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AHN INTERVIEW:
SARK, artist and author of Make Your Creative Dreams REAL
"I know that art is healing because of how it heals me and how I see it healing other people every day. Through art, we come alive through the deep connections to our souls and spirits." - SARK
 SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy), is the best-selling author and
artist of 12 books including Make Your Creative Dreams REAL: A Plan For Procrastinators, Perfectionists, Busy People, and People Who Would Really Rather Sleep All Day, just released in paperback, and the updated edition of SARK's New Creative Companion: Ways To Free Your Creative Spirit, which will be released in May 2005. Her books and artwork demonstrate a playful, whimsical, colorful, and inspiring approach to art, writing and life in general. She has also created a wonderful online creative community called Planet SARK at www.planetSARK.com. Danny Hobson interviewed SARK this February about art, writing, healing and her latest book.
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This is an example of one of SARK's posters/prints available on her web site.
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Danny Hobson: I've heard you say, "Creativity healed me ... Matching creativity with healing is the shortest version of describing what my life's work is." Can you tell me more about how you believe art is healing?
SARK: I know that art is healing because of how it heals me and how I see it healing other people every day. Through art, we come alive through the deep connections to our souls and spirits. I'm talking about being "artists of life," not only visual artists. I believe there is an "art of living" and that this art practiced heals each of us everyday in small and significant ways.
Danny: What advice would you have for someone who wanted to use creativity as a catalyst for healing?
SARK: Dive in, open up, be free! Creativity moves us in new directions. Creativity
is catalytic by nature.
Danny: Congratulations on your latest book Make Your Creative Dreams REAL. What inspired you to focus on this topic, and what did you learn along the way? |
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Learn more about
SARK's new book
and view sample
pages online by
clicking here.
Or order it through Amazon
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SARK: This book is truly a compendium of all that I've learned about the process of creativity. I wanted to write a guide including all the stages of creative dreaming that could escort people through weeks, months, or years of their creative activities and dreams. I learned that I had a lot to share, and I feel really grateful to have it all in one glorious, colorful book.
Danny: Your new book is full of wonderful advice -- could you share a few nuggets of wisdom about making creative dreams real?
SARK: Making creative dreams real is all about being creatively active in the midst of our real lives. Real life is often inconvenient, messy, splendid, annoying, and time-consuming. Most of us don't have big slabs of time to "be creative." We need to fit it in, between overdue library books, crying children, and meals that need to be cooked. The more we practice fitting it in, the more space will open up. First comes our intentions or action, then inspiration. Not the other way around.
Then we must learn to live with creative dreams that don't work the way we thought they would. We need to adapt to changing, quitting, or postponing dreams and continuing to live creatively each day. Realize that everyone else is faced with similar challenges and that to think creatively about these challenges is a pleasure in itself.
Making creative dreams real is a lifelong, live-giving process that is free
and available for everyone to experience, especially if you think this doesn't
apply to you!
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This is an example of one of SARK's posters/prints available on her web site.
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Danny: What advice would you have for people who might be feeling blocked or
fearful about moving their dream forward?
SARK: Welcome to being a "human bean!" Living creatively guarantees that you will feel blocked and fearful. You can choose new creative ways to work with those fears and blocks, as I describe in detail in two chapters of my book. Mostly it means just being aware of your fears and blocks.
Danny: What inspired the creation of Planet SARK - your online creative community?
SARK: Planet SARK is inspired by collective creative synergy. Our mission statement says "Planet SARK promotes creative living, thought, and action. We facilitate, encourage, and empower kindred spirits to reach out, connect, and teach each other in the spirit of SARK."
Danny: How do you sustain the work you do -- creatively, emotionally, financially?
SARK: Creatively, I feel like a fountain. Creative energy just flows continuously. Emotionally, I receive support from coaches, healers, and health care practitioners. I also do a lot of self-healing work. Financially, I practice intention-setting and deserving and am engaged in various kinds of prosperity work on an ongoing basis.
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Danny: What does your creative dream look like today?
SARK: I have so many creative dreams! I listed them in my book. Some are just
zooming along. Some are stagnant. Some are slowly blooming. Some, I am avoiding. This is the nature of creative dreams. I just move the way energy leads me to what feels most rhttp://www.sfcamerawork.org/mentoring.htmlet frustrated and quit. Sometimes I experience great success. Most of all, I realize that it's all the same -- a giant creative process. I just keep showing up to play with all the toys and look inside my dark caverns (with a flashlight).
Danny: What inspires you most about your dream right now?
SARK: What inspires me most is that my creative dreams keep growing, and I grow and learn right along with them.
 To learn more about SARK, please visit her web site at www.planetsark.com. There you will find information about upcoming SARK celebrations and creative workshops, a full list of her books and products, and information about joining "her creative community built from the heart." You can also sign up to receive her email newsletter by clicking here.
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FEATURED BOOK
The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
By Twyla Tharp
 This is one of the best recent books written on the creative process. Twyla Tharp, the world-renowned choreographer, shares insights and advice gleaned from years of working steadily as a creative artist. This book applies to anyone wishing to make a greater commitment to a creative path of any kind be it visual arts, dance, music or even engineering. According to Tharp, it all boils down to practice and discipline. In this book, she shares stories from her own life as well as many anecdotes from writers, film makers, painters, and others that makes her advice concrete and accessible. She also offers exercises that help spark creativity, overcome blocks, and help you to understand your creative nature better. The layout of the book is really wonderful and clear with selective use of red type and large font to emphasize important points. It is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to make a greater commitment to a creative life. Published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, it sells for $25 in hardback (softcover will be released soon). Click here to order through Amazon.com.
