Happy solstice and extra large full moon! I’ve heard that the moon is as close in physical distance right now as it ever gets. On top of that last week’s earthquake shifted the earth axis, narrowed the Pacific Ocean by 13 feet and slightly compressed the Earth’s shape so that we are now spinning ever so slightly faster.
This week also marked the memorial services of two people who have effected my view of Inclusion – Wolf Wolfensberger and Marilyn Ferrell.
I felt shaken in my core this week. It’s not that anything particularly good or bad happened, but just the same, it felt like some kind of reorganization.
Outwardly the signs of this are that my circle met today and I ensured that we did not talk about my health or my needs, but about how I am groping to reorganize my life so that I can integrate and balance all of the commitments that are trying to happen to put Inclusion and Peace deeply into the conversation of the world. To use a biblical phrase, this week has been about girding myself to conduct the big fight, the big push.
Mike and I counted my commitments, not such an easy task because they do overlap quite a bit with each other. In the end we decided on twelve:
1. The ROM Exhibit
2. Laser Eagles
3. The Book of Judith
4. Zombie Video Game Research & Development
5. Making WPIT a genuine presence
6. BMX Model Research
7. Health & Well Being
8. Wisdom City Team
9. My Staffing
10. Weaning myself off ODSP
11. Having Individualized Funding Extended
12. The Book and Getting it Published
All these things together will bring about the capacity of my colleagues and I to deeply embed a new conversation about Inclusion. Anything less will have me and our efforts unstable in some way. So in a very real way it’s all or nothing at this time.
Of course, this is the way it looks right now. Expect in the near future it will consolidate into a simplified version of this picture. The genuinely core issues will emerge and it will be clear how to empower all of it through a few key efforts.
It is also clear that I and we really need project management and a project co-ordinator. These things are necessary to engage as many people as possible and keep as many efforts going as possible all at the same time.
What has shifted is my level of certainty. This is what must be and can be.
Showing posts with label Book of Judith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book of Judith. Show all posts
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
March 15, 2011
It has been over a week since I began using this blog to reflect on the letter that I have now sent to the two pastors of First Presbyterian Church of Savannah – Stephen Williams and Will Shelburne. I sent the letter today. It had a few modifications from the text in the last four postings. I ended up concentrating more on invisibility and less on being an enemy.
In one sense I feel directionless and in another I feel quite the opposite. It is clear that the next five or six months will be focused on Laser Eagles, the ROM art exhibit, shifting my staff team and my physical realities in order to accommodate the upcoming trip to Oregon, Arizona and the Conference for Global Transformation in San Francisco. The purpose of much of this trip is to nail down an opportunity to research the BMX Model and to demonstrate the inclusive video game at the conference.
So the direction is set in that sense. It is not set in a more personal and specific sense. Questions such as “Do I need a different kind of staff person so I can travel more easily?” or “How do I make sure that I’m making enough money that I can let go of ODSP if/when I need to?” – these questions remain vague and uncertain. Of course, their vagueness will disappear as necessity demands I take action. For example, I currently only have three weeks of staff time scheduled and my staff will soon be questioning me about what shifts they will have and how many hours and when am I going away and all that sort of thing. In other words, life will give me a direction if I haven’t already chosen one myself.
I am battling with myself. The question looks something like “I thought you were going to retire?” My circle is meeting on Sunday and I can already hear them protesting the intensity of life which faces me from end of April until end of August.
It is not hard to see how this all emerged. A few months ago I was lying on my back in my comfy bed recovering from near-terminal illness. Two forces conspired to shift all that. First, I was intrigued by the gigantic toys playing blocks outside my window at night only to discover that a prison is being assembled in my neighbourhood. Secondly, a colleague from the Book of Judith play went to a party because we couldn’t go to Edinburgh in November because I was sick. This set off a chain of events leading to my having an Inclusion art exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. Add to these main themes that I actually did recover and that Laser Eagles was revitalized this fall by the combined efforts of Kimberly Fu and the CAVE board, and rather suddenly I’m pushing to create THE art exhibit about the journey of Inclusion that will – one hopes – convict people with the desire to embrace diversity.
There are other factors such as Mike Skubic and the video game. It all runs together at this point. I am on the road again and compelled again.
I have a great sense of fatigue just thinking about it all. Of course, the thinking about it is way more tiring than the doing of it, but that’s where I’m at right now. I have been learning in many ways, and particularly through the course on achieving a lasting impact that a sense of fatigue and hopelessness is really no more than confronting the perception that “the tiger is not dead but asleep”. You can drag it out of the path but as soon as it wakes up it is going to walk right back to the road and lay back down on it again. Trying to bring about Inclusion has been like trying to drag this sleeping tiger out of the road.
The course has been very interesting and instructive. It has pulled up virtually every occasion where I have felt like I got close to making a powerful impact on building Inclusion only to be driven back into obscurity. Whether it was Al Etmanski firing me in 2000 or Tom Kohler crossing his arms and emphatically saying that people with disabilities are not invited to Citizen Advocate training or Jack Pearpoint or Marsha Forest not including me in Inclusion Press. No matter how great and inspiring my own journey has been or my ideas may be I am not seen as having the practicality that is required to put a real organizational strategy together and to bring it to fruition.
So now we (mainly Mike and I) envision a well resourced organization that will foster Inclusion. Now I am preparing to put my energy on the line to get the necessary steps in place. I cannot know of course if I am just dragging another sleeping tiger to the culvert from whence it will shortly return, wet and hungry.
In one sense I feel directionless and in another I feel quite the opposite. It is clear that the next five or six months will be focused on Laser Eagles, the ROM art exhibit, shifting my staff team and my physical realities in order to accommodate the upcoming trip to Oregon, Arizona and the Conference for Global Transformation in San Francisco. The purpose of much of this trip is to nail down an opportunity to research the BMX Model and to demonstrate the inclusive video game at the conference.
So the direction is set in that sense. It is not set in a more personal and specific sense. Questions such as “Do I need a different kind of staff person so I can travel more easily?” or “How do I make sure that I’m making enough money that I can let go of ODSP if/when I need to?” – these questions remain vague and uncertain. Of course, their vagueness will disappear as necessity demands I take action. For example, I currently only have three weeks of staff time scheduled and my staff will soon be questioning me about what shifts they will have and how many hours and when am I going away and all that sort of thing. In other words, life will give me a direction if I haven’t already chosen one myself.
I am battling with myself. The question looks something like “I thought you were going to retire?” My circle is meeting on Sunday and I can already hear them protesting the intensity of life which faces me from end of April until end of August.
It is not hard to see how this all emerged. A few months ago I was lying on my back in my comfy bed recovering from near-terminal illness. Two forces conspired to shift all that. First, I was intrigued by the gigantic toys playing blocks outside my window at night only to discover that a prison is being assembled in my neighbourhood. Secondly, a colleague from the Book of Judith play went to a party because we couldn’t go to Edinburgh in November because I was sick. This set off a chain of events leading to my having an Inclusion art exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. Add to these main themes that I actually did recover and that Laser Eagles was revitalized this fall by the combined efforts of Kimberly Fu and the CAVE board, and rather suddenly I’m pushing to create THE art exhibit about the journey of Inclusion that will – one hopes – convict people with the desire to embrace diversity.
There are other factors such as Mike Skubic and the video game. It all runs together at this point. I am on the road again and compelled again.
