WUNRN
MAKING ART IS MORE THAN INTENTION:
IT'S ABOUT COMMUNICATING WITH THE SELF
(WNN) Santa Rosa, California, UNITED
STATES, AMERICAS: In the global upsurge of world creatives finding their way to
the camera, the canvas, the clay pots as a means of not only creating art but
of healing themselves and the world, women are creating art as a tool for
personal and collective transformation. Women, regardless of income,
heritage, or geography are intentionally seeking an experience with art-making
as a way to recover from a history of violence, trauma and broken lives.
The impact of hardship for women worldwide often causes both men and women to
silence ourselves as we no longer speak of what has happened to us or how it
feels. Over time this impact continues to harm us and our choices unless we can
find a way to express ourselves, to transform and release the damaging images
we hold inside us. Often, the most damaged image for women is the one too many
women hold of themselves.
In the launch for a new GlobalARTS section for WNN – Women News Network, I want
to share a big part of my life and share with you the lives of women who are
now using painting and writing as a medium to communicate and document their
own healing stories through something called the Red Thread Chronicles, a world
community that is tied together by one very long global red thread that holds
us together.
In a step toward creating a better life as we ‘dream our world’, we must first
make use of intentional creativity. This means we have to literally
create around our intention. Making art in this way is not about being
talented, gifted or artistic. It’s not predicated on someone identifying
themselves as an artist, or even feeling creative. This way of working comes
from the therapeutic art realm and is all about establishing communication with
ourselves.
Knowing how to articulate what we think and feel is a journey toward recovery
for ourselves and everyone else in our world.
Let’s look at humanity
To create a context for how art has shaped and informed humanity, let’s look at
the significance of how art objects, artifacts, throughout history document the
culture of a people, their textiles, agriculture, geography, family life and
spiritual traditions. Art is a record of knowledge, culture and meaning sent
down through the ages through image, symbol, song, dance, poetry, recipes and
stories.
If artists do not create, how will we know who we were 100, 1000, 10,000 years
from now? What would we know of
Studying our creations from the past gives us
the opportunity to explore the global mistakes we’ve made together as part of
humanity. With a new chance to mourn the loss of disappearing cultures as we
‘hopefully’ choose to become co-creators of a new sustainable future.
We must be free to express ourselves because it is from that place of
authenticity inside of each of us that we will build a future worth living. We
think of freedom of expression as an essential human right from which all the
other rights are drawn.
Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of democratic rights and freedoms,” says
the Human Rights Education Association, which
provides an online resource to promote understanding, attitudes and actions to
protect human rights, and to foster the development of peaceable, free and just
communities.
The United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 59(I) stating, “Freedom
of information is a fundamental human right and…the touchstone of all the
freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated,” in its very first session
in 1946, before any human rights declarations or treaties had been adopted.
The right to self expression through freedom of information is what we usually
talk about, yet few of us really think about our human rights. The right to
understand and know how to access self expression is a human right.
So, what do we truly think and feel? Art-making can be a direct path to knowing
one’s self as we express the knowledge of who we are – instead of just
accepting, or resisting, the ideas of our dominant ‘over-culture’. Experts
agree governments and the powers-that-be have often found it too dangerous for
us to think for ourselves.
Feeling Free to Express
With the rise of today’s technology our freedom to express ourselves is
changing drastically. It’s now happening to all of us in ways that are both
beneficial and devastating.
In a thousand years will an I-Phone indicate the truth of an ancient people?
Can we finally get how Venus of Willendorf describes her own people from
24,000-22,000 BCE? Or why PBS felt a need to say, “The question is
why were prehistoric humans stimulated by an exaggerated image such as this?”
When specific artifacts are found by archeologists can they provide the
‘emperical evidence’ we deeply need?
According
to UN Women, the United Nations Entity for
Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, between 15 and 76 percent of
women throughout the world will be targeted today under physical and sexual violence
during their lifetime. It’s no surprise that many global women are trying to
work through personal and ancestral experiences by actively seeking channels to
improve their lives. When a woman gains the language of her own story through
art she has a new ability to transform how the story affects her life and her
choices.
Paintings are stories captured in image. They reflect emotional, physical and
spiritual experience – especially for those who aren’t trained in the arts.
Trained artists can manipulate image to their desires. While those just
beginning have access to images that are often serve as vehicles of
transformation, because they are untrained, the images are raw, truthful and
revealing. The artist themselves becomes the hero of their own story.
Art has the capacity to give us the tools to reinvent our own images. It also
helps us build a framework to see our stories differently as we put them to use
in our lives. Past pain becomes future strength. Even the most challenging
experiences can be put into the service of reinventing ourselves, and working
with others who have had similar experiences.
For close to 20 years in the creative arts I have witnessed thousands of women
use art as a tool for transformation.
Following the 2010 earthquake in
Connecting to Red Thread Chronicles
The name ‘The Red Thread Chronicles’ is inspired by an ancient Chinese legend
that says that those who are destined to meet are connected before birth by an
invisible red thread. There are many more legends of the red thread that
we will continue to explore in this series but this one speaks of destiny and
finding the unique thread that is your own.
In all the circles of women that I serve we always weave the Red Thread with
each of us holding on and asking what our own piece of the thread contains. And
if each of us holds our own piece then we hold it together and each is only
responsible for a piece of the tapestry. Art gives women access to this
understanding and how it can be used to heal themselves and the world.
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