Catching up

Decorative letters and packaging workshop

I haven’t posted in awhile because of uncharacteristic busyness as well as being away for a week.

The photo shows the last session of my recent series of creativity workshops here locally. We’d just decorated some tissue paper with mixed media and were puzzling over a complicated 6 piece triangular origami box.

The next course is a wild adventure (I hope) disguised as  7 week (1x/week) beginners drawing course. Participants will get basic drawing skills while being exposed to a lot of other media and techniques. They ‘ll be encouraged to let go of  ‘getting it right’ and let go a bit to discover their secret talents. For any local people (Northern Holland, de Marne area) the course begins on January 11. Keep on the lookout for a possible free introductory lesson.

I’m recently back from Glasgow where I had a project with Alicia Devine shooting film clips for an internet course we are working on for caregivers on the topic of dementia. This was under the benign and inspired direction of David Ramsay, one of the world’s rare artist friends and enablers.

I’ll keep this one short because I ‘ve got more to share here about my recent trip to Scotland as well as some of my pet themes such as painting, art and money, creativity as a binding element in community, and craft as a potent political force.

Current projects

Last Monday, October 24th, my buddy Jan Krol and I gave 3 workshops at the 2nd Art and Dementia conference in Eindhoven, Holland. For Dutch readers here is the link . It was a wonderful, well attended event and the responses to our workshop were very positive. We did a hands-on art exercise, role play, small group work, had a creative approach discussion, and sewed the handouts (excerpts from Chocolate Rain) into a pamphlet book. This all had to fit in exactly 60 minutes. There were 25 people in each group and we had three groups in the course of the day.

People especially responded to the role play that Jan (in Holland Jan is a man’s name pronounced, Yan)  and I did. Jan played a person with dementia, and I, an overactive pushy activity organiser. I barge into the room talking on my cell phone, don’t greet Jan, and more less push the activity I’ve been preparing for him for days under his nose. He isn’t having any of it and sits apathetically at one point picking his nose quite explicitly. I get more and more frustrated, and though there were a lot of laughs, and this was an exaggerated depiction, people recognized the situation. Then we invite participants to come up and act out a better way to engage the person.

Home again, recovering from a cold, I now have less than 2 weeks before I leave for Scotland to get illustrations ready for a DVD I’m working on with my friend Alicia from Glasgow. It is an e-learning course on dementia for social workers and caregivers. We’re supporting the lesson material with quirky cartoons and several video clips written by Alicia, in which she and I will be acting. This time I will have the part of Mary, a 67 year old lady in various stages of dementia.

After I come back from Scotland, hopefully I’ll have a few weeks to rest before the harpsichord case is delivered from Germany. Then it will be a feast of flower painting which I will record and post here as it progresses. Johan Hofmann (Dutch language site), my client for this project has some fresh ideas about the painting and colour scheme, so this instrument, while staying within the tradition of 17th century Flemish Ruckers harpsichords will also be gently declaring its own modern identity. The craftsman in me doesn’t mind doing one after another of the same kind of paintings, but the artist wants growth and exploration. So both will be fed with this commission.

I hadn’t had time to get to my oil painting in the last week, but am looking forward to getting back in the studio.

Kate’s place: richly woven, knitted and crocheted

Kate's woollen lair

Continuing on the theme of inspiration from my recent trip to London and Edinburgh, I stayed overnight at Kate’s. We went to the large craft fair that was part of the Edinburgh Fringe festival  and saw among others, Lesley’s work. And we went to Remade as inspiration for my shop.

Sleeping in Kate’s living room art studio let me completely soak up the colours and inspiration of her many and beautiful handmade cushions, blankets, multicoloured socks, samples and afghans.

I’ve met Kate through the dementia field, she works closely with John Killick on creative projects for people with dementia. She is a psychologist and writer and textile artist.

Entering her living room in Edinburgh is like coming into an Aladdin’s cave of treasure. Everywhere are textile projects in process. The walls are painted in rich colours and her knitted, crocheted, and woven blankets glow with the colour of the moors: sky blues and slates, moss greens, lichen rusts and ochres, heather purples and pinks. Most of these are also my colours, I realize, but the way she combines them gives me a new slant. There is less ’air’ between her combinations, making a dense impression of tapestry or richly clad yurts, far away in some African desert.

