What stops you from reaching your artistic potential? Has fear and/or loss of meaning blocked your creative practice?

Optimal Creative flow happens when you can free your mind’s energy from worry about failure and guilt. This freedom will allow you to focus on the present creative moment.

I call my unique approach Integral Creativity Counseling. This process integrates the mind, body and spirit through self-inquiry, skill-building, education and creative/spiritual practice.

Though I work with anyone who needs to nurture his or her creativity, my specialty is as an artist’s consultant. My many years as a professional artist, graduate- and undergraduate-art teacher and psychotherapist have given me exceptional insight into the artist’s creative process.

I can help any type of artist - visual artist, writer, musician, actor, etc. - who wants to take his or her art to a higher level. I offer a challenging perspective grounded in ethics, compassion and a deep respect for the individual creative process.

Within several sessions, clients usually see a positive shift in their creative process.

I have successfully worked with artists on:

– transforming performance anxiety into a creative force
– creative slumps/writer’s block
– sustaining creative effort
– completing projects
– self-trust and courage
– fear of failure
– fear of success
– fear of criticism
– organizing time/work space to facilitate art-making
– developing portfolios and artist’s statements
– reconnecting to the joy of creation

Art instruction and critique are also available.

“After working with Erin, I feel calm. I have the clarity and potential to advance in a productive way. I have had an exciting shift of energy that has made my work in the studio take off. I appreciate that she knows the creative life. I enjoyed the energy work but was able to have remarkable and subtle spiritual conversations which allowed me into a deeper experience of being.”
Jeff, Artist, Brookline, Mass.

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Artist’s consultant

What stops you from reaching your artistic potential?  Has fear and/or loss of meaning blocked your creative practice?

Optimal Creative flow happens when you can free your mind’s energy from worry about failure and guilt.  This freedom will allow you to focus on the present creative moment.

I call my unique approach Integral Creativity Counseling.  This process integrates the mind, body and spirit through self-inquiry, skill-building, education and creative/spiritual practice.

Though I work with anyone who needs to nurture his or her creativity, my specialty is as an artist’s consultant.  My many years as a professional artist, graduate- and undergraduate-art teacher and psychotherapist have given me exceptional insight into the artist’s creative process.

I can help any type of artist - visual artist, writer, musician, actor, etc. - who wants to take his or her art to a higher level.  I offer a challenging perspective grounded in ethics, compassion and a deep respect for the individual creative process.

Within several sessions, clients usually see a positive shift in their creative process.

I have successfully worked with artists on:

– transforming performance anxiety into a creative force

– creative slumps/writer’s block

– sustaining creative effort

– completing projects

– self-trust and courage

– fear of failure

– fear of success

– fear of criticism

– organizing time/work space to facilitate art-making

– developing portfolios and artist’s statements

– reconnecting to the joy of creation

Art instruction and critique are also available.

“After working with Erin, I feel calm.  I have the clarity and potential to advance in a productive way.  I have had an exciting shift of energy that has made my work in the studio take off.  I appreciate that she knows the creative life.  I enjoyed the energy work but was able to have remarkable and subtle spiritual conversations which allowed me into a deeper experience of being.”

Jeff, Artist, Brookline, Mass.

What stops you from reaching your artistic potential? Has fear and/or loss of meaning blocked your creative practice?

Optimal Creative flow happens when you can free your mind’s energy from worry about failure and guilt. This freedom will allow you to focus on the present creative moment.

I call my unique approach Integral Creativity Counseling. This process integrates the mind, body and spirit through self-inquiry, skill-building, education and creative/spiritual practice.

Though I work with anyone who needs to nurture his or her creativity, my specialty is as an artist’s consultant. My many years as a professional artist, art professor, psychotherapist, and founder of an artists’ collective have given me exceptional insight into the artist’s creative process.

I can help any type of artist – visual artist, writer, musician, actor, etc. – who wants to take his or her art to a higher level. I offer a challenging perspective grounded in ethics, compassion and a deep respect for the individual creative process.

Within several sessions, clients usually see a positive shift in their creative process.

I have successfully worked with artists on:

– transforming performance anxiety into a creative force

– creative slumps/writer’s block

– sustaining creative effort

– completing projects

– self-trust and courage

– fear of failure

– fear of success

– fear of criticism

– organizing time/work space to facilitate art-making

– developing portfolios and artist’s statements

– reconnecting to the joy of creation

Art instruction and critique are also available.

“After working with Erin, I feel calm. I have the clarity and potential to advance in a productive way. I have had an exciting shift of energy that has made my work in the studio take off. I appreciate that she knows the creative life. I enjoyed the energy work but was able to have remarkable and subtle spiritual conversations which allowed me into a deeper experience of being.”

Jeff, Artist, Brookline, Mass.

