Active imagination is a visualization technique originated by Carl Jung as a psychotherapy tool. During the pandemic I began synthesizing various visualization techniques into my art practice, including active imagination. In Fall 2021 I hosted a public workshop called “Active Imagination for Visual Storytellers,” thanks to a grant from the City Artists Corp program, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, with support from the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment as well as Queens Theatre. Subsequent courses have focused on connecting creative visualizations to tangible expressions of art-making.

I don’t interpret dreams :)

MCAD Continuing Education

Spring 2022 / Fall 2023

Active Imagination: Ideation Process for Creatives (online)

This remote, five-week course introduces a world-building process grounded in imagination, memory, and dream. A range of nontraditional exercises in a supportive environment encourages students to consider deep focus and empathetic observation as daily tools of making, in order to deepen their existing creative practice. The heart of this technique is a deep focus exercise the group practices together during class meetings. In the final week students are encouraged to take steps to develop new work directly from the technique, in the creative discipline of their choice.

Final publication excerpts from Shashi Arnold, Seoyoung Lee, Piper Day, and Ana Jacob.

PRATT INSTITUTE

Fall 2022

Image As Communication: Myth Making

This six-week sequential storytelling project used dreams as a trigger for a process that fuses design and writing with targeted world-building. Each student began by harnessing a dream to serve as the foundation for their publication. Rather than focusing on the story of the dream, we introduced the active imagination technique as an exploratory exercise to engage with sensory information, details, and new perspectives from which to construct meaning.

Illustrations by Humeyra Neyha, Michele Wu, Jacqueline Rivera, and Michael Wan.

CUNY Queens college

Fall 2021/Spring 2022

Illustration II: Dream Character

In this two-week assignment students used an in-class active imagination exercise to spark the design of a character first encountered in a dream.

City Artists Corps Grant workshop

Oct 17/24, 2021

Active Imagination for Visual Storytellers

Many people, including me, experienced unusually vivid dreams during the pandemic. This mini-workshop focused on using dream content to develop rich characters for use in personal and professional visual work. We experimented with using Carl Jung's active imagination technique as a jumping-off point for creating a catalogue of personally meaningful visual material. During the in-person session we built the muscles to engage with specific characters and environments in a "waking dream." Participants left with a flexible assignment to create new material using the same technique. We came together again a week later for a hybrid-format show-and-tell, with a final group session to reinforce the heart of the technique. Participants included Rumi Hara, Amy Fortunato, Yunyi Dai, and Kelly O’Donnell.