Open Studios 2011

Once a year East Bay artists come out from behind their easels and drawing boards to accompany their work in exhibition. This event is known as Open Studios. It is choreographed and presented by Pro Arts, a non-profit art advocacy program and gallery in downtown Oakland. This is my fifth year participating in the event, and it is always and exciting season.
The coming weekend: June 11 and 12 is the second and final weekend of Open Studios 2011. I will be at 401 26th St., Oakland (between Broadway and Telegraph) from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. with 19 of my colleagues. We have a beautiful venue: Uptown Body and Fender. Believe me, you've never seen a body shop like this. Check out their website and get the 411 on all the events and fundraisers held there. It's a very special place (and a great place to get your car repaired).
So enough for the promotion. My regular readers know that painting is a deeply spiritual and personal practice for me, and you might wonder how it feels to put myself 'out there' hoping to sell the work. In reality, there's a lot more connecting and schmoozing with people than selling which is good and not so good. The fact is, an artist cannot continue to produce without selling. For one thing, unsold work takes up space in the studio. My studio is not terribly big, so I hope to sell my work to good people, so that it can fulfill its life as art. No matter what our art form is, we cannot horde it. Hording is against the flow of creativity. We only horde things that we're eventually going to use in our art (which means that along with unsold paintings my studio stores wire, small sections of fencing, jars of insects that died of natural causes, jars of broken colored glass, shells, old canceled stamps, spools of thread, discarded snake skins, old costume jewelry, etc.)
Selling a work brings a beautiful feeling of completion to the artist. Artists are like fruit trees, the crops that come through us, are meant to be out nourishing our community and society at large. As trees need water and sunlight, we need funds to maintain our lives. Though there is no true equity in our financial realities, artists deserve to be recompensed for their craft, their time, their originality, their intellect, their skills, and their unique abilities to reflect the human condition in a symbolic or abstract way. Only a very small minority earn on a par with other professionals of equivalent talent or years at their craft.
Unlike the 19th Century image of the artist as Bohemian ne'er-do-wells, contemporary artists mostly work at other jobs while maintaining a serious creative practice. Many have families and meet all the responsibilities of parents, and/or children of aging parents. This is a reality check for people who still think artists live on the margins of society. Not many of us are wealthy, but we work hard to maintain our commitment to our calling along with our commitments to our other professions and loved ones. You can see why we cannot afford to sentimentalize our connection to the pieces we create. And even though original art seems expensive to many people, believe me, the prices asked don't even cover the overhead of studio costs.
So come to Open Studios and support a unique "tribe" of people who love their craft so much that they sacrifice summer vacations for it. They go without new shoes for it. They drive old cars, go without health care, and after a 40 hour work week, they spend weekends in the studio. Artists are people who don't put their money where their mouth is, they put their money where their heart is.
I'd love to meet some of my blog readers. Hope you will come by a say hi.
*The painting with this posting is entitled River Psalm, and it is on exhibit this weekend at 401 26th St., Oakland, (unless someone buys it before you get there).

Culturally Aware Coaching

Since establishing my personal website, I've had the good fortune to come together with a small cohort of coaches to focus on an aspect of coaching that, in our opinion, gets too little attention in the coaching profession. That important issue is Cultural Awareness.
We are all coaches of color and began to get together in an informal monthly lunch to talk about how cultural awareness came up in our coaching practices, and in our personal lives. After a year of such meetings, we realized our commitment to the topic, and learned that we enjoyed an affinity and a manner of working together that encouraged us to go further. So we established ourselves as Prism Coaching.
Each Prism coach maintains their own practice, while working on shared goals and activities of Prism Coaching as well.
I have not yet added a Prism link to my website, so I want to add it here. For more information about the individual coaches, and the work of Prism Coaching, please go to www.prismcoaching.org. There you can learn more about Culturally Aware Coaching and about the gifts that each coach brings.
The one thing I will say, in this limited space is this: Cultural awareness is not another name for "diversity training". We can see, though, just with this comparison of terms, that our language has been evolving, toward recognition and respect of all people. We've come a long way from "the melting pot" terminology and ideology of the 1950's. We now talk about the culture of a business environment, for example. If a person moves from one company to another, he or she must adjust and learn the cultural norms of the new place. When we stop to realize the number of American businesses that now hire employees from foreign countries, and from distinct American ethnic communities, we begin to guess at the complex cultural landscapes of the American business world. When women began to move into managerial and executive positions, that too caused a cultural shift. That's just a glimpse at cultural awareness in business, and it doesn't begin to touch on the components of gender and lifestyle.
I have to admit that when I got my Masters degree in Culture and Spirituality, I had no idea that it would lead me to this work, but I guess it just proves that when you stay on your own path, you are guided, inevitably, to where you are supposed to be.
I just want to add that I'm grateful for the friends and colleagues I discovered through what has become Prism Coaching: (I've listed them in alphabetical order by last names) Jennifer Chien, Kim Fowler, Donald Gerard, Belma Gonzalez, Wendy Horikoshi, Johnny Manzon-Santos, Ernest Mark, Alfredo Vergara-Lobo, and Fresh! White. Go to www.prismcoaching.org to learn more about each of us, and more about Culturally Aware Coaching.

