Community in Wonderland: creative community

I haven't felt this inspired in a while. For the past few weeks or so I've been meeting and exchanging dreams with some artists here on Guahan. I'm a member of a bunch of online artist communities, but this is different, obviously. It's great to sit face to face and interact, collaborate, and share with a group of people who are not only passionate about art, but also community. And we don't just want to sit and talk. We are motivating each other to get out there and create for ourselves and our island.

With the help of We Are Guahan, we were able to paint another Prutehi yan Difendi bus stop. This time we met and planned first, picked a theme, and brainstormed the elements we wanted to incorporate in our mural. We learned about the village that the bus stop is in. Ordot means ant in CHamorro and is home to farms. It took a day of priming and 2 weekends to finish, but we were able to complete the mural before school was back in session. It felt really good to provide some kids with an inviting and stimulating place to start their school day.

Aside from the bus stops we also decided that we wanted to have a creative night once a month to get together and create. We are mostly made up of visual artists and one writer, but we plan to invite musicians and other creative minds to join us. The first creative night was freaking awesome. I mean, I've had painting sessions with a couple of friends at my apartment, but nothing like this. Every once in a while I'd step back from what I was working on and look around at the beauty that was being created. The energy we were sharing was so refreshing and positive. I can't wait for the next session.


Just last night I got together with a few artists in the group, and someone new, to talk about what we want to do next. After the serious (I don't even think you can call it that) discussions we decided to have an impromptu creative night. While Colleen worked on her printing, I sat at a round table with the other 3 artists and we did this crazy collaboration-ish thing.

We each started a drawing and every 10 or so minutes the table turned counter clockwise.  So we each added on to the drawings.  It was a lot of fun.  It wasn't super serious and it was pretty challenging.

I can't wait for the next session.

Check out these community art projects I found on You Tube.