Need to really digest this.....

Lisa:

I am truly amazed at what you have accomplished and the level to which you
have taken our art program. I get a big smile every time I see an email,
knowing that you are once again doing great things for our kids. It is truly
transformative in their lives, and in ours.

Thank you,

Chris
Christine Stoner-Mertz, CEO

And thank you for being the source of its creation!

Chris
Christine Stoner-Mertz, CEO

Looking forward to it Lisa - thanks! And thanks again for your
responsiveness in helping brighten up our hallway. I really appreciate it...

Chris
Christine Stoner-Mertz, CEO

______________________________________________
"my experience of creating with these extraordinary children, two of my core
beliefs about art have been affirmed. Art is intrinsic to the nurturance of
the human spirit and art’s true essence is transformative.”
Lisa
ArtTeacher at LCC

______________________________________________________________
Lisa,
Again thank you this is wonderful for our students!!!! It just keeps getting
better and better.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY AWESOME...... not just the art but our children's comment's .... simply amazing!
val
______
Lisa

I am so excited about this! Thanks for doing this!
Vinya S.V.

In Honor of my Dad

Every time I visit my Dad's house in Ozarks I feel I am on a sabbatical. I can breathe and center myself. Although, this time was very different my Dad is sick and we had to take him into the VA for some tests.

This image is piece a created after my healing run down to the lake. Honoring the place and my connection to it.

Value!

HS Student of the Year Nomination:
To Lisa Rasmussen:

Lisa,

Five years ago, you entered the Department of Arts & Consciousness as a student in the Transformative Arts program. As your creative process unfolded, your paintings grew ever more compelling. By the end of three years, you transferred to the MFA program to more deeply engage your artwork. During this period, you continued to develop a program in transformative arts for clients at the Lincoln Child Center in Oakland. Your program bridged the gap between art as a transformative tool and art as a form of cultural expression. Your Lincoln Child Care Center students exhibited their work in a Sausalito Gallery and were the focus of an annual benefit for the Center. Because of your dedicated and creative work with the students at Lincoln Child Center, they have experienced the invaluable joy of self-expression and the all-important process of being seen in their fuller humanity. You have been a profound, transformative influence in their lives.



As an artist, your work has gone far beyond the limits of traditional painting. Your final MFA Exhibition entitled Caol Ait (Thin Spaces) reveals the full scope and power of your artwork, moving beyond the genre of painting into installation and environmental art, as well as movement, ritual and sculpture. In your teaching and in your artwork you celebrate the realization that art lives at the edges of life and spirit. You explore and then dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer, self and other and in so doing represent the highest ideals of Holistic Studies. You are an outstanding individual, and we are proud to nominate you as Student of the Year. Congratulations and best wishes for continued success.



Peter M. Rojcewicz, PHD

Dean, School of Holistic Studies

#9 collecting random interactions: UZ DA SUN!!

"UZ DA SUN!!"
Walking up the hill in Berkeley and fellow walker smiled at me. Then turned around and laughed saying that is so cute. As she pointed to the VW Bugs licences plate and she read it..

Earth Day 2010: Kelp Forest Shrine

I had an amazing Earth Day we camped on the coast, south of Big Sur at this magical treasure of a campsite called Kirk Creek




I was drawn to the portal, the doorway that had been formed in the rock... The energy of this place felt was akin to the Inca gate of the Sun in Machu Pucchu, Peru. The betwixt!!



I started creating a spiral with rocks close to the portal and as I looked around I saw a beautiful piece of kelp.I necklaced the kelp around the spiral. It is amazing how my shrines always go back to the tree or the forest. As kelp in the ocean is considered a forest.



I came to the conclusion that this place was hub of Jyoti(meaning light in Hindi)




On this trip I was also reading one of Deepak Chopra's books and here is what I embraced in an automatic and stream of consciousness way
New vision--new sense of self--generous of spirit-Devata--never ending creativity



awareness is the source of all of us--deeper vision--seeing differently!



To check out the Earth Day in D.C."Click Here". Shouldn't everyday be Earth Day?? We all need to embrace a new and deeper vision of what it means to be a human and to reconnect with our amazing mother called Earth!!

#8 collecting random interactions

"All you need to do is get a steady job, buy house, and a have family that is life." "That is all it is about."

guy talking to his friends outside a brew pub, Berkeley,CA

"Here Kitty, kitty." Homeless man at the Albany Bulb park in Albany, CA--seriously there were no cats in sight.....

"I love you like Jesus. I love you unconditionally. You just have a problem because you do not except my love." "What problem?"
Two elderly man arguing outside Peets Coffee in Berkeley.

Art from the abyss

What creative hub!! This a landfill site on the Bay that has been transformed!!.




"Click Here" to read about the history of the Albany Bulb.