Creating Calm Within: An introduction to the basics of nervous system care

by Rachel

The first time I met my psychologist he suggested I try a breathing exercise. I rolled my eyes at him. My problems were huge, I didn't have time for that kind of thing. As if that was going to fix anything. Many years later, I'm the person telling people to try breathing in the face of a crisis.

Many of us are currently experiencing anxiety and ongoing stress. It's important to be able to regulate your nervous system when you get too anxious to think straight, and to take time regularly to de-stress.

Maintaining a healthy nervous system through regular, daily practices helps you to avoid falling into crippling anxiety.

To achieve these two things (reducing anxiety and avoiding triggering it), you need to learn how to activate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Parasympa-what?!? I hear some of you ask.

A Quick But Important Neuroscience Recap

In your body your nervous system has several components that control various functions.

Relevant to stress and anxiety are the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS).

The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for your 'fight or flight' crisis mode.

It prepares your body to take quick action. Blood pressure, blood flow and stress hormones are increased in this mode. This mode is great for getting things done when it's for short periods of time. However, when you're constantly in this state or are so activated that you feel paralysed (freeze mode), it can have detrimental affects on your body and mental wellbeing. Your immune system is lowered in this state, making you more prone to illness.

On the other hand, the parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for feelings of calm and resting.

This is your 'rest and digest' mode. Your immune system is strengthened when you activate your parasympathetic nervous system. Blood pressure, blood flow and stress hormones decrease in this mode and you experience increased feelings of wellbeing.

A basic understanding of how these systems work together helps you to hack them so that you can reduce feelings of stress, anxiety and panic and increase your wellbeing and ability to function in a crisis.

Tips For Reducing Anxiety

First, let's look at how we can reduce immediate feelings of anxiety through activating your PNS.

When you feel anxious with feelings of urgency, pressured thoughts and worry, tension, racing heart and so on it can be helpful to:

1. Notice and name it. Notice the thoughts, physical sensations and how you're breathing.

For example, say to yourself: 'I notice my thoughts are racing,I feel scared, there's a lump in my chest and I feel like I'm barely breathing at all'.

2. Consciously decide that you are going to help yourself now through supportive practices.

Say to yourself something like: 'It's okay that I feel scared. I accept this moment as it is and I have tools I can use to help myself through this. Firstly, I am going to help myself by slowing down.'

It helps to say these sort of phrases in your mind in a sloooooow and compassionate way.

3. Bring further awareness to your breath and body. See if you can relax any tense areas of your body through stretching, tensing and releasing.

This can feel hard to do when you're in 'URGENT!!' mode and your brain is telling you that the world is ending. Remind yourself that slowing down is exactly what you need to do to think more clearly and make better decisions.

4. Apply your PNS activation tools (below). Take a few minutes, or as long as you need, to do an activity/activities that supports your body to move into your parasympathetic nervous system mode.

Your Anxiety Reduction Toolkit

Here are a few of the many ways you can activate your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) AKA tools for your anxiety reduction kit.

1. Breathing exercises

2-4-4 breathing can be particularly helpful. It is used for managing panic attacks but also helps for general feelings of anxiety.

Breathe in for two counts, hold for four, breathe out for four. Repeat seven times or more. A few rounds of this will alter the oxygen levels in your blood stream and move you into a calmer mental and physical state.

2. Notice the present moment

While breathing gently, name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, one you can taste.

This has the affect of bringing your mind into the present instead of wherever it is currently racing into the future.

3. Lie on your back with your legs up the wall for to five to fifteen minutes

Lie in a comfortable spot with your legs up a wall for 5-10 minutes and breath gently. Listen to some nice music if you like. Blood flows to your heart and mind calming your nervous system. It's also good for insomnia.

Avoid this exercise if you have any medical conditions such as glaucoma or heart problems.

6. Massage

Even self-massage or massaging someone else helps. Massage releases tension and increases blood flow. The rhythmic aspects of massage have a soothing effect. Massaging someone else is like using them as your personal stress-ball and you have the added benefit of doing something kind. Compassionate acts have been shown to stimulate additional feelings of calm.

7. Meditate using art

As an art therapist I help clients access their PNS through a simple exercise called 'painting the breath'. This is a great exercise if normal meditation seems too difficult for your racing thoughts.

