VOLUME 9
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As the days grow darker, we must draw upon our inner light to keep our inspiration burning. So much of my time in recent years has gone into the many facets of outreach for Touch Drawing, that I have put my own inspiration on the back burner. I am beginning to fan those flames once again, facing the challenge to carve out more inward time. There are a few exciting book projects brewing. And I am making a deeper commitment to my music. What coals simmer in your heart, waiting to be fanned into full flame? I encourage you to make even the smallest gesture toward actualizing your deeper callings.
This issue features three people who are each embodying their unique passions. Shemaya tells how she used Touch Drawing to integrate a powerful experience of midwifing a woman’s death in her Hospice work. Mark shares how Touch Drawing has deepened his experience as an artist. And Kari tells how she used a particular SoulCard as a guiding image in an international adoption, and so much more that grew out of that.
I also answer a very practical FAQ: How to economize on paint for Touch Drawing. Click on the schedule to see where I will be giving public workshops in the coming months. I am putting lots of new Interpretive Touch Drawings online. And scroll down the left column to see images from this year’s Touch Drawing Gathering. It is a joy to share this with you!
Blessings, Deborah
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What's New at the Center?
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Feminine Mysticism in Art;
Artists Envisioning the Divine
I am honored to have an essay and images included in this exquisite book. The author, Victoria Christianson, has decided to publish independently. She is deeply committed to bringing this book through in the fullness of its vision. She is currently raising funds for the first printing through pre-sales of the book. I encourage you to support this phenomenal work to come into the world. Order your copy today.
Click here to find out more.
The Touch Drawing Community now has numerous special interest groups ready to be energized by your presence. There have also been some improvements in the functioning of the platform. We are ready for you to enter. Go to http://touchdrawing.ning.com and join.
Touch Drawing in Syndicated Article
Touching Drawing has been included in a syndicated article on Art Therapy that has been reproduced in 200 newspapers around the country, and their websites. See it here.
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Touch Drawing Stories
Hold Me
A Hospice Worker Processes her Experience Through Touch Drawing
Shemaya Nancy Blauer
As a hospice volunteer I often sat bedside and entered into an intimacy and being that words could not begin to describe. Each person’s journey was unique, and my task was to enter their world and be a companion, allowing each moment to unfold into the next. This particular evening I was asked to go to a patient’s room, as she was requesting to be held. Although I had connected with her on previous visits, I knew that I needed to walk into her room and not know her and find her. Her desperation pierced my heart as she pleaded over and over again, “hold me, please, hold me.” I could only understand a few of her words. I followed her as she rose in despair, cried out, and wept. I felt my own tears wet my face as I entered a space somewhere in between my own body and hers. This continued for a while. The intensity would grow and then it would release until it began again. When I got home I was filled with the experience and began to draw.
Touch Drawing offered me a way to continue processing this profound experience and bring it into a deeper place. I was able to remain intimate with myself and with the experience, while at the same time gently moving back into my own body. As I have returned to being with these drawings, I have been able to reconnect to the evening and they have also become well known friends. Just as there was no guide for the journey that evening, Touch Drawing allowed the same space, to join with myself and be in the moment of unfolding as the images appeared.
The following pictures appeared and these words were written several months later.
See the full series of drawings here.
 Touch Drawing Deepens Artist's Sources of Inspiration
Mark Runge
I’ve made art for years. Ever since I can remember, I’ve drawn on paper, in dirt, and in my mind with clouds, fabric, fur and many other textures. For nearly a decade I’ve taught studio art to different levels of students – from young children to octogenarians, from complete beginners to professional artists. But in all of my art making experiences I’ve never been as thoroughly moved as I have been by Touch Drawing.
I can draw; and I can create pretty art. I’ve had successful shows and sold many pieces of artwork. Though my art resume is filled with accomplishments, I am only now recognizing some of my best and most fulfilling work. I did not realize how hollow some of my art-making processes actually were. When I met Deborah in the summer of 2005 at The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, my processes went from hollow to hallow. The shift was subtle yet profound.
