6 x weeks) Register with me on wildatartweekly@gmail.com

Loosen Up Painting  Mornings Wednesday 31st July-  Aug-21st 9.30-12.00am Be bold! Be Brave! $1,500 for 4 x classes incuding all materials Come and find your own inner artistic voice by exploring line, colour, texture and layering techniques to create intuitive paintings which will change and evolve over time ! You will be encouraged to be bold and fearless, to experiment with colours, to explore your mark making vocabulary, to find out how take creative risks and decisions, while allowing a process to unfold. Yes, come and trust the process, let whatever it is GO!! and follow your intuition.

I look forwards to greeting you very soon at the Wild at Art Door! Artfully Yours from Katie

🌻🌻🌻Wild at Art Studio News June 24th ! 🌻🌻🌻

Hi Everyone I have recently been reminded that when people hear the two words Art Therapy, they often think of colouring books, crayons and children!  Since I am often asked about this, I thought I would unpack a little of what Art Therapy is and can be over the next couple of weeks.   One of my wise teachers, Cathy Malchiodi reminds us that Art as Medicine is an age old practice, humans have used the arts for thousands of years as a way to communicate not only experiences of celebration and beauty, but also those of struggle, crisis and trauma. As many of you know, in the right setting, we can use hands on art making to manage stress, build resilience, find growth solutions, develop coping skills and to strengthen a sense of self. This is very pertinent in a high-pressure environment like Hong Kong. We know that people benefit from seeking support from various types of helping professions at different times in their lives. Many of us are used to being the experts of our own problems and generally access this knowledge via our cognitive brain. Expressive art-making can provide a conduit to thoughts, self limiting beliefs and feelings that are buried very deeply and help people to access and work with those in new ways. Nowadays Art Therapy is a fully recognised mental health profession requiring specialised graduate level training. It can now be found widely in Hong Kong, in a number of clinical, private and educational settings, Art Therapists need to be fully accredited and affiliated with the Hong Kong Association of Art Therapists who offer a very clear summary of what Art Therapy is and what it can be : What is Art Therapy ? At Wild at Art Studio my group workshops are designed with a focus on emotional health, well-being and creative self-care.  Some workshops facilitate decompression and mindfulness through art, others help people explore stories and events through art making which can help to reframe challenges, to develop new perspectives and to help people access sensitive topics in a safe moderated situation. So colouring books might offer an opportunity for a therapeutic moment of quiet in a stressful week and this can be the first step to recognizing the benefits of how it feels to enter a flow state, this is your jumping off place to dive a little deeper in finding ways to make and create your own art. I leave you with a beautiful and powerful film that says of all of this so very well: Can Art be Medicine ? Our summer workshops and new courses can be found here :  http://wildatartstudio.blogspot.com/p/wild-at-art-studio-offerings.html Register with me on wildatartweekly@gmail.com Our next Monthly Mandala Meet Up  " Celebrating Summer with a Floral Tribute! " will be on Thursday 6.30-9.00pm  July 11th I look forwards to greeting you very soon at the Wild at Art Door! Artfully Yours from Katie