My wife is a poet and seamstress. I am a clown and therapist, occasional poet and performance artist.
We were married in Prague, then moved to Belgium and then returned to where we met in Austin, Texas.
We ran an art community called The Bloom House for many years, trying to integrate the arts and spirituality. It was fun. Community upstairs, art studios downstairs, and many happenings offered to the local community.
It was international, beautiful and formative. I got to practice my art therapy in action, and help do spiritual formation with remarkable people.
We tried to throw monthly art happenings, and be a safe but extremely creative haven for all who joined us.
We flourished in this parenting the arts and artists role.
Then we went monastic for a season of two, and worked on developing our inner lives and art (which work in tandem for us). Monastic seasons are required in life!
Now, we want to build a creative monastery, to haven retreats, workshops and artist who just need a “creative covering” while they scuba dive.
So we are learning new skills of building and designing.
I was trained as an art therapist and dreamer. My wife a designer and poet, a musicologist, book designer and fellow dreamer.
We keep getting new dreams each season. I look forward to collaborating on incarnating this latest one!
We’re calling it The Hermitage. A creative monastery, less austere than most, but just as contemplative, and having room to develop the inner and outer life through the arts-with a refined circus vibe thrown in for fun.
It will have shared spaces for outdoor films, poetry readings, gardening and magical conversations, as well as be able to host my wife and my workshops—hers on sewing body image and design; mine on identity, spirituality and the symbolic. It will also have housing for artists on sabbatical, or an artist in residence space! It’s the type of space we always both needed in our own lives and journeys, so we are excited to build it—and combine our metaphors and over the top design love to make this new Big Top for our global and local friends to come and just be and create. Can’t wait when we get this tent up on the pleasant lines of our funky inheritance.
It will also of course, have some of my own favorite metaphors—a spiraling staircase and a wardrobe as a door into my floating European style Art Deco library, as well as a sky watching deck up to with garden. Fun trying to combine all our metaphors!
Still, having fun after all these years. And I pray, more efficient in sharing our gifts with others.
We are just artist, being and havening other artists to find their ways—the ways prepared before us to be our ways And trying to allow God to finish the poetry we both are together on this brief trip on earth.
To help others integrate their spirituality and their creativity is still our passion, and to just stay creatively awake in Love as we do! Yahoo! Here we go on our next adventure in incarnating the metaphors we are! And the great poetry God is writing within and through us together! We know our names, so can help others find theirs. Art is our medium, but love is our heart.