We always planned to change our name. “Creative Group” was a temporary label until we could come up with something a little more jazzy and distinctive. Somehow it has held on now for more than twenty years.

It began at the initiative of Ruth Goring. She invited a group of InterVarsity Press coworkers to meet over lunch once a month. We would bring our meals and eat in a conference room to maximize time together. We each brought in our own projects-in-process to share with each other. Carla Sonheim shared the art she was creating in modes ranging from pen and ink to papier-mâché to watercolor. Sally Craft and Ruth read from the poetry they were creating in workshops and classes; Deborah Keiser shared writing projects and, eventually, some of the boards from her graduate program in interior design. I would bring bits of writing or craft projects in various mediums.

“Grown-up Show and Tell” is my favorite way to describe the format. By scheduling a time and place to talk about our creative lives, we were attempting to motivate ourselves to continue to develop this aspect of our lives as our “day jobs” were in other arenas of editorial and marketing work. Sometimes the lunch hour included a bit of moaning over lack of time for art from one or another of us, but usually at least one or two of us came with us something to share. This was not to be a critique group but a place to celebrate and encourage. Over time it became even more than that.

Here are a few ideas to get you started if you want to do a lunchtime gathering.

1. Keep it simple to maximize time together, especially if you have to get back to “day jobs.” Meeting in a home or quiet conference room is ideal for conversation. You might want to intentionally pick a less popular and quiet restaurant if you go that route.
2. Try to stay on task with creative conversation. The downside of working together for my group was that it could be tempting to talk about work. Make this your time to talk about your creative life.
3. Even if you have no new creative work, show up! Agree to make the group a no-guilt zone. Each of us has gone through dry spells and hectic periods of life where we could not create. It’s still inspiring and encouraging to get together with friends who create and to be reminded of how creative life nurtures us.
4. Stay positive and supportive. This is a model designed for nonprofessionals. For us, this group was about having an enjoyable outlet that brought personal renewal. When Sally Craft earned her MFA, she had plenty of opportunity to receive critique on her poetry in that program.

§

01.  The Book

Early on Carla purchased a little book that we began passing around each month. A turn with the book was each person’s encouragement to include and complete a creative project in its pages. Then, of course, we’d bring it back and talk about what we’d done in the past month. It became a sort of memory book for our group as well as it grew over time.

Eventually, as members moved on to other workplaces, our meetings shifted to evenings. For a season we met quite regularly at Front Street Cocina, but then we eventually shifted to meeting in our homes. This allowed us a more spacious time frame. Sometimes we would take a turn leading one another in a creative project while we were gathered. Carla suggested an exercise of drawing without looking at the paper. Ruth led us in writing exercises such as free-form journaling about a childhood experience. As each of us works in different mediums, the modes of these different exercises were stretching for different ones of us (hint: you won’t be seeing any illustrations from me in the next few pages). But they got the creative juices flowing and, as we discovered was perhaps equally important, allowed us to enter each other’s creative lives.

The day came when Carla moved to Colorado to pursue a life focused on art with her husband. We were all so proud of her first book of whimsical art and fun, accessible exercises for artists at all levels: Drawing Lab: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun! We added new members, some who stayed for shorter periods of time, and two who became core members: Cindy Kiple and Rebecca Larsen. Eventually, we realized what we had was no longer just a “Creative Group.” It was much more.

Here are some ideas for a creative dinner group:

1. Meeting in a home allows for more private conversation. We have had long periods where we primarily met in my home—a gift to me when my son was young. Everyone brings a dish, and we share our culinary creativity as part of the fun. Or we may choose to order out when time is tight. We’ve each gone through our economic ups and downs over the years, so it’s nice not to have to pay for a restaurant meal.
2. In this more expansive space, personal check-in and sharing will naturally become a part of your evening. You may want to create an intentional time for “check-in” to ensure that you also allow time to get to share creative work.
3. You may on occasion want to plan to take a turn bringing a brief writing or art exercise to the group to do together in that evening. For ideas I recommend The Artist’s Rule by Christine Valters Paintner.
4. Take a field trip together! We have spent memorable evenings at an Art Studio open house, where we created a project with a personal photograph, and a mosaic class.

§

02.  Discovering the Spiritual Connection

Life happened over the years, and we found ourselves sharing from vulnerable places as we experienced divorce, betrayal, depression, unemployment, the illness and death of parents, and problems such as alcohol addiction in our extended families. While we formed around the love of making art, we all experienced a deeper connection in our shared faith in Christ. As we made art, these spiritual themes surfaced at times. We were able to be a safe place for one another in exploring the hard questions of how to find God in times of deep disappointment. We wept together and we prayed together.

Of course, life brought along all the wonderful, landmark events our way as well. We were able to enter into one other’s celebrations with the creative flair that had brought us together. So it was that Creative Group members planned and executed the decorations for my wedding, hung art and photographs together in one member’s home, and threw an engagement shower for another. Our lives were spilling over into one another’s lives. We were no longer just an office lunch gathering or evening dinner group.

