When I finished my first book, Art Is a Way of Knowing, I had the shocking realization of how isolated I was as a person and how artmaking had kept me alive. My experience this time around is vastly different. For the past ten years, working in and teaching the studio process described in this book has served to connect me to a vast number of people in profoundly important ways.
The Creative Source has been exceedingly generous in sending me companions along the way. I am deeply grateful for Dayna Block and Deborah Gadiel, my partners in the original Open Studio Project, and Kim Conner, whose loyalty, support, and loving witness made both the existence and the demise of Studio Pardes a central blessing in my life. I thank the artists whose stories appear here: Annette Hulefeld, Dave King, Lisa Sorce Schmitz, Sallie Wolf, Barbara Fish, Kim Conner, and Dayna Block. I thank my daughter, Adina, whose images weave their way through my life like golden threads.
As I began to think about whom I might mention in these acknowledgments, I became overwhelmed remembering all the fellow artists, many dear friends, children, and teenagers, some of whom only came once to a studio session, others who have made intention, art, and witness a central part of their lives. I despaired of coming close to naming all the people whose images and witness writings have instructed me in the studio process, all the colleagues who have engaged in formative discussions of these ideas, and all the students and workshop members who have welcomed, embraced, and enlarged my work. You have all made real for me the beautiful image of life as a net of interconnected threads, each of you a pearl at a crossing of lives.
I am honored by the work of Kendra Crossen Burroughs, who is exceedingly knowledgeable about all spiritual traditions as well as all things editorial, and that of her colleague Jacob Morris, who sharpened and helped to shape this book into its present form. I am also honored to be published once again by Shambhala Publications.
Finally, I thank the Creative Source for my husband, John, who has provided unwavering support of my work since the moment we met and has been an active participant in the studio process as it has unfolded in our lives.