I have a great sense of fatigue just thinking about it all. Of course, the thinking about it is way more tiring than the doing of it, but that’s where I’m at right now. I have been learning in many ways, and particularly through the course on achieving a lasting impact that a sense of fatigue and hopelessness is really no more than confronting the perception that “the tiger is not dead but asleep”. You can drag it out of the path but as soon as it wakes up it is going to walk right back to the road and lay back down on it again. Trying to bring about Inclusion has been like trying to drag this sleeping tiger out of the road.
The course has been very interesting and instructive. It has pulled up virtually every occasion where I have felt like I got close to making a powerful impact on building Inclusion only to be driven back into obscurity. Whether it was Al Etmanski firing me in 2000 or Tom Kohler crossing his arms and emphatically saying that people with disabilities are not invited to Citizen Advocate training or Jack Pearpoint or Marsha Forest not including me in Inclusion Press. No matter how great and inspiring my own journey has been or my ideas may be I am not seen as having the practicality that is required to put a real organizational strategy together and to bring it to fruition.
So now we (mainly Mike and I) envision a well resourced organization that will foster Inclusion. Now I am preparing to put my energy on the line to get the necessary steps in place. I cannot know of course if I am just dragging another sleeping tiger to the culvert from whence it will shortly return, wet and hungry.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
January 9, 2011
As I was going to bed last night, Mike assisting, after staying up a little late to blog, I thought that the day had been so fulfilling, so replete with authentic experience, that I could happily die with no regrets. Well, I didn’t die. I awoke to a day of more video taping in my winter coat under camera lights, more Farmville, more apple pie, and beautiful sunshine. The vision out of my lake facing window was just like so many of those Christmas card scenes with brilliant sun shining on neat and even tiny houses with perfectly snow covered roof tops!
I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.
At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.
Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!
A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?
So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.
Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.
Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.
Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.
I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!
I got so tired today that I actually fell asleep momentarily during a pause in the taping. Just the same, finally, Michael, Sarah and I reached an ending to the play that we all are excited about. It is in the camera. The editing can happen. I do not have to travel with the play unless I want to.
At the same time I feel the pressure of how structured I am making my life again. Each of my chosen task areas could use whole days in and of themselves to “do” them with research and thoroughness. WPIT, painting, blogging, the ACF Inclusion Circle, travel and workshops, Wisdom Graduate Liaison, the Robert Cooke Coop, attending to the gifts and needs of my staff, not to mention the Individualized Funding envelope upon which we all depend, Farmville, time with my Dad, time watching pelicans and construction cranes – I can’t keep up with myself, and to just give each of them “a lick and a promise” (there’s my Mother again!) fills my day from 6:30am to 12:30am.
Yet I don’t seriously intend to change a thing. It’s all too rich!
A clone? Would it really give me “more time” or would I just expand to nearly burst two lives – not just one?
So often I feel like I never left off being four years old. I just want to play and eat. I do NOT want to go to bed no matter if I can’t stay awake long enough to get there. I want to get into everything, leave the messes to someone else and find out how everything works. And I never really mean to do harm.
Four is compelling and passionate, creative and fantastical, and NEVER reasonable. Four doesn’t have a style, a culture, a career, a financial plan, an ethic or a long memory. Four is optimistic. Four makes and loses friends easily, forgives easily and is easily forgiven. Four is able to bend a long, long way before breaking.
Four is also right on the edge of losing that openness, of becoming fearful, judgemental and certain, of narrowing the options and playing the game. It is nearly the moment to find out there is no Santa Claus.
Then it’s a long, long stretch until maybe, just maybe the adult becomes willing and able to be responsible for creating a world within which she and everyone she touches can be four again.
I want to be, and sometimes am, that adult. It is good!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
January 8, 2011
There was no crane action today.
Today was very much a day of sitting still and being bathed in the profound. This is particularly hard on my back – the sitting still part I mean – and I actually lay on my bed for part of the late afternoon.
In the morning ‘til late afternoon I was being taped for the Book of Judith. Sarah and Michael want a different sort of ending for the play for those performances where I cannot show up. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone else can’t just play me. Instead they want to have a video of me make the icon of me appear to come alive, rescue Mathew from the part where he is left naked not knowing what to do next, and end the play.
So there I was wrapped in the same winter weight poncho which I am wearing in the iconographic picture already used in the play. I was interviewed in this coat under intense video lights with the apartment windows shut to cut down the background noise. I was to stay still for the most part so the video, when edited, would fit into the icon background, and thus I will seem appear in the wall to the audience
What did I say? I don’t remember much of it, but most of it was serious in tone and some was profound, or close to it.
I remember sharing what I have recently learnt about my failure to notice people’s boundaries and how the gift of intimacy without proper limitations can bring people into difficult situations. I am certain that if Caleb and I had better appreciation of boundaries at that time I would not have asked him to help me find a lover. But then there would have been no Book of Judith. The paradox of life!
The rest of today’s sitting still had to do with going to the movie – The King’s Speech – with Gloria, Peter and Mike. I need to sleep and so it’s difficult right now to say fully its impact on me. I was struck by how obvious it is that a good personal assistant, and the one who is supported, will love each other. I wonder when the world will realize how utterly authentic this is.
The other depiction that struck me was how the prince, and then the King George VI, up until he gave his great war speech, had to struggle to assert, even discover, himself both inside of being seen as defective AND inside of the utter imposition of being royal. As afraid as he was of being king he really could only be himself when he was crowned and when he mastered being able to use his voice. This moves me because I can only be myself inside of bringing Inclusion into view for others. Everything that has occurred in my life prepares me for this, even being seen as disabled. And so, I can sit for hours, overheated and in growing pain and stiffness, speaking words whose depth and insight seem to me to be strangely not entirely my own. It is who I am and who I am meant to be even if it wasn’t me who decided this was the theme of my life. My role is not to craft it so much as it is to choose it, and make from it its own authentic fulfillment.
Such an egotistical, yet natural, thing it is to feel that one has a mission – inspiring yet corny, dangerous and fulfilling.
The Prince walks with his therapist openly in the streets, unrecognized – maybe because who could fathom that the Prince would keep the company of such a lowly man. I wonder if there is a way that I can step outside of myself to see me as others do?
Today was very much a day of sitting still and being bathed in the profound. This is particularly hard on my back – the sitting still part I mean – and I actually lay on my bed for part of the late afternoon.
In the morning ‘til late afternoon I was being taped for the Book of Judith. Sarah and Michael want a different sort of ending for the play for those performances where I cannot show up. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone else can’t just play me. Instead they want to have a video of me make the icon of me appear to come alive, rescue Mathew from the part where he is left naked not knowing what to do next, and end the play.
So there I was wrapped in the same winter weight poncho which I am wearing in the iconographic picture already used in the play. I was interviewed in this coat under intense video lights with the apartment windows shut to cut down the background noise. I was to stay still for the most part so the video, when edited, would fit into the icon background, and thus I will seem appear in the wall to the audience
What did I say? I don’t remember much of it, but most of it was serious in tone and some was profound, or close to it.
I remember sharing what I have recently learnt about my failure to notice people’s boundaries and how the gift of intimacy without proper limitations can bring people into difficult situations. I am certain that if Caleb and I had better appreciation of boundaries at that time I would not have asked him to help me find a lover. But then there would have been no Book of Judith. The paradox of life!
