John Brodie, the man from Brattleboro who ran from a Hinsdale police officer and drowned in the river, was not an anonymous recluse as the article in last Friday’s Reformer implied. John was a brilliant, creative, and deeply spiritual person who lived a rich, full, and courageous life
Read MoreA Mother’s Day Tribute for My Mom
I wrote the poem below for my mom, Ellie, in 2007. It captures her spirit and also touches upon the essence of a mother and child relationship. I thought that others would be able to relate to its universal themes. So much about who we are comes out of the foundation that our mothers offered us.
#47 Leaf Body Landscape This drawing was made on April 13, 2020. It depicted my body as abstract landscape. It felt healing, but I had no idea that the plant forms symbolized organs. Months later, after making a drawing that released emotion, a benign liver cyst that protruded from my abdomen dramatically shrunk in size.
Read MoreWhen making the Drawing into Trauma Series of 111 images, I did not reject any work or toss out mistakes. Healing entailed being with the neglected, abandoned parts of myself, so accepting uncomfortable pieces, facilitated inner reconciliation. However, when I was young, I regularly destroyed artwork.
Read MoreMy subconscious uses the imagery of circular forms like eyes, to depict trauma and its gradual progression of healing. In this image, the intensity of the trauma has begun to dissipate, though grief and vulnerability still remain. At the beginning of the series the two circular forms were empty, disassociated, and frozen.
Read MoreThis art piece that I made on March 5, 2021, references insects, which have positive associations for me. I feel especially fond of spiders. As a child, I would rescue spiders from others who wanted to kill them out of fear. Since many people associate insects with dark energy, they offer a bridge for integrating shadow elements of self.
Read MoreWe all experience trauma. As biological creatures it is natural to freeze and recoil in shock when flooded with overwhelming situations. Early childhood traumas are carried in our bodies as patterns of tension and holding. I knew that trauma lurked behind the stress of grief, shame, anger and fear.
Read MoreNumber 39 in my series on healing trauma. This drawing was made in early March of 2020, a week before the pandemic shut everything down in my area. (Art which comes from the subconscious, tends to be just a bit ahead of my lived experience, while significant dreams take many months to play out.) This image exposes the body as a landscape, revealing the inner healing time that the Covid-19 quarantine engendered.
Read MoreThis is the second piece in a series of images that delve into The Art of the Unknown. My art arises unplanned from subconscious scribbling. After two plus years of drawing into trauma, a transformation has occurred. I am no longer drawing wounds.
Read MoreNumber 50 in my series of 111 drawings on healing trauma in the body. This one shows a portal or opening into an inner womb-like landscape. This piece soothed some external disappointment and difficulty that I was experiencing at the time. It served as an internal balancing of darkness with light.
Read MoreMost of my art arises from a state of emotional intensity of one kind or another. We might as well make good use of our distressed energy! The art making process transmutes turbulent emotions into something healing. A drawing might begin with anger, but very few end up looking and feeling that way.
Read MoreLast year I had multiple encounters with 2 (or perhaps even 3) different moose. The encounters felt heightened and magical like a dream. My husband put up several game cams and we captured many videos of this one particular moose. (I wrote an article Vermont Moose Mysteries
Read MoreThe image was made on February 17, 2020. It’s number 37 in my series on healing trauma. This drawing continued a dream that I had 2 weeks prior to the making of it. In the dream, when I went back to find a moose that I had seen, the moose had turned into a smooth boulder that resembled an undefined head.
Read More#23 in the Drawing into Trauma Series. The seed for this drawing was planted in the early 80s, while I was a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. While there, I made a drawing with the same form as this one. It arose out of a primal, healing, scribbling movement.
Read MoreThis is a rattle that I made a long time ago. I use to make rattles and shekeres for professional musicians. Each tiny bead is individually hand-knotted into a mesh that covers a gourd. The mandala patterns were healing and meditative to make. The sound quality and movement of the mesh on the gourd was important to me, too.
Read MoreIn the beginning of the Drawing into Trauma Series, each drawing depicted a wound, most of which were composed of unresolved space. I was unsure how to resolve the wounds visually on the paper and emotionally in my body, but eventually both body and art transformed. However, this drawing puzzled me, because it did not blatantly depict a wound like the others.
Read More#78 in the Drawing into Trauma Series. This image resembles an animal integrated in a landscape which is also its home. Nestled within the animal is yet another animal or home. The drawing explores the multidimensional feeling of being at home within oneself, while simultaneously embedded within land and surroundings.
Read MoreIn the Fall of 2018, 3 friends passed away. One of them, Lisa Charkey (lisacharkeyart.com), was an artist who knew the stabilizing power of art making. Even when dying she did not abandon that thread of expression, while I had practically severed mine. At her memorial exhibit, I felt an inner calling to return to art making for myself, but also for Lisa, as she was no longer here to continue.
Read MoreThis is drawing number 88 in a series of subconscious drawings. My artwork has been an integral part of releasing old trauma stored in my body. This piece in particular represents a pinnacle of inner healing, a momentary balance of humble vulnerability and light. The drawing reveals a beautifully simple relationship of support and space between background and form.
Read MoreFor most of us, for most of our lives, our bodies are a slave to our needs and desires. There is a tendency to push our bodies mercilessly, until some kind of illness or breakdown occurs. At this point, we pay attention to our body, as it is now screaming out its distