Earth, Art, and Therapy or Was it Just a Parade?

The last few weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster. The high point was definitely the Ojai Fourth of July parade. I dropped the pebble of the idea one morning at the farm a few months back. What about a float for the Farmer and the Cook? Turns out Steve had never participated in the parade when tends toward the highly traditional and patriotic in the best small town way. Lots of equestrians, cheerleaders, cub scouts, civic groups and churches. We'd sat through it a few times over our summers here. The locals put out chairs along Main Street to claim their viewing space up to a week ahead, which speaks to local pride, not boredom, since there are tons of things to do here.
Johanna   was my partner in organizing this feat, since before this parade gambit I was never sure exactly how to read Steve on such things. Would this insult his semi-hippie soul? Be too silly for his elder organic statesmanlike role in the general community? Take too much time from surfing? Johanna broached the question to him AND agreed to be our "Parade Marshall" in the four double-sided pages of paperwork we had to fill out to be in the parade. Steve coughed up the $35 fee to be a "commercial/auto" entry, borrowed a hay wagon and got Greg to wire the truck for sound. Then the fun really began.

This parade prep business was the most fun I'd ever had, beginning with the giant paper mache heirloom tomato.
Everyone picked their totem and created their costume. I was delighted to provide studio space for what turned out to be a rollicking good time of creating fun and beauty out of nothing.
Steve transformed himself into "King Karat," (the carrot is the 'gold standard' of the organic farmer, Steve tells us often) Olivia (the inspired cook of the Farmer and the Cook) felt called by the spirit of Breakfast Radish. We had butterflies galore, including the Momma Butterfly, Nora, and Strawberry Jon, her consort. Several peppers, farmers, a flower and Bridget of Broccoli fame. We had signs and music, a re-write of "Woodstock" by our own band, Tofu Fighters. We regaled the delighted spectators  from speakers mounted on a hay wagon pulled by the farm truck driven by Michael, John's brother and his wife, Cindy (smiling in the truck cab picture). I made a lettuce hat, homage to the sparkly, leafy stuff, which though in abundance at the time, is far from my favorite vegetable. I wore an apron, my nod to balance, I like to embrace both farming and cooking, after all.
This week I am preparing for an upcoming gig teaching a class called "Earth, Art and Therapy" when I re-read this in my notes: "One of my earliest memories was sitting in my backyard while my mom gardened, looking at the lettuce growing along the fence and wondering why it was all floppy and not  in a tight round ball like the stuff from the grocery store. As a three year old, I imagined someone at the store rolled it into a ball and wrapped it in cellophane." Who knew about varieties?
Over the past few years my mother's spirit has been urging me to remember her as a gardener and lover of all things growing instead of as a sick person suffering from cancer. The image of her gaunt and pale with a scarf tied over her chemo ravaged head has had a lot of staying power in me. It is equally true, though, that she grew flowers and vegetables all summer long and had pots full of cactus and rubber plants indoors. She has been telling me for many years to focus on the beauty, the pleasure and the fun of life, not to avoid the pain, just notice it, hear what it has to say,  then make the course correction it is inevitably suggesting and focus on the light and the love that always flows once the needed change is made. Her illness was just one detail of who she was, not the most significant one. Everyone, but especially the women, who incarnate and suffer with such illnesses are bringing us a message of the need for a change. Let's listen up more closely so we can get that flow of love and joy that's right behind the change.
So here's what she's saying today: She and most women were gardening in the 1950's when I grew up. Sure, they also dabbled in T.V. dinners and other food fads that eroded our health and our families, everybody was curious about something new. But in the big picture, the gap from then to now is a short one. It's a very short time in which to make the course correction back to local, fresh and now consciously organic food. Celebrate that! People didn't always eat junk food, it's a blip on the evolutionary screen and we are correcting it all around the world. When we represent for what we love, it touches the love inside of others and activates it. Works way better than scare tactics to create change.
I credit my son-in-law Jeff with a quote that really woke me up: "If you want to save the world, throw a better party!" And by better, I mean fun, fresh, local and pretty darn silly. Oh, and did I mention our float won first prize in our category? We're already planning an even better party for next year and everybody is invited. Our complete photo albums from the parade are online. Thanks, Mom!

Pomegranates Revisited, Another Season

In December, 2006 I undertook a collaborative art project I called the "Pomegranate Exercise." The project was inspired by the eaten out, empty pomegranate shells I was finding on my walks around Ojai that winter. I resonated with those empty shells, they felt like an accurate mirror of my inner state. Twenty three other women artists agreed to let me mail then a pomegranate shell and also agreed to use it to prompt their art making. We had a show in May 2007 of all the transformed pomegranates and the artists' reflections; the show can be viewed on my website.