Thanks Kate!

Chocolate Rain is now easy to obtain

 Click here   Introduction   to look inside and read the introduction.

There have been various availability problems primarily for people in the US who want to buy my book. I am happy to say that book depository now carries ‘Chocolate Rain, 100 ideas for a creative approach to activities in dementia care’.  They ship all over the world for free! And they are a good, reliable business, we order books there regularly.

Chocolate and sex- book launch

Sarah (left) holding the book, with Karen (right) the first person to buy a copy. Photo by Andy, thanks Andy.

Now that I have your attention!  I’ve recently returned from the book launch at the 5th UK Dementia Congress in Bournemouth. It was a wonderful and inspiring event with impassioned speakers and an atmosphere of cooperation and support. Next year’s congress is in Liverpool, I highly recommend it.  Keep an eye on this blog for further information. 

Hawker Publications  launched two new books this year: my book ,’ Chocolate Rain’, and ’Dementia and sexuality’ by  Elaine White.
Friends quipped that it was a tough choice to make- Sex or Chocolate!

Karen Borochowitz pictured above is the Executive director of Dementia SA  and was my first customer. Most people who heard about the book during the plenaries came to look at it and once they had it in their hands, seemed to want to take it with them. It was very heartening to see how the colour, design and illustrations invited people to look further and eventually take one home.
One delegate came up to me during the signing and said he’d gone back to the hotel tired after a day of lectures, and just wanted to take a glimpse inside it. It was an hour before he looked up and realised he’d read about half the book.

As well the book going to South Africa, England, Scotland, and Ireland-  it was taken to Singapore by two charming women,Yan Ling and Helen, as an inspiration for their new Mental health education programme for carers of people with dementia. Good luck ladies!

Friends are ordering copies for libraries in the US and Australia. And heads of nursing homes and care services throughout the UK are ordering batches for their activity organisers.  Friends from the congress said, ‘everyone was talking about it’.

Waterstones has it listed, though we need to supply more material. And I wouldn’t recommend ordering from there if you are outside England, a friend in the US has had no end of delays in getting his copy- even after it was dispatched they said it would be another 21 days!  Amazon UK has it, and the Central London Library was promising to order one. It can be ordered directly from Hawker Publications as well.

So basically I am home, recuperating from the last push on the book. Next step is finding a Dutch publisher.

A look inside

A look inside

Here is a spread from my book. And below is another.

From the 100 Activities Handbook section

The book is really taking shape now.  Should be done in three weeks!

Chocolate Rain, activity ideas for dementia care

Here is a sneak peek at the front cover for my book Chocolate Rain, which will be published by Hawker Publishers this fall.
I’ve mentioned in a previous post that it is an idea book for caregivers and families for activity design for dementia care. It contains chapters on how to develop activities suited to your particular situation as well as a fully illustrated 100 activities handbook.

The Pitch
I also give quite a bit of attention to developing your own creative capacities so that you can keep coming up with your own ideas on the spot. Most caregivers’ training develops the intellect which is obviously needed,  but dealing with dementia also asks for the ability to imagine, improvise, intuit, and play. These are all skills developed by anyone regularly engaged in creative processes, such as visual artists, inventors, writers, and innovators in any field.  I haven’t seen many books on creativity addressed specifically to caregivers, so this is a fairly new area.

I know from meeting many nurses and doctors through my experience as an artist in health facilities, that they are incredibly creative people who generally haven’t found an outlet for their creativity in their work. Or they feel attracted to the creative fields but don’t know how to start. Usually, doing the simplest craft project together, taking less than 5 miinutes, can open up a whole area of discovery for these individuals. My book contains at least 150 of these projects which are simultaneously activities for people with dementia, and artistically satisfying creative projects for caregivers, family or anyone interested.

The Process
I will remember this summer primarily as being spent in front of the computer or in my attic studio with the fan on, with quick forays out into the garden (but with my thoughts still in front of the computer).  It is a joy to be given the task of illustrating and designing the book myself.  But in the time given (it all goes to the printer at the end of September), it would be less nerve wracking to be working with a team.

