Yep, still going through closets, cabinets, drawers and boxes, sorting out what I need/love from the rest. This month, I found, shoved into a folder, some things from an old bulletin board I had saved. Two of those items were old fortune cookie fortunes I had saved:
“Life to you is a dashing, bold adventure”
And
“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing”
I’ve had that attitude about my life since I left home at age 19, walking away from the cult I grew up in, and being shunned by family and friends. I found a home with my grandmother, a safe place that allowed me to start navigating a world I knew very little of. I was both scared and excited, and isn’t that part of an adventurer’s life, to step into the unknown, to feel all the feelings, to experience the magic of discovery?
My life HAS been an adventure, mostly a very good one, and always a very interesting one. And being an artist, both visual and literary, has given me a voice, a (sometimes) loud one. I’m currently battling a creative block, and have decided not to fight it. I’m in the middle of processing some heavy *stuff*, dealing with some heavy issues, and now walking side-by-side with a close friend on her kidney cancer journey. The issues WILL be processed, my dear friend WILL come through and my creativity WILL return.
I may not be actively making art in the real world, but oh my. In my dreams, I see the colors swirling, I hear the words coming together, I feel the textures of materials interacting. The creativity, the art is there, right under the surface. I am eager to see how it will come out, excited to step into my next adventure. It may be months before I can carve out a space in my head to be able to connect dreams with fabric and paper, but that’s fine, my friend takes priority. She’s been on many adventures with me, and will be on many more.
How do you view life? How do you handle creative blocks? Please, email me at gretchen2art@yahoo.com to share your thoughts.
Walk in love
- Gretchen -
Exhibit news!
WiVLA’s exhibit EXPANSIONwill take place from September 1, 2023 to October 31, 2023 and will be held at Winter Street Studios. Our juror is Elena Poirot from Lee College in Baytown. The exhibit will be open to WiVLA members as well as women artists working in the Greater Houston Area.
Saturday, August 26, 2023
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
ZOOM
The real work of writing is the re-writing: Believe me, your literary heroes revise and revise and revise! This two to three hour workshop focuses on revision and editing and welcomes both poetry and prose writers. Participants will come to workshop with a piece of writing they would like to work on—either one poem or one-three pages of a prose piece. We will closely examine these works for craft (not grammar!). We will consider elements such as description and imagery, sound and syntax, people and place as well as beginnings and endings. This workshop will be tedious and immensely “hands-on” in its dissection—for example, isolating every noun and considering each for their relationships and intra-lineage. Participants will leave with plenty to consider!
Bio: Adele Elise Williams is a writer, editor and educator. She is the winner of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing and Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize for Poetry as well as a finalist for the 2022 Loraine Williams Poetry Prize. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Indiana Review, The Georgia Review, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Cream City Review, The Florida Review and elsewhere. Her current goings-on can be found at adeleelisewilliams.com.
Writing Your Story and Then Sharing It: How to Stop Doubting and Start Making Art
Saturday, September 2, 2023
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
ZOOM
"Everyone's a critic," the adage goes, but for countless artists and aspiring artists, no one's a harsher critic than one's self. Join Dr. Cait Weiss Orcutt for a two-hour workshop geared around working with (or simply firing) our inner critics. We'll discuss how we get in our own way, what we have to offer, and why/how some systems seem to work to keep us quiet -- then we'll dive into a few creative exercises together to shake that nay-saying inner voice up.
Bio: Cait Weiss Orcutt is the author of VALLEYSPEAK, winner of the 2017 Zone 3 First Book Prize. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and a PhD from the University of Houston. Her essays and poems have appeared in Boston Review, Bust Magazine, Chautauqua, FIELD, The Pinch, The Academy of American Poets and more. Currently based in the Midwest, Cait leads online poetry and creative nonfiction writing workshops for writers of all backgrounds and locations. She is the recipient of a UH College of Arts and Letters Dissertation Completion Fellowship and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor/MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship.
Why do certain characters stick in our minds? Whether kind or cruel, powerful or pitiful, handsome or homely, some characters live on long after the curtain closes. Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the Golden Girls – let's explore specifically what makes a character live on and on.
Bio: Also known as The Story Painter, Rogers wrote her first story in third grade. “A Girl Named Sam” earned her an A+. Years passed. Married with children, Rogers tackled her first painting – a mural for a livingroom wall. A simple tree – but a dismal failure – and it was 38 years before she again picked up a brush. Today, after publishing 6 short-story collections numerous magazine articles, including Writers Digest, 9 novels – a non-fiction book on writing and winning numerous ribbons for her art, both abstract and representational, Rogers will enjoy her first solo-artist show in June 2023 at Degallery in Bryan, Texas.
Save the date for a tour of the Printing Museum. More details, TBA.