Erin Stack offers a unique approach to enhancing creativity called Integral Creativity Consulting (ICC). A holistic approach, ICC considers the dynamics of mind, body and spirit in the creative process. For example, stress and anxiety are addressed as blocks to flexibility and experimentation. Tailored to the specific needs of the individual or group, Erin teaches how to recognize and develop innate gifts through self-analysis, education, skill building, and contemplative practice.

Erin is uniquely qualified with over 25 years experience as an artist, 20 years as an arts educator (mostly college level and above), 14 years of meditation and spiritual training and 5 years training and practice as a psychotherapist. Erin offers a challenging perspective that is grounded in ethics, compassion, humor, and a deep respect for individuals’ unique creative process.

Erin helps clients recognize and dismantle:
• unconscious assumptions and negative expectations
• fears of criticism and change
• habitual thinking and perceiving
• scattered thought processes
• habitual and ridged thinking
Consulting tends to follow the following pattern:

First, Erin diagnoses inhibitions in the creative process.

Second, she works with the client to determine the constricting cognition and missing skill sets causing the inhibitions.

Third, Erin suggests and teaches psychological, spiritual, body, and creative exercises to develop creativity skills and to transform negative emotions and rigid thought patterns into a more positive and creative life approach.

Finally,creative practices are used to:
• Question mindless assumptions
• Expand perception and broaden perspective
• Increase problem finding and problem solving skills
• Develop innovative thinking styles
• Inspire play and innovation
• Commit to a project
• Sustain creative process
• Nurture a healthy critical/discerning relationship to the work
• See a project all the way through to successful completion
While most people feel a difference from an initial session, Erin does more than offer immediate solutions. Creativity counseling offers strategies and exercises that, if practiced, will incrementally and positively enrich the quality of life.
Erin has successfully helped people with:
• performance anxiety
• mindless assumptions
• sustaining creative effort
• fear of failure
• developing concentration and attention skills
• loss of inspiration and meaning
• organizing time and working space to facilitate creative process
• reconnecting to the joy of creation
Who can benefit from Creativity Consulting?

Creativity Consulting is for anyone who wants richer life experience and increased success in professional and personal life. In these times of uncertainty and rapid transition, creative people will have the competitive edge; they can be flexible while remaining focused.

Erin has had success working with people from diverse backgrounds, including:
• artists, creative-professionals
• people in career transitions
• business people
• salespeople
• therapists
• educators
• retirees
Creativity Consulting is complementary to many health and enrichment practices, including psychotherapy and career counseling.

Erin works with people face-to-face and via telephone and/or e-mail. Erin is available for one-hour sessions on as-needed basis. A unique, customized 12 week creativity program offers 5 one-hour sessions with weekly check-ins for support and feedback via e-mail. On site business consulting and workshops are also available.

“Erin has a calming way about her. She has an intuitive sense of reading people without it feeling invasive. Through our sessions I’ve acknowledged my fear of success has contributed to my creative block. Our time together has been one of looking inward for the answers I seek. Meeting with Erin has definitely been a step in the right direction for the manifestation of my creative endeavors.”
Jennifer H, North Shore, musician

The Green Artists’ League (GAL) is an interdisciplinary collective of artists who have come together to create public art that addresses the global environmental crisis. GAL strives to be a model of community, collaboration, and service. Viewing art as an agent for transformation, GAL engages the public through interactive art experiences. We hope to raise awareness and challenge people to look at their role as part of Nature and their relationship to the environment. Through this increased awarenss, GAL hopes to inspire people to adopt environmentally healthy behaviors and attitudes.

We are also interested in creating work outside of the traditional setting of galleries to jiggle people’s attention when they least expect it and also to create site-specific work that will encourage people to question their habits of perception and behavior and interact with their environment in a new, fresh way.

The Green Artists League is also a forum to explore the relationship of art and ethics and other issues that face the 21 century artist in the era of ecological degradation. By working together to both challenge and support each other intellectually and creatively, we offer a model of collaboration in an often divisive culture. It is our hope the artists and other thoughtful, creative people from other disciplines will join our salon discussions and to collaborate on artistic endeavors.

To find out about our monthly salons and other information contact Erin or check out www.GreenArtistsLeague.org.

Created for Earth Day, 2008, Erin Stack escorted Stephenie Strogeny, who had been transformed into a ravenous ghoul, through the streets of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Stack would tell people about the sad tale of Stephenie, a savvy, yet profligate shopper who awoke one morning transformed into a giant Hungry Ghost. She is now doomed to roam the world consuming without ever being satisfied.

The public was encouraged to feed the hungry ghost by putting their waste water bottles, napkins, candies etc. through the many open mouths of the ghost. The food would then be seen through the exposed stomachs that hang from the ghost.

