Service Works

Evelyn over at Crossroads Dispatches is one of my favorite art and gift economy bloggers. She has some intriguing insights and always shares something interesting.

Today I learned about Service Works.

Josh Greene is a 36 year old artist and waiter. Service-Works is his foundation that is designed to bridge the gap between his art career and his service industry career. Each month he dedicates one night’s worth of tips to fund a project. The site shares several of the projects he's already funded and offers an opportunity for artists to apply for one of his grants.

What a wonderful way to be creatively generous!

This Holiday I wish ...

I was just visiting Wishcasting and this week's prompt got me thinking...

This holiday season I wish to . . . open my heart and my daily consciousness to the spirit of generosity that abounds during this particular season and find reasons to celebrate. I'm not feeling particularly holiday spirited this year, nor did I last year, although several previous years I reveled in the opportunities to give from my creative stores and in the beauty of creative decorating. I love victorian and unusual Santa Clauses, the greatest archetype for generosity in the modern world. I love burgundy and gold ornaments and garland, which bring a rich sparkle to my home. I love the lights. I know it's not pc with environmental issues being what they are, but I love the lights sparkling everywhere. However I think my health issues and the state of my family have driven away the desire for celebration. It all seems energy draining. I want to find the place in me that can hold space for my family to enjoy this season, so I need generosity stories to feed my fire. Perhaps I need to spend some time at HelpOthers.org.

This holiday season I wish to . . . inspire people to consider being as generous the rest of the year, not in material gifts, but in the general sense of good will. We say Happy Holidays to each other all the time, strangers and friends alike. We give a lot, often spending considerable energy in efforts to show our love in the manifest world, whether through gifting or cooking or organizing events. We open ourselves to one another's stories, good feeling stories, generosity stories, peace stories, stories of overcoming selfishness (ego) in service of the greater community. But once Christmas Day passes, we stop greeting each other with the same level of cheer, we stop being so generous, and we give our consciousness to stories of violence (action movies and video games) and competitiveness and greed (reality tv, game shows).

Much of the intent of The Conspiracy of Blessings is to inspire people to reconsider generosity and recognize its value in every day life. Why do we limit ourselves and/or store up our natural propensity for lavish generosity until we're given permission by a cultural tradition to be blissful in our giving? I started the Conspiracy in December 2005 because I had all this art around me that I had put my loving and creative energy into and I knew it didn't belong hidden in my house. It needed to find homes in the world, needed to bring some kind of good feeling into the world.

When I give, even store bought gifts, it is always with conscious love and desire to show that person I honor who they are as an individual. I buy books and music for my children that I hope will inspire good feelings, a sense of belongingness and their own creativity. I give my children and family gifts that support their bliss--like a book on Soul Collage for my sister the art therapist or a drawing tablet for my son's pc. Or I give gifts that honor their spiritual traditions and foster self reflection (both of my children have learned how to use divinatory tools to bring insight into their personal journeys).

But giving to my family in this way wasn't enough manifestation of my bliss--creative generosity. I needed some place to give more. So I started homemade gifts for my friends and co-workers. I've done homemade candles, soaps, and holiday art ornaments. One year I painted or otherwise colored images from Shiloh McCloud's Color of Woman Journals and laminated them for each of my women friends. I chose the images based on who I knew those women to be, and included poems about womanhood printed on beautiful papers and laminated them as well.

In 2005 I needed to give more. I wanted to give beyond the holidays and felt like I needed to create a reason, a permission to be so generous. The Conspiracy came to life. I had already participated in the gift economy of the altered artist communities online and learned about random-act-of-kindness art that people would leave in their communities to be found by whatever stranger happened upon them. I decided to create a long-term project and document it online, as well as provide a forum for interacting with those who found my RAK Art in the community. I left little packages with beaded snowflake ornaments and my first art/word cards in public places...on restaurant tables, in public bathrooms at the mall, in planters outside of business downtown, and in free newspaper dispensers.

I later added the component of allowing people to request blessing packages for themselves or others. I have some other ideas of how to evolve and expand the project further but do not have the abundance to do more at this time. So I patiently use the supplies I unwittingly stock piled when abundance flowed more towards the project in the past until the Universe offers an opportunity to do more.

This holiday season I wish to . . . inspire and motivate myself to find and/or plan a way to make creative generosity a full time endeavor, at least for a little while. I'd love to have a year to commit my time to creative generosity ideas and manifestations, to discover what I'm truly capable of and here on earth to give my human family. I'd love to have at least a year to develop and live a gift economy lifestyle in every possible way. I'd love to have one year of my life where I did not have to make every single decision based on my family's survival and could have the space to truly find my place in the world.

I know it will come. I know every life experience I'm having will help me to evolve to greater capabilities of service. But I'm in a phase of feeling frustrated and questioning of my faith in the evolutionary process. I want to get to the part where I can focus on what and how I'm giving through my work instead of having to choose what will support a family of four. I don't know how to make the transition yet, but I know it will happen.

This holiday season I wish to. . . replenish and nurture my spirit. It's been an intense year. I want to focus on what brings me the greatest joy but is restful...like reading, writing, and doll and journal making. Creative generosity is what feeds my spirit most deeply. I know now what my bliss is. I just need to figure out how to make it my life's work.

This holiday season I wish to . . . be the change I wish to see in the world and learn how to bring my capacity for generosity into my relationship with my ex-husband/co-parent. It's time to heal the wounds, forgive the past and move forward in friendship. It's time to be generous with my love again.

What do you wish for this holiday season?

