Last week I had the honor of sharing the power of play with three lovely women at my first Re-ignite Your Creativity workshop, my first real experience as a teacher, a leader, and I’m still a little stunned by the experience. I mean, I know the power of art and the power of play, I even wrote a little about it here on this blog, and still I hadn’t guessed just how powerful it could be to witness the creativity and life it brought into our little group. Creativity re-ignited indeed!

At first, there was trepidation. Play is often seen as fit only for the realm of children, and many of us haven’t allowed ourselves to play since we were very young. And I think that many of us subconsciously know that play is powerful magic, and we are afraid to touch that power. So trepidation wasn’t too much of a surprise, and I knew the way to handle it was with gentle guidance. What was a surprise was how quickly the exercises I assigned led them from trepidation to bold exploration!

A friend asked me what my favorite part of the workshop was, and it has to be on the first day of the workshop when Judy, an artist who told me that she hadn’t been able to paint for nearly a year, looked up from her painting, caught my eye, smiled a smile of pure bliss, and breathed. It looked like the first real breath she’d taken in a very, very long time, and my heart just soared.

A close runner up for favorite moment was at the end of the second day, just looking around and seeing all the wonderful images they had created laid out all around us. I’ve included a few pictures here, but they represent a very small portion of the bounty we created.

I am very much looking forward to doing this again. To find out more about my November workshop at 3231 Creatives in Everett, click here.

 ”I’m really blown away. Angela did a wonderful job and gave us plenty of space to explore our own stuff, artistic and otherwise. I got so much more out of this class than just drawing”

~Chelsia Berry, Fashion Designer, student in October’s workshop

“Angela is AMAZING! I got so much more out of the workshop than I expected. Some of the exercises really opened up some closed doors… I highly recommend taking her class at the next opportunity.”

~Rebecca Pena, student in October’s workshop