The rest of today’s sitting still had to do with going to the movie – The King’s Speech – with Gloria, Peter and Mike. I need to sleep and so it’s difficult right now to say fully its impact on me. I was struck by how obvious it is that a good personal assistant, and the one who is supported, will love each other. I wonder when the world will realize how utterly authentic this is.
The other depiction that struck me was how the prince, and then the King George VI, up until he gave his great war speech, had to struggle to assert, even discover, himself both inside of being seen as defective AND inside of the utter imposition of being royal. As afraid as he was of being king he really could only be himself when he was crowned and when he mastered being able to use his voice. This moves me because I can only be myself inside of bringing Inclusion into view for others. Everything that has occurred in my life prepares me for this, even being seen as disabled. And so, I can sit for hours, overheated and in growing pain and stiffness, speaking words whose depth and insight seem to me to be strangely not entirely my own. It is who I am and who I am meant to be even if it wasn’t me who decided this was the theme of my life. My role is not to craft it so much as it is to choose it, and make from it its own authentic fulfillment.
Such an egotistical, yet natural, thing it is to feel that one has a mission – inspiring yet corny, dangerous and fulfilling.
The Prince walks with his therapist openly in the streets, unrecognized – maybe because who could fathom that the Prince would keep the company of such a lowly man. I wonder if there is a way that I can step outside of myself to see me as others do?
Monday, December 20, 2010
December 20, 2010
Jen the masseuse, Kevin the frazzling child, trading a ride to Christmas shop with Helen for a car wash – inside and out, fundraising, cancelled meetings all day, tracking down a minced pie for tomorrow’s Laser Eagles potluck, discussing the next phases of WPIT with Mike, answered and unanswered e-mail, wrapping presents – these occupied my day.
Jen says there is no choice except to rest. At the same time we are on a very different plane today with my body, discussing together the intricacies of clearing and opening space for my right side while moving more of what I do with my right side into my left side – practical to spiritual. It’s a much different place than managing pain, though there is still some pain to manage. Oh, by the way, I don’t really get what all that means in a day-to-day way. Stay tuned!
When I get to this moment in the year I generally feel a certain sense of victory. This year, this night, at 3:17am Eastern Time there will be a full eclipse of the moon and we will also pass the Solstice. Thursday will yield more sunlight than today. Daylight will steadily lengthen until June 21, 2011.
There are moments in life when you know for certain that it doesn’t get worse than this. Those moments are perversely joyful, at least to me, giving a sense of power and vitality. Now that I am solidly into my Third Cycle this eclipsed Solstice offers just such a sense of joy and strength. I have already come through some of the most difficult moments of my life, and yet so much potential and realized opportunity is with me at this time.
I love my home, my health has returned, I have pathways to money, I have great staff and awesome friends, the ROM is working with me, the Book of Judith will tour this year coming and next, Mike Skubic is putting real legs under WPIT and – mysteriously – I even feel more attractive to men. I want to be a leader, I am a leader and I have the strongest chance ever to make a worldwide difference.
Some euphoria is Morphine, no doubt. Yesterday I took none but today I took two doses. Just the same could Morphine give me a high if there was nothing in my soul to be uplifted? I doubt it.
Besides money, if there is something to be at work to accomplish it would be to paint more frequently and steadily, which means having reliable and frequent access to a tracker that is trained to my ways. Mike has great potential but we have so much else going on that tracking for me easily gets sidelined. There is no reason I couldn’t have more than one tracker.
I never expected that art and writing would play such a large part of my life and be such a strong path to building Inclusion. Yet when I look back over the past seven years, and also twenty-eight years, painting, theatre and writing have been the most expressive and reliable vehicles for me to be Judith.
Funny how long it takes to see the obvious.
Anyway it is time to focus on painting, writing, friends, good food and rest. There are other important aspects to my life, of course, but these are my foundation.
The Third Cycle will continue.
Jen says there is no choice except to rest. At the same time we are on a very different plane today with my body, discussing together the intricacies of clearing and opening space for my right side while moving more of what I do with my right side into my left side – practical to spiritual. It’s a much different place than managing pain, though there is still some pain to manage. Oh, by the way, I don’t really get what all that means in a day-to-day way. Stay tuned!
When I get to this moment in the year I generally feel a certain sense of victory. This year, this night, at 3:17am Eastern Time there will be a full eclipse of the moon and we will also pass the Solstice. Thursday will yield more sunlight than today. Daylight will steadily lengthen until June 21, 2011.
There are moments in life when you know for certain that it doesn’t get worse than this. Those moments are perversely joyful, at least to me, giving a sense of power and vitality. Now that I am solidly into my Third Cycle this eclipsed Solstice offers just such a sense of joy and strength. I have already come through some of the most difficult moments of my life, and yet so much potential and realized opportunity is with me at this time.
I love my home, my health has returned, I have pathways to money, I have great staff and awesome friends, the ROM is working with me, the Book of Judith will tour this year coming and next, Mike Skubic is putting real legs under WPIT and – mysteriously – I even feel more attractive to men. I want to be a leader, I am a leader and I have the strongest chance ever to make a worldwide difference.
Some euphoria is Morphine, no doubt. Yesterday I took none but today I took two doses. Just the same could Morphine give me a high if there was nothing in my soul to be uplifted? I doubt it.
Besides money, if there is something to be at work to accomplish it would be to paint more frequently and steadily, which means having reliable and frequent access to a tracker that is trained to my ways. Mike has great potential but we have so much else going on that tracking for me easily gets sidelined. There is no reason I couldn’t have more than one tracker.
I never expected that art and writing would play such a large part of my life and be such a strong path to building Inclusion. Yet when I look back over the past seven years, and also twenty-eight years, painting, theatre and writing have been the most expressive and reliable vehicles for me to be Judith.
Funny how long it takes to see the obvious.
Anyway it is time to focus on painting, writing, friends, good food and rest. There are other important aspects to my life, of course, but these are my foundation.
The Third Cycle will continue.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
December 19, 2010
I wrote my second draft for the ROM tonight. I now feel free to share the first one. We are pushed back to mid-June or early July, for very good reasons. More soon!
Exhibit Overview – the Legacy of Judith
Preliminary Thoughts
This - Draft 1 - is written by Judith Snow. It is clear to me at this moment that I cannot fairly represent The Book of Judith since Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Garton Stanley and I have not worked together since the ROM hosted the preliminary meeting on Nov. 29.
I have only a superficial understanding of the needs, structures and processes of the ROM. As such I anticipate that this – the first kick at the can – is off base and I am requesting lots of constructive feedback and an opportunity to meet key players in the near future.
I have spoken at length with nine individuals who come from a variety of communities in my life, such as a Vice President of Spinmaster, which is a toy company, who advised me about interactive toys.
Dreams, Hopes, Must Haves
I am starting at my dream because dreaming is always a powerful place to start!
I want the people who design, build, tour and enjoy this exhibit to be exposed to and potentially fall in love with the understanding that Inclusion is a multi-dimensional approach to building a vibrant society where social and economic benefits accrue from garnering the gifts of diversity.
My art, and the play The Book of Judith, are aspects of my legacy of building Inclusion internationally. This is what the ROM knows about me so this is what we talked about on Nov. 29. However, my paintings and the play are not a complete representation of what it means to be Judith Snow. Therefore I have been imagining an interactive exhibit that says more than these can say in themselves.