To do this, you need a piece of paper and pen. Draw lines that match your breath in pace and length. Draw one line for the duration of your inhale, draw one line for your exhale. You can do this without picking up your pen, or with two coloured pens, with paint brushes, or whatever way you like. Let it flow. About five minutes of this supports a more relaxed state.

Scribble drawings, mandalas and colouring in books all have a therapeutic and calming effect.

8. Repeat and/or write mantras

A helpful activity for slowing down racing thoughts is to repeat mantras such as 'Slowly, gently' or any words that support you to feel better. Writing out these words with coloured pens in a very slow and gentle way will help slow down your thinking.

9. Dance it out

Put on some music and move in whatever way feels good for you. This can release a lot of the physical tension that builds up with anxiety. Music has a powerful ability to shift our emotional state.

10. Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This is an excellent relaxation tool for reducing anxiety. You can find many versions of these on YouTube or apps like Insight Timer or Mindspace. Here's one progressive muscle relaxation exercise you can do right now.

11. Run cold water over your wrists

This brings relief from cortisol and slows down your blood flow.

Your Ongoing Nervous System Care Toolkit

For dealing with ongoing stress, taking time every day to do activities that activate your parasympathetic nervous system enables you to maintain good health and wellbeing. Daily practices will reduce the chances of you falling into severe anxiety. You can avoid burnout, diseases related to chronic stress, unnecessary arguments with others and bad decisions caused by stress.

Activities for good nervous system care are:

going for walks
spending time in nature
yoga
meditation
listening to music
practicing mindfulness during everyday activities eg. cooking or cleaning
having a cuddle with a loved one or even a teddy or pillow
progressive muscle relaxation (as mentioned above)

Reduce pressure on your nervous system

Having good boundaries around your social media and news consumption will stop your nervous system from getting overworked. Through regularly tuning in with your body you can learn to recognise the signs that you are overworking your nervous system. Signs include tension in your muscles, shortness of breath and 'frayed' thought patterns.

Key Takeaway

By practicing good nervous system maintenance you increase your mental and physical resourcefulness, you feel calmer, you can think more clearly and make better decisions.

Consider nervous system maintenance part of your overall health and fitness regime.

What are your favourite calming activities? Comment below and please share this article with anyone who might find it helpful.

PS. As always, if you are experiencing ongoing, debilitating anxiety or panic attacks, reach out to your health care provider for additional support. You can find many anxiety peer support groups online on Facebook and Instagram to help you feel less alone.

The Future of Art: Lionel Cruet

by Rachel

The Future of Art is an interview series where I speak with artists on the topics of sustainability and climate change in relation to their artistic practices. The series aims to explore a range of viewpoints, not only those of artists working directly with these topics but also how it affects the practices of all artists, no matter their chosen themes or mediums.

Our next artist is Lionel Cruet. Lionel was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and lives and works between New York and San Juan. He works across various mediums in order to explore topics related to economics, geopolitics, and technology.

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

I create large-scale audio and visual installations, experimental digital prints, sound arrangements in space and videos to recreate spaces, memories, and experiences using imagery of natural spaces as a metaphor to understand the complex and interconnected realities we all live in. The sources that serve to create the installations come mostly from a digital form, archival material, thus, the generated artworks are research-based.

Images of obscure natural spaces and elements that define our intimate relationship to spaces, such as storage containers, sounds, voices and songs of proclamations in the void, become the aesthetics of the work. Through my artworks and practice I am constantly confronting geopolitical issues, states de facto, economics, the act of speculation and testimonials about the relations that we create to spaces and natural environments; always underlining a conceptual framework that comes from my experiences as a Caribbean colonial and post-colonial being as it is in dialogue with the rest of the world.

At the End of Daybreak, 2017, vegetation mural and audiovisual installation on translucent cube, variable dimensions © Lionel Cruet 2017. Image by Everson Museum of Art

How have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

Climate change and sustainability are two different areas for me, related, but they are distinct. The awareness around these subjects started to formalize in a seminar I took while in college at La Escuela de Artes Plasticas in San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the seminar we observed multiple approaches that artists and designers have taken to create sustainable practices. We observed adjustments in living spaces, approaches to use of renewable materials, use of energy and such. I truly believe that helped me to think and envision a practice for myself as an artist.

