Welcome to 'Image. Word. Mystery.'
Lisette's newsletter is taking new forms.
How you do one thing is how you do everything.
“Image. Word. Mystery. is a creative container, a newsletter to share prompts and inspiration, a community space to dialogue & resource ourselves. I welcome you to this evolving nest, this platform where my creative games, writing, animation, imagery & audio can co-exist and hopefully help catalyze you into more of your own creative abundance.”
The right container sets you free.
Quality input is essential for quality output. I love fantastic newsletters for this reason and subscribe to a sizable array of interesting creative thinkers’ publications. Over the last year or so I noticed a change in the email footers….all those newsletters had seemingly migrated to Substack. Suddenly, beyond their emails I could engage with some of my favorite thinkers and connect with broader communities in their chat threads, absorb audio & animated content all in one sexy little platform (and it has an app!) and I thought… Y’know, I never really took to that whole MailChimp “Here’s the art I have for sale this month” method of artist newslettering. What I’m after is a living ecosystem.
I walked out of my studio, looked at my husband with tears balancing in my eyes and said, “Whatever Image. Word. Mystery. is, I want to do it every day for the rest of my life.”
In 2022 the visionary art academy ViTra gave me a delicious invitation to deliver a course of my making during a ten-week container. That course was the original Image. Word. Mystery.: (From the course description) “Liberate the stories waiting just outside the threshold of your conscious creation in this abundantly generative, process-oriented, ritual journaling & ceremonial sketchbook course. Deepen your engagement with your unique inner system of symbols & story by practicing poetic play. Through oracle & improvisation, organized chaos & somatic exploration, a multi-dimensional greater-than-self portrait emerges effortlessly in words and images on the page before us.”
Honestly, I can get pretty fancy-dancy with my over-the-top writing style so bless ViTra Co-Founders & Directors Alecia Sacred Heart & Amanda Sage for trusting that this was a legit class concept. And bless all the amazing people who read that description and thought, “Hell yeah! Sign me up!” It’s because of y’all that I had a distinct and glorious moment of personal clarity: One week into that creative container I walked out of my studio, looked at my husband with tears balancing in my eyes and said, “Whatever Image. Word. Mystery. is, I want to do it every day for the rest of my life.”
And, y’all, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what it is.
Action brings clarity.
Partially, I commit to this newsletter & constellation of work as a moving, living system which will reveal itself as it goes just like all my other projects & am excited to have you with me for the exploration. I wouldn’t have done half the cool shit I’ve done in my life if it wasn’t for doin’ it messy, so I’m leaping in.
What I do know is that I’ll be using this newsletter to extend my personal ecosystem of creative gamification prompts & unique emergence-oriented systems thinking to your inbox. [Or, if you prefer, you can read posts here on the Substack platform or on their lovely app. I like using both. You can also customize your inbox load & notification preferences for your subscriptions or chats by managing your settings.]
Subbin’.
•You can subscribe for free and get regular prompts and musings and access to community chat discussions like this thread for Creative Partnership Circle, an experiment in mutual support between creative professionals. And you’ll be the first to hear about live sessions and meetups.
•Paid subscribers help me produce these nourishing offerings. You will have access to special live creative gamification sessions with me and the community and gain access to the deeper archives as they grow. Special chats. Discounts on workshops and retreats. All that sweet stuff.
•Patronage level support is a blessing and I look forward to sharing a one-on-one Creative Clarity session with you in gratitude, or sending you a personal poem on the topic of your choosing. Actually, I’d really love to give you both.
Mostly, I’m touched that you’re here at all in a rough world that demands so much of you. I’m excited to bring you into Image. Word. Mystery. the ecosystem (!) & I eagerly look forward to discovering all that the Mystery will reveal from simply committing and pushing publish…right now…on this first post…
XOXO,