More Blessings

One of the recipients of a recent blessing package sent me a beautiful gift in return, her self published book Spread Your Wings and Fly: An Origami Fold-and-Tell with a set of deep purple paper cranes. What a lovely gift!

I never anticipated people returning blessings to me when I started this project. But I am glad to practice being a joyful recipient. So much inspiring creativity abounds in this world. I am also hopeful for the future of the human race because of the tremendous positive creativity I am honored to witness nearly every day from my little corner of the world.

Conspiracy Collaborators

Yesterday, I received a package envelope in the mail that jangled...a lot. Kind of sounded like there was something broken inside. I didn't recognize the address, even from people I've corresponded with concerning donations to the Conspiracy. I was intrigued. I opened it up to find it overflowing with papers and ephemera for art making. Jeanette at PostcardX sent me the package. I love that I get unexpected suprises from PostcardX every couple of months. It brings a little dash of creative magic to life. I must remember during lulls in blessing requests that I have an endless source of people to bless there.

Also, as noted in a comment on a previous blog post, Kara from Motherhenna.com and the wonderful "A Peace of..." blog and collaborative art project, is sending some 1000 Faces of Mother Henna art to include in blessing packages. Very, very cool.

Creative Generosity Hero

"You wouldn't know it by looking at the man in the t-shirt standing on the street corner, but if you listen, it's easy to tell that David Juritz is a world class musician. He's just traded in concert halls for street corners. The violinist left his London home on June 9 and has since traveled the globe as a street performer, raising money to fund music education for some of the world's poorest children. Near Stanford University, he raised $500 in an hour; in Berlin, he got $16 after 3 windy, rainy hours; and in all, he's collected over $65K. But his best moments aren't associated with large amounts of money, he adds." From CharityFocus

Learn more him and the Musequality program at his website: Round The World and Bach

Smile Award and More Blessings

Emma gave me the Smile Award recently, which I think is very thoughtful. I have a few subscribers to this blog and they have been very uplifting to me over the months.

I am very excited that my inbox is filling up with requests since the project was mentioned over at Create A Connection, a fabulous community art blog that I don't have enough time to properly enjoy. An especially lovely request is for a woman who runs a sexual assaul survivors' website and she wants some blessing packages to pass on to the women she works with. Now I have something to work towards, a few new dolls, boxes, and possibly a journal or two, something I've been pondering for quite awhile.

Tomorrow's Blessings

I am sending out two blessing packages with art dolls tomorrow: one to New Mexico on behalf of a friend to a woman having a rough time in her life and one to Miami, Florida for a Zaadzster who needs a "bushel of blessings".

I also used some birthday money to get some beautiful new fabrics and glass beads for the transformation dolls, so make more requests and give these beauties homes!

A Blessing Box

I haven't worked on blessing boxes in awhile, but I have this one left for the next person who requests one. (Blessing boxes come with 50 or more inspiring quote cards inside.)

Blessing Dolls

I've been quite busy making blessing dolls (as I'm currently calling them). I'm not sure where their homes are yet since I haven't received any requests in the last two weeks , but I'm very happy keeping myself busy creatively. From now on I'm going to focus on the butterfly and bird goddess patterns (I'll add more photos tomorrow) because I'm thinking about calling them Transformation Dolls with the intent of encouraging/inspiring women in times of change and growth. Future dolls will also include various herbs and stones that have healing or other positive properties and possibly an accompanying note with a description of the kinds of energy I've invested in the doll.

The Art of Gratuitous Praise

A compliment is verbal sunshine. --Robert Orben

"Feeling blue? Unloved? As if nobody appreciates you? Maybe no one can see your inner wonderfulness. Or maybe you deserve to be forsaken. Maybe you are unloved because you're such a jerk, simply unlovable. Maybe you're a victim of the old maxim: "If you can't say anything nice . . . "

So when walking along 14th Street NW, you might be surprised to hear a chime followed by a reassuring voice:

"You help create a brighter future."

The avuncular voice calls out from a bright red-and-white-striped box perched on a platform of bricks, with a speaker at eye level and a grid of ventilation holes in the side. A small sign explains, "The Compliment Machine." The striking colors, stark lines and sharp corners lend the appearance of some strange installation of the municipality, perhaps from the Bureau of Self-Esteem or the Ministry of Happiness."

Read more at this Washington Post article about The Compliment Machine.

The Power of Giving

Conversations.org is committed to the gift economy, so much so they give subscriptions to their print magazine for free--and there's no advertising attached!

Check out this article about three artists who gift their ceramic art (and soup!) in response to the war.

The Power of the Giving, Berkeley Art Center, Richard Whittaker in Conversation with Ehren Tool, Fariba Safai and Ashley Smith, Oct 21, 2004

"Fariba Bogzaron and Ashley Smith were still students at CCA when they decided to do something radical. They decided to prepare a large batch of home made soup (from a favorite recipe of Fariba’s mother), to construct a cart able to wheel a very large stainless steel pot along a sidewalk, and to make their way to Union Square in San Francisco on Black Friday[the day after Thanksgiving and largest shopping day of the year] where they would offer free bowls (that they made) of soup to any and all.

Ehren Tool, a marine who served in Iraq, upon finishing his tour of duty, enrolled at UC Berkeley to study ceramics in the Art Department. There he learned to throw on the wheel and found himself engaged in a new mission: making, and giving away, thousands of handmade ceramic cups—shaped like tea bowls and sometimes accompanied by a letter—each cup impressed with military emblems and images such as bombs, rifles and gas masks. Tool refers to himself as a “war awareness” artist.

The evening of our conversation only a modest crowd had turned out, but they were in for a special treat…"