Art Class -- Nurturing Arts

655 Willowside Road,Santa Rosa CA 95401

27 March, 2022

Description

First Nurturing Arts Workshop of 2022 -- Held at Summerfield Waldorf School and Farm Your Instructor: Mary Bowen, M.Ed. Mary is a Waldorf arts educator and teacher. She leads courses and workshops in Nurturing Arts for teachers and parents. Her training in the Nurturing Arts took place in Berkeley, Chartres and Ziest Holland. In her early teaching career, Mary taught children in the Hawaiian public schools for 14 years. Thoughts from a Nurturing Arts practitioner: As a Waldorf mother and as an art therapist, one would imagine that I knew something about Nurturing Arts and Mary Bowen’s unique approach to creativity. But nothing prepared me for the delightful, profoundly engaging, and beautiful simplicity of this extraordinary experience. From the first moment, when Mary introduced us to a paintbrush, a sponge, and a tiny glass bowl of colors, I was swept away by the process, and by Mary’s gentle determination to slow us down, to take us to the very essence of color on paper, and to amazingly turn off that pesky critic living inside of each of us. As the weeks passed, I found myself imagining what lovely journey Mary would lead us through next. There was clay, but not clay in the ways I thought I knew clay. There was drawing, but drawing intended to evoke a feeling, rather than a finished piece. There was painting of course, slow and quiet on paper that somehow stood up to soft layers of water and color. There was that inevitable moment when an image would make itself known on that wet paper, a small jolt of recognition, like an old friend showing up unannounced. And there was kindness at Mary’s table, and an immediate sense of belonging. Until Covid closed us down, I can truly say that those hours at Mary’s table were the sweetest of my week, and I eagerly await the time when we can once again open up to this beautiful work. Mary H.