Don't Look Down

There is a new movie out called Soul Surfer. It's about Bethany Hamilton, the courageous young surfer who returned to her sport after the loss of an arm to a shark attack. I haven't seen the movie, but I did see an interview with AnnaSophia Robb, the actress who plays Bethany in the film, and she was asked about her own fears in learning to surf. She said that in teaching her, Bethany told her not to look down, and she found that to be the key to keeping her mind focused. In fact, when I heard Bethany interviewed, it was the key to keeping her head and surviving the attack. She said she realized that she was bleeding badly, and instead of trying to see how bad the damage was, she focused her mind on getting back to shore.
When I heard her say that, "Don't look down" suddenly it struck me as a piece of universal wisdom. I say it frequently when teaching people to dance, and I've heard it said about wire-walking and rock climbing. You've probably heard it about other things you've learned (from riding a bicycle to roller skating).
There are two reasons why "Don't look down" is good advice. First, the human head weighs approximately 10 pounds. As soon as the head goes forward, even slightly facing down, the whole body is pulled off balance. Anyone who has tried yoga knows that the alignment of the head with the rest of the body is very important in reaching and maintaining an asana (a Yoga pose).
The second reason "Don't look down" is good advice is: Looking down means letting focus and determination wane, and opening a window to let fear in. Looking down reinforces one's sense of danger. So "Don't look down" is good advice whenever you're taking on a new endeavor that takes courage.
When I heard AnnaSophia Robb say that in her interview, I realized that it was a message to me. For the last two years I've been involved with writing my first novel. I originally set out, about six years ago to write a non-fiction book, but I couldn't find the right voice. Eventually, I had the idea to incorporate the subject I wanted to write about into a story. So I started studying writing fiction, and by the time I heard the Robb interview, I had the novel completed, to such an extent that it was time to start "shopping it around" to agents. Suddenly, I looked down in the sense that I thought "Oh God, what have I done?" I have devoted months to this project, and now I am out here at a point of no return.
What could I do at that point to regain my focus? I had to accept the possibility of worst-case scenarios. I realized that there was no way the project could fail, because I had carried it to it's creative completion. The only way to "fall off my board" would be to stuff it in a drawer.
The drawing posted with this blog post is about the creative process. It's about those moments of fear when we balk or stop ourselves because we have 'looked down'. The blank page can be both the best catalyst and the worst bully. It can look like a deep canyon beneath you, or a space laid out just waiting for your self-expression. So, I hope when you have the next moment of hesitation, you too will remember Bethany Hamilton's life saving advice.