At the End of Daybreak, 2017, photo installation and audiovisual installation on translucent cube, variable dimensions © Lionel Cruet 2017. Image by Everson Museum of Art

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

Yes, I have always been aware in my innate consciousness about this issues; But more specific to the impact of humans activities in Earth and with other species. Sustainable issues are about the adjustments that we can make as individuals and as a society to over turn and sustain without causing long term impact. Since I was young I could see it and I was aware of it but I didn’t have the language to describe it. Also in my living environment and with my family I was limited in making significant changes toward a sustainable living. I was not a decision maker within my household with the ability to change living patterns that affect ‘climate change’ in the long run.

With my artist studio and my home environment I keep making sustainable adjustments and adapting.

With time I understood that Climate Change is increasing but that it is caused by the levels of industrial and mass production that extends from a demand for international commerce.

At the End of Daybreak, 2017, vegetation mural and photo installation, variable dimensions © Lionel Cruet 2017. Image by Everson Museum of Art

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years. If so, how?

As an artist and with my studio practice I have made significant changes to support the sustainable production of artworks and the methods for how things are done. For instance, my studio has a sensor for the lights so they turn off when there’s no activity. In my studio we have changed the ways for how framed artworks are packed and shipped. We no longer use paper, tape or bubble wrap, instead, we use fabrics and belt systems that are reusable. Elements like this help advance a sustainable framework and the studio functions. When it comes to the artworks, most of them are in materials that have minimal impact on the environment. Digital forms and archives of videos, sounds, and images are some of the mediums and materials I work with.

There are some artworks that take on physical form and all of those are created with materials that are sorted out by local or regional providers, which make less impact on the environment.

Future of Art Interview: Jarek Lustych

by Rachel

Our next artist is Jarek Lustych. Jarek Lustych is Polish visual artist (b.1961) based in Warsaw. After his fifteen-year career in the confined space of printmaking, Lustych decided it was time for some change and has taken his work out of the gallery space in an attempt to redefine the perception of art.

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

For over fifteen years I have been taking art for a walk, letting it take a breath after centuries of enclosure in galleries, collections and museums. It is known that galleries, by definition, ennoble everything that goes into them. By placing my work in thickets, gates, puddles, in a word, in contexts that - as they are out of the normal 'Culture rules' - are usually not associated with art, I have attempted to redefine the concept of art and redefine its area.

In my investigations I'm concerned with the elements of our everyday life which are scorned or ignored because of their commonplace unnoticeableness. It is this invisibility, with its hints of mystery and discovery, that I have always found the most alluring. My actions move these elements from the murky background to the limelight, emphasizing their value. Enhancing existing chaos, I intend to shake spectators out of the rut of everyday thinking and direct their attention to the hidden sense of events and ambiguity of the word.

How long have you been practicing as an artist?

It has been 33 years already. Initially, the main area of my artistic focus was relief printing. Exploring its possibilities and limitations, I created a series of works that have been shown in Poland and abroad and in competition presentations. My solo exhibition showed various stages of these experiences – in the changing technical solutions, formats, and in the methods of imaging. After this fifteen-years working in the confined space of printmaking, I decided it was time for some change and enriched my practice with an extra dimension in an attempt to redefine the perceived scope of art.

How have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

The public fetishistically substitutes consumer ideals for the lost, acculturating experiences of art. Very few realize that not only do we accumulate, but most of those purchases are junk. Many of us don't stop at purchasing merely basic needs, but invest and indulge in luxury goods. The consumer industry thrives on corrupting real desire for beauty and change. Consumptionism expansively calls for production beyond need in order to create high profits for producers and abundance for the public.

Amid a hailstorm of unbridled production, I'm embarrassed to add any new objects to this excess. Besides, imposing my autonomous creativity on the environment seems inequitable for me since I'm a part of the threatened environment. That's why with my work I usually explore existing entities. I'm eager to share authorship with the elements. Very often "nature art" just means putting pieces of art into nature. In this way nature is used as just a nice background. With my works I try to establish a dynamic relationship with the elements. The environment is an active part of my work. By using the unique properties of the environment, my projects aim to manifest the normally imperceptible aspects of the environment.

