The 2018 Artists’ Gratitude Project: A Weekly Practice

The potential for positivity, hope, change, and appreciation.

Do you feel the dichotomy? Many artists come from an upbringing of extensive support and opportunity – with training, classes, private lessons, workshops, mentors, supplies, and equipment. Many go onto colleges, conservatories, and masters programs. Yet, as artists in the U.S. today, many of us live with modest incomes to support our families and to keep making our work. Many times – we can end up feeling bitter, resentful, and negative.

Would a weekly gratitude practice inspire and promote personal change, hope, and contentment?

Whether you consider each weekly idea while on the subway commuting to work – or you decide to write in a personal journal – please join us on this journey in 2018. The 52 ideas were brainstormed and then placed in a random order. Thank you to colleagues Valerie Gutwirth, Juliana Monin, and Brian Smith for help launching this project.

Each week, one idea/intention/consideration will be shared.

 

Week 8: Collaboration

Today and this week, I offer gratitude for: 

Collaboration. Collaborators. Working together to fulfill my vision and mission of my work. A generosity of spirit….risk takers….co-creators. Believers in it. 

Collaboration is a deep commitment to teamwork, to being together, to seeing and hearing each other. It is about yielding, blending, intertwining. 

As Charles Slender-White mentioned in his recent artist profile:

Collaboration for me means an on-going series of proposals, interpretations, and counter-proposals. I rely on my dancers’ brains as much as their bodies to help me make the work and understand what we’re creating. The dancers must feel confident in their abilities to object to or question what I propose, while simultaneously being willing to dive right in. Balancing that push and pull takes a lot of discussion, patience, and sensitivity.

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