027: #CarveDecember

I'm delighted to bring you another episode of the Adventures in Arting Podcast!  Today we're talking to Briana Goetzen, Louise Nelson, and Arleigh. Briana Goetzen, MA, founder of Orange Spiral Arts, is an expressive arts coach living in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. As an artist, avid photographer, visual journal keeper, and deep conversation enthusiast, Briana supports women who desire to fully express themselves in mind, body, and spirit. She helps women re-connect to the inner artist and divine inner wisdom that is inherently theirs. What is expressive arts coaching? Expressive arts coaching is a process where women explore and experiment freely with art supplies, journaling, photography, and physical movement in order to get in touch with the inner artist and divine self.  Note from Briana: Expressive arts coaching is NOT the same as expressive arts therapy.  Expressive arts coaching uses the creative process to integrate the mind, body, and spirit connection. Briana wishes for you to experience spiritual joy through creative and mindful acts. Find Briana online: Blog: orangespiralarts.com Email: orangespiralarts@gmail.com Etsy: orangespiralarts.etsy.com Facebook: facebook.com/OrangeSpiralArts Flickr:  flickr.com/photos/brianacreates/ Instagram: @brianacreates Pinterest: pinterest.com/brianacreates/ Twitter: twitter.com/BrianaCreates/ Hi! It's Louise Nelson From Adelaide Australia. I am a passionate mixed media scrapbooker, wannabe painter and photographer. I love to dabble in lots of different arts and crafts, and even more, love to play and experiment incorporating these into my scrapbooking. I just wish there more hours in my day so that I could try out every creative idea keeping my brain abuzz! Find Louise online: Facebook Instagram Blog My name is Arleigh, which rhymes with “Charlie,” and I'm a freelance artist working from my home in Fort Collins, Colorado. I started as a professional typesetter, decades ago, at a big publishing company, and slowly moved toward my dream job, commercial design. I design logos and posters and stuff for clients. I have big clients and small clients, and I do both small jobs and big jobs. It’s all over the place and so much fun! I love my work. BUT, when you do something professionally, and you’re “on the clock,” you can’t really play around with techniques and experimentation. So I save the experimenting and playing for my own stuff on my own time. I have lots of artists and architects in my heritage. And also a few scientists. So I bounce back and forth between being logical and mathy, to being loosey goosey artsy fartsy. I am self conscious creating art that’s just art, just hang-on-the-wall art. I feel more inspired if there’s some practicality in the piece. Does it do something? How can it be used? So maybe I’m less of a fine artist, and more of a crafter. Last year, Ronda Palazzari had just learned how to carve stamps from Julie Fei-Fan Balzer. So I begged her to teach me. I carved a few stamps, then got way too busy with moving (Denver to Fort Collins) and a new regular client, Cocoa Daisy, for whom I—guess what—design stamps! In November, when I saw Julie’s reminder that #carvedecember was coming up, I decided to join in and make stamps that I would like to have. I gave myself permission to skip a day or two if needed, but I have to say that on the days I didn’t carve or use one of my new stamps, I really missed it! I’m keeping the creative momentum going in January by drawing every day—or almost every day. You can see my drawings on instagram (arleighb). Find Arleigh online: site: arleigh.com wordpress blog: arleigh.com/blog facebook art related: facebook.com/arleighart facebook other stuff: facebook.com/arleighville twitter: twitter.com/arleigh pinterest: pinterest.com/arleigh instagram: instagram.com/arleighb