June's Theme is Reverie

Our June theme is Reverie, chosen by our Omaha chapter and illustrated by Eduardo Gardea.

When your gaze softens around the edges, where does your mind travel? What thoughts arise unbidden? Reverie beckons us to dream while awake, spinning loose associations that seem to emerge from somewhere not entirely inside or outside of you. Our woolgathering summons past memories and nascent fantasies. We turn them over and over, like smooth stones in our hand, making meaning.

Neuroscientists have found that daydreaming ignites your brain’s default mode network. Counterintuitively, this unfocused part of the mind is where many creative breakthroughs take place — think Archimedes‘ fluid mechanics in a bathtub and Newton’s gravity under the apple tree. When you’re not preoccupied with solving a problem and chaining yourself to your desk in a fit of productivity, your mind is free to drift, roaming for the pieces that might complete the puzzle unexpectedly.

Pay attention to what lulls you into reverie. What conditions disarm your focus? Let your thoughts float and not settle on anything, but drift like a cloud, or a child skipping across a sidewalk on a hot summer day.

We asked you, what thoughts and images populate your daydreams? Where do you go when you find yourself in reverie? What role does your wandering mind play in your life? You shared delightful daydreams and profound ruminations.

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⛅ Moments of Reverie

“This artwork is part of my year-long project that integrates abstract shapes, collage and figures around the themes of femininity and cycles. In this piece the figure pauses in a moment of reverie between two loops - this force of this calm balances the tension between the two.” – Frances Hahn, Toronto, Canada

“I wrote about saudade. Here’s an excerpt:

‘Every person, I think, knows this; it’s a forgotten thing. How distracted you’ve become, and how far off the solitary path you’ve gone, might mean it was once at the innermost core of your being. Maybe you need to find your way back to it.” – Michael Maupin, Minneapolis, USA

“When I think of reverie, I think of swinging from a magnolia tree as a child in my backyard in St. Louis, Mo. The memory of the scent of the petals and the sound of the tree’s reach converging with free air.” – Brynne Rinderknecht, Singapore

“I first started keeping a daily travel journal in the winter of the year 2016 when I visited a small quaint village called Bir in the Kangra valley of Himachal Pradesh, India. I interned at a vernacular architectural institute, Dharmalaya, for half a year and it completely changed my outlook towards life.



I found plenty of moments sitting down gazing at the sunset, spotting satellites passing us by in the night, observing the first morning rays making the Dhauladhar mountain ranges glow in hues of reds, oranges and yellows, making friends for life, and sharing moments filled with reverie.

The place gave me the hope to look at the brighter side, enjoying and relishing the small moments. I am sharing a few pages of my journal that I kept through those life-changing 6 months. Below is a haiku I wrote on 10th of May in 2017 in Bir.” – Damini Rathore, Jaipur, India

“Just close your eyes and listen.” – Sandra Justo, Lisboa, Portugal

“​​I love to wonder as I wander, using artist walks from The Artist’s Way for over 15 years to boost my ability to settle my busy mind and drop into the wider, real world wide web of consciousness. I pose a question I have before I walk and let my mind wander as my feet do the same.

This is also true of making collage from magazines with no plan other than to feel my way into handmade image-making as the process of picking the images, shapes, colors, then the cutting & stick. I let my mind daydream up images I wouldn’t find otherwise and often in hindsight the images relate to happy childhood memories at the beach, the fun fair, or being outside.

Open-water swimming has a very similar effect on my thinking. When I am swimming in the sea near where I live, I am awestruck by the whole immersive experience. Watching the clouds or patterns of the water in the light *gives me a much clearer head to come up with creative ideas. This allows me to be a much better creative coach and facilitator through being more present to *listen and watch for patterns unfolding.” – Anna B. Sexton, Liverpool, UK

“I heard Lee Renaldo play "In Virus Times” live, and it has stuck with me in a big way. I find myself reaching for it (via Spotify) absentmindedly, as I would reach to pet my dog’s head or rub a worry stone. I was very much a “go-go-go” person before the pandemic, and I learned the value of reverie as I adapted to staying home.” – Anna Taylor, Florida, U.S.

“Drawing without subject, notion, instead letting the interaction of the tool and surface follow itself as an exploration of itself. This is the start of what has become a series of drawings which search to draw nothing in particular, conscientiously moving away from meaning and instead allowing the drawing to “construct itself” based on the interaction of materials it is made from and the lines that accumulate. In this, the making of the drawing becomes an experience of itself and …i have found… sharing the drawings with others brings a second even more rewarding interpretation as the viewer describes their own image built from their imaginative reading of the sedimented lines.” – Andrew Hart, Philadelphia, U.S.

“What does flourishing look like? So much that comes into my conscious awareness constellates to this idea of understanding what it looks like when a life, a group, an idea flourishes. Can we witness it in network science? Does it show up in some way that dialogue and conversation plays out? We are exploring this in a salon series with Cultural Program of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) and in a Substack essay newsletter.” – Ryan McGranaghan, Mount Rainier, Maryland & the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, U.S.

“I’m including a poem I wrote about a reverie I have of living near my nephews instead of across the country.” – ​​Osanna Bennett, San Diego, U.S.