Slow yourself and create...
Mindful making invites us to slow down. Creating from our heart and hands, allowing for play, invites us into a space where we can endlessly explore without attachment to the outcome. Whether its pencil, pen, yarn, fabric, paint, clay or scraps of found objects or paper, the material that comes to us can tell a story through our own placements and expressions. Slowing down to play and create can enliven us and allow for a deeper connection to ourselves and to the world around us.
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Michelle provides experiences that allow for personal creative expression for anyone regardless of their own personal assessment of their creative ability. Michelle believes all individuals possess unique expressive ways that are intrinsic to their feeling of belonging in this world. She facilitates mindful and intentional creative workshops combined with somatic awareness that allows for individuals to reclaim their lost sense of play and spontaneity. Some of the creative forms Michelle introduces is sumi ink and brush play as inspired from Japanese calligraphy, Shodo, intuitive slow-stitching, watercolor exploration, mandala making, and nature-inspired assembly and collage.
Michelle received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts and Art History from the University of Minnesota and went on to receive a Post Baccalaureate degree in Graphic Design at the Minneapolis College of Art + Design. She studied Shodo, Japanese Calligraphy, for nearly eight years in Japan through the lineage of Kampo Harada and achieved San-Dan level granting her the certification to teach Shodo at the middle/high school level. Michelle also studies other Japanese art forms in Japan including Sashiko stitching and the art of urushi pottery repair, Kinstugi. Her personal meditation and mindfulness practices are rooted in creative mark-making through watercolor/ink and thread/recycled fabrics.