ART

Art, like a cleansing and purging of the soul, it can drain you of poison, toxins, negative thoughts and help you find release, relief, and hope.  Looking or creating, we become someone different, someone stronger and bolder.

Art is neither good nor bad, something to be scrutinized exploited, contained or blamed.  We are creators of our own…

Today's poem is titled "Snapshot". It's a "found poem", that is, one written using text found on a Web page of The Phillips Collection.

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2012/05/snapshot-found-poem.html

Today's Wednesday Wonder is the late ceramics sculptor and teacher Pamela Mei Yee Leung for whom clay held magical qualities. I've included a moving video interview with the artist.

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2012/04/wednesday-wonder-pamela-leungs-clay.html

Egypt may not be the country that first comes to mind when you combine the words "suppression" and "artistic freedom" - that honor most often goes to China - but as the documentary The Noise of Cairo (from Germany-based scenesfrom) shows, in the years preceding the Arab Spring, the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak used all the means available to stifle creative freedom, violently punishing artists who raised their voices in protest. . . .

Learn more about this wonderful new…

Patti Digh provides today's Thought for the Day, addressing writing to be useful v. writing to explore feelings and experience.

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2011/11/thought-for-day_27.html

Hindsight is 20/20. Yes, looking backwards I can see the path that I have left in the grass and gravel of my life so far. If I had made a right turn at 16 instead of forging ahead would I have reached this intersection faster? Would I have reached it at all?

That hindsight thing is great for seeing what occurred; not so great for the…

Why do I write, to explain myself, over explain myself, tell a story, make someone cry tears of joy at an ending they never thought could be. No, I write because a fire inside me burns with such a fury I have to find a way to let people here my war cry. I write to yell out for the world to hear:



“IF NO ONE BELIEVES IN YOU, BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, NEVER STOP BELIEVING IN YOURSELF! SOCIETY DOES NOT DETERMINE WHO WE ARE, THAT RITE WAS NEVER THEIRS, IT IS…