Month: January 2018

creativity

A Year of Yes: Marching

Christa Avampato

“We cannot walk alone. And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.” ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today I march for people who cannot march for themselves, for people who have been marginalized, silenced, and cast aside as less than. I have been lucky in life that I was afforded opportunities to rise above my challenges and hardships, financial and otherwise. Yes, I worked hard, and yes, there were many people who helped me in countless ways. I didn’t get where I am alone. I march to pay forward my good fortune. I understand at a deep and relentless level that injustice against any single person is injustice for our society as a whole, and we shouldn’t rest until everyone has not just equality, but equity.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Dreadnoughtus, my first multi-panel collage

Christa Avampato

I’ve been working on my first multi-panel collage. I wanted the subject to be fitting for a larger piece.

I give you Dreadnoughtus. Discovered by Dr. Kenneth Lacovara and his team in Argentina, it is one of the largest animals to ever roam the planet. It is part of a large group of plant-eating dinosaurs known as titanosaurs.

I recently learned that dinosaurs skeletons are never found in totality and many times are reconstructed from a small handful of bones. The skeleton of Dreadnoughtus was exceptionally complete with over 70 percent of its bones represented. In life, it was 85 feet long and weighed approximately 65 tons.

Collage explanation:

Dreadnoughtus is entirely composed of the faces of other animals closely related to dinosaurs—birds (which are in actuality dinosaurs) and modern-day reptiles. The skeleton in silver paint illustrates the bones that were part of the discovery in Argentina per this schematic:

Dreadnoughtus-iv

The salmon-colored sky represents the asteroid (comet) which likely caused the end of the 165-million year reign of the dinosaurs. There is still some mystery surrounding the exact cause though it is widely believed that the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico suggests that an asteroid or comet approximately 10km wide hit the Earth, and created a series of events that led to their extinction.

Below Dreadnoughtus, I used bits of paper from a photo of the gnarled landscape of Wistman’s Wood. Packed with moss-draped boulders, ferns, grass, and lichen-covered dwarf oaks, and dense fog, it’s located in Dartmoor National Park in the U.K. It’s a landscape that inspires myth and mystery, the kind of wonder that dinosaurs inspire in so many of us.

The other items in the collage represent everything that was born into the world because of the exit of the dinosaurs. The truth is that if the dinosaurs hadn’t died out, if the asteroid or comet hadn’t hit the Earth exactly when and where it did, we likely wouldn’t be here, nor would many of the other species that exist today. Nature is opportunistic and chancy, one species loss is another’s gain. Everyone and everything we know and love came about on the backs of the dinosaurs. Our history is intricately intertwined with theirs. We owe them a great deal, as Ken explains in his book, Why Dinosaurs Matter.

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creativity

A Year of Yes: It’s never too late

Christa Avampato

I saw this list over the weekend:

  • At age 23, Oprah was fired from her first reporting job.
  • At age 24, Stephen King was working as a Janitor and living in a trailer.
  • At age 28, J.K. Rowling was a suicidal single parent living on welfare.
  • At age 30, Harrison Ford was a carpenter.
  • At 40, Vera Wang designed her first dress after a career in which she failed to make the Olympic figure skating team and didn’t get the Editor-in Chief position at Vogue.
  • At 42, Alan Rickman gave up his graphic design career to pursue acting.
  • At 52, Morgan Freeman landed his first MAJOR movie role.
  • At 62, Louise Hay launch her publishing company, Hay House.
  • At 101, the artist Carmen Herrera finally got the show the art world should have given her 40 or 50 years ago before: a solo exhibition at the Whitney in New York City, where she has been living and working since 1954.

Know this: it is never too late to do what you love. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to achieve all of our dreams at an increasingly younger age. We beat ourselves up because we aren’t a 30 Under 30 or a 40 Under 40. Here’s my advice: forget about your age. Stop tracking your life’s milestones against someone else’s. 

Life is about the long game; it’s about being a little bit better version of yourself today than you were yesterday. That’s the greatest win of all. Your life could change at any moment, at any age. Do something you’re proud of doing. Celebrate your wins, learn from your losses, and most importantly, keep going. You’re going to find your way. You’re going to find what you’re meant to do, who you’re meant to be with, and where you’re meant to be. I can’t tell you when, but I can tell you that if you keep looking and trying new things, you will find your best life.

creativity

A Year of Yes: I’ll be a featured speaker at the Virginia Festival of the Book

Christa Avampato

VaBookFestival2018-RGB-WEBI’m so honored that I’ll be an invited author at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March in Charlottesville, Virginia. This is a special honor for me because I went to graduate school at UVA, and this city holds a special place in my heart. It’s also where I began to dream, again, of becoming an author.

Over the course of two days, I’m visiting 7 elementary and middle schools to talk to students, teachers, and staff about writing, books, and storytelling. Here’s where I’ll be:

  • Village School, 215 E High St, Charlottesville, VA 22902
  • Walker Upper Elementary School, 1564 Dairy Rd, Charlottesville, VA 22903
  • Burley Middle School, 901 Rose Hill Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22903
  • Oakland School, 128 Oakland Farm Way, Troy, VA 22974
  • Scottsville Elementary School, 7868 Scottsville Road, Scottsville, VA 24590
  • Hollymead Elementary School, 2775 Powell Creek Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22911
  • Sutherland Middle School, 2801 Powell Creek Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22911

After that, I’ll be attending events associated with the book festival. The schedule is still TBD and I’ll let you know more as soon as I have that information. I’m looking forward to meeting readers and authors, and to revisiting a city that made me the person I am today.

To learn more about the festival, visit http://vabook.org/.

creativity

A Year of Yes: I’m going to Iceland (finally)

Christa Avampato

Finally, finally, finally I’m going to get to Iceland in 2018. I’ve been thinking about this trip for years, and I’ve decided this is the year to make this happen. Like my trip to Ireland, I’m also doing some research for my next book in Iceland. Iceland is a place that inspires wonder, magic, and curiosity. It’s a place that’s still wild, still very much in touch with its historical roots. From Vikings to its dramatic and varied landscape to those famous Northern Lights, Iceland is a place for dreaming.This might need to be done in two trips – one during the summer and one during the winter – because what you see and how you see it is so different from season to season.

Have you been? Do you know people there? I’d love ideas and recommendations. Some things I’m planning:

The Northern Lights
The black sand beaches
The Golden Circle
That landscape – waterfalls, volcanoes, fjords, lava stacks, geysers, hot springs, glaciers caves
The turf houses

What else? I’d love advice!

creativity

A Year of Yes: The right circumstances for your dreams – a lesson from the Rose of Jericho

Christa Avampato

A friend of was recently telling me that the time for his dream had passed. He’d missed his opportunity to do what he really wanted to do with his life. I told him about the Rose of Jericho, and what it can teach us about our lives through the process of biomimicry. I recently learned about this plant as I was doing research for Emerson’s second book. The plant hibernates, sometimes for years, when conditions are unfavorable. When drought passes and it has enough water again, it springs back to life. Our dreams are the same way. Sometimes what we want just doesn’t work out when we want it to, in the way that we want it to. The world is a generous place. When we keep a dream alive in our minds and in our hearts, we will get many chances to turn it into a reality. It’s only a matter of making sure that we recognize when that opportunity is in front of us, and that we do the best we can with what we’ve got when our opportunity comes around again.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Your time doesn’t belong to your past

Christa Avampato

“Never be defined by your past. It was just a lesson, not a life sentence.” ~Unknown

We get stuck, don’t we? Bad experiences from childhood, from broken relationships of many kinds, jobs that didn’t work out, things and people and circumstances that hurt us. We have a tough time letting go. When that work is tough, I remind myself that the effort is so worth it. If we don’t let go of what was, then we can’t make room for what’s in front of us now and what’s on the way. There are good things coming to us that we don’t even know about yet, and if we’re bogged down by our yesterdays we’ll miss out what’s meant for us now. Keep the lessons, but please don’t let them hold you hostage. Your past doesn’t hold the keys to the castle that is your future; you do, right now, just as you are.

creativity

A Year of Yes: The magic of everyday living

Christa Avampato

“The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ~W.B. Yeats

We are hungry for magic and wonder. It’s around us everyday. In the weather, in nature, plants and animals, in our own biochemistry, in every time period of history. We don’t need to look far for magic, for Kismet, for inspiration. We only need to look and listen more deeply. Finding magic can sometimes take work but it is always worth the effort. It’s the best use of time we could make. Once found, wonder’s gifts last a lifetime and usually don’t cost anything except the use of our own curiosity.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Taking a storytelling workshop with Third Rail Projects

Christa Avampato

Staying true to my New Year’s resolution of “Yes”, I signed up to take a storytelling workshop with Tom Pearson, Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects. You may know Third Rail from their ingenious immersive theater productions of Then She Fell and The Grand Paradise. Tom co-created both of these projects. I’ve been increasingly intrigued by this art form of immersive performance and want to expand my personal and professional skills in rich, 3-D storytelling as a vehicle for audience development. I couldn’t be more excited to take this class.

Ritual & Performance: Rites of Passage
This one-day intensive will demonstrate how an artist can (re)construct a story from just the remnant or shard of a fragmented narrative. We will look at the mythologies surrounding coming of age, death, re-birth, and oracular archetypes – and their applications in Third Rail’s recent immersive theater hit The Grand Paradise – as a way to understand ritual, narrative, and rites of passage in an immersive theater context. The workshops will mostly be in lecture/demonstration format. Hand written note-taking is encouraged, but there will be no electronic devices of any kind allowed. Please prepare to participate in group material and to work together in dyads. A Q&A session will wrap up the last hour of the day.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Going to Ireland

Christa Avampato

Last week, I put out a call for help to plan my first international trip of the year—to Ireland. I’m doing research for my next Emerson book and I’ve long been thinking about Dublin because of the stunning Trinity Library and the many treasures it holds. Once I got into researching the city and surrounding area, there were so many reasons why this is the perfect destination for Emerson to travel to in book two. It is, after all, a land of magic, history, and literature. It is, and has been for centuries, a hotbed of science and discovery. From its museums to its castles to its natural phenomenon, Ireland has everything that Emerson needs to make her next daring leaps into her future. And they will be daring.

Here are some of the places I’m planning to visit:
Trinity College & Library
Marsh’s Library
Newgrange
The Little Museum
Birr Castle Gardens
National Museum of Ireland, including the Natural History Museum
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
…and a short stop over in Wistman Woods in England because I really need to see that with my own eyes to believe it’s real.

A huge thank you to Museum Hack and several of its staff members and tour guides who provided great tips and encouragement, tour company Hennessey & Furlong, Jennifer O’Neill, and all the staff of the sites tagged above. All of your advice and the ideas you shared have made me more excited than ever to visit this inspiring country. I can’t wait for spring!

Have you been to Ireland? Are there place you’d recommend I see that inspire wonder? I’d love to hear about them.