Peer Support for Creative Practice

Practice creates the conditions for developing peer relationships, independent of differences in age, skill or life experience.

When we share practices, we relate as peers.

Sharing practice offers an invitation into relationship.

Reflections on Peer Support for Creative Practice

Thank you for the many kind messages of love and connection to my last newsletter sharing our loss of Kona and the many transitions of this season. I was reminded how loss, transition and milestone moments are important opportunities for support from our peers. At graduation events, it was delightful to see other parents again, many for the first time in over a year. I realized how I missed my peers as much as my children have missed theirs. Your notes of kindness and sharing your own losses in the past year reminded me how important connection is when we feel overwhelmed and isolated by loss.
Thank you.
 
I have been reflecting on peer relationships and their importance for creative practice. 
 
When my son was in elementary school, he played the cello in the school orchestra. We attended a concert by Acoustic Eidelon. When we purchased a CD at the end of the concert, Hannah Alkire, the cellist, signed the CD “To Ryan, a fellow cellist.” In this simple act, she chose to relate to my child as a peer, a fellow practitioner. There was a kindness and humility in her words, a sense of hospitality. Hannah was not diminished through her choice to relate to my child as a peer but she certainly lifted him in that moment. As his parent, it was a reminder of the complexity and wonder of his chosen practice, even at a very beginner level.
 
In April I had the opportunity to reflect on my life story through an interview with my friend Beth Knight who is working on a project to tell womens’ stories. You can read my story here on Beth's blog. One of the stories I told as a turning point moment was working with artist, Ellen Driscoll, in my second year of college at the University of Virginia. Ellen created large interactive installations based on social history and I was fascinated by her process. This was also when I discovered that many of the making-by-hand tasks of my childhood like sewing and building were also skills of an artist. I met my friend and fellow artist, Laura Wooten while working with Ellen. Laura read the biography Beth published on her blog and wrote to say how much working with Ellen impacted her too. Ellen Driscoll invited students into her process, to wonder with her, to research history and to help assemble and install works that had been prefabricated but would take on new life in relation to the spaces they inhabited in Charlottesville. When she led community events related to her work, she invited students to co-lead and led us through the activity first to help us prepare to work with participants at the event. Ellen's gallery intern class became a valuable peer group for me and the most beautiful introduction to the studio art community at UVA. 

A year later, another sculptor served as an artist in residence in the department. This was a very different experience. He worked in our sculpture courtyard and printmaking studio, exhibited his work and held lectures and demonstrations. However, there were not invitations to students to practice alongside him. I was more likely to enter a community studio space and see certain equipment labeled off-limits to students, reserved for the artist in residence. I was somewhat taken aback by this approach, yet, looking back I realize it is likely more common and that I was fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time to work with an artist who saw her role to be in relationship as well as in residence. 

In choosing to invite students into her practice, Ellen invited reflections on our own practices and growth as artists. She allowed us to see an image of a practice outside the academic setting and ways to build community when we were no longer students. Ellen’s example impacted my teaching and leadership style and my love for community art.
 
The events of the past year invited us to interact as peers. I could not draw on my experiences as a teen during a pandemic to help my kids navigate their experience. Likewise, my parents could not share stories of parenting during a pandemic to help me with my experience. As we navigated together, we did so as peers.
 
Peer relationships invite empathy, compassion, and the chance to be seen and heard. Empathy and compassion are essential to convey an interest in our peers. Curiosity is key too. As I reflect on the last year or so, I am grateful for the ways my children and my parents were my peers in navigating this time. I am grateful for the ways friends and family near and far shared experiences and listened in times I felt particularly challenged.
 
I am hopeful that as we return to gatherings and routines that are more familiar, we will bring with us some of this curiosity and connection from our time connecting as peers. I hope we will seek ways to continue to find our peer groups based on new practices developed. With the chance to re-gather, I hope we will make the time and space to share practices that changed us in our time apart and what we learned. I would love to hear from you:

What practices are you looking to share? 
Who became a peer during this time? 
Is there a new peer group you might be seeking now to support a new practice? 
Who surprised you with their wisdom as you related as a peer? 
What peer groups support your practice?

Honoring and Remembering Lois Ehlert

Children's book author and illustrator, Lois Ehlert died in May. Her books, especially, RRRalph, Leaf Man and Hands: Growing Up to Be an Artist are favorites of mine and favorites for reading aloud. Hands: Growing Up to be an Artist relates in particular to my own experience of childhood and growing up with lots of materials and spaces for making. 

Upcoming Events...

This July I will be up at Shrine Mont with Shrine Mont Camps to lead some community art projects. I look forward to gathering in person in this special place and to the opportunity to lead community art again.

In September and October I will have a show at Goodwin House in Alexandria, Virginia. I will share more about the dates and a reception as the time gets closer. The images at the top of this email are some I have been preparing for this show.

Summer sale going on now in my ETSY shop through the end of June.
 

Thank you for reading and being a part of creative community through this newsletter. 
With a grateful heart,
Kathryn