The Creative Process and Schmita

This workshop was developed in part with funds from the 2015 Linda and Joel Abromson Award, granted by a committee, who know a lot about how to nurture creativity.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

12:00pm – 12:30pm Brown Bag Lunch

12:30pm-4:00pm Workshop (includes a 20 minute break)

Jewish Community Alliance, 57 Ashmont Street, Portland ME

FREE

Please RSVP to fsilverman@mainejewish.org or (207) 772-1959

Facilitated by Asherah Cinnamon

 

A uniquely Jewish and personal workshop for anyone who wishes to increase their own, and other people's creativity. Note: This is NOT an art-making workshop. We will learn something about concepts of Schmita, and about our creative selves. Creativity is not linear, does not follow a path visible to others, often not even to ourselves. This makes many of us nervous. Creativity is diminished by very early, and often internalized, pressures to be “productive”, as defined by others. As Jews, with a long history of being targeted, killed, and thrown out of many countries, we may be particularly prone to wanting our children to be accepted and seen by others as successful. As a People, we cherish creativity but do not always nurture it. We tend not to be patient about letting creativity unfold with the time needed for full development. Judaism has an APP for that. It is called “Schmita”, the recently completed, traditional, once in seven years, period of letting the land lie fallow (at least in Israel). This workshop is about finding Schmita in your creative life and encouraging it in others. We do not have to wait seven more years, and it is never too late. We will discuss, share personal stories with at least one other person in the room, and through specific questions, will make our way toward creative renewal.

Asherah Cinnamon is a late life sculptor/performance and installation artist. In the 12 years since she entered art school, her work has been shown on several continents and in three Jewish Museums. She has won awards at the Beijing Olympics and in Portland, Maine. Even more than that, though, she relishes the freedom that becoming a Creative has given her to trust her own thinking, not always or perfectly, but more than ever before and with increasing regularity. For more than three decades before she became an artist, she taught, and still teaches, groups of people how to connect more fully with themselves and each other

 

Please RSVP HERE  or contact fsilverman@mainejewish.org or 772-1959 with questions.

 

Image of "Shema" by Asherah Cinnamon and Nikki Green. Photo copyright Paul R. Solomon