Friends / Colleagues / Students / Teachers / Extremely attractive hilarious human-loving humans: Hello! And what are you up to on New Years Day?
I am writing to invite you to join me for a mini-retreat on the concept of Re-creation.
Re-creation
Re-creation. These days, the concept has been rolling through my mind like a stone in the waves.
I first encountered the word through the work of Dr. Abigail Housen, cognitive psychologist and co-author of the Visual Thinking Strategies facilitation method, who passed this past year.
Housen’s study on human thinking in response to art identified a set of stages by which we tend to develop over a lifetime of interaction with art. The final stage — Stage 5, the Re-Creative Stage — represents that wise place of lived experience, where familiarity, newness, acceptance, and humorous curiosity all converge, with some leftover space for something else to evolve.
It was was blown away when I fist heard the concept (almost twenty years ago!). Re-creative. Like re-creation: to make again. And, next-door neighbors to Recreation: fun, play, fresh air, and highest-quality acts of restoration outside of work or craft.
Re-creation in art
Re-creation puts a finger on what some of my all-time favorite artists seem to be doing in their work. Like the way Maya Lin intended for everyday passers by to encounter the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial as a “rift in the earth”: a fissure of polished black rock reaching to unify two planes. A scarred landscape representing a place where something unforgettable has happened, while at the same time, living in its own rite as another place: a park in an American city.
Like the way Liliana Porter’s works on canvas play with everyday objects like toys, hardware, the detritus of pop you might find at the bottom of your kids’ backpack or left behind in an abandoned cubicle — reconfiguring them into scenes that are both deeply familiar and a world of their own that might have something important to say.
Or how Richard Prince’s Cowboys photographs, such as this one, click right into our pre-conceived ideas of American masculinity… while simultaneously complicating and contributing high doses of reality to the picture. Or like Frida Kahlo’s recreations of herself, such as here. Or Hilma af Klimt, re-creation to say the least. The list goes on…
The word Re-creation pops up for me from time to time, like how a structural thread might become apparent here and there through the course of a very long tapestry.
And right now, after the blows and possibilities of 2020, as we look ahead to 2021, what I crave is focus: what could re-creation look like were we at our best?
This is why I’m hosting the mini-retreat. Join me?
Re-Creation mini-retreat! Details:
Friday, January 1, 2021. 10-11:30am EST, by Zoom.
Agenda
- On Re-Creation. I’ll share some slides and ideas, we’ll explore some questions on re-creation as we know it and see it in life and in art.
- Arts Experience: Re-Creation. There will be writing prompts. There will be drawing prompts. There will be looking at art, and some looking again. There will be conversation. There will be sharing. And there will be no sharing of anything drawn or written that anyone does not want to share.
- Debrief. Takeaways, intentions, parting thoughts. Q+A for those who want to stick around
All will leave with:
- Insights on re-creation
- Perspective-catalyzing examples of re-creation
- Clarity on what re-creation means to you for the New Year (and most importantly, where).
- A list of all works of art viewed and referenced (sent out following the event).
Homework: A very short, and entirely optional, assignment will be sent to you upon your signing up. Its purpose is to boost your experience with the session. It is not a pre-requisite.
Cost: $50.00 USD. If you have a financial hardship, reach out for a no questions asked substantial discount.
Registration: right here.
Space is limited!
Bring: A journal or little stack of unlined paper, and your favorite pen or pencil.
Also bring: Coffee, tea, a family member to hang next to you on the couch as long as they are on-topic and not distracting. And bring your friend across the country so you can text each other the whole time, which we all know is the funnest part of taking online classes.
See you on New Years Day!
Alexa xx
PS — Interested in bringing this retreat to your organization? Get in touch.
RECENT PRESS:
How Fine Art Can Help Clinicians See Past their Biases, Conversation with Xenia Shih Bion, CHCF Blog, 10/29/10.
Interview on Art Goes On Podcast, 10/7/2020.
