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Health & Fitness

Creative Dreaming at the Fine Line Art Gallery

Your dreams may be the royal road to living a creative life.

 

Over the years, I’ve often heard people exclaim, “Oh, I wish I was creative.”  It always makes me scratch my head in wonder.  Many of those exclaiming were mothers or fathers.  How can you claim you’re not creative if you have children?

But I know what they mean.  I’m lucky enough to be a member of an art cooperative as fine as .  We’ve been around for over 20 years and are going stronger than ever.  Why?  Because we aren’t just creative in our art, we’re creative in our collaboration for art and it’s existence in our community and in our culture.  Visit our website and see for yourself (http://www.finelineartgallery-connecticut.com) or check us out on Facebook.

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I’m a jewelry designer and also a dream teacher.  You can see my one-of-a-kind jewelry creations at the gallery, but here, I’m taking the opportunity to address creativity from the point of view, not of an artist, but of a dream teacher.

Artists have been tapping their dreams since they painted on cave walls; the famous surrealist movement of the early 20th century was a purposeful exploration of the dream world by artists like Henri Rousseau, Marc Chagall and, of course, Salvador Dali.

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Dreams have proved the fountain of creativity and the realm of the muses for a myriad of creative people.  Robert Louis Stevenson wouldn’t let his wife wake him up from a nightmare because he feared, not the nightmare, but losing the inspiration for story plot.  A whole segment of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is literally transcribed from a “fine bogy tale” he dreamed.  Albert Einstein credited some of his famous mathematical discoveries to a dream he had as a teenager. My point is, if you want to feel more creative, start paying attention to your dreams.  Map them in journals and in drawings.  Play with them and enjoy them.

On Wednesday, August 8th, at FLAG, I’ll be teaching a three-hour workshop on turning your dreams into creative pastimes and artistic inspiration, titled The Art of Dreaming. Using my preferred dreamwork approach, Active Dreaming, created by author and shamanic dream teacher, Robert Moss, I’ll share simple shamanic techniques for exploring creativity in dreams and ways to manifest it in waking life. If you’d like to learn more about my approach to dream work, check out my dream blog:  http://litadreaming.blogspot.com/

I’m very excited to inaugurate this new workshop series at FLAG.  Our membership includes many talented professional teachers of their Art, so, we’ll be offering mini-courses to the adult community on art and related topics frequently in the future.  Hope some of you will join us for one.  For information, call the gallery Thursday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 203 266-0110. 

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