As it is, I am the team, and that entails generating all the artwork and scanning it, reworking in Photoshop; checking the text and editing where necessary; doing the interior book design and cover; the typography throughout, preparing it all so it is printer-ready, checking what needs copyright permission and getting it, etc etc.

Coincidentally, I also have a life, so it is quite a juggling act. This week, I’ve written all the task areas out and for the first time prioritized, because I was getting lost in details.

Right now I am working on getting to a definitive page count as well as a consistent design for the chapter and section headings, which often involve illustrations.

Luckily for me, Rende is going to deal with a lot of the technical details which go beyond my Photoshop knowledge. He’s a real wizard with that.

Book update: Working on the design

I feel like I am just starting to get to know the book, getting into it at a level where working on it is a sort of listening and it reveals directions that I wouldn’t have hit upon by intellectualizing.

Hard to describe, it is a recognition, a welcoming and affinity.

And it is delicate and needs time to unfold. 

 

As more of the parts become clear, they start influencing the whole picture, which again influences how the parts relate. The whole entity is morphing and bubbling like a magic cauldron from day to day. 

 

 I’ve finally done a mini mini paste up like a story board which I can gleefully change without having heart failure every time the right and left hand pages shift yet again!

 

My book

Good old paper and scissors work

I’ve been so busy designing my new book, that I’ve not had time to announce it here.  It will be published, all being well, this year.

Friends had been encouraging me to write a book compiling my experience and methods in working creatively with people with dementia. They felt it would be a great aid to caregivers and family members. After several years of false starts, I finally found the right tone and wrote it over an 18 month period from 2008-2009.  I was lucky to also find a publisher very quickly, and one that agreed to let me design and illustrate it myself.

The book is a practical guide to designing activities for people in all stages of dementia, but it is also a creativity manual  for caregivers. It is called ‘Chocolate Rain, 100 ideas for a creative approach to activities in dementia care’.

The deadline is pretty tight as we hope to launch it at a large dementia congress in England in November. Today I got up from  the computer and went upstairs to my studio to cut and paste. I felt like I could get a better idea of the whole if I could see the spreads in front of me. I actually cut the little sketches of each spread out and glued them with non-permanent glue to another sheet. That way I can keep up with the design changes without constantly renumbering.

I may check back here regularly, but the pressure to get everything done is already pretty intense, so I’m not going to add one more ‘to do’ on an already long list.   I had hoped to make a blog page just for the book, it may happen.

Lucie helping

What Evert taught me

Book inscription from Dutch calligrapher, Evert van Dijk

One of my oldest and dearest friends here in Holland is an impassioned calligrapher and retired teacher of handicapped children.

My encounter with him when I first came to live here changed my life as an artist irrevocably.  Evert saw my dilemma clearly. I was no longer growing artistically because I was caught in the prison of the  prevailing aesthetic in the middleclass American  milieu where I grew up. I’d  learned that art had to be ‘beautiful’ and that my calligraphy had to be as close to perfection as the human hand would allow.

Evert, with his wonderfully ebullient personality and outspoken views, blasted through that shell of pretense and released my authenticity. I think this is the task of all true teachers and mentors.

This altered view is also what releases calligraphy from craft and lifts it to art. My letters and mark making became much more expressive of who I was, and this had a ripple effect throughout my life; one I am only truly coming to understand about 20 years later.

In the article I am writing about art and dementia care, this theme of authenticity keeps reappearing.
Artists accept people with dementia as completely whole, viable, interesting human beings, and therefore often elicit lucid repsonses where trained staff have failed.   In an art session, the person ‘s markmaking is seen in the context of authenticity rather than conventional aesthetics.  I am not after a pretty picture (this would expose the person and me to the potential of ‘failure’)  instead, I look for interaction and engagement.  The rules change, a person’s  raw and spontaneous line becomes the new context for  ’beautiful’.  The Japanese have a philosphy of aesthetics based on this called Wabi Sabi*.  

It is the ability to see the worth in something or someone just as they are without requiring that they fit a preconceived ideal.

 

*Wabi Sabi is an asethetic of the fragile, weathered and transient. It is the opposite of the Western tendency to aspire to the imposing, large and powerful. We idealize a perfect rose in bloom, Wabi Sabi cherishes the rose past its prime:  a chipped flea market wooden table with flaking paint as opposed to the latest design statement in glass and chrome.