Week 8 winter quarter

Week 8 was full of academic work prepping for my final installation and recording the experiences I have had this quarter.
I began the week writing a blog on permaculture, what I through about it and some of the highlights of what I had learned at the training. I also blogged about our successful report back.

The thing I am learning most from making this installation is giving my inner critic a rest. Through my meeting with my faculty I got this advice. " You can't control the embodied experience of your viewer, the most important thing is to enjoy the process and not stress the details." I have decided to take this advice to heart and not spend my time obsessing about how all the little parts fit together. I will trust my process and enjoy crafting each piece. It feels good to make art from all natural and found materials, low environmental impact art makes me feel more connected to my neighborhood, as I watch my neighbors walk by and look inquisitively at the spiral I am crafting. It makes me feel like an urban forager finding all the stones in the alleys and asking neighbors for extra ones from their patios. I take apple branches I find in a yard waist dumpster and weave them together into a square to create a nest of sorts. I made a flyer about the installation and started inviting people this weekend.


I spent the rest of the week crafting a values statement for my and Heron's community plan. We also made a chart of the goals we want to achieve before living on the land. These were all documents that are a part of our strategic plan for intentional community. It was fun making these statements, we got to brainstorm and use exercises from the book "Creating a life Together." We were also able to see how important it was for us to start attracting members so our vision can expand beyond our two imaginations. I had a good talk with a friend this week about her ideas of having an intentional community. Through that talk we realized how much we want in common and how fun it would be to talk with others about there strategies and dreams for community. We want to start an open conversation cafe about it starting in the spring.