Land Acknowledgment

Art Works! Studio is located in Walled Lake, Michigan, on the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Anishinaabe peoples, including the Ojibwa (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Potawatomi (Bodéwadmi) nations.

I offer this acknowledgment with respect for these enduring relationships to land, water, community, and culture.

Who Inspires This Work

The way of working at Art Works! Studio has been shaped by many people and traditions — artists, educators, poets, and thinkers who value attention, creativity, dignity, relationship, and the deeply human experience of making.

In expressive arts and creative practice

• Shaun McNiff — for his understanding of creativity as relationship and dialogue
• Pat Allen — for integrating image, writing, and reflection
• Stephen Nachmanovitch — for honoring improvisation, play, and process
• Natalie Rogers — for her humanistic and expressive arts approach

In education and human development

• Lev Vygotsky — for recognizing learning as relational and socially supported
• Donald Winnicott — for his ideas about play, creativity, and becoming fully human
• Jean Piaget — for understanding learning as active exploration and construction

In attention, slowness, and observation

This work is informed by writers, artists, and teachers who value presence, careful noticing, relationship to place, and the sustaining rhythms of creative practice.

And always:

the ongoing lived experience of making, teaching, observing, and learning alongside others.

The Poets Who Guide Us

Poetry is often woven into classes and workshops at Art Works! Studio, especially within SoulCollage® and expressive arts gatherings.

Mary Oliver • John O’Donohue • David Whyte • Jane Hirshfield • Naomi Shihab Nye • Wendell Berry • Rainer Maria Rilke • Pablo Neruda • Li-Young Lee • Ross Gay • Galway Kinnell • Christian Wiman

Poems are shared not as material to decode, but as invitations into attention, reflection, image-making, and presence.