{"id":630,"date":"2020-09-07T13:53:22","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T20:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/seniorstudio\/?page_id=630"},"modified":"2025-09-02T23:14:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T06:14:00","slug":"unit-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/seniorstudio\/unit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"UNIT 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n \n Unit 2 <\/span>\n\n \n \n Making Space, Making Rituals <\/span>\n <\/h1>\n<\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n
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Only the maker (and then only with time) has a chance of knowing how important small conventions and rituals are in the practice of saying at work.<\/span><\/h4>\n

-Bayles & Orland<\/h4><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Hopefully by this week you will be more acquainted with the way you work and your needs for a studio. The kind of space and environment you choose to work in will profoundly shape the kind of work that you create. When I moved to Alberta for graduate school I was so captivated by the light and shadows. Especially in the starkness of the winter the days with little sun and long, dark nights. I\u00a0 believe that this was at least part of the reason that I was so focussed on working with projection during my graduate studies. I wanted to work with the medium of light and shadow. You can see some of those early experiments here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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What kind of environment sustains your practice?\u00a0 What kind of space will enable your work? What space is available? How will the space you are working in form the kind of work you make?\u00a0 Does your work require a kind of space? Or is it a mental space that you need to find? Do you work in spurts of frenzied activity or do you prefer to pursue a consistent daily practice? There are as many ways to practice as there are creative people. I invite you to consider the rituals that you build for yourself and how they contribute to sustaining creative practice in your life.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of my graduate school professors insisted that <\/span>“you should go into your studio every single day, even if it\u2019s simply to look at and think about your work.”<\/span><\/p>\n

An artist I know had a home studio for a time. Every morning she would get up, leave her house, walk around the block and come back into the studio. This act of \u201carriving\u201d at the studio helped ground and focus her.<\/span><\/p>\n

A friend of mine talks about his sense of delight in turning off his phone just as the church service was starting, perhaps the only time he turns it off all week.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn’t a daily ritual but when I complete a project and begin a new one I clean! I take everything off the walls from the last project and think carefully about what I want to put up to inspire and influence the next project. I deep clean, sweep, organize and give myself space for new ideas.<\/p>\n

These are small rituals that carve out sacred spaces in our lives.\u00a0 Actions acquire special significance because we do them regularly. They help us mark time. They help signal change. What practices help to ground you and transform the mundane into the sacred?<\/span><\/p> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Unit Overview:<\/strong><\/h3>\n