A Joyous Outpouring celebrates beauty and soul

For The Tennessean, Michelle Jones writes "Twist Art Gallery shares Lauren Krusso's pretty flowers", describing Krusso's exhibition, A Joyous Outpouring that showcases her printmaking and sculpture. Jones describes the show: "An overwhelming sense of beauty emanates from a floating garden of 10 handmade flower sculptures suspended in one corner of the gallery. In combinations of cream and deep red, purple and teal, orange and red, blue and white, each flower sits on its own bed of leaves. She includes,

"Kussro also likes to counter what she sees as a trend in contemporary art of downplaying the relevance of beauty. Quoting a Thomas Moore essay, she talks of the necessity of nurturing the human soul. “My work has always been about beauty,” Kussro explains. “I think it’s necessary for beauty to exist. … I feel like it’s my responsibility as an artist to use my gifts to benefit others.”

Jones writes, "Kussro also explores the negative side of beauty in A Joyous Outpouring in that she was inspired by the negative spaces and pieces left from where she cut shapes for her sculptural work." The artist says, “I was throwing away all these beautiful scraps, so I started saving them all,” she says. She began repurposing them in small, colorful resin-covered collages, or cut out even smaller leaf shapes in various green hues and applied them to gauzy fabric stretched over plywood frames."

Artist quotes Moore about enchantment and art

Today, Sarah Zoutewelle quotes Thomas Moore's The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life in two posts about commercialism and the role of art, on her blog Art Calling. She includes Moore's observation, "Through a magical, spiritual use of images, the arts nourish the soul creating a richly varied atmosphere, an environment that is not only practical, but spiritually nutritious."

"Re-enchanted art"
"Tending the soulful life"

Zoutewelle attended the Fine Arts department at Syracuse University and writes on her web site, ArtWell (Artist in Healthcare), "I was shaped by a tradition where mastery of technique was an important prerequisite to producing quality work." Visit her site for an online gallery posted November 2008.

Slow discovery of intimacy through art works

In Melbourne’s The Age for Saturday 11 October, Andrew Stephens discusses two local art installations in "Too Close for Comfort". He writes,

"Intimacy isn't easy, for vulnerability requires emotional nakedness, letting down the defences to expose and share ugly or dull traits alongside fragile treasures. We crave intimacy - with partners, parents, children, even strangers - yet we may repel or avoid it out of paralysing fear of what it demands of us.

I have searched for clues to it in books - haven't we all? On the cover of Thomas Moore's beautiful Care of the Soul, a subtitle explains that it is "a guide for cultivating depth and sacredness in everyday life". There are other texts of this ilk on my shelves - James Hillman's A Blue Fire, Stephanie Dowrick's Intimacy and Solitude, Robert Johnson's Psychology of Romantic Love. They all make their cases for greater intimacy. Some are truly wise.

But the real, slow discovery is that intimacy mostly comes in relationships with people and usually involves an exchange: honest conversation, tenderness and compassion, sexual expression, or perhaps simply being. Other forms of intimacy can mean communing deeply with self or with the creative world.
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It is a question that goes to the heart of the experience of intimacy: how close can you get, and yet retain your identity and necessary solitude at the same time? Even with your beloved, or a dying parent, or a newborn child (let alone an art work), you can only go so far. It is the sort of thing that Stephanie Dowrick writes so successfully about: that intimacy begins on the inside, that it begins with your own self, and if the boundaries blur too much between two people, a dynamic can ensue which actually hinders or defeats intimacy.

It is an intriguing aspect of humanity: our desire to "only connect", as E.M.Forster's epigraph announced in Howard's End. Some lovers misconstrue this desire as a need to be "as one", to take union - coital or emotional - to its extreme and to actually merge. I think of Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights or the medieval myth of Tristan and Isolde. As Melbourne psychologist Peter O'Connor remarks in Looking Inwards (2003), such idealisation of a lover usually turns to disillusionment. If we are able to hang in there and work through it, he says, that denigration may metamorphose into a healthy and fulfilling integration of the other's difference. We come to value these differences - a process we might apply more broadly when we encounter "the other" (in culture, politics, sexuality or gender) in the broader world.

Many nuances of relationship are beautifully explored in the Intimacy exhibition at ACCA but one telling aspect ... is the emphasis on non-verbal languages to convey intimate feelings.

"I didn't expect music to be such a large part," says curator Anna MacDonald when she gives me a preview of some of the works she chose for the show. "But then it also seems quite natural. Music steps in when another kind of language fails - and if you think of the way it functions in most people's lives ... you experience particular emotions when you listen to music; it also helps you to understand or to articulate particular feelings in a way that you can't do otherwise."

A meaningful life at work fulfills creative needs

On Monday 30 June, writing coach and visual artist in eastern Iowa, Suzanne Kelsey blogs about "Why We Want to Create", quoting a passage from Thomas Moore’s column in the 2008 March-April issue of Spirituality and Health:

"C.G. Jung once described creativity as an instinct. If I do something creative in a day, I can sleep well. I’m relaxed. But if the practical world of traveling and family and obligation prevents me from doing something creative – if I can’t make anything – I feel tired and sick and somewhat depressed."