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years. If so, how?

The only morally, environmentally indifferent activity would be not doing. But that's hard decision so you have to find the balance. I prefer, whenever possible, to work with discarded/recycled materials: wasted fruit boxes, soda/beer cans, plastic shoping bags, used tea bags and the like. Once these objects are passed their prime they are transformed into large piles of garbage. My work brings a new life to the materials (sometimes very beautiful) which are already forgotten and thrown away. These materials serve as signifiers of relationship and connections we have with the world around us.

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

Awareness of climate change/sustainability issues grew gradually for me. Just as these changes gradually increased. The development of the internet and thus the ease of access to various sources information has greatly accelerated this process. Then a few years ago I came up with a project whose element was snowfall. That for its implementation I had to wait a few years (compared to usual) clearly shows the impact of climate change.

In everyday life, the presence of brazen advertising forces one to think about the nature of global economic systems and their 'growth at all costs' paradigm. It makes one think: just when did greed stop being a cardinal sin?

Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to these issues? Why/Why not?

Thanks to their intuition, artists often see problems that the rest of the society does has not yet noticed. Often, they act accordingly. Hence telling them what should be a topic of their art is remiss.

On the one hand, of all human activity, art is particularly environmentally harmless. It's not like mass production. It's about sharing ideas, not material things. It doesn't need a huge amount of non-renewable raw materials, transport, logistics, broad and aggressive advertising campaigns. Artists should just follow their own way and be honest with their research.

On the other hand, there is the incredible growth of the global art market. Just think about all those art fairs and its carbon footprint. Artists should consider if they really need to participate. Especially when I'm not convinced this benefits the artist in any way.

'Latent voice', since 2015, site-specific, strings & rivers, links to recording selection (see below and Vimeo)

Using the principle of aeolian harp I got sound representing the subcutaneous / hidden / deviously creative power of flowing water. The sound is soft enough to be inaudible more than a few meters from the river, and loud enough to hear every infinite detail when the ear is close to the receptor. This will allow you to establish intimate contact with the elements - strings can be touched, and the vibrations are felt and heard.

Why I’m running an Artist’s Way group and why you might like to join

by Rachel

When I was nineteen or twenty, I discovered The Artist’s Way, the famous book by Julia Cameron. I can’t remember exactly how, whether I’d heard of it or simply stumbled upon it at the library. What I do remember is how much it changed my perspective on life. I was studying photography at the time and I would read the book in my breaks while lying in the green grass outside the TAFE building (TAFE = Australian college). I remember putting the book down one day and looking up at the blue sky and feeling an astonishing sense of wonder at just how beautiful life can be. The blue of the sky that day and the wonder I felt is still impressed in my memory.

Fast forward sixteen years and I’m living in Berlin, working as a coach for artists and creatives, I’m a trained art therapist and I’m still a photographer. I can wholeheartedly say the Artist’s Way changed the direction of my life.

The Artist's Way showed me ways to connect with my innermost thoughts and feelings, stay connected to an artistic spirit in a world wants you to fit in with what’s ‚productive’ and it helped me to deal with a savage inner-critic. It showed me perspectives on life that were not tainted by cynicism or irony.

A lot of people say they find The Artist’s Way hard to go through for various reasons, in particular, the esoteric language can be off-putting. The amount of exercises offered per week on top of the compulsory artist date and morning pages can make the full twelve weeks seem difficult to achieve.

However, I can tell you from my experience, it’s worth doing.

Why?

The Artist’s Way provides you with a framework and guidelines in terms of time, space and direction in which to cultivate parts of your self that are undernourished but that whisper to you in quiet moments. It's possible they yell at you.

Perhaps, not listening to these whispers makes you feel guilty, or lonely, or unfulfilled. You have a sense that something exists inside you that wants to come out but you haven’t given it the space it needs yet.

The Artist's Way facilitates that thing or those things coming out.

By offering an Artist’s Way group this winter I’d like to support you and others like you whatever creative impulses are stirring within you to emerge.

What’s different about this group:

I will show you how to use art-making itself as a way to connect with your inner creative impulses.

