Up at Bat: Amy Zerner

In recognition of Dan’s presenting sponsorship of the East Hampton Artists & Writers Charity Softball Game on August 21, we are giving local writers a free rein to write whatever they want in this space for the summer. 

Stress is a big problem and we all need tools and techniques to deal with it. Coloring, crafting, cooking, designing, making art and music, writing—are all calming meditations that help to re-calibrate your focus and calm your worries. By becoming magic-makers we can transform concepts, goals, visions and dreams.

Creativity is a process of alchemy, combining and blending and transforming. I can take the whole sky apart when I am creating and turn it into nighttime instead of daytime; I can grow wings and invent goddesses, make flowers out of problems, balance the chaos; and that’s the magic of the self-transformation. As you do it, all these decisions you are making along the way really change your life, that’s why creativity is so closely aligned to the spiritual process.

When you’re feeling stuck, or when you’ve tried everything but nothing is really working, then creatively engaging in the art of collage can free your spirit and get you to be playfully inventive and think outside the box for answers, solutions and renewal of your spirit. Creativity and spirituality go hand in hand, when you are actualizing your creativity, you become spiritual.

Collage is therapeutic because it is a creative and spontaneous process; it allows you to be open to your soul’s language, symbolic imagery and to envision the way you would like things to be.

Art, writing and other creative outlets are a way of talking to our Higher Selves, the part of us that knows the answers and, just as important, the next round of questions in our process.

The act of creating a collage can have many positive effects—it can help you to visualize your goals, it can connect you to your inner self and it can relieve stress. When you make a collage, you can forget where you are, what time it is, and enter the realm of your dreams, hopes and wishes.

Begin by deciding to explore new possibilities in some area of life, choosing a theme on which to focus. This is like the first step of making a wish. Pose the question: What do I want? What is my true heart’s desire? It might be: “A new career direction,” or “Finding a place to live,” or “Finding a mate,” or “Making more money,” or “Getting healthier,” or “Worrying less.”

Select a variety of papers, ribbons, photos and more in colors and symbols that excite you, and that will help you to realize your personal imagery.

You’ll start with a blank background, and then cut, assemble and glue your collage to represent your hopes and wishes. You can do this by cutting images from magazines; by transferring personal photos or pictures from books and magazines on a copy machine; by adding written affirmations or by any number of creative methods.

The artwork that results from this exercise is a visual affirmation. As with verbal affirmations, which are positive reminders, the Wish Collage establishes and reinforces a desired goal or experience. You exercise and stimulate your right brain by using the visual affirmation on a daily basis. By looking at the collage as a meditation, the images are reinforced in the imagination and memory.

Make your Wish Collage a loving expression of your truest desires and allow the joy you take in creating it to be expressed each day by making your life a work of art—and your art a work of life.

Amy Zerner’s mixed-media collages illustrate the best-selling books and tools she has created with her husband, author Monte Farber, with nearly 3 million copies in print in 18 languages, including The Enchanted Tarot, Astrology for Wellness, Enchanted Love Tarot, The Creativity Oracle and Mindful Astrology. Her Wild Goddess Oracle and Enchanted Worlds: The Visionary Collages & Art Couture of Amy Zerner will be published in September. Her website is AmyZerner.com.