Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art [Paperback]

Nancy J. Azara (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2002

Anyone can make art. Finding one's spiritual center can come of making art. Making art can come of finding one's spiritual center. Nancy Azara has been teaching the making of art, art-making as a spiritual practice, and other spiritual practices for thirty-five years. She has developed a system that combines her lifelong spiritual practice with techniques designed to help anyone get and stay in touch with their own inner artistic souls. Spirit Taking Form is a practical book. It offers lists of materials to work with and exercises and meditation techniques to help everyone bring out their inner voice. It includes specific meditations for healing the inner critic, cultivating imagination, and finding one's artistic heart. Its meditations and exercises can be done many times, and each time they can bring the reader new and richer experiences and deeper insights. Throughout the book Azara shares her own story and the inspirations that have made her a successful artist. Using an old Sicilian folk tale taught to her by her grandfather, she has always sought to look at life with one eye open out to the world and the other closed, or turned inward. It is this skill more than any other that she seeks to engender in the reader through exercises such as "The Visual Diary." Learning and teaching about art from a place of spirit calls us to a challenge, a challenge to look at something very familiar, yet distant and remote. Spirit Taking Form offers insight into artistic expression and how it can be applied to life as a catalyst for growth, change, and expression.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nancy Azara is a working artist who has been teaching for thirty-five years. She came of age as an artist and a woman during the feminist movement of the 1960s. In the process, she began a lifelong spiritual practice that led her to teach and do psychic healing circles. In Spirit Taking Form, her first book, she combines the two.

Product Details

• Paperback: 148 pages
• Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser (December 31, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590030168
• ISBN-13: 978-1590030165
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #428,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful...worthy!, November 23, 2003

By 

* "eepeak" (Corvallis, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art (Paperback)

Filled with artistic endeavors and meditations to get creative juices flowing. Healing in that it affirms that all creative process is worthy...not just the technical modems of art instructors, designers etc. The symbols that come forth during our artistic expressions, even the simplest ones, are coming from the deepest parts of our soul...the author hopes that we'll "come to view our inner selves as if watching a film", to see our own personal images and to be able to transform them into art we can appreciate. Worth a read, a study, there are lots of reflective stories that I found very inspiring, quotes from other students, artists...I found the exercises very propelling and I am all for moving forward, even small increments make progress...

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Would be better as a CD, June 28, 2006

By 

eileen2000 (E Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art (Paperback)

I enjoyed the ideas in the book but found it ultimately not to be very useful. The book consists mainly of guided meditations focused around aspects of creativity. In a CD form it would be useful as an adjunct to actual meditation.

The information about the artist and her process was interesting and the guided meditations could be useful in a different format. My one biggest wish is for a lot more hands-on creative exercises. There were a few, but in a book geared towards creativity and "making", there should be alot more experiential stuff.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Ar, February 7, 2004

By 

Melissa Wolf, Women's Studio Center (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirit Taking Form: Making a Spiritual Practice of Making Art (Paperback)

As the Executive Director of Women's Studio Center I find this book to be a great boon to artists and those thinking about becoming an artist. It has elements of "The Artists Way" with more substance and some biographical details.
Nancy Azara was the Director of the New York Feminist Art Institute, a wonderful women's art organization that closed in 1990. She taught a class "Visual Diaries" which included elements of consciousness raising and art or creating an "artists book". I think her ideas and exercises come from this class.
It's a wonderful creative motivator !