The Power of Poetry

Thanks to Rap music, poetry and spoken word have surfaced in the life of American Pop culture.
But the role of poetry in the U.S. has largely been relegated to the intelligentsia, and with the crumbling state of our educational structures, it's not too likely that the mass majority of young people will know much about poetry beyond Rap and Hip Hop. This, in great part, is because of the democratic, if contentious, nature of our lifestyle.
Sadly, most Americans think poetry is about rhyme, or used in greeting cards to send well wishes to distant friends and relations.
But if we look at the role poetry has played in other parts of the world throughout history, we see that poetry is politically powerful. And in realizing that, each of us, can be empowered to read more poetry, and even write it for ourselves.
The painting published with this posting is called Antiquity. The markings coming out of the center are the foundational impulses of language expressed by the human hand. They are sophisticated in their symbolism, though ancient and primal. That's how I see the instinct of human beings to make poetry. It grows from the most independent and honorable impulse to be heard, to speak one's truth about life, and, in doing so, effect change.
Mary Pipher is a wonderful writer, and certainly very successful. She's the author of at least seven books, including the N.Y. Times bestseller, Reviving Ophelia. She also wrote a thought-provoking book about writing called Writing to Change the World. In her chapter about poetry, she talks about the power of poetry in the history of the Soviet Union, where samizdat, or underground poetry was an important subversive means of maintaining morale, communication, and strategies against a profoundly oppressive government. Even Doctor Zhivago, which most Americans treasure as a powerful love story, was smuggled out of the country in segments. Boris Pasternak, its author, barely escaped execution.
Russian poets became creative and skillful in ways of sharing their work. A good deal of it was memorized and recited in little clubs or gatherings. They made recordings on ex-ray film that could be played like phonograph records. There were also recordings of music and literature made on magnetic tape.
We have have never had to fight for the free expression of our poetry. Not that there hasn't been censorship in our country, but for the most part, poetry is not thought of as a political act in this country. That's where learning more about the subject, and the lives of American poets can set you straight.
I write this to raise consciousness about the freedom of creativity we enjoy. One has to wonder if a limitation isn't a catalyst. When someone tells you not to do something, don't you want to do it more? Stay away from those brownies. Don't drive so fast. You're not going to wear that are you? Think about it.
Now, don't go start writing poetry to tell the truth about the life you're living. I dare you.

In Remembrance

Last November a dear friend of mine lost her life in a light plane crash. Even as I write, four months later, after memorials and hymns and prayers, I cannot believe she's really not dancing on this earth.
Peg Noonan was a graceful spirit. She was a spiritual daughter of the muse Terpsichore in her love of dance. She was a teacher of NIA, and Zumba. At sixty-four she was in great shape, and seemed to love working out almost as much as she loved dancing.
But the thing that stayed with everyone who met Peg, was her vivacious love of life. She made friends with everyone she spoke to. And those of us who were fortunate enough to be her friend, knew that she was always with us in spirit whether she lived on the east coast or the west.
There was one small consolation to her death: she died with the sweetheart she'd finally found after more than twenty years of being divorced. They'd met only months before, and planned to marry this year. I did not know him, but I pray for him with my dear friend, that they may have, after all, a sweet life together.
Attempting to come to terms with Peg's death, I wrote the following poem which I leave here, in memorial.

For Peg
copyright 2011, Adriana Díaz

In my grief
I think of you
suspended in
an interminable
cessation
of being.
There's not a word
not an adjective,
or verb,
not an expletive,
nor a bleep.
There's no phone call,
or cyberspace correspondence.
No questions.
No answers.

This silence is a coffin
we share.

You are no longer breath,
nor graceful step.
Yet chassé you shall
on the memories
of dance floors we knew.

Our last lunch together,
sitting on the hem of the ocean,
the Pacific sun eavesdropping
on our buoyant words;
I see you there
as if I could touch the red curl
of your hair, or
hold your gentle hand.

If I had known you were
to fall from the sky
like Icarus from the sun,
I'd have prepared a field
of wool, dense as clouds,
and a bed of flowers,
fragrant and supple.
I'd have summoned birds
to give you wings and
bring you to rest
in slow, descending reverie.

But you enjoy now
the spacious affection
of stars.
You, aglow in
the cosmic landscape
beyond our understanding,
will visit Earth in
the echo of your laughter,
the remembrance of your
kind words, and the
persevering joy of your
vivacious spirit.

We, still planet-bound souls,
celebrate the grace of your
diaphanous presence,
sorrow's gravity dissolved by
the transcendent warmth of your
radiant smile.

Too late to say goodbye,
dear friend,
I lay my voice across the page
to say, at least, adieu.