About Me Hi. My name is Amy Shamansky. I am a Jacqueline of all trades, master at jumping. I can jump between different art forms with grace and ease. THAT is the magic of expressive arts. How did I get there, you ask? Read on… Music play came first. Flute, piano, then guitar. Two bands, both gigging, one with a full-length CD featuring my vocals, rhythm guitar, and….DRUMS. I started playing drums because I was dying to jam with other musicians and couldn’t with piano or guitar. Finally, I flew solo after the bands dissolved, performing my own music with guitar and vocals. A short EP came out of that. Visual art showed up next. I started with a few realistic watercolor classes and then jumped to abstract mixed media. That started my journey of painting intuitively through play and exploration. Drawing was thrown in along with other random classes like encaustic, stained glass, and silversmithing. Today, I jump between renderings of the natural world in pen and ink and strange, playful mixed media images that come out of my imagination. Dancing followed, SALSA dancing. That was an attraction to the sultry, sensual side of music. I built up a vocabulary of movements and reached a point where I was responding to the music with complete, embodied joy. Writing has always been in the background. I started keeping a journal when I was a teenager. I write in response to my art. I write in response to what I see, learn, and feel in nature. I write a bimonthly newsletter on Substack called a Trail of Curiosity. I tell nature stories that go with my nature journal encounters. Writing is a faithful companion. During all of this art play and exploration, I became an educator and worked over 20 years in both private and public settings. I came to realize that I cared most about the social emotional well-being of my students. Hence, I pursued a professional diploma in Expressive Arts Coaching, Consulting, and Education through the Expressive Arts Institute of San Diego. With the expressive arts, I didn’t have to limit myself to one art form. I could move between them all, finding fuller self-expression. Right after I graduated, I became a mother. I let that be my focus for the next decade while I continued to develop myself as a visual artist. During that time, I discovered nature journaling. I had been following curiosity in my art without realizing it. With nature journaling, I became acutely aware of my curiosity and how it drew me into my nature encounters and my journal pages where I recorded them. It is an activity that replenishes me to this day. I deepened my connection with myself and the natural world in a special way, not as much by play and exploration as in the arts, but by presence and compassionate attention. It’s a beautiful complement. Last, but not least, theater arrived! I began a love affair with comedy improv in the summer of 2023. It has been an unbelievable ride of finding joy, ease, and community in theater play. Both my expressive arts and nature journaling practices offer me rich resources for well-being. I want to share the fun, joy, and magic of these with you. Where will your curiosity lead?