Art as Ritual started out as a creativity workshop utilizing the three main tools from Julia Cameron’s book the Artists Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. It appeared that everyone I knew owned the coveted book but 90% of them had never gotten through it, including myself. It is a profound and revealing book that requires devotion, dedication and preferably a support group.
This was the genesis of the workshops. I worked for many months designing a curriculum and a series of exercises that are based on her three principles of Morning pages, Artists Dates and Daily Meditative Walking and my own experiences of living and working as an artist in New York in many complimentary creative fields, (photography, film production, painting, and sculpting).
Art as Ritual is rigorously experiential; a twelve week series of three hour evening classes once a week for adults who feel creatively blocked or frustrated. My intimate and dynamically interactive groups are dedicated to nurturing and releasing creative potential. Utilizing innovative tools in a safe and stimulating environment, the workshop consists of art making, (drawing, painting, clay, plaster, collage), in class and at home writing, supportive critiques, healing rituals, story telling, creative visualization, movement and sound techniques, and visiting guest artists from the visual and performing arts.
This exploratory personal journey provides the tools and the support to help excavate innate potential for a more authentically creative life. This is not an art class; it is an examination of the art of process and how to be in the creative moment without criticism or judgment.
We learn to relocate, re-parent and reeducate our inner creative child, which sets us free to enjoy a more self-expressive and happier way of living and working. We are training our inner guide to find the answers we already have.
We will be working with the light and shadow within all of us. We will befriend our inner critic and through this process, entertain new possibilities, court the invisible, and learn how to maintain balance to make the seemingly impossible possible.
Through appreciation and forgiveness we set ourselves free from the shame and guilt of distraction or stagnation. Consciousness as opposed to self-consciousness and the freedom to manifest a creative mode of living allow us to fulfill our dreams and share them with others.
Creativity, the art of ritual, self-awareness and the cognizant art of healing are what make us uniquely human. Art as ritual challenges us to take responsibility for ourselves and help facilitate a world of culture and peace giving us hope and faith that our future will be healthy, productive and joyful.
Stephanie Annette Foxx

“To laugh often and much,
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden path, or a
redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has
breathed easier because you
have lived
This is to have succeeded!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson
( In 2004 I googled the first line and viola I found the source…of course...)