As an art therapist I have seen, with wonder, how image-making combined with intelligent and compassionate reflection processes can bypass over-thinking and surprise the creator with a sudden new insight about their life.

Therefore, we will sometimes use art-making instead of writing to respond to the exercises.

We will keep it simple. We will focus only one to three exercises per week and aim to go deeper instead of doing too many.

We will skip the esoteric language. Bring your own sense of existential intelligence or spirituality with you or you can cultivate what those terms mean to you throughout the program.

You will want to participate in this group if:

you have an artistic and creative impulse whispering in you (or blatantly yelling) and you think it’s time to give that side of you more space.
you’ve already thought about doing The Artist’s Way but have found it hard to commit for whatever reason.
you’ve completed The Artist’s Way already and loved it and want to explore the topics by taking them a layer deeper this time.
you’re confused about what to do with your life next and would like a nurturing and encouraging creative space gain clarity on that.
you want something soul nourishing to do over the winter months in Berlin.
you’re curious to learn more about using art-making as an insight process.

Why would you want to pay for a group when you could do it on your own?

A few reasons:

in this group I’m offering a modernised and artful approach to the book, it’s not just going through the book. We’re taking the core themes from each week and digging a bit deeper using techniques I’ve learned from art therapy rather than taking a scattergun approach to doing the exercises.
having an experienced facilitator helps the group stay on track, provides moderation and ensures that everything is well organised.
Sharing your experiences with others, being witnessed and heard is powerful. It makes you stronger. It makes us stronger.
Hearing the experiences of other participants helps you too.
Commitment and accountability. No creative u-turns this time.

It begins Tuesday November 12th, 7-9pm at KLL Studio in Berlin (near U-Bernauer Strasse). It runs for 12 weeks with a break in the middle for the holiday season.

Places are limited and bookings are essential.

Full details, dates and pricing options can be found on the website here: http://www.thegreatcreativelife.com/the-artists-way-berlin/

For questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me!

If you know someone else that would love this group experience - please forward this to them.

Yours,

Rachel

Future of Art Interview: Katya Fialka

by Rachel

Our next artist is Katya Fialka. Katya Fialka was born in Moscow, Russia, and grew up in New York City. She practiced looking and drawing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Randy Williams and studied painting at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. Katya lives and works in Berlin.

Grazing, graphite on paper, 70 cm x 100 cm, 2013

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

I make drawings, paintings, and things in between. My work has been described as “dystopian landscapes”: broken highways with crumbling bridges, burning fields, factories abandoned to nature, floods.

I have a lot of interests; some of them are things I find wondrous (like how trees communicate with each other) and some are things I find infuriating or frightening (like mass surveillance, or the climate emergency). Often these topics make it into my work.

Airport, graphite on paper, 60 cm x 112 cm, 2012

How long have you been practicing as an artist?

I have been drawing since I can remember. I don’t remember a division between “I’m making a drawing” and “Now I’m a practicing artist.” I have been making stuff the whole time all the same.

Dome, acrylic and graphite on paper, 50 cm x 65 cm, 2019

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

I was aware of these issues since I was a kid. Global warming and the hole in the ozone layer were in the news back then, and people were talking about greenhouse gases and CFCs. Even back then I worried about rainforest destruction, made drawings of us kids coughing in clouds of air pollution, wrote letters to the President, things like that.

In recent years I read ever increasing reports by climate and conservation scientists, and it is fucking frightening. Terrified by what I was reading and frustrated by political inaction, I decided to become more involved in climate activism.

How have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

I usually work intuitively. While there are definite themes and interests, I don’t know what the final result of a piece will be when I start. I like being surprised by what I’m making. That said, the catastrophic effects of climate heating have been a thread through much of my work for years.

In the current series I’m working on, Flooding, the climate crisis was the conscious starting point.

Flooding, one, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 100 cm x 220 cm, 2019

Flooding, two, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 100 cm x 220 cm, 2019

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years?

I like working with basic artistic materials; the materials I used as a child: pencil, paper, ink, acrylics, etc. I stopped using oil paints and solvents a long time ago, for health and environmental reasons. I like the challenge of making something interesting from just pencil on some paper.