I never again found shells the way I did that season. This year we are in residence here as the pomegranates have dropped their gorgeous flowers and have begun to set out their fruit. I watch as the fruit swells from a tiny crenelated bell to a round vessel and imagine the crimson seeds multiplying within. I find that this year I also resonate with the pomegranates. I feel renewed life, new projects growing, and old projects are blooming in a new cycle. I am especially excited to be working again with the Open Studio Project helping to offer the first stage of the Facilitators Training Program.
It is wonderful to be reminded that the cycle of fruiting and dying are ever present in us and in everything. The pomegranate art gave me a focus for meditating on emptiness and kept me busy while the energy slowly flowed back underground to my core,  rejuvenating my essence and preparing me for what was to come next. I am so grateful to all the women who joined me and whose work supported me in that time of transformation. I know that some of them are also moving into new exciting projects. Deborah Feinstein is Vice President of the Vilna Shul in Boston, MA and working on hosting a conference on Jewish identity there next year that she will integrate art into and which will yield an eventual exhibit. Janis Timm-Bottos is on her way to Montreal to begin teaching in a graduate art therapy program and also set up a community studio for research and learning. Lisa Sorce-Schmitz probably just gave birth to her second child and continues to hold the space for magic and creativity at Whispers from the Moon Studio in Oak Park. Kim Conner has become a Reiki Master and has a vibrant practice. Joanne Ramseyer has open Blue Lotus Studio in Evanston, IL. Wendy Lauter just finished presiding over the second annual Mitziut Art Show and is back growing gourds and sharing gourd magic all over Chicago. M.G. Maloney is running the speakers program for Barbara's Bookstore and making plans to return to school for a degree in library science. Sallie Wolf, who graciously hosted the Pomegranate Exercise show at her studio Calypso Moon, has a new book, The robin makes a laughing sound: A birder's journal. I hope any of the other artists who I have not been in touch with recently will comment here on the blog and let everyone know what you are up to as well. I am so grateful for such fellow travelers.
Everything is change. Life gives way to death; the stillness eventually stirs with new life. Amazingly, we can count on that.

What the Landscape Taught Me Today

 

I walked along one of the trails near my house  with a loose intention to receive any lessons the landscape had to offer. I took pictures along the way and tried to hold an open unthinking mind. I am fortunate to have trails very close by that within twenty minutes take me into the foothills and impart a feeling of being far away from civilization. Today workers from the water company were laying new pipe to replace the storage tanks that hold water at the trail head in case of fire. I felt a little tinge of annoyance at having my views disrupted by technology but continued on my way. It was a cool morning but sunny, ideal for being outside and I breathed the fresh air in deeply. Among the experiences on this hike: a plant pretty much shouted: “eat me!” and so I did. It was beautiful green and white and very tasty, a variation of dandelion I suspect.

I found my eye drawn to what I think of as earth art, particularly striking arrangements of bits of stuff and I photographed a few of those. Each time I took a photo I felt a glowing or shining sense that I experience as a subtle energy of joy. That quality of noticing something beautiful and having that which is beheld shine back, much the way when we smile at someone that person usually smiles back. I experience this sort of ‘call and response’ when I make art and it is exciting to begin to notice it in nature. I made an offering in return.

I rested at my favorite spot and ate a snack and watched the clouds, they too, spoke, reminding me of the filaments of mycelia and the use of that concept in Avatar (see last post). I like to think that we all have wispy filaments of energy that connect us to those we love and we send energy to them and receive energy that way because all of us, living and those who have passed on, are enwrapped in a tissue of care together. I find myself utterly calmed and rejuvenated by this kind of a hike.

I climbed back down the trail after what seems like hours but wasn’t. This time I noticed the earth art made by the machinery used to grade the area so the newly constructed tanks could be installed.

Now the machine looked alive to me.

Now I felt a welling up of gratitude for the workers installing the pipe, the engineers who figured out how to do all this and everyone who is responsible for the amazing fact that I filled my water bottle by simply turning a tap in my kitchen sink this morning before I began my hike.  I spoke to the two men working on the project and asked to photograph the valve, a beautiful sculpture.

They explained that there is already built in a larger valve in case there is a need to expand the water service in the future. Next week the old rusted tank will be dismantled and I’d like to go and watch. This kind of patient care for infrastructure is something I usually take for granted and yet every day depend upon.  The skilled workers who design and install and care for these structures are as much my beloved kin as the plants, the trees and the rocks. This is what the landscape taught me today.

The Claims of Place

I couldn't get into the New Year's resolution thing with my friends last night. I kept feeling I was in a fragile state that shouldn't be tampered with. It had something to do with letting a mode of being fall away, feeling my way into doing things differently. Being claimed by a place.We started coming to Ojai in 2004, the beginning of a major transition. Today, the first day of the calendar year of 2010, I am here. With no external help, I woke up in time to see first the moon and then the edges of the sunrise, that's how I knew I was finally here. My intention for this blog is to explore the claims of place and to witness the changes that occur as I submit to this claim. The idea of being earthbound has come up in this context, being bound to the earth as tied to it as well as bound in the sense of traveling toward. It is a simultaneous sense of being both here and on my way here. Like many people I am aware of living a transition that is both personal and more than personal. I am reading lots of stuff in ecopsychology, permaculture, energy and seeing images in dreams and in my art and receiving intuitions about this. Feeling my way into a new space. I seek to share this experience.