Kelsey then explores our need to create.

On the same day, in Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, Susan Whitney reviews Thomas Moore’s A Life at Work under the headline "Listen to learn true calling, author says". Whitney concludes her review with,

"Does talk of loving your work seem like a luxury? Moore's new book will convince the reader that it is not selfish to seek deep satisfaction. At the very least, you'll come away from this book thinking that being open to new callings can give your life more meaning.

And finally, he advises, "You don't have to look for perfection. Dark shadows from the past may always color what you are doing. ...A life work is more a sensation than a fact, a realization that your work has been meaningful and not that it has finally become complete and flawless."

Refugee women feel healing of creative arts

Thomas Moore often writes about soul and art. In today’s Toronto Star, reporter Nicholas Keung gives a concrete example of art’s healing capabilities for recent refugees to the city. This story touches on another theme underlying Moore's work: friendship and soul.

Keung asks, what happens when you get a paintbrush, a camera and words in a new language?

"For a group of women and girls waiting to be granted asylum in Toronto, the fruit of that experiment last summer was a remarkable 40-page book of photography, painting and poetry, plus an exhibit at the Tinto Coffee House that will go on to Toronto City Hall and Metro Hall in June during a celebration of refugee rights.

But more than that, for these women the opportunity to express themselves artistically relieved stress and helped heal the trauma of being displaced from their homelands, giving them a new sense of dignity and self-confidence.

The book, Shukar Lulugi – "Beautiful Flower" in the Romany language – came as a surprise even to the 17 participants, age 12 to 56, because none of them originally wanted to take part in the project organized at the Sojourn House refugee shelter.

That changed when they started learning about drawing, painting, writing and photography from community artists with Toronto's Red Tree artists' collective.

"I thought my life ended when I left my country. I was constantly depressed. The snow here didn't help," said Margarita Valdez, a Mexican lawyer who sought refuge in Canada with her husband and their 14-year-old son in 2006.

"But creative art has awakened my feelings again. I realized that after all the snow, everything would be born and grow again."

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"In their painting class, the women were asked to draw landscapes from the rooftop of the Queen St. shelter, or to paint their hands or favourite fruits, like Melena Yohannes' "ugly mango."

"Many of us never painted before. We aren't Picassos, but it doesn't matter," said Yohannes, 21, who fled Eritrea under official persecution because of her Pentecostal faith. "Creative art is about expressing ourselves. It's a huge relief for us to have a few hours for ourselves, to forget about all the stress and problems we had in our lives. And we got to make some new friends, too."

Standing beside a framed photo she took of her toddler son, Adam, Jamila – a Moroccan who fled an abusive husband and asked that her last name not be used – said she never thought she could write, at least not in English. But she enjoyed the simple wordplays in the writing class.

"The project was a therapy for me. As refugees, it's hard to let it out. It's nice to know that I wasn't alone in my tragic experience. It's not like we're trying to forget about the pains inside us. It's about sharing those feelings and stories," said the 30-year-old, all smiles now.

The women's book Shukar Lulugi , funded by the Toronto Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, can be purchased for $10. Email info@sojournhouse.org or call 416 864-0515 ext. 242. The exhibit is free to view until Thursday at Tinto Coffee House on Roncesvalles Ave. It moves to Toronto City Hall April 3, 2008; Toronto Metro Hall on June 4, 2008.

Creative arts therapies mentioned at lecture

While describing her breakfast of Tofu Scramble today, Laura Muraco says she attended a recent talk by Thomas Moore and wrote on her blog, "Lately I went to a lecture given by the great Thomas Moore he is the author of Care of the Soul which after hearing his lecture I know I must read. Basically he is a brilliant psychologist who has a very spiritual and archetypal approach. One thing that was discussed were creative arts therapies. Drama Therapy was mentioned and my heart buzzed with excitement. The keystone in my passion for Theater is the gateway it provides for deep expression and loss of ego. I believe it is just such a beautiful medium to transcend perceptions that divide us from one another and ourselves. I am definitely going to do more research on this field because it really pulled my heartstrings hearing about it."

Editor's Note:
Moore has been a psychotherapist, not a psychologist.

Artistic creations stem from artists' gardens

Earlier this month, Susan Smith-Durisek wrote about three Kentucky artists in her column "When artists garden:
The interplay of self-expression shows in their work", published in the Lexington Herald-Ledger.

Her profile of artist Nancy Evans Nardiello includes, "Taking the time to really look at the miracle of each plant allows Nardiello to garden and paint in the spirit of one of her favorite authors, Thomas Moore. In his Care of the Soul, Moore wrote that simply pausing and taking time to look around can transform a life."

Descriptions of the artists’ work support the column’s introduction, "Three local artists are growing three very different kinds of gardens. Yet there is a common thread among them: the interplay of self-expression in creating visual art and designing their own gardens. The combination has resulted in works that reveal intimate familiarity with the smallest details of growing things and hold an up-close and personal meaning in the artists' lives. For the rest of us, the result is some stunningly beautiful art."

Thomas Moore wrote,

"We may have to learn again the mystery of the garden: how its external characteristics model the heart itself, and how the soul is a garden enclosed, our own perpetual paradise where we can be refreshed and restored."