Thoughts on Inner Excavation Chapter 6

The title of Chapter 6 is: I open my heart. The idea here is to be creative with someone else or in a group. I see people talking about getting together with a friend and doing one of the exercises, but besides my husband I don't really have any friends around here and not even all that many online. I could have put in a request for someone to work with over in the Flickr group but honestly I just couldn't bring myself to do that. It reminds me too much of school when no one wanted me as a lab partner or when no one wanted me to be in some other sort of group some teacher or other tried to split us up in during some class or other. I didn't like it then and I don't feel up to it now.

I thought about trying to do something with my husband but he's busy and works third shift so trying to get together for this sort of thing during the week just doesn't work. I find trying to work in a group or with a partner I don't know well and trust to be very triggery. So in the interest in taking care of myself I'm pretty much skipping this week's stuff.

I like working alone. I'm very much an introvert and I'm okay with that. Maybe later during the weekend or next week the husband and I can get together and take portraits of each other but I'm not going to stress if it doesn't happen. I've had fun with this read along of Inner Excavation and I feel I already did a lot of work with it.

This week has been stressful. Between bank error issues (resolved thankfully) and a heat wave that only just broke, I haven't been feeling very creative or motivated to go outside and take photos (or go outside at all during the day.) I have been putting in some good reading time though, so that's been fun. I'm almost finished with Laura Anne Gilman's Retrievers series and have been totally loving it.

I've also done a bit of embroidery work on my whale art quilt. I do love playing with fun threads.

Photos from Week 5 of Inner Excavation

I'm not really new to taking self-portraits. I've been playing around with them here and there for years. This year I committed to taking at least one each Sunday of 2012 and I've been documenting that journey in this Flickr set.

Back in May I took the You Are Your Own Muse: Re-Writing The Story e-course run by Vivienne McMaster. It was awesome and so liberating. You can see the set of photos I took during that time here on Flickr.

So this chapter for Inner Excavation really isn't new for me. I even played around with the mirror meditation work a bit when I took Liz Lamoreux's Create Space course a little while ago.

I've been trying to figure out a way to go deeper with this chapter but I haven't figured that out yet. I have been taking mirror portraits and shadow photos though and here are a few that I've taken this week so far...

Finishing Chapter 4: I See Me

Well I finished up my work with chapter 4 of Inner Excavation this past weekend.

Here is the chapter page in my journal:




I played around with the "Where I Stand" Prompt but this time I did so with my Instax camera.


I tucked these inside the envelope on this page:


I had a couple other pages of photos and added some poem notes to those pages as well. Some of that content is a bit to personal to share here though so I won't be adding those pictures. All in all I enjoyed Chapter 4 a lot.

What I've Been Up To...

I've been working on week four of the Inner Excavate-along and taking pictures for the first week of the Slice of Life Project. I've also been dealing with a chronic pain issue flare up in my right arm/shoulder area, which has cut down on my online and art time. It's also cutting down on the amount of pictures I'm taking at the moment.

For week four of Inner Excavation: I see me I'm working on body photos that I will later couple with some poetry bits and I'm also working on a series of "Where I Stand" photos with the twist of those being taken with my instax camera. I'll probably do a bit of writing for those too once this pain flare up passes.

I Gather....

 More for Week Three of Inner Excavation:

These are some of the things I gather into my world...

Words
 

Supplies


Sacred Space

Inner Excavation: Week Three

I'm not finished playing around with week three yet but so far this is what I have done:

Here's the section page I made for the journal I'm using for this adventure:



I started the week with many "on the ground" photos:


The whole set can be seen here on Flickr.

I also wrote a poem note sort of thing and combined it with a picture:


I've also been writing some other poem bits that I'm not sharing here right now. My plans for the rest of the week are some photos of what I gather to me and more poetry. Then I'll put it all in my journal book when I'm done.
 I'm really enjoying this adventure.

Inner Excavation Week Two

First up is the chapter page in my journal for the project...

This one is a collage type thing consisting of copies of photos and journal entries from 1992 when I spent a semester abroad in London. I also made side trips to Scotland, Wales and the Island of Rhodes in Greece. The text says: "Once upon a time I had adventures" This is in contrast to my life now and really my life in general except for that time period. I'm mostly a homebody. One might say that these days I'm borderline agoraphobic. But one time I did have adventures, small ones but they were mine.


The last one is about my dad who passed away three years ago. It is also about dreams left behind and about him discouraging me against following my own dreams.


You can click on the pictures to see bigger versions at Flickr.

Take a Walk...

Thursday June 14, 2012 I did the "Take a Walk" prompt from Inner Excavation... I took a walk downtown with my husband and daughter. Daughter needed her new glasses adjusted so we all walked down together (we don't have a car) and I took pictures along the way...


and then I did a a two page spread in the journal book I'm keeping for the read-along.



 It was a lot of fun. I love being behind the camera. It really forces me to focus outside of myself and notice the world around me.

 I almost forget my favorite photo of the bunch...

This little guy I spotted on a very damp stone wall under a railroad bridge. It stinks like crazy under there and the wall oozes water or something I probably don't want to know about, but this little one seems to like it.

The whole set of photos from the photo walk is here in this set on Flickr.

I also ended up doing a small collage for chapter one last night:



That completes my work with chapter one.

This week work with Chapter 2 starts. I'm so excited!

Scenes From This Day...

I took these on Monday June 11th. It was an ordinary day at home. I used my little point and shoot and kept it on me all day. I took over 150 photos.
These are what I cut it down to. ..

I did these 4 collages with PicMonkey! I'm really loving PicMonkey.

 The set where you can see the full sizes and read some of the descriptions of these pictures is over here on Flickr.

inner EXCAVATION time!

Liz Lamoreux's Inner EXCAVATE-along begins today!

I'm so excited! Last October I bought the book inner EXCAVATION: Explore Your Self Through Photography, Poetry and Mixed Media by Liz Lamoreux. I read through it a bit then put it aside intending to work through it eventually but had yet to motivate myself to do so. I had been in a creative slump that started sometime last fall and lasted until I started taking some e-courses this spring.

Soon after picking up the book I started checking out Liz's blog. I took her POEM IT OUT e-course recently and just finished up with her CREATE SPACE e-course. I loved them both and am so excited that she is doing this read-along for her book now.

I've got some ideas about what I'm going to be doing this week for chapter one. I've already started getting a notebook ready and I'm doing the SCENES FROM THIS DAY prompt today. I'll post those photos later on in the week if not tomorrow. It depends on how long it takes me to go through the pictures and edit and upload them. I still have a backlog of photos to go through and upload from the last few days. I've been taking a lot of pictures lately. It really seems to ground me.