For years I have been incorporating this simple but profoundly effective exercise into my teaching of mixed media. A book pull, introduced to me by friend and resident wise woman, Mary Kay Zeeb, is the practice of pulling a book off your bookshelf and opening it to a page-within that page a message will come through. It can be a word-a sentence-a paragraph-even an image that catches your eye. The practice in its original form is to hold the words in your thoughts. You will find their relevance will be revealed-it never fails. In mixed media, I have the students literally cut the word/sentence out of the book and begin to create a narrative from it. The results are always revelatory-taking you places you may not have gone before.
Today I did a book pull and here’s what I found:
“…..we need to dare to be sane, to take our craziness unabashedly and hold it with compassion, to face it, name it, and in doing so, be bigger than it…”
Coming To Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn
book detail-artist- Cara Mcaneny
This post is so relevant to a conversation I had today. Weird how the world works. I want to do this with you!
ReplyDeletelove love love you.
yes! let's do it!
ReplyDeletesometimes a struggle to be bigger than our craziness and have compassion for it. Thanks for this pull.
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