JACQUI LEWIS ART
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Colouring Time

7/20/2020

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Don't forget to let me see your creations @jacquilewisart 
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Download printable here.
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Download printable here.
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Download printable here.
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Community Arts

6/14/2020

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FLOW

It is with a sudden realisation that I never wrote anything about this particular community art project I was involved with a few years ago created by Banyule Arts and Culture's Pinpoint Artists, Art in Public Spaces events.

FLOW was a school of origami fish 'swimming' along
'Flow' by local artist Jacqui Lewis -  Greensborough Walkway towards Watermarc Aquatic Centre. Workshops were held for locals to be involved as we created a flow of fish.
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Charle Wote Street Art Festival

4/24/2019

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Wata Mata - Revisited

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Chale Wote Art Festival is a platform that brings art, music, dance, and performance out into the streets of Ghana. It targets exchanges between scores of local and international artists and patrons by creating and appreciating art together.

As the call for artists and contributors is now out, I immediately reflected on my time and experience of being a part of this amazing festival in the heart of Jamestown, Ghana, West Africa. 

A place and time that invited me to Re-member, be Hope-full and Beauty-full.

Read more about Chale Wote Festival here.
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A Journey of Journals.

3/17/2016

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What journaling has brought to my life.


As I sat down to write this, I thought it would be fairly short. Yet as I started to peel back my journaling layers, there was more than I imagined. As I run creative art journaling workshops, I felt it would be useful to give some insight into what they have brought into my life on a personal level. What I did really notice through this is how creative journaling has been a part of my life for a long time and really has been a tool to carry me from one place to another.

*

Initially, journaling was a place to sketch and collect. Throughout art school days, I carried journals, both large and small. Taking note of things that caught my attention. My eyes were ever active and noticing. My journal also became something of a scrap book with images that I felt I couldn't live without, cutted and pasted until my heart was content.

For some time after these books were places that I planned projects. Step one, step two, and sketches appropriate to each. Times, places and materials were noted. Evaluations made at the end of sessions or projects. My eyes were focused on the job at hand. Artworks were made and classes were taught. And my journal was a planning place only.

In the early years of having children my journals disappeared. Despite the efforts of my brother who bought me a blank journal and pencils, and brought them into the hospital bed where I sat for weeks next to my child, I did not want to pick it up. I looked the other way. That blank journal sat next to my bed for nearly a year. One day, I couldn't hold it in any longer and I picked up that journal and wrote. I wrote about ten pages of an A3 journal. I wrote of my pain, my anger, my daily torment of having a disabled child with no idea what that meant to her, or my life. I wrote of the grief and loss, of our previously lost babies, and the child I thought I was going to have. It spilled out and poured over until finally I actually wanted to draw her. And I did. I drew how I saw her, and how I thought others saw her. And I then continued to write and draw when I could, but mainly journaled through the lens of a camera, capturing beauty where ever I could as I questioned what is 'beauty'.

  As time went on I undertook a Master of Education in Visual Arts (not completed as I took a leave of absence due to my child being in hospital and never returned to finish). Yet my thesis and research was again on the use of a visual journals in senior secondary art students and its influence on their cognitive capacities. 

As I was working part time, playing African drums and dancing, and raising my kids, my journal took a back seat in its place in my home. Occasionally it was opened but my energy was directed to working on paper, canvas or work related.

Once again I decided to study. This time I was required to keep a journal as a part of my Master of Arts in Creative Arts Therapy. And I felt like I was home, sitting with a long lost friend having a chat as if we had seen each other yesterday.

​And now, as a mother of three with multiple jobs and roles, I am back to carrying my journal everywhere again. And once again, its role has shifted. Now it is a place I can declutter my mind. (And what a relief not to be worried about losing 'that' idea.) A place I can put my thoughts, questions (and sometimes answers), my doubts, my dreams. Sometimes it contains something someone said, a photograph, a whinge to no one in particular about my children, or a sketch for the next exhibition I am involved in. This time my journal is more like my diary, my companion who always listens, a witness to my life as I document how I spend my time. With my eyes open and alert, I draw, write, cut and paste, scribble, and scribble out. It has become an accumulation of all the ways I have used a journal on my journey. 

​For more info on teenage art journaling sessions click here
Adult art journaling sessions click here
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The Noticing of a Creative Arts Therapist. (How do I really work?)

11/23/2015

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​So I stepped right up to myself and this is what I found... 

​

 
A muddy pool of associations
swirling around behind different doors.
I open one,
 and Intersubjectivity invites me into her comforting space.
But I knew I needed to see what else is there before I slip into that easy place.
Intuition has a sign on her door, but something tells me not to go there yet.
I hear some soothing sounds and peak behind the red door to find Emergence weaving magic as she goes.
I hear an assortment of voices, bossy, soft, knowing, regrettable. I knock on the door and wait. Reflexivity opens with a knowing look on her face. “Are you here to find Contrapuntal or Multiple?” she inquires. “For yourself or someone else?” she asks with a fleeting look of annoyance.
I shook my head and continued down the hall.
A little sign caught my eye. It read “Unknown (formally known as Don’t Know)”.
I tentatively look in.
I see Unknown sitting comfortably amongst a group of others.
Curiously I watched one of the others walk across the room, with a relieved look on her face, heading towards a door. And as I read the name plaque, I then knew who I was looking for, Validation.

 
*
​As I considered how I spend time with a variety of people of varying ages and in varying settings, I noticed the mindfulness required to be present and attentive in the emergence of finding what matters the most. I noticed the constant conversations I have with the many different parts of myself, sometimes useful as “confirmation of something planned” (Allen 200 p. 24) and sometimes a surprise. I noticed how overwhelming emotion and sensation can be held in the phenomena of an experience, but cannot always easily be named. But the thing I became curious about is the role and subtleties of validation and acknowledgment in the spaces where companioning, or working alongside someone, can take place.
"I hear you. I see you." 
Feeling heard can be an important aspect of working with someone who is inquiring into something in his or her lives. Validation can take form as simply as a word or two acknowledging an experience or naming and emotion, or can be a more formalized intersubjective response (a personal response to a client, either verbal or in multimodal form that contains a meeting of subjectivities found in the session. For example a drawing, a postcard or perhaps even a song.)  Sometimes these validations can land immediately and sometimes others can leave us wondering. Yet they can hold an important role as we move from what is not known and what is known, and what we would like to know.

Allen, J. (2004). The art of intersubjectivity. Unpublished dissertation. Melbourne:
            University of Melbourne. 
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