The Practice

Or: why I work with dreams, and other little studies…

_{pictured: some little collages & 3-d works sparked by dreams and other fleeting inspirations}

My current favorite way to describe my practice is to say, “Imagination is a muscle… one that needs exercise.”

The dream-thing is one aspect of my creative pulse. The imagery, narratives, jump-cuts (scenes that change in a flash), feelings, sensations and themes that show up in my dreams have been a life-long fascination for me. I have had dreams that dramatically altered the course of my life, and more than my share of run-of-the-mill anxiety dreams. In between those extremes, were ones that haunted me with their strange beauty, or sparked an idea that I took into the day and it found its way into a work of writing or art.

It wasn’t until I ran the first Dream Salon workshop, in early 2023, that I realized how many of may dreams had shaped my creative works over the years. Including some works that never found a finished, or more finished form, but others that persisted their way into being, not just in the landscape of my sleep-dreams, but in a physical waking reality that I could share with another on this planet. That was a bit of an aha moment, one that reminded me why I could mine my sleep dreams, or fleeting thoughts/feelings/impressions upon waking, for the raw materials I could use to shape and mold as moved, or follow the ideas for where they may be leading me.

_{pictured: a doodle – checking in on the monster under the bed}

But there is another part of this practice I maintain — and that goes back to the idea of imagination is a muscle that needs working. For many years now, my daily practice is just that: I write, draw, arrange and give expression or form to ideas in various ways as “what I do”. I do studies. Short bursts of writing, usually roughly 20 lines, or little check-in doodles. I make clothes for puppet people, and little collaged and three-dimensional worlds for them to populate. I tell stories in words, visuals & other forms. I also make games, because life for me is play at its core, with work just an often mis-understood form of play.

When I think of why I work with those dream sparks, as fuel for my daily creative practice and studies, it comes down to this:

• They are uniquely my own, even if it may be a shared universal theme.
• They are a warehouse of creative prompts & ideas, my own movie theatre.
• They connect me to my muse & help my growth & well-being.

It has been a joy in the last year and a half to share these explorations with others in our mini free salons and extended Dream Salon workshops. As always, if interested in sharing some of these experiences with us, reach out.

In living creativity ~

Carli
April 3, 2024