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Below is an excerpt from the first chapter:
"I'm a dancer and choreographer. Over the last 35 years, I've created 130 dances and balletsÉAfter so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers for example, like to establish routines for themselves. The most productive ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren't ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people's words. They might set a goal for themselves -- write 1500 words, or stay at their desk until noon -- but the real secret is that they do this every day. In other words, they are disciplined. Overtime, as daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit.
It's the same for any creative individual, whether itÕs a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory. The routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more. And this routine is available to everyoneÉ.
ÉI've thought a great deal about what it means to be creative, and how to go about it efficiently. I've also learned from the painful experience of going about it in the wrong way. I'll tell you about both. And I'll give you exercises that will challenge some of your creative assumptions -- to make you stretch, get stronger, last longer. After all, you stretch before you jog, you loosen up before you work out, you practice before you play. It's no different for your mind.
I will keep stressing the point about creativity being augmented by routine and habit. Get used to it. In these pages a philosophical tug of war will periodically rear its head. It is the perennial debate, born in the Romantic era, between the beliefs that all creative acts are born of (a) some transcendent, inexplicable Dionysian act of inspiration, a kiss from God on your brow that allows you to give the world its Magic Flute, or (b) hard work.
If it isn't obvious already, I come down on the side of hard work. That's why this book is called The Creative Habit. Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's is in a nutshell."
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FEATURED BOOK
The Sound of Paper: Starting from Scratch
By Julia Cameron
 Julia Cameron, renowned author of The Artist's Way, offers yet another wonderful resource to support the creative process. The Sound of Paper brings together a collection of over 30 short essays on topics such as "Ripening," "Hope," "Keeping On,"and "Taming Time." Each essay concludes with exercises designed to help you dig below the surface and uncover new inspiration.
As Cameron explains in the Introduction:
"This small book you hold in your hands was begun in a green eastern spring and written throughout a long, parched summer in New Mexico. It is intended as a creative companion. Its essays are modest and gentle. Each is accompanied by a matching task, also modest and gentle. It is my belief that we make great strides in our creativity by taking little steps. Think of this book as a summer's hike through the New Mexico wilderness. You will gradually build stamina and savvy. One essay at a time, one task at a time, you will become more and more familiar with your own creative strengths."
Published in 2004 by Tarcher/Penguin, this book sells for $19.95 in hardback Click here to order through Amazon.com.
Below is an excerpt and an exercise from her chapter called "Compassion":
"What I like about art is the very thing that makes people fear it. It enlarges us. I am a better and more honest woman from having taken to the page today and admitted my locked-away feelings of the years. I am larger and better and softer and kinder and more open than I was resisting knowing what I knew. It is always this way with art. We say the unsayable and in saying it we name not only ourselves but also the human condition. By being willing to characterize our lives in art, we begin to have the character necessary to make living itself an art. We rise to the occasion that life offers us....
EXERCISE: COMPASSION
Try This: Most of us have been braver than we know, braver than we acknowledge. Take pen in hand and write yourself a fan letter, thanking and prasing yourself for your courage. Be specific. "It was brave of you to go back to graduate school. It was brave of you to help your sister through her divorce. It was brave of you to submit an entry to a juried show. It was brave of you to take up fly-fishing." Your inner artist is proud of you for your many accomplishments. Let this letter be a place to share that pride. Write fully and fondly and then mail yourself the letter."
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FEATURED LINK
Artists Helping Artists (Aha!)
www.artistshelpingartists.org
Connecting and energizing artists...and inspiring arts community...
 Artists Helping Artists (Aha!) is an international nonprofit organization that is igniting the imagination of artists and creative spirits to uplift and enhance culture. Aha! has the goal to unite artists behind a highly creative vision and a common mission to inspire and heal society through art forms and fresh creative innovation all stemming from fostering greater arts community!
Aha! is open to all active, creative individuals, as well as arts lovers, arts leaders or creative artists including musicians, visual artists, writers, performers, composers, arts educators, photographers, digital artists, etc. regardless of race, nationality, artistic or philosophic discipline. All those who participate with Aha! find greater fellowship and collaboration with like-minded spirits... and each individual involved helps fashion a more enlightened culture for humanity. Aha! offers events such as Artist Round Tables, publishes books and an e-zine, and more.
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FEATURED LINK
Everyday Art Assignments
www.everydayart.org
"Everyday Art Assignments encourages you to revisit your creative energy through participation in this community-interactive, public art project. We actually believe that using your brain can make the world a better place."
If you are feeling stuck creatively or would like the extra challenge of a concrete assignment, then this web site is a great resource for you. They offer a variety of art assignments to spark your creativity. Upon completing them, you can send them into Everyday Art Assignments where they will be posted on their web site and perhaps in future exhibitions as well. To learn more visit www.everydayart.org
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READERS RESPOND
Please send your thoughts and feedback on this month's news page to ahn@artheals.org. We would love to hear from you.
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