   
Now into my third year of TD, I am just coming to terms with my art practices and art objects as sacred. And because of TD, my imagination is soaring. I am no longer tethered to the mundane art practices that bound me to the mundane art objects I was creating. My ideas and inspirations no longer come from external and destructive forces, and my art reflects this shift in consciousness. My art is coming from a higher source. I have learned and  accepted that art comes from Spirit—if I allow it. This has been directly infused into my teaching philosophy and method.
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At the college where I currently teach, I designed a 16-week TD course. The course was a success. Because this is a college level course, the lessons are sometimes heady, but the practice is always the same. It is amazing to see a generation that is seemingly addicted to “what’s next” sit around a classroom deep in meditative preparedness for TD. Even the smaller workshops that I have had the privilege to facilitate give me great pleasure and thoughtful appreciation of art making, teaching, and myself.
Mark Runge is a professional artist who has a studio in Clearwater, Florida, and has shown his artwork nationally. He teaches studio art at Eckerd College as well as other venues in the Tampa Bay area. His work and the work of his students can be viewed at http://mark4art.com.
SoulCard Stories
 SoulCard Image Holds the Spirit
of an International Adoption,
School and Book
Kari Grady Grossman
Author of Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia
 In the fall of 2000, I was impatiently waiting for the adoption of my son from Cambodia, when an energetic healer asked me to pull a card from a deck of SoulCards. When she saw the image on the card she told me to keep it. With a background the color of the ocean, the image has two women painted in a circular pattern like yin and yang; a white woman with strong hands is looking up expectantly, while an olive brown woman floats above her, one arm penetrating the other’s heart. Soul Card #12 became my shrine, my ultrasound image.
The image is like a womb, reminding me of my son’s birthmother and me in energetic embrace. Over subsequent trips to Cambodia to visit a school we built in our son’s honor, I’ve always taken this card with me as a talisman, for protection.
When I published Bones That Float, only one image felt right for the cover, Soul Card #12. Connecting with Deborah Koff-Chapin and the Touch Drawing process became yet another magical moment in this soulful journey that crosses the boundaries of country and race to find the point where we all are One. Thank you, Deborah, for this beautiful image that introduces my hope for love and healing in Cambodia to the world.
Find out more about the book and the school Kari founded in Cambodia at www.bonesthatfloat.com. Contact Kari at Kari@GradyGrossmanSchool.org
http://www.bonesthatfloat.com/press/presskit.php
FAQ
How Can I Economize on Paint?
Paint is by far the most expensive part of Touch Drawing. I know. I pay the bill for hundreds of tubes a year! There are a few things you can do to use less paint as well as to make the tubes you have go further. Here are the essential points:
• Squeeze less paint from the tube when you roll out the board. If you are facilitating, always remind your participants that they do not need to make their drawing board ‘goopy’ with paint – they just need enough on the board to make a smooth, thin layer of paint.
• You do not have to add paint to the board very often. Just roll out the board and do another drawing. Do not add paint until you feel the drawing is getting too light for your liking. This will also protect against deep indentations forming in the paint from previous drawings. These happen when you keep adding paint so often that you have a deep wet surface of paint that ends up getting incised with drawings. They are very difficult to roll out. If you use water mixable paints, you can try sprinkling a small amount of water onto the board to soften the paint. Then roll out the indentations. If they don’t come out, just wash off the board and start again.
• Use larger tubes. Though larger tubes cost more initially, you pay much less per ounce of paint.
• Use a paint tube squeezer or crimper to get much more paint out of each tube. I recommend you get a metal one rather than plastic, especially if you use large tubes of paint. I like to go through all my tubes before a workshop, squeezing the paint toward the front of each tube and rolling the crimped part of the tube up. I even wipe the tubes off with a soapy sponge so they stay looking fresh. This is especially important with the new super-large tubes that will last for multiple workshops. If you don’t have a crimper, you can use a large spoon to press from the bottom of the tube.
• If a tube develops a leak, wrap that area with duct tape to prevent messy leaks
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