Legend has it that poor Stephenie is still seen wandering the streets of the Northeast trailing her ever accumulating train of waste.

New Eden Organic Community Gardens August, 2010

2008-Present

In the spring of 2008, I became the organizer and director of First Parish Church of Newbury’s  environmental mission the New Eden Collaborative. The New Eden Collaborative brings together

New Eden mural inprogress

church congregants,  Greater Newburyport CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)  shareholders,  organic community gardeners, organic chicken cooperative members, environmental groups such as Transition Newburyport, and the Green Artists League (GAL) for the purpose of cultivating a sustainable, and earth friendly community.

The participatory art projects at New Eden is the first of GAL’s  3  ”Articulture” community art projects.

GAL inspired projects at the New Eden Collaborative from 2009-2011 include:

• 2009-2010 New Eden Organic Community Garden Plot created by GAL artist/architect  Stephenie Strogney and myself. The garden was designed to break the utilitarian grid of traditional community gardens to cultivate the contemplative and relational aspects of gardening and community. Plots were clustered into “neighborhoods” and paths were configured as to require the walk to turn several times to get to the other side of the garden as a way to increase awareness of  time and place.
• 2009 “Measure Up” an experiment in relational aesthetics. In this participatory community action New Eden Community gardeners as part of their introduction to each other where asked to work together to define,  measure and plot out the community garden based on the GAL design. As gardeners help to define each other’s spaces individual skills and personalities became apparent with in the collaborative process and quickened the sense of community.
• 2009-present “New Eden Mural” A 35′ mural at First Parish Church, Newbury with imagery created from New Eden Collaborative members’ vision of what makes a sustainable community.
  

  Radiant City with high-rise modernist nesting boxes.

• 2010-present  ”Radiant City” I am working with  Chicago based artist Andrew Barco and the New Eden Chicken Co-op share holders to build ”utopian chicken architecture”  out of reclaimed materials as playful practive of animal empathy. For 2011, we are  planning on painting a mural inside the coop for the chickens and expanding the chicken yard .
• 2010-present “Conversation Shelter”  GAL artist Stephenie Strogney, GAL intern Cathy Stephens, and my self worked with Cindy Schartman,  Ben Twombly and other New Eden Collaborative members to design and construct a public trellised sitting area with in the private garden plot of one of the New Eden Gardeners. “Conversation Shelter” is an opportunity for dialogue on  issues of community and private space.
• 2011 “Waste Folly” an artful compost container constructed from reclaimed materials is planned for the upcoming growing season.

“Savage Rituals”, Earth Day, 2007, Newburyport, MA
This performance addresses Americans anxious, projected as romanticized, relationship to Nature. Our “friendly” polar bear greeted people on the street and in commercial establishments. The bear offered the gift of cards describing assorted “savage rituals”. If performed, these rituals would allow a more intimate relationship with Nature.

Selected Savage Rituals:

2. For the duration of one month from this day, place a cup outdoors every time there is precipitation. Allow the cup to fill for as long as the rain or snow lasts. When the weather changes, drink the contents of the glass.

5. In your mind, determine a length of time: a specific number of hours, days, weeks, years. Next, pick up a rock. Any size that you can carry is fine. Keep this rock with you at all times: in bed, in the shower, at work…always have the rock in arms length of you. At the end of the specified time, return the rock to the exact location where you found it.

7. Assign a name and one character trait to every item you throw away or recycle today based on either a property or the item or a feeling you were experiencing when you discarded it. Write all these names and characteristics down. At the end of the day, write a fictional story that uses all of these characters.

8. Locate the sources of food: Find the nearest produce, dairy, and meat farm to the place where you slept last night. Walk to each of these some time this month.

11. Do not flush a toilet today: If the toilet that you typically use seems to be in danger of exceeding its capacity, find another toilet.

14. Waste feed: Take the remains of your dinner today. Place it out side for food for the animals. Visit the remains morning noon and night until all traces are gone.

15. Wind Turn: Close your eyes and stand. Note the sensation of the wind on your skin. Turn to face that direction open your eyes walk in that direction until you can no longer feel the breeze on your face.

17. Conversation piece: Place cheese on decorative tray and place in center of dinner table. Leave tray for 8 weeks.

18. Think of an animal that frightens you: Dress up as this animal and stand in from of a mirror. Have a conversation with this animal on your hopes and fears.

20. Go to a forest: Learn to identify 12 plant and tree species by touch.

21. Remove all electronic media from you home: Open window and listen to the ambient sounds of Nature for nightly news.

22. Follow piece: Follow the next ant you see to its nest. Sit down and wait until your particular ant exits nest.

23. Animal Empathy: Prepare chicken for your next meal. Take a bite and imagine the life of the chicken. Continue chewing until you have imagined the places where it was born, lived, and died. Swallow.