This is a post describing an ongoing work/practice in progress, Lanna Cotta.

Last year (during the ides of march), my world changed. A lot of people’s world’s changed. Essentially, the pandemic related to coronavirus escalated to the point where both my part-time jobs shut and then had a lot of time at home with the existential question, what do I do?

Inspired by some of my friends and their pivoting to the world of Zoom communication, I created a morning meeting group called Webinara (then later named Lanna Cotta) that would meet and check in and do creative exercises, mostly drawing and writing.

This practice, bolstered by the social connection, gave me something to anchor myself to during this long and continuing “bunker-down” situation that many of us continue to find ourselves in.

Above is a video I made explaining how the sessions go.

I recently started to catalog the exercises into a blog at https://lannacotta.wordpress.com/

It’s interesting and challenging because I feel like I have a lot of catching up on the lanna cotta blog to make it up to date. I have run over two hundred exercises at this point which seems pretty great. And I have to give a lot of credit to my consistent participants, mostly Simone, who has been Lanna Cotta’s greatest supporter.

The main thesis of Lanna Cotta is that it’s a practice and its unique structure features social support. I recently started a meetup group and since then one person has come through that to find the meetings and she seemed to really appreciate it, although she doesn’t come regularly.

So, it is in some ways just beginning as a journey for me. I think that being an art-session facilitator has some legs for me. I’ve spent some time in art nites and sound jams, and it feels like a great place to be. My goal is to continue to explore ways to find people who are interested in this kind of practice that is actually uncommon, a drop-in micro-workshop zoom meeting. Sometimes, I think of it like meditation or yoga. Creative exercises are a lot of fun and I am glad to have gotten this far with it and will continue to find ways to improve the experience and share the experience.