March 11, 2024
Nicholas Wilton Free Workshop, post #3
The third pre-workshop countdown prompt:
#3 Share a story of when your intuition was right; a time when you trusted yourself.
I had to pause for a bit to dial in to this prompt. Then several stories bubbled up, one of which I share today.
In the late 1990s I experienced a prolonged stretch—maybe a year or longer?—of what I’d call high-functioning depression. From the outside, not particularly noticeable. Inside, however, I knew something needed my attention. Eventually, I took what for me was a considerable leap. I left my job and a master’s degree program, identified several strong interests that I knew brought me alive, wove them together into whole cloth, and started an entrepreneurial business called art
warmers.
artwarmers were small eye-catching one-of-a-kind art pieces handcrafted by me and sent through the mail as six once-weekly gifts on behalf of clients who wanted to bring action to their intention to reach out to support, cheer, and/or celebrate someone important to them. They entrusted me with me as much information as they chose in order to “introduce” their intended recipient, thereby providing the sparks of invention I needed to create small pieces of art and whimsy customized to the recipient and the occasion.
The strands I wove together:
• my long-time love of connecting with loved ones through the mail;
• my practice of participating in what is called mail-art, i.e. the direct exchange of art through the mail without need for gallery or museum wall;
• my commitment to reusing everything possible by making art created mostly from post-consumer-use materials (e.g. egg carton as envelope), found objects (e.g. doll shoe), and scraps (e.g. matte board from framer, fabric from seamstress, wood veneer from cabinetmaker);
• my aptitude for recognizing what I call a prose poem, i.e. a sentence or sentences in running narrative text that, when isolated and given line breaks, becomes an exquisite short poem; and
• my strengths in communicating with and supporting others one-to-one.
artwarmers were a bit of a crazy notion in that they were a concept that would (a) depend on the willingness of others to pause for considerably more than just a one-word explanation of something about which they knew nothing and (b) would require me to market myself and get a small business up and running—a process about which I knew nothing. But my intuition told me I could trust myself to be myself; I just knew artwarmers would be well-received.
Yup. I created artwarmers for seven glorious, nourishing, stimulating years. I brought together line, design, texture, color, and found text to make tangible the three-way connection of sender, recipient, and myself. People loved artwarmers! I loved artwarmers!
And, when my passion for that particular venture was fulfilled, I trusted my intuition to move in new directions.
Sample artwarmers story:
from: ML
to: HS
story: ML and HS met when they were both nurses 25 years earlier in the surgical intensive care unit at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and remained friends from then on. ML wanted to send HS a friendship gift. HS was a collector of rocks of different shapes and textures, baskets, unusual greeting cards, and clothespins.
text:
“Wash day was Wednesday
everybody knew that,
so here come this woman
out of Louisiana into town
who did hers on Friday
and everybody was fuming
because order is order,
and even coal camp living
has got to have its principles.
And washday was Wednesday.”
—Cynthia Rylant
artwarmer:
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10 responses to “Nicholas Wilton Free Workshop, post #3”
I feel the huge amount of self compassion and self love you surrounded yourself with in following your intuition – and then, compounded, compassion and love out into the world. I read your post (serendipitously) just after finishing a self-compassion meditation (I am currently struggling with a bit of anxiety and depression) and felt a big soft blanket of loveliness. Thank you for sharing this. It touched me deeply. xo
Lola, thank you. I’m sorry for your struggles. So grateful that my sharing met you right where you are and touched you deeply. Here’s your artwarmer/prose poem for today:
Mattie had a dream not long ago
about a therapist
who came to your house
and did the dishes,
cleaned up,
did the ironing,
while you talked.
A graying, sturdy woman,
who smelled of lavender soap
and wore a pin shaped like a turtle on her lapel
and carried in her purse
a smooth clean cotton apron.
The woman folded laundry
and never missed a word.“I’ll just fold the sheets,”
the woman said,
“and you can tell me all about it.”—Eliza Osborne, The Distance Between
Sheila, thanks for your précis of my art
warmers adventure; it was such a nourishing, stimulating, steep-learning-curve, growth adventure for me!
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