Untitled (from the Landscape Surveillance series), ink and graphite on paper 50 cm x 65 cm 2018

Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to these issues?

In our personal lives, I think yes. This is an emergency and we need to put pressure on our leaders to act, literally right now.

But do artists have a responsibility to address these issues in their artwork? Thematically at least, definitely not. I was born in the Soviet Union, so that may be why I’m very wary of any prescriptions about what artists ‘should’ be making or doing.

Art, on its own, ends up sparking conversations about a huge range of topics, and pushes people to confront things that they maybe otherwise wouldn’t. It shows us different ways of seeing and thinking. Art is mysterious, ambiguous, uncomfortable; it makes us question our certainty.

Untitled, ink, graphite, acrylic on paper, 2018

Slow Art Day Berlin 2019

by Rachel

Slow Art Day Berlin

International Slow Art Day was this Saturday 6th April. This year 175 galleries and museums were registered internationally, yet none were registered for Berlin.

So, ever a lover of slow art, I hosted an unofficial event with thanks to the Robert Morat Gallery on Linienstrasse in Berlin.

The basic premise of slow art day is very simple, you look at art, slowly. The organizers recommend five artworks for 5-10 minutes each with a discussion afterwards.

For our slow art viewing, our intrepid group of art lovers had the pleasure of viewing five photographs by Hans-Christian Schmink from his series Hinterland.

These images are already quiet. Not anything like a wild Kandinsky painting, they invite us to be reflective, quiet with them. Shot over the last Autumn and Winter in remote areas of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Verpommern, they hold the melancholic and desolate feelings associated with those seasons.

When people look slowly at a piece of art they make discoveries. About the art, and about themselves.

Time with Schmink’s images is time well spent. We find small hidden details that add to the story image and we gather an increased appreciation of the composition and mood of the images.

An image of a barren field proved to be one of the most fruitful images for our slow art viewing. Many participants remarked on the feelings it gave them, how the lines in the field appealed to them in various ways or how the white clouds of the sky calmed them.

Slow Art Day is a global event with a simple mission: “help more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and loving art.”

You don’t need to wait until Slow Art Day happens to enjoy art slowly. Try it next time you’re in a gallery or museum. Challenge yourself to spend twice or three times longer with an image, or set a (quiet) timer to keep you steady.

There is often a feeling in museums that you have to look at ‘everything’. Why not look at just a few pieces instead? Spend quality time with an artwork that grabs your attention. It will be time better spent.

I’m looking forward to doing free events like this more often.

If you’re in Berlin and would like to come along you can subscribe to the mailing list, or join on Meetup.

****

Photo above is my own, to see Schink’s beautiful work, please visit the Robert Morat Gallery website.

For more about Slow Art Day, visit their website.

A Quick But Important Neuroscience Recap

Tips For Reducing Anxiety

Your Anxiety Reduction Toolkit

1. Breathing exercises

2. Notice the present moment

3. Lie on your back with your legs up the wall for to five to fifteen minutes

6. Massage

7. Meditate using art

8. Repeat and/or write mantras

9. Dance it out

10. Progressive Muscle Relaxation

11. Run cold water over your wrists

Your Ongoing Nervous System Care Toolkit

Activities for good nervous system care are:

Reduce pressure on your nervous system

Key Takeaway

What are your favourite calming activities? Comment below and please share this article with anyone who might find it helpful.

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

How long have you been practicing as an artist?

How have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years. If so, how?

Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to these issues? Why/Why not?

Is there anything else you would like to add on this topic?

Where can people find more of your work?

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

How long have you been practicing as an artist?

How have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years. If so, how?

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to these issues? Why/Why not?

Where can people find more of your work?

Why?

What’s different about this group:

You will want to participate in this group if:

Why would you want to pay for a group when you could do it on your own?

Tell us about your art. What do you create and why?

How long have you been practicing as an artist?

Was there a certain point in time that you became more aware/self-conscious of climate change/sustainability issues?

How have the topics of climate change and/or sustainability affected your artistic practice either directly or indirectly?

Have you reduced your carbon footprint in your professional practice in any way over the last few years?

Do you think artists have a responsibility to respond to these issues?

Where can people find more of your work?