One of the things you're supposed to do in The Artist's Way is take yourself on an Artist's Date every week. Just you, yourself, and art. I've absolutely loved doing this, and I wanted to share some of my favorites with you.
The Dallas Arboretum
Early in the summer, the Dallas Arboretum hosted Zimsculpt, an exhibit of sculptures, all by artists from Zimbabwe. It was beautiful and fascinating. I hope they bring it back again in years to come.
The Dallas Museum of Art
One of my favorite things about the DMA is the amazing way they curate the individual galleries within the museum. Epigraph, Damascus by Julie Mehretu, hanging next to Untitled by Christopher Wool: "No more home." Stunning.
The Crow Collection of Asian Art
I loved this exhibit, Landscape Relativities: The Collaborative Works of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney. Cherney is a photographer who lives in China; Chang is a classically-trained painter who lives in New York. Cherney takes photos, and sends them to Chang who creates a fantasy landscape the includes and expands on the photos. Collaboration is the all the awesome, in my book.
The Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth)
You may remember how I flipped out over Gabriel Dawe's Plexus no. 34 when I saw it in June. It's leaving the museum September 2, and I'm pretty much in mourning. I feel like this should be part of the permanent collection at the Amon Carter.
The Japanese Garden, Fort Worth Botanic Garden
The Japanese Garden in Forth Worth is an entire living art-landscape that you get to walk into and enjoy from endlessly beautiful aspects. There's not a single flower in the whole place. Just green green green of all shapes, sizes, and textures. (And a lot of slightly scary carp.)
So, folks, I was having a wonderful, artful summer, full of normal, usual artful experiences: sculpture, photography, painting, gardens. All the good stuff.
And then we went to Santa Fe, where there's a new art-sheriff in town, and its name is MeowWolf.
MeowWolf is a group of artists who collaborated on some art installation projects, then took over an old bowling alley and turned it into The House of Eternal Return.
They call it "an immersive art installation experience."
I call it The Cathdral of Creativity on Crack.
After standing in a pretty serious line (because word has gotten out, y'all), you enter the exhibit, which looks like the front porch of an old farmhouse. There's some kind of mystery attached to the house, and practically everything in the house is a portal to different parts of the "multiverse" where you can continue to follow the story line.
Walk through the closets, climb through the fireplace, shimmy through the dryer, crouch through the refrigerator, and find yourself in a fantasy world.
True confession: I didn't even try to follow the storyline, because I was too busy being visually overwhelmed in the best possible way.
Here we are, playing the musical dinosaur bones:
Here's a selfie we took after we climbed inside an ice machine:
Here we are, exploring a flourescent forest:
Playing a laser-light "harp" by passing my fingers through the light beams:
While we were in Santa Fe, my assignment from The Artist's Way was to write some creative mantras for myself.
One of the mantras I wrote that week was, "Nothing confines my creative spirit."
And then we went to The House of Eternal Return, where a whole bunch of people with completely unconfined creative spirits went and lost their collective minds, all in one spot.
It was glorious.
And it just made me wonder:
How am I holding myself back, creatively?
When I hold myself back, creatively, what glorious wonder remains unleashed?
What are we all missing out on, because I hold myself back?