life updates + other adventures

Workshops, Roadtrip, Rocks!

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. - Picasso  

Hello! I hope you are doing well and finding joy in unexpected places!

Welcome to my Substack! I'm looking forward to sharing more here over the upcoming months. Join me if you’d like to stay up-to-date with my future offerings, musings, and projects. I have a few I am working on/out right now…

Matters of the Heart: An Online Art Journaling Workshop

I'm excited to announce my new workshop, Matters of the Heart: An Online Art Journaling Experience. Over the past few months, I've poured myself into creating this workshop, and it's been a joyful journey of creation and play. This workshop is designed to inspire anyone who wishes to jump into the creative waters of art journaling!

There are 20 video demos exploring art journaling and our love for color, texture, images, ideas, ourselves, and others. It's a playful invitation to let loose in the comfort of your journal, where you can research ideas and experiment with various mediums, textures, and colors. I would love for you to join me. It’s on sale now until July 20th.

A Creative Cross-Country Journey

Soon, I will embark on a cross-country road trip from Virginia to California with my creative companion. My intention is to stay creatively engaged during the long hours and endless miles, making the journey artistically conducive. Along the way, I will work on a project within projects, creating art to sell en route as a means of emotional and financial support for the trip.

This journey is significant, representing personal growth, exploration, and determination. By the end of this 6,000-mile adventure, I hope to have a clearer understanding of my life and what I hope for the next chapters of it.

During this trip, my companion and I will be working together on a project we are calling “Keeping in Touch,” using the journey and locations to find ways to stay connected with each other, the ones we leave behind, the earth, and all its elements, and ourselves. We plan on dancing our way across the states, one destination after another. It should be quite the adventure!

If you would like to support this journey, you can watch my Instagram for art that will be available for auction or buy-it-now along the way. Another way to support is by purchasing a postcard that I will personalize from the road and send to you en route.

Want a postcard? VENMO @mistymawn

I am also working on a cross-country playlist and will continue to add to it as I go. You can listen along with me if you’d like.

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Embracing Destruction for Creation

As a strong fire sign, I often find destruction favorable to creative endeavors. I resonate with Picasso's quote, "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." This rings true for me, even in the simple act of pulling a leaf from a plant for nourishment. It’s about knowing and balancing the extent of destruction needed for nourishment and thriving, whether for food, creativity, or curiosity. Lately, I've been deconstructing much of my familiar life to create the life I truly wish to live, all while learning to move more like water and air—one breeze at a time.

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. -Bruce Lee

Rekindling a Love for Rocks

Through this process of deconstruction, I'm discovering things that pull me closer to my true self—the one who thrives on the creative process, yearns for new ways to express myself, and trembles with excitement for discoveries. Recently, this pull has led me back to a childhood love: scavenging for rocks. As a child, I spent hours in my driveway and in the woods marveling at the various colors and shapes of rocks. Now, as an adult, I'm rekindling this love in a new way. I have been finding great joy in smashing rocks that took millions of years to form into powder, which I then use to make pigments for paint and glazes. I'm on a mission to explore the roads ahead and find the rocks that call to me, connecting with the earth and my creativity in deeper ways. 

Upcoming in-person workshops

I am still planning to host workshops at my home in Virginia. Thank you to everyone who emailed me about it. I have added you to the mailing list for home workshops. Hopefully, the first will be this September, and again in October and November.

I know it will be last minute, but the house is currently under renovation, and my mind is elsewhere at the moment. Once I return from the road, I will send an updated email to those who have expressed interest in my in-person home workshops. If you are interested and haven’t reached out, please let me know, and I will add you to my mailing list.

Art + Soul

After a long hiatus, I will be teaching in person at Art + Soul in Portland in March of 2025 again! I cannot wait! I would love to see you there.

If you made it this far, thank you! 

Wishing you a joyful journey, wherever you are headed! 

“May I have the courage today To live the life that I would love, To postpone my dream no longer But do at last what I came here for And waste my heart on fear no more.”  - John O’Donohue