Save the Date: Journal Making with Cori Austin
Saturday, November 4, 2023
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
819 Highland St, Houston TX 77009
Would you like to make a handmade journal that you can use for sketching? Watercolor? Art journaling? Writing your deepest thoughts? Playing with poetry? Any of those are possible at Cori Austin’s Handmade Journal Workshop.
Remember to check the WiVLA Calendar for exciting happenings - fieldtrips, studio visits, workshops, and other fun activities.
Imagination is part of our ability to problem-solve, to adjust, to change. Children spend hours playing, not only to experience delight, but to learn about the surrounding world and themselves. We somehow feel growing up means leaving these imaginative episodes behind. Modern science tells us otherwise. Dr. Karyn Purvis, the late Director of the Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University, found that it takes around twenty repetitions of a new behavior to create a synapse in the brain and integrate the behavior during play, while a behavior learned in a dutiful mindset requires around four hundred repetitions. Play is one way to increase neuroplasticity, flexibility in the brain. How do we recapture the spirit of play and integrate it with technique to access new areas of creativity?
Katherine McDaniel grew up roaming fields and woods near Dripping Springs, Texas, aquiring a passion for nature and imagination. She is the founder of Synkroniciti, an arts incubator, and the editor of Synkroniciti Magazine, a quarterly online literary and visual arts journal exploring what it means to be human across the literary and visual art spectrum.
Katherine works with a variety of creative media. She leads playdates on fairy gardening and other botanical crafts that encourage collaboration and creative thinking. Her poetry has appeared in Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor and she was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera to write and perform a series of poems based on the lives of women who immigrated to the United States from Latin America: Nubia’s Shoes, Yo soy un Corazòn and Drumming. Her art has appeared at Art on the Avenue, a charitable exhibition and auction that supports housing assistance. A performing musician, she lives in Houston in a home that does not flood (!!) with her husband and four tabby cats.
Watch your Inbox for an email with the Zoom meeting code.
Rachel Connelly
Rachel Connelly is a developmental editor, community theatre actor, and cat mom. For as long as she can remember, reading, writing, and art have been the loves of her life. There has rarely been a moment when she didn't have at least three creative projects going on, and that's the way she likes it. Whether it's through the written word, visual art, or performance, she values any opportunity she can get to express her creativity. As a developmental editor, it's her greatest joy to get to help other authors do the same and help them bring their hearts to life on the page.
In addition to her editing work, Rachel has recently joined the wonderful team at the Jung Center as an associate for the Mind Body Spirit Institute. Their mission is near and dear to her heart and she is incredibly thankful for the opportunity to work with so many like minded people. She is also currently performing in the Art Park Players' production of The Music Man, which runs from July 7th-July 22nd.
For any inquiries about developmental editing projects, you can email her at rachelconnelly7@gmail.com
June Member Meeting: Adventures in Authoring Books
Diane Prokop led an interactive discussion with the WiVLA members and guests about how a variety of arts can inspire writing.
She presented various scenarios of different art forms that inspire writing.
Music – what kind of music do you enjoy while you create art or do you like to write in silence? How does music affect your characters or the setting of your stories? Diane shared books where music plays a prominent role.
Visual arts and hobbies make our characters more memorable and help to build a more interesting setting. A character’s sense of fashion can add interest. Incorporating ekphrastic writing is another way to add color to our stories. Diane gave the example of storyboarding a fight scene if you were writing a story about a boxer to visualize each movement during a fight.
Diane and the WiVLA members generated a list of the universal qualities of creativity:
Personal expression
Emotional
Fear
Vision
Curiosity
Discipline
Empathy
Healing
Accomplishment
If you missed the zoom meeting, you can watch the recording on the WiVLA YouTube Channel.
Activities outside of WiVLA
Authorpalooza
Friday, October 6 to Sunday, October 8, 2023
Hilton Houston Plaza Medical Center Hotel
6633 Travis Street, Houston TX 77030
Houston Writer's Guild's Authorpalooza Conference will be October 6-8, 2023, at the Hilton Houston Plaza Medical Center hotel. Full details, cost, and registration links are now live on our website, www.houstonwritersguild.org.
Melody Locke is part of the Really Big Show
One of Melody Locke’s images was juried into the Lawndale Art Center’s BIG Show. The exhibition runs from June 2, 2023 through August 12, 2023 in the John M. O’Quinn & Cecily E. Horton Galleries.
We'd love to celebrate your good news. If you are interested in sharing, please send your items to newsletter@wivla.org. The deadline for inclusion in the next month's newsletter is the 20th. Thank you.
WiVLA’s exhibit EXPANSION will take place from September 1, 2023 to October 31, 2023 and will be held at Winter Street Studios. Our juror is Elena Poirot from Lee College in Baytown. The exhibit will be open to WiVLA members as well as women artists working in the Greater Houston Area. 
Remember to check the WiVLA Calendar for exciting happenings - fieldtrips, studio visits, workshops, and other fun activities. 
