This week I really felt my growth as a facilitator. Over this past year I have worked on building my confidence and my ability to identify what art activities will be well received by the community. While I can come up with many ideas of art to make, not all of them are going to be of interest to the artists. So, in order to lead a successful art-making idea I need to have built my own confidence as well as an understanding of what the community enjoys. I also need to know what small challenges could be embraced.
I have learned that I can engage with the artists more when I bring my art-making to them, rather than inviting them to come to me. I’ve found that ideas that allow people to engage a lot or only a little are more successful, because some people have the capacity to work for a long time on something while others, for one reason or another, only have a little time to engage in it.
This week I wanted to highlight the incredible range of artistry that our community holds by making “artist trading cards.” On the bottom of a small card the artist writes their name and above it they create an artwork that is representative of themselves as an artist. I had so much fun going around and asking people to join me in making these cards. I then gathered and laminated them. This final step made them feel complete; they are like a deck of one-of-a-kind cards. I am very excited to make more in the following weeks and share them with the community. My hope is that they will reflect for everyone how connected and whole the community is, how we all fit together, and how everyone brings amazing creativity to build this bright colorful deck.
–Marielle Charpentier, 3/24/2002