The Blog

Once again, Earth Art at Squam proved to be a beautiful, amazingly grounding class. There’s something about setting aside how you think about creativity in the “classic sense” (paint, oil pastels, drawing, etc) to get your hands dirty. To observe and gather sticks, stones, flowers, pine cones… And to do so with INTENTION. That’s the difference. That’s what makes it powerful. I think every year students come to this class with pre-conceived ideas about how it’ll work for them… and they are always surprised by their process and thinking. It’s powerful to witness.

For a recap: Earth Art is a class based on Andy Goldsworthy’s work. It’s about making a sculpture or work of art out of found objects in nature… whatever is available at that moment. The class starts with a meditation to get students still and listening to their own hearts and thoughts (that in itself is sometimes the most amazing thing!), and they allow a word or phrase to bubbled up to the surface… This word is something they want to bring into their lives (for example: abundance, clarity, joy). The sculpture they create, then, is based on this word. The concept is to bring intention to that which they want to create, and then release it back to the source at the end of the day.

This year we had some major breakthroughs. Things like — letting what you create be good enough, and not comparing it to other’s work (isn’t that so hard sometimes?). Things like — realizing the process is more important than the final “product”. Things like — thinking you wanted to draw something into your life, but realizing your heart wanted something completely different. All amazing self-discoveries, yeah?

Here are the results (which, by the way, are ridiculously hard to photograph at times):

Thank you to all the students who took the class with such open hearts and minds. You guys create your lives.

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