Several years ago, a member of my circle decided to throw an art party, a chance for some collective healing to take place around creative expression.

We were instructed to meet at a small studio which was equipped with paints and glitter, stencil forms, sponges and small blow dryers.

The process was referred to as “collaging,” although it did not involve putting together photographs and scraps of printed pages as I might have expected. Instead, we were each given small canvases and offered an odd assortment of devices (designed for other purposes) to use to apply paint.

Not brushes, but cards, feathers, sections of metal pipe, and plastic utensils served as our tools.

We were to experiment. By focusing on the process of adding layers and flowing with our intuition, we thought we just might come up with something special.

A scary, but sort of liberating proposition.

I started playing with a palette of earth tones. Using thick brown and ochre, yellow and green paint, I filled every open space of my canvas with some color. Then, I held the blower over the layer of paint until it was dry.

Sometimes, I waited for inner guidance on what color or application tool to use for building the next layer.

Normally, not one to think of myself as a capable visual artist (I can’t seem to draw the likeness of a face to save my life), I think I learned a lot from the project.

• Time didn’t matter. I was lost in the process.
• Whatever my completed piece looked like didn’t matter. I had a great time making it.
• I honored my own impulse regarding when I was finished.

One could be in process forever. I witnessed others in my group continue to add layers beyond coherence or healthy experimentation. I don’t know whether I captured a “less is more” vibe, but I understood when I had applied sufficient paint and variety of shapes to say, “Enough.”

I actually liked the appearance of what I had created.

I didn’t feel like dating or signing the piece, but I considered different ways I could claim the design.

On the top and bottom, in primitively formed letters, I scrawled the word, “LISTEN.”  On the bottom left corner, using small letters cut out from a magazine, like the key for interpreting a Map of the Mall, I placed the words, “You’re HERE.”

I decided to hang my creation in the guest bathroom.

I was delighted by all the layers of irony and silliness and joy this collage represented and continues to provide.

• Imagine me, hanging art on my powder room wall as if it was a refrigerator door for a second grader.
• Hidden, in plain sight, are nods to my philosophy of being in the moment and paying attention — to listening and appreciating such mundane things as the hum of overhead fluorescents or sound of running water.
• Reflecting on the few words I chose to include in this swirl of colors and textures is a celebration to living life as a process, a journey that’s flexible and surprising.
• Every time a guest slips into the room, I wonder with gleeful anticipation if they will notice my bathroom art, see these words and get the joke.

Finding unending amusement from an inside joke is no small thing.