How making choices in your collection or textile art is connected with the art of living.

Inspiration for the zoom class about color and choices: https://nl.pinterest.com/marijkebongers/colorstudy-liberationskirt/

Later I will add the presentations about chosing color for you work and how you can make your own choices.

Making choices

Making choices and colors, today (June 2, 2020 a day after the demonstration on the Dam in Amsterdam about #blacklivesmatter ) I talk in my zoom meeting with the #liberationskirtchallenge participants about making choices and colors. (The challenge has now two groups of people and I will work with them on their own projects)

What do we want to say?

I am always aware, but now even more, that if you truly work on being authentic, picking colors, making choices, it will not only show others who you are, but also yourself. I think I even need it, to know and learn who I am and what I have to say in a changing world

It is an interesting journey to develop your own work. We learn from others, they are a mirror to us. By them showing their choices we can feel inside if that feels good, very good or very wrong to us. That doesn't say a lot about the work of the artist, but more about yourself. Feeling recognision might feel even less lonely, feeling not touched or feeling offended might learn us how to deal with the the differences. What does it do to you, is there a boundary that you need to give a voice or is it possible to just let it be. Does it stirr questions? Does it makes you curious? Can you be more open to that?

Art and your personal work is an extra language. It might be helpful to know that.
You can react, or you can stay silent, you can shout or you can whisper, let your reaction to work of others cure a bit before you decide what to say and try to understand what it is that triggers you.

Looking at other people’s work and and notice our deep feelings, tells us who we are and might help us to make our own choices.

I think we can use this idea in real life too, in how we want to live.
In what way you want to live, in what way you want to speak. We all have our unique way of communication and how we feel about it. Learning more on ways to communicate can help us to express ourselves.

We might need to do some work on our communicationskills. Although we communicate more than ever we are often feeling more apart. Maybe the skills of Non Violent Communication will help me. Maybe we need something else. What I do know is that making choices feels like it has a price. And we are not sure that, what we want so much, will happen. So we often make no choice and stay with the old and the that seems kind of save. But on the other hand the choice of change might be way better for us. Today I made some choices to speak where I normally stay silent. It feels scary, I might loose someone I rather not loose. But to be aware that saying nothing is also a choice, not only in art but also in live is, I think, a crucial part of creativity. And also of life.

Making new choices for my studio

PS: The #liberationskirtchallenge is full now. It will run for a year and I already doubled the amount of participants. (thank you for your enthusiasm!) i will try to support all the participants on their own journey. And be open to what is happening in the world and our lives. That is only possible if I have a limit in the amount of participants.

I am working on ways online and offline in the studio to offer you coaching combined with practical lessons to help on Haute Couture and other surface design skills, so you can be guided by me, one on one, or in a group, to work on your brand, collection or artwork.

I will let you know when it is in our shop. You can follow the proces of the challenge here on our blog. I will share the updates here too. In this way you you can travel with us and be inspired and see what you like of our journey. Because I want also to share my work for a better world I also work together with a #diverse group of people in the XR NL Fashion Action group. In that way I hope to offer some choices for most of you.

update: I decided to take a kind of a sabbatical and work more with Extinction Rebellion. So this year is for fashion activism against climate change, polution and the modern slavery in fashion.