Creativity and spirituality are an incredibly potent combination. As we allowed those two spaces of our lives to spill over one another and to be intertwined with a third element, friendship, we developed some of the deepest and most important relationships of our lives. We had moved from the early days of meeting over the lunch hour at work, to dinner at a restaurant, to meeting for several hours over dinner in a home. Then, five years ago, we found ourselves longing for even more spacious time and space to create and be together.

§

03.  The Creative Retreat

Deborah was able to get us a loan of a family member’s lovely cottage near a Michigan lake in late August. We drove up on a Thursday late afternoon and took Friday off work. Deb orchestrated the food for us, and we each planned to take a turn cooking a favorite dish. Our time looked something like this:

Thursday night

Stop for dinner, Michigan farm-stand produce and then some groceries.

Chill out with local NPR classical station and a nightcap of Irish cream.

 

Friday morning

A lengthy time of devotion, personal check-in, and prayer. A favorite opening exercise is a collage exercise that I first learned from Margaret Campbell and Juanita Rasmus of Renovaré. It is simple to execute but can produce very deep spiritual insight. (See “Spiritual Collage” at the end of this article for more.)

Lunch and a walk on the beach.

 

Friday afternoon

Begin art projects! Now we have unwound from life and moved into retreat mode. Some of us may have what we call “retreat hair” by now as a result of the relaxed beach setting. We have taken turns bringing project ideas to share with one another, each purchasing and contributing needed supplies. The advantage of the weekend setting is the space to do larger, messier projects and leave them out for a couple of days to return to them. We have done projects over the years including:

• painting on 8” x 10” glass
• clay modeling
• collages on boards, canvas, wooden boxes, and just about anything else we can get our hands on
• altered books
• writing exercises
• photography collage
• painting with gesso and acrylic (an idea from our friend Carla; see carlasondheim.com)

 

Friday evening

After dinner some of us continue creating art in an obsessive manner, while others sit by the fire and talk or journal.

Another beach walk at sunset.

 

Saturday morning

We start the day with a devotion led by another group member.

After that we were ready to start a new art project.

Over the weekend some of us might find that we were more drawn to one of the projects that we’ve all brought along than another. Part of the fun again is the shared learning. We may discover that we enjoy something another member suggested that is entirely new to us. We also love to share resources with one another. Discovering new creative tools and supplies is another part of the fun.

 

Saturday afternoon and evening

Some years we have gone to a local art fair or a used bookstore or a play (when we held our retreat in Chicago). In Michigan we’ve found time to stop into antique and gift shops in town. These are ways to engage in the many forms of art around us each day.

 

Sunday morning

When we were in Michigan, we made a tradition of going to worship together at a lovely local chapel on the lake and then going out to lunch at a local resort. After that it was the inevitable cleanup project from our creative furor, and we would head home.

§

04.  Get Something Started

If you would like a space for creative expression and spiritual growth, then you may want to bring together some like-minded friends to form a creative group. You may be surprised by where it takes you.

 

 

TUESDAY

Ruth Goring

We layer our lives

like cinnamon brown on a field of yellow

& blue for shadows. We lean

Tuesday against Tuesday,

thought on thought, merge

silences & suppositions.

We pluck each other’s words

to color or elongate our sentences,

we enter each other’s dreams,

alter each other’s course.

You hand me yes like an orange,

succulent & shining. Your path

braids with mine into one

journey. We stay awake

in each other’s darkness, praying,

humming lullabies, breathing.

We offer truth

& taste it together—sometimes weeping,

sometimes it burns. The world is so

lumpy, quizzical & tender,

how could I walk in it, or

lie down, without your shadow,

your textured seeing?

Your life stretches

across mine, & others’, like cirrus clouds,

like prickly mallow & wild rose.

We inhabit each other, flora

& fauna, putting down deep

fire-resistant roots, foraging,

interlocking & roaming, full

of each other’s smell.

§

05.  SPIRITUAL COLLAGE

• Work in silence or with instrumental music.
• Allow about forty-five minutes for the process.
• Distribute pieces of firm 5” x 8” cardboard, scissors, and glue sticks.
• Set out preselected art clipped from magazines in four categories: (1) nature scenes, (2) people and animals, (3) food, and (4) architecture and art. Don’t include words for this exercise.
• Encourage people to choose four or five pieces to work with that they are either drawn to or repelled by—or both.
• Spend time laying them out on the card until you find a satisfying arrangement, but keep in mind that it’s not about
• artistic creation as much as it is about listening to the Spirit.
• Encourage the group members to journal on the reverse side about the experience and their thoughts about the images they have selected and why.
• When everyone is ready, bring everyone together and have each person talk about their collage. Group members can ask one another open-ended questions. Often deeper understanding comes in this phase of sharing about the images.
• This image can be ideal to set a tone for a retreat and open up some questions or can also be helpful in the midst of a retreat experience—especially where there’s teaching—to allow for some left brain processing.