I have many long term partners and relationships with whom I want to share this voice. The ROM is primary because they own and have opened the opportunity, and because there is a longer term potential through the Programming functions at ROM to continue to foster understanding and practise of Inclusion. Secondly, the Book of Judith and I are essentially one in this, though it remains to be created how the tour of the play intersects with the tour of the exhibit.
Laser Eagles Art Guild, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, World Peace through Inclusive Transformation and the City Team of the Toronto Wisdom Unlimited program are all integrated in my journey toward “being” Inclusion. This exhibit is my chance to shine AND to celebrate my community, relationships, collaboration and partnerships. To me they are central to my life and legacy.
While this work can’t be only about ME and my art, at the same time the design of the exhibit can and must integrate these relationships without confusion of the message, distraction from the art and the play, or encumbrances that would make the exhibit unworkable as a touring or stationary unit.
My “must haves” are:
It will be joyful and uplifting to do this - for me and others;
I am partnered with and taught what I need to know to fully participate;
The stationary and touring products represent Inclusion as I understand it;
The exhibit has an interactive component, and the exhibitors work with me to ensure that this aspect is sustained when I am not present to do so; and,
Costs are covered and there is sufficient recompense as to not make my participation a financial burden to me.
The “would love it if” aspects are:
I would like a book to get written, published, to sell well and to launch my ideas through related videos and other media.
I would like to get a teaching venue out of this where I have real control over the teacher, student, content dynamic.
I don’t expect the ROM to promise these, but the exposure and “the resume” are priceless to me! I am asking only that people are aware that these are important to me and to steer in directions that make these results likely.
Limitations, Barriers and Challenges
Inclusion necessarily is a challenge to the status quo in some way. This means there will always be “issues” when we are beginning the effort to be inclusive. I began my thinking about the exhibit itself by “noticing” what came up for me as issues.
The exhibit room is roughly 20 feet by 24 with three doorways and one “lopped off” corner giving effectively 7 discreet display areas of varying size. In addition there is a display panel in the middle of the room that runs on a diagonal and is approximately 9 by 2 by 7 feet high, and from which can be hung paintings, posters, video screens and similar objects. The walls are white, smooth and likely painted. The ceiling is perhaps 20 feet high or more and both inaccessible and not uniform in construction. The floor is smooth and not carpeted. There is no seating of any kind. There is abundant track lighting aimed at the walls and central display panel, making the room bright and very suitable as an art gallery.
The room is essentially a thoroughfare for visitors and staff moving from the Rotunda core or the elevators to the dinosaur exhibit and service areas. When we were being shown the room I observed a continuous low flow of traffic – everything from guests to garbage disposal units moved on through! The challenge is to entice visitors to step out of the flow and spend some time – maybe time that they had allocated for other exhibits – dipping into and dallying with Inclusion.
Other limitations – not necessarily BARRIERS – are that:
Floor space to move around in, after the “stuff” is placed, is not ample;
People who do not easily stand for more than a few minutes have no place to rest;
There is no apparent expectation that the exhibit will cater to children, those who lie down or those with unusual sensitivities or interests in light or sound; and,
Sharing the experience of play or interaction in general is NOT encouraged as there is an ongoing need to prevent vandalism in this and other exhibits.
Concepts for the Exhibit
The room lends itself neatly to the paradigm of structuring inclusive support that I used to call “Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing” – the paradigm that formed much of the basis of the 1991 book: “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It”, still available through Inclusion Press.
In my current conceptualization the regular path that visitors who are merely going through the room with no intention of staying will be clearly marked as “The Normal Path – Do Not Stop or Look Around”. All along it there will also be enticements to step aside and stay awhile, learn something and enjoy the experience.
In addition, the room will be conceptually divided into three layers. The middle layer will be for language based communications, including talking videos, text and more realistic paintings. The floor to about 3 ½ feet up will be for playful, interactive and colourful objects and paintings. Six feet up will be for projections, both colourful and those statements and photographs captured and recorded by visitors.
The groupings of videos, pictures and photographs on the central panel will focus on dreaming. The rest of the display space will focus on place, people and resources, indicating how different communities in my life have shaped my expressions of Inclusion. Finally the “dead” space between the “Normal Road” and the South Wall, really 3 short walls connected like a bay window between the main entrance and exit, will be reserved for statements about barriers. For example I will hang my first framed painting, “Vulnerability”, where my tracker was an art therapist who claimed that my work wasn’t art.
I will find ways to include other artists such as Felicia Galati and Irena Kagansky. The intention is to show, first, that I am not unique among artists as a person who does not sit easily with being labelled disabled, and secondly, that I have influenced such artists.
Floor to 3 1/2 feet
The concept is to appeal to children and others who are unlikely to be interested in language driven information. Spinmaster will donate four Aquadoodles. These devices allow drawing, finger and hand prints, and written messages. The message slowly disappears in a few minutes. We can arrange a camera that takes a picture of the design/message, to preserve it and project the growing collection of messages in a slowly moving pattern on the walls and perhaps on hung-from-ceiling panels.
Colourful, abstract paintings will also be hung in this area, perhaps six of mine and another six from Laser Eagle artists, featuring Felicia Galati. They will be unframed canvas boards, solidly attached to the wall and covered with a material like Plexiglas that can be easily cleaned off.
Six feet up…
The Marsha Forest Centre will collaborate to refurbish and/or redesign some of my PATH’s and other graphically designed depictions on newsprint, typically banners that are 8 by 3 ½ feet. The themes will indicate movement from early to later understandings of Inclusion. The newsprint will be “fixed” and can be mounted so as to be moved for the tour.
These will intermingle with the preserved drawings and messages from the Aquadoodles.
3 ½ feet to six
(Please note: exact dimensions of paintings will follow as soon as the basic design is agreed on.)
“Dead Space” of the South Wall:
“My Community” – acrylic on canvas, not framed, approx. 4 by 2 1/2 by 2 inches, accompanied by text about my being ejected from the organization that I started to flow individualized funding to coop members who need personal assistance;
photos of Irene Kagansky in the Book of Judith choir, text from my blog entry about her, and a display of one of her poems;
“Vulnerability” – acrylic on newsprint, framed and glazed, 29 in by 23 in by 1 in, on the South/West wall adjacent to exit, with text about being told I’m not an artist.
East Wall
This area will be used for an extensive exploration of the Laser Eagles Art Guild, including:
video on tracking and tracker training
about 4 framed paintings (dimensions to follow shortly)
photographs of artists at work
statements from the Etobicoke Art Gallery where our work has been displayed an exhibition of Felicia Galati’s work, pictures of her painting and an article that I wrote for the Centennial Flame project acknowledging her gifts (English, French, Text & Audio)
an area for me or other Laser Eagle artists to demonstrate how we paint. This area will not be continuously be used of course and so at other times paintings on easels can be left on display and cordoned off for security purposes.
North Wall – larger area
This will be the People area. It will be organized in sections relative to the important communities of my life.
The area for the Wisdom City Team will include a painting called “Boats”, which is acrylic on canvas, and needs to be framed. It will also include a video slide presentation of people assisting me to climb a rock wall on a cruise ship. The short article that I wrote about this called “Shoes” will be displayed in such a way that it can be read or listened to. Likely other artifacts, collages and text relative to participation will be displayed, (I’m making it up here guys!)
Similar displays will be created with a painting, text and video for other communities as mentioned in the beginning of this document.
In addition to being organized by communities, we will use a “path” that is painted on the wall to demonstrate how my art has progressed from 1984 to now. I will use 4 or 5 unframed paintings, (these may be framed by the ROM if this is their preference). I will also use quotes and text to demonstrate shifts in my thinking about Inclusion.
Following a progression, everything about the Book of Judith play will be around the doorway which is in the west side of the North Wall.
North Wall – smaller area, and West Wall
This area will be used to demonstrate Resources. I will work with Motion Specialties to have a puff and sip, and a touch plate system available for show, and video demonstrating how people drive their wheelchairs and type on computers with these systems. We will also provide video of artists painting using the lasers, and when a Laser Eagle artist is present we will provide lasers for people to attempt tracking themselves.
Central Display Panel
This will be used on both sides for video, text and perhaps 4 paintings (framed) to demonstrate the importance of dreaming.
I have a large 10” diameter Dreamcatcher made by a young aboriginal man with autism. I will display pictures of him creating the Dreamcatcher. This artefact needs to be repaired and cleaned, and hung high enough to not be vulnerable to passersby.
Questions…
Insurable value??? How does that get calculated?
How to represent “Place”??
I’m sure there are many others!
Conclusion
Once again, thank you for this opportunity and please provide extensive feedback so that I may quickly get to work on creating and finding the resources and artefacts that will make this exhibit extraordinary.
Exhibit Overview – the Legacy of Judith
Preliminary Thoughts
This - Draft 1 - is written by Judith Snow. It is clear to me at this moment that I cannot fairly represent The Book of Judith since Michael Rubenfeld, Sarah Garton Stanley and I have not worked together since the ROM hosted the preliminary meeting on Nov. 29.
I have only a superficial understanding of the needs, structures and processes of the ROM. As such I anticipate that this – the first kick at the can – is off base and I am requesting lots of constructive feedback and an opportunity to meet key players in the near future.
I have spoken at length with nine individuals who come from a variety of communities in my life, such as a Vice President of Spinmaster, which is a toy company, who advised me about interactive toys.
Dreams, Hopes, Must Haves
I am starting at my dream because dreaming is always a powerful place to start!
I want the people who design, build, tour and enjoy this exhibit to be exposed to and potentially fall in love with the understanding that Inclusion is a multi-dimensional approach to building a vibrant society where social and economic benefits accrue from garnering the gifts of diversity.
My art, and the play The Book of Judith, are aspects of my legacy of building Inclusion internationally. This is what the ROM knows about me so this is what we talked about on Nov. 29. However, my paintings and the play are not a complete representation of what it means to be Judith Snow. Therefore I have been imagining an interactive exhibit that says more than these can say in themselves.
I have many long term partners and relationships with whom I want to share this voice. The ROM is primary because they own and have opened the opportunity, and because there is a longer term potential through the Programming functions at ROM to continue to foster understanding and practise of Inclusion. Secondly, the Book of Judith and I are essentially one in this, though it remains to be created how the tour of the play intersects with the tour of the exhibit.
Laser Eagles Art Guild, the Marsha Forest Centre, the Atkinson Charitable Foundation, World Peace through Inclusive Transformation and the City Team of the Toronto Wisdom Unlimited program are all integrated in my journey toward “being” Inclusion. This exhibit is my chance to shine AND to celebrate my community, relationships, collaboration and partnerships. To me they are central to my life and legacy.
While this work can’t be only about ME and my art, at the same time the design of the exhibit can and must integrate these relationships without confusion of the message, distraction from the art and the play, or encumbrances that would make the exhibit unworkable as a touring or stationary unit.
My “must haves” are:
It will be joyful and uplifting to do this - for me and others;
I am partnered with and taught what I need to know to fully participate;
The stationary and touring products represent Inclusion as I understand it;
The exhibit has an interactive component, and the exhibitors work with me to ensure that this aspect is sustained when I am not present to do so; and,
Costs are covered and there is sufficient recompense as to not make my participation a financial burden to me.
The “would love it if” aspects are:
I would like a book to get written, published, to sell well and to launch my ideas through related videos and other media.
I would like to get a teaching venue out of this where I have real control over the teacher, student, content dynamic.
I don’t expect the ROM to promise these, but the exposure and “the resume” are priceless to me! I am asking only that people are aware that these are important to me and to steer in directions that make these results likely.
Limitations, Barriers and Challenges
Inclusion necessarily is a challenge to the status quo in some way. This means there will always be “issues” when we are beginning the effort to be inclusive. I began my thinking about the exhibit itself by “noticing” what came up for me as issues.
The exhibit room is roughly 20 feet by 24 with three doorways and one “lopped off” corner giving effectively 7 discreet display areas of varying size. In addition there is a display panel in the middle of the room that runs on a diagonal and is approximately 9 by 2 by 7 feet high, and from which can be hung paintings, posters, video screens and similar objects. The walls are white, smooth and likely painted. The ceiling is perhaps 20 feet high or more and both inaccessible and not uniform in construction. The floor is smooth and not carpeted. There is no seating of any kind. There is abundant track lighting aimed at the walls and central display panel, making the room bright and very suitable as an art gallery.
The room is essentially a thoroughfare for visitors and staff moving from the Rotunda core or the elevators to the dinosaur exhibit and service areas. When we were being shown the room I observed a continuous low flow of traffic – everything from guests to garbage disposal units moved on through! The challenge is to entice visitors to step out of the flow and spend some time – maybe time that they had allocated for other exhibits – dipping into and dallying with Inclusion.
Other limitations – not necessarily BARRIERS – are that:
Floor space to move around in, after the “stuff” is placed, is not ample;
People who do not easily stand for more than a few minutes have no place to rest;
There is no apparent expectation that the exhibit will cater to children, those who lie down or those with unusual sensitivities or interests in light or sound; and,
Sharing the experience of play or interaction in general is NOT encouraged as there is an ongoing need to prevent vandalism in this and other exhibits.
Concepts for the Exhibit
The room lends itself neatly to the paradigm of structuring inclusive support that I used to call “Harmonizing the Four Things Worth Doing” – the paradigm that formed much of the basis of the 1991 book: “What’s Really Worth Doing and How to Do It”, still available through Inclusion Press.
In my current conceptualization the regular path that visitors who are merely going through the room with no intention of staying will be clearly marked as “The Normal Path – Do Not Stop or Look Around”. All along it there will also be enticements to step aside and stay awhile, learn something and enjoy the experience.
In addition, the room will be conceptually divided into three layers. The middle layer will be for language based communications, including talking videos, text and more realistic paintings. The floor to about 3 ½ feet up will be for playful, interactive and colourful objects and paintings. Six feet up will be for projections, both colourful and those statements and photographs captured and recorded by visitors.
The groupings of videos, pictures and photographs on the central panel will focus on dreaming. The rest of the display space will focus on place, people and resources, indicating how different communities in my life have shaped my expressions of Inclusion. Finally the “dead” space between the “Normal Road” and the South Wall, really 3 short walls connected like a bay window between the main entrance and exit, will be reserved for statements about barriers. For example I will hang my first framed painting, “Vulnerability”, where my tracker was an art therapist who claimed that my work wasn’t art.
I will find ways to include other artists such as Felicia Galati and Irena Kagansky. The intention is to show, first, that I am not unique among artists as a person who does not sit easily with being labelled disabled, and secondly, that I have influenced such artists.
Floor to 3 1/2 feet
The concept is to appeal to children and others who are unlikely to be interested in language driven information. Spinmaster will donate four Aquadoodles. These devices allow drawing, finger and hand prints, and written messages. The message slowly disappears in a few minutes. We can arrange a camera that takes a picture of the design/message, to preserve it and project the growing collection of messages in a slowly moving pattern on the walls and perhaps on hung-from-ceiling panels.
Colourful, abstract paintings will also be hung in this area, perhaps six of mine and another six from Laser Eagle artists, featuring Felicia Galati. They will be unframed canvas boards, solidly attached to the wall and covered with a material like Plexiglas that can be easily cleaned off.
Six feet up…
The Marsha Forest Centre will collaborate to refurbish and/or redesign some of my PATH’s and other graphically designed depictions on newsprint, typically banners that are 8 by 3 ½ feet. The themes will indicate movement from early to later understandings of Inclusion. The newsprint will be “fixed” and can be mounted so as to be moved for the tour.
These will intermingle with the preserved drawings and messages from the Aquadoodles.
3 ½ feet to six
(Please note: exact dimensions of paintings will follow as soon as the basic design is agreed on.)
“Dead Space” of the South Wall:
“My Community” – acrylic on canvas, not framed, approx. 4 by 2 1/2 by 2 inches, accompanied by text about my being ejected from the organization that I started to flow individualized funding to coop members who need personal assistance;
photos of Irene Kagansky in the Book of Judith choir, text from my blog entry about her, and a display of one of her poems;
“Vulnerability” – acrylic on newsprint, framed and glazed, 29 in by 23 in by 1 in, on the South/West wall adjacent to exit, with text about being told I’m not an artist.
East Wall
This area will be used for an extensive exploration of the Laser Eagles Art Guild, including:
video on tracking and tracker training
about 4 framed paintings (dimensions to follow shortly)
photographs of artists at work
statements from the Etobicoke Art Gallery where our work has been displayed an exhibition of Felicia Galati’s work, pictures of her painting and an article that I wrote for the Centennial Flame project acknowledging her gifts (English, French, Text & Audio)
an area for me or other Laser Eagle artists to demonstrate how we paint. This area will not be continuously be used of course and so at other times paintings on easels can be left on display and cordoned off for security purposes.
North Wall – larger area
This will be the People area. It will be organized in sections relative to the important communities of my life.
The area for the Wisdom City Team will include a painting called “Boats”, which is acrylic on canvas, and needs to be framed. It will also include a video slide presentation of people assisting me to climb a rock wall on a cruise ship. The short article that I wrote about this called “Shoes” will be displayed in such a way that it can be read or listened to. Likely other artifacts, collages and text relative to participation will be displayed, (I’m making it up here guys!)
Similar displays will be created with a painting, text and video for other communities as mentioned in the beginning of this document.
In addition to being organized by communities, we will use a “path” that is painted on the wall to demonstrate how my art has progressed from 1984 to now. I will use 4 or 5 unframed paintings, (these may be framed by the ROM if this is their preference). I will also use quotes and text to demonstrate shifts in my thinking about Inclusion.
Following a progression, everything about the Book of Judith play will be around the doorway which is in the west side of the North Wall.
North Wall – smaller area, and West Wall
This area will be used to demonstrate Resources. I will work with Motion Specialties to have a puff and sip, and a touch plate system available for show, and video demonstrating how people drive their wheelchairs and type on computers with these systems. We will also provide video of artists painting using the lasers, and when a Laser Eagle artist is present we will provide lasers for people to attempt tracking themselves.
Central Display Panel
This will be used on both sides for video, text and perhaps 4 paintings (framed) to demonstrate the importance of dreaming.
I have a large 10” diameter Dreamcatcher made by a young aboriginal man with autism. I will display pictures of him creating the Dreamcatcher. This artefact needs to be repaired and cleaned, and hung high enough to not be vulnerable to passersby.
Questions…
Insurable value??? How does that get calculated?
How to represent “Place”??
I’m sure there are many others!
Conclusion
Once again, thank you for this opportunity and please provide extensive feedback so that I may quickly get to work on creating and finding the resources and artefacts that will make this exhibit extraordinary.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
December 14, 2010
I don’t feel much like writing. It’s been a busy day – a Laser Eagles fund raising planning meeting, Laser Eagles itself where I painted five small pieces, a little shopping and finally a Book of Judith debrief. Interspersed were the usual things that add up to hours and hours of time allocated – getting up, bedpan trips, getting to, in, out and away from the car (especially in winter where cleaning the wheelchair wheels becomes part of the process), e-mail, (Farmville!), eating and preparing for the next – meal, day, meeting, project, assistant, etc. There are days and parts of days where one more interruption, thought, task, whatever seems much, much too much. Today has been like that!
On top of this is the nagging question in my head – “Am I actually doing anything?” Someone today asked me, “What’s new?”, and I had no answer except, “The ROM”, which she already knew about. Why is it that so much energy and activity is expended on so little? Even more, what compels me either to be always “doing” or asking “Why”.
Anyway it seems like a chore to write tonight, yet important to keep on going. It’s a commitment now, and keeping it helps me continue to have faith in myself.
Part of it is to keep on capturing the edges of this fabulous moment in my life when inclusion is emerging at an entirely new level. Here are recent examples:
- real progress with letting go and having something that I created and care about be picked up and nurtured by others – Kimberley with Laser Eagles, Mike with WPIT
- inching patiently through the structures and processes of the ROM so that they may genuinely be partners in creating something inclusive
- living in my home and neighbourhood like I actually want to and do belong here
- sneaking up on writing another book
- designing with colleagues a touring version of the Book of Judith that is authentically vulnerable and will draw host communities into the inclusive experience
- staying in a role on the Toronto Wisdom City Team for more than a few months, confronting what hasn’t worked and taking on reaching new successes.
Now a real question is, “Can I make all of this packaged in the sort of profile that I will get paid enough money so that my living AND enhanced participation costs are paid, and my personal assistants’ wages are covered ongoingly - deep into the future?”
Can my art and my writing make money?
Can my ideas, dreams and experience make money?
Why not? Somehow it seems more likely that they can and always could except where I have been putting unnecessary barriers in the way.
I have a friend whose advice I am seeking regularly about money who says it is simply a matter of saying what I am going to do to make money, then doing it. No more hype, getting ready, anxiety, whatever – just choose to do something, then do it!
I have had considerable practice with just that and creating these daily writings.
Now I will copy the pattern over to making money!
On top of this is the nagging question in my head – “Am I actually doing anything?” Someone today asked me, “What’s new?”, and I had no answer except, “The ROM”, which she already knew about. Why is it that so much energy and activity is expended on so little? Even more, what compels me either to be always “doing” or asking “Why”.
Anyway it seems like a chore to write tonight, yet important to keep on going. It’s a commitment now, and keeping it helps me continue to have faith in myself.
Part of it is to keep on capturing the edges of this fabulous moment in my life when inclusion is emerging at an entirely new level. Here are recent examples:
- real progress with letting go and having something that I created and care about be picked up and nurtured by others – Kimberley with Laser Eagles, Mike with WPIT
- inching patiently through the structures and processes of the ROM so that they may genuinely be partners in creating something inclusive
- living in my home and neighbourhood like I actually want to and do belong here
- sneaking up on writing another book
- designing with colleagues a touring version of the Book of Judith that is authentically vulnerable and will draw host communities into the inclusive experience
- staying in a role on the Toronto Wisdom City Team for more than a few months, confronting what hasn’t worked and taking on reaching new successes.
Now a real question is, “Can I make all of this packaged in the sort of profile that I will get paid enough money so that my living AND enhanced participation costs are paid, and my personal assistants’ wages are covered ongoingly - deep into the future?”
Can my art and my writing make money?
Can my ideas, dreams and experience make money?
Why not? Somehow it seems more likely that they can and always could except where I have been putting unnecessary barriers in the way.
I have a friend whose advice I am seeking regularly about money who says it is simply a matter of saying what I am going to do to make money, then doing it. No more hype, getting ready, anxiety, whatever – just choose to do something, then do it!
I have had considerable practice with just that and creating these daily writings.
Now I will copy the pattern over to making money!
Monday, November 29, 2010
November 29, 2010
Today brought the first meeting with the ROM.
Mike Skubic, Michael Rubenfeld and I with Sarah Garton Stanley on a speaker phone met six officials of the museum in a huge board room after passing through two sets of secured entrances. It left me feeling a little like Bambi meeting Godzilla, but not too much. The gathering was still very much about me, my art, the play and my legacy and I was very much being listened to and taken seriously.
A few moments were nearly incomprehensible to me – like when I was asked what the insurable value of my art would be. So many of my pieces are on dollar store canvas boards. Most have been produced in less than two hours. The largest price I have ever earned was $500. Insurable value?
The meeting was useful for us to get our bearings. Godzilla has traditions, policies, internal politics, union reinforced job descriptions, rigid time schedules and really bad coffee. We have to learn the ropes. Inclusion isn’t about “doing our own thing” – it is about seemingly incompatible entities finding ways to authentically express their essences while being mutually supportive and, in so doing, creating space for the unimagined to emerge.
It was good to see the space within which the 3 to 6 month exhibit will take place. It is a relatively small but well lit and not to noisy room. It really is an anteroom, along the pathway to the dinosaurs. This means that there will always be lots of traffic through the room but that many “visitors” will not initially have the inclination to stop.
At this juncture, because of this pathway, I am imaging designing a “highway” where signs will be posted that there is to be no stopping due to dangerous circumstances. At the same time there can also be more subtle invitations to stop and stay awhile, to discover something magical about life and yourself!
I don’t feel that this exhibit will be as much about my art as about the various stages I have been through in developing my own ideas about Inclusion. My art will be one vehicle of several used to get the ideas across. We will be using the play, video and I hope something interactive that pulls people into the exploration. I also hope that the exhibit can appeal to children and teenagers. Currently the ROM officials mainly talked about children as if the main concerns about them are their safety and that they might destroy stuff!
There is no sense at all of what, if any, financial opportunity there is in this. I attempted to express that to do this well I, and others, would have to give up other opportunities to make money. The process does not reveal anything about money at this point. First things first in the ROM’s way of doing things is to produce a document – a proposal with a creative theme – that gives them a sense of what they will be committing to. They get to say back if it’s doable. They say back what they are willing to do and not do. To me it’s like negotiating in the dark, but at least after today, it’s a little less dark.
I am in a very strange space indeed. On the one hand my creative juices are being called on like never before. On the other I am dollars away from bankruptcy, only weeks away from serious illness and suddenly playing with the “big boys” – people who have the capacity to take my legacy very far indeed but also who have very different agendas than mine.
Mike Skubic, Michael Rubenfeld and I with Sarah Garton Stanley on a speaker phone met six officials of the museum in a huge board room after passing through two sets of secured entrances. It left me feeling a little like Bambi meeting Godzilla, but not too much. The gathering was still very much about me, my art, the play and my legacy and I was very much being listened to and taken seriously.
A few moments were nearly incomprehensible to me – like when I was asked what the insurable value of my art would be. So many of my pieces are on dollar store canvas boards. Most have been produced in less than two hours. The largest price I have ever earned was $500. Insurable value?
The meeting was useful for us to get our bearings. Godzilla has traditions, policies, internal politics, union reinforced job descriptions, rigid time schedules and really bad coffee. We have to learn the ropes. Inclusion isn’t about “doing our own thing” – it is about seemingly incompatible entities finding ways to authentically express their essences while being mutually supportive and, in so doing, creating space for the unimagined to emerge.
It was good to see the space within which the 3 to 6 month exhibit will take place. It is a relatively small but well lit and not to noisy room. It really is an anteroom, along the pathway to the dinosaurs. This means that there will always be lots of traffic through the room but that many “visitors” will not initially have the inclination to stop.
At this juncture, because of this pathway, I am imaging designing a “highway” where signs will be posted that there is to be no stopping due to dangerous circumstances. At the same time there can also be more subtle invitations to stop and stay awhile, to discover something magical about life and yourself!
I don’t feel that this exhibit will be as much about my art as about the various stages I have been through in developing my own ideas about Inclusion. My art will be one vehicle of several used to get the ideas across. We will be using the play, video and I hope something interactive that pulls people into the exploration. I also hope that the exhibit can appeal to children and teenagers. Currently the ROM officials mainly talked about children as if the main concerns about them are their safety and that they might destroy stuff!
There is no sense at all of what, if any, financial opportunity there is in this. I attempted to express that to do this well I, and others, would have to give up other opportunities to make money. The process does not reveal anything about money at this point. First things first in the ROM’s way of doing things is to produce a document – a proposal with a creative theme – that gives them a sense of what they will be committing to. They get to say back if it’s doable. They say back what they are willing to do and not do. To me it’s like negotiating in the dark, but at least after today, it’s a little less dark.
I am in a very strange space indeed. On the one hand my creative juices are being called on like never before. On the other I am dollars away from bankruptcy, only weeks away from serious illness and suddenly playing with the “big boys” – people who have the capacity to take my legacy very far indeed but also who have very different agendas than mine.
Friday, November 26, 2010
November 26, 2010
Moods can be annoying!
Of course with yesterday’s great news there are complications. What will this do to my ODSP income, if anything? How does this affect the people who are expecting me to be more available to WPIT? Already I have had an offer to purchase four paintings from a speculator. Another person wanted me to share the news NOW with a group I haven’t gotten to yet.
None of this changes anything substantial. It just leaves that mood – that unwelcome sense of a “bad moon rising” – that sense of distraction that comes with having multiple agendas to untangle. What of all this is me – my expression?
Perhaps that is the point anyway. What is my expression in the face of being recognized? It’s one thing to be “out” trying to get “in”. It’s quite another, I suppose, to have come home to find that home is no more interested in Inclusion than anywhere else was.
Not that I thought it was – I just got disoriented for a moment! Whoops - sorry.
Inclusion hasn’t happened in the world yet, except for those momentary, seductive occasions that give one both a sense of what’s possible and the necessity to not hope unrealistically. There is still much work to do. The question is what is the good work to do now?
I love the heady beginnings of fun things. The video game project, the ROM. I’m not so fond of the negotiation part – sorting out mine and other’s agendas, often in a competitive stance.
There is nothing wrong with either the competition nor the fact that I don’t like it. In fact this is precisely where I get to show that Inclusion can actually happen. If we/I can come to grips with all the needs and diversities and have it work out with no one left out then the world really will have something to pay attention to!
So can I like it, or at least cease to resist it? Can I be the perfect matador and simply not be there for the moment the bull passes through the cape?
It’s not a challenge I had anticipated but neither is one I am unfamiliar with. This is just taking a Rubik’s cube life to another level.
I wonder when and what I will paint next. My familiar tracker quit this week, and although Mike is a good tracker, if he tracks for me on the days he works as a personal assistant it limits his break time. It seems ironic indeed that at the moment when the world will want to see me paint, I am almost as unprepared to do so as in the beginning in 2004.
So perhaps the genuine question for me to address now, in the few months before the exhibit happens, is who will paint with me in this upcoming year of public scrutiny?
Of course with yesterday’s great news there are complications. What will this do to my ODSP income, if anything? How does this affect the people who are expecting me to be more available to WPIT? Already I have had an offer to purchase four paintings from a speculator. Another person wanted me to share the news NOW with a group I haven’t gotten to yet.
None of this changes anything substantial. It just leaves that mood – that unwelcome sense of a “bad moon rising” – that sense of distraction that comes with having multiple agendas to untangle. What of all this is me – my expression?
Perhaps that is the point anyway. What is my expression in the face of being recognized? It’s one thing to be “out” trying to get “in”. It’s quite another, I suppose, to have come home to find that home is no more interested in Inclusion than anywhere else was.
Not that I thought it was – I just got disoriented for a moment! Whoops - sorry.
Inclusion hasn’t happened in the world yet, except for those momentary, seductive occasions that give one both a sense of what’s possible and the necessity to not hope unrealistically. There is still much work to do. The question is what is the good work to do now?
I love the heady beginnings of fun things. The video game project, the ROM. I’m not so fond of the negotiation part – sorting out mine and other’s agendas, often in a competitive stance.
There is nothing wrong with either the competition nor the fact that I don’t like it. In fact this is precisely where I get to show that Inclusion can actually happen. If we/I can come to grips with all the needs and diversities and have it work out with no one left out then the world really will have something to pay attention to!
So can I like it, or at least cease to resist it? Can I be the perfect matador and simply not be there for the moment the bull passes through the cape?
It’s not a challenge I had anticipated but neither is one I am unfamiliar with. This is just taking a Rubik’s cube life to another level.
I wonder when and what I will paint next. My familiar tracker quit this week, and although Mike is a good tracker, if he tracks for me on the days he works as a personal assistant it limits his break time. It seems ironic indeed that at the moment when the world will want to see me paint, I am almost as unprepared to do so as in the beginning in 2004.
So perhaps the genuine question for me to address now, in the few months before the exhibit happens, is who will paint with me in this upcoming year of public scrutiny?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
November 25, 2010
It’s relatively early in the day. I usually write these near 11:30pm and it’s just past 11:30am. I have just heard momentous news, and I am going to be writing e-mails to friends and colleagues everywhere. I figure I may as well do it this way, and take parts of this and turn it into the e-mails later. It might save some Morse Code puffing!
I have just heard that my paintings and the play – The Book of Judith (http://bookofjudithplay.blogspot.com/) – are going to be exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). I am to be a guest curator. The theme will be my legacy of Inclusion and my growing understanding and message portrayed as art, video and other interactive elements. After a stationary instalment in the museum itself, we will tour both the play and art. This will be in partnership with the Trillium Foundation who are already backing a spring and fall tour of The Book of Judith.
In all it’s a year’s commitment to celebrating Inclusion and diversity.
Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley are integral to the creation, development, production and presentation of the play. We will be in close collaboration for all of it!
Even the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation will get a leg up as this theme and initiative are very much part of my legacy. Will I finally be able to get research backing for the BMX Model of Inclusion?
Recognition and the opening of doors come in quiet and unassuming ways. Yesterday included a last minute rearrangement of my schedule so I could participate in a teleconference with the ROM. It was no big deal – I am always rearranging my schedule last minute. Staff needed on the spot support to put a last minute proposal in front of the museum’s exhibit selection committee. Today I was in bed, getting ready to get up so the technician could fix the electronics of my bed. The call came and my future shifted.
It’s such an ordinary moment that my emotions haven’t caught up. I get what Mike was saying about meeting with the video game producers on Monday. It’s such an ordinary day, unlike a special day that one has been preparing for - a wedding or graduation - that the obvious next step is to go have lunch. The overall mood is so ordinary, so: “Well, of course – what else would we do except say yes.” In the absence of a big high it nearly feels like a low.
Yet I have been preparing for this day in one way or another since I was four – 57 years. I am coming home to a rightful place in the world. I don’t need a big high right now. I need to place myself firmly in the passion for Inclusion that has carried me through these 57 years. I need to fully feel and express my gratitude for the opening, for the many hands – seen and unseen – that have carried me to this day, and for the vision, energy and courage I have been given to keep on working the path when there was no sign that this future was realizable. Hallelujah!
Michael and I will be at the ROM on Monday for the first production meeting, to find out really what we need to do to set up the contracts, partnerships, etc. Then we will go have a beer. By then I think I will be ready to celebrate!
I have just heard that my paintings and the play – The Book of Judith (http://bookofjudithplay.blogspot.com/) – are going to be exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). I am to be a guest curator. The theme will be my legacy of Inclusion and my growing understanding and message portrayed as art, video and other interactive elements. After a stationary instalment in the museum itself, we will tour both the play and art. This will be in partnership with the Trillium Foundation who are already backing a spring and fall tour of The Book of Judith.
In all it’s a year’s commitment to celebrating Inclusion and diversity.
Michael Rubenfeld and Sarah Garton Stanley are integral to the creation, development, production and presentation of the play. We will be in close collaboration for all of it!
Even the World Peace through Inclusive Transformation will get a leg up as this theme and initiative are very much part of my legacy. Will I finally be able to get research backing for the BMX Model of Inclusion?
Recognition and the opening of doors come in quiet and unassuming ways. Yesterday included a last minute rearrangement of my schedule so I could participate in a teleconference with the ROM. It was no big deal – I am always rearranging my schedule last minute. Staff needed on the spot support to put a last minute proposal in front of the museum’s exhibit selection committee. Today I was in bed, getting ready to get up so the technician could fix the electronics of my bed. The call came and my future shifted.
It’s such an ordinary moment that my emotions haven’t caught up. I get what Mike was saying about meeting with the video game producers on Monday. It’s such an ordinary day, unlike a special day that one has been preparing for - a wedding or graduation - that the obvious next step is to go have lunch. The overall mood is so ordinary, so: “Well, of course – what else would we do except say yes.” In the absence of a big high it nearly feels like a low.
Yet I have been preparing for this day in one way or another since I was four – 57 years. I am coming home to a rightful place in the world. I don’t need a big high right now. I need to place myself firmly in the passion for Inclusion that has carried me through these 57 years. I need to fully feel and express my gratitude for the opening, for the many hands – seen and unseen – that have carried me to this day, and for the vision, energy and courage I have been given to keep on working the path when there was no sign that this future was realizable. Hallelujah!
Michael and I will be at the ROM on Monday for the first production meeting, to find out really what we need to do to set up the contracts, partnerships, etc. Then we will go have a beer. By then I think I will be ready to celebrate!
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