Issue 7 Writer Spotlight | LeeAnn Love
C+B: Tell us about yourself, LeeAnn!
LL: In addition to furthering my writing and fine art career, I am a long time trained art and expressive therapist and newly beginning somatic coaching practitioner in training.
I LOVE to be outside as much as humanly possible: writing, painting, hiking, kayaking, tending fires, hugging trees, and talking to the moon.
I absolutely love to dance. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Three things I bet most people do not know about me: I am a newbie banjolele player.
I won my first writing contest when I was in 7th grade.
I started out in college as a math major. I made it to my third calculus class, and I was bored out of my creative mind. Needless to say, the year after I quit math, I studied art abroad in Italy for a summer term.
C+B: How do you define the word "art?"
LL: The word "art" to me is very broad -- in my mind, it is honestly any creative act. I believe all people are inherently creative, although many do not believe this. Art can be through cooking, designing your home, what you wear, a computer program you created, or a stone cairn you created in the water when playing by the sea.
C+B: Describe a time when you experienced a creative breakthrough, a change in process, or a realization about your work.
LL: Last summer, I took a radical leap, paused my art therapy business and headed to Scotland, the land of my ancestors, for a four-month sabbatical. As I landed, with very few plans established, other than where I was staying, so many creative opportunities came my way. I wrote every single day, and my two poems in Clover + Bee came from this season of writing. I also found local artists who walked in nature and created plein air art in community. I joined an artist group at the local hub in town, and I made playful work inspired by other artists and their work. If found the deep importance for me of working creatively in community, and then heading back into the studio to create my own body of work. I had forgotten my need for this; as an expressive therapist, I had gotten so focused on other's creative processes rather than my own. The both/and of communal and solitary creative process is the perfect balance for my creative practice, both in writing and artmaking.
C+B: Describe how you work through a creative block, or period where it's difficult for you to produce work.
LL: In expressive therapy graduate school, my professor spoke about the intermodal shift: changing materials, media, or modalities of creativity to explore concepts more deeply. I have found in my own work that when I am stuck, if I create a haiku poem, or start with a list of words, try a differing artist medium, dance what I am trying to create, or even just hop on my banjolele, things will often get flowing again. In the creative process, there are also just times of ebb and flow. In those times, if I can travel, play in the woods or the sea, read poetry, go to art exhibitions, explore a new art supply shop, watch a film, or attend a creative event, these experiences can bring inspiration when my work is in ebbing phases.
C+B: What’s your creative legacy?
LL: As a childless woman, a woman who wanted children but was unable to have them, legacy is a tender topic. I have thought of this a lot in recent years, and I realize what a profound legacy I have, even without children. As an art therapist, I have supported children and families of many races, cultures, gender and sexual identities, socioeconomic classes, physical and mental abilities over the years. I have worked with hundreds of those in recovery from mental health and substance abuse issues helping them find joy and healing in the art process. I have taught art skills to children, teens, adults, since I was a teenager. I taught college students about arts and healing, expanding ideas beyond cultural beliefs. I continue to supervise upcoming art therapists, supporting them in their practices of holding compassionate and creative spaces with those who are suffering. I have completed many murals, paintings, exhibitions, writings, and have a book in progress.
And even with all the people I have impacted and accomplishments I have met, I am most proud of my legacy that is seen in my beloved nieces and nephews. While they are all are dearly loved, currently, a few of them embody part of my creative legacy. I had never really considered how much my creativity had impacted my nieces and nephews, until after the passing of my nephew, Adam. His friends told me that he believed he "got his artsy side from me." My niece, Lauren, is a force of nature as an artist, moving and shaking the intersection of social action with Presbyterian theology. She inspires and humbles me daily. My other niece, Lindsay, who mistakenly calls herself the "noncreative one" is providing all kinds of creative opportunities for her son Pax, who is a natural artist and singer. She is truly passing on my families' creativity and my creative legacy to the next generation.
LeeAnn Love
My ideal creative workspace: I love to write in a fully sunlit room, with floor to ceiling windows. With colorful pens, journals of recent years, and a keyboard, as I am in the generation which bridged analog and digital writing. I enjoy lots of cozy pillows, blankets, a sturdy table and desk, and a cuppa hot herbal tea.
Something I’ve learned as a creator that I would want to pass on to younger creators: Trust your creativity. The Western world will continue to tell you not to create. It isn't wise. You can't survive financially. You aren't talented enough. It is frivolous. The more I fought my own creativity (e.g. started out as a college math major), the more creativity sought me and will seek you. It is in your bones and in all of our ancestral stories. Creativity is the epitome of the human experience. It is your medicine and healing for you and for the world. Once you no longer resist yourself, embracing the creative path is the most terrifying, exhilarating, life giving way to live.
If I could have coffee with any creator (past or present) it would be: Mary Oliver, Beth Kempton, Glennon Doyle. Each of these women embody some part of the writing process that I greatly admire and inspires me. Mary Oliver has such a rich way of bringing nature and simplicity to the greatest depths, down to the bones. Beth Kempton is so authentic, honest, inspiring, and truly present in her human experience. Glennon Doyle is a firecracker of a soul, moving and shaking in her work, in advocacy, and in truth telling.
Find and support LeeAnn here:
IG: @leeannlovestudio
Website: leeannlove.com
