The Wayward Artist is the working title of my book on the creative process and common natural materials.  It is about “ordinary creativity”… that energy we all have and use to make our lives everyday. It is the result of working rustic for almost 30 years and teaching about it for 25 years.  Every so often, tucked in between sets of chairs, beds and tables, I’d find myself making something “else”. Something that wasn’t really a chair or a table. After years of “elses”, I began to see certain patterns and themes in these objects.

portfolio of more carved figures

So, The Wayward Artist got started.. 

“wayward”         Middle English, short for awayward turned away, from away,

1 : following one's own capricious, wanton, or depraved inclinations :   UNGOVERNABLE <a wayward child>

2 : following no clear principle or law : UNPREDICTABLE

3 : opposite to what is desired or expected : UNTOWARD <wayward fate>

synonym see CONTRARY

The Wayward Artist is an exploration of the need and benefits of tendencies we all have towards expressing the ungovernable, the untoward and the contrary parts of ourselves.

But it is not just about the maker. It's an attitude towards the making of objects... Or perhaps, it's learning that objects get themselves made through us.  Objects "matter" themselves into existence through humans.

The Wayward Artist is about the workings of imagination and creativity and about making things.  It’s about the ‘how” of making, but it‘s really more about the why and what of making. It’s about ways of seeing, ways of being and ways of doing and the changing mix of all three.  This means that there is no first way, best way or one way. We are an ever-changing mix of tendencies and influences. Some people use the word archetype.

                                                            more to come...

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES for Wayward Artists:

Creative Fitness Workshops, 2-hour topical meetings in my Warwick Studio, about once a month starting in September              

Woodlander Gatherings in Wisconsin and New York, each summer

ARCHIVE ACTIVITIES

Imagination Matters a five-week on-line course  Jan-March 2007

Joy of Making Conference at The Omega Institute, June 2006

Shadow: conceals and reveals "Shadow:the unclaimed parts of inner life."       Gallery Exhibit, Nov-Dec 2004 ... now on-line exhibit with 25 artists  

LINKS for Wayward Artists

Myth*ing Links    Kathgleen Jenks' annotated, illustrated collection of worldwide links to mythologies, fairy tales & folklore, sacred arts & sacred traditions.

The Imaginal Institute is a conduit for imagining: supporting the leap between ideas and action through dialogue, lifelong learning, and creative expression.

The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) is a pictorial and written archive of mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic images from all over the world and from all epochs of human history.

Welcome to mythopoetry.com ... What' s New In Mythology, Poetry, Mythopoetics & The Arts In Myth & Culture ... by poet Stephanie Pope

Mythic Imagination Institute offers conferences, performance festivals, and lectures to encourage a creative response to life, individual lives, and our lives as families, tribes, communities, nations and as a world.

Archetypal Talk A place for friends, professionals, interested transients, and invisibles connecting to Archetypal Psychology and James Hillman

Other Wayward Artists               

Mark S. Kuhar

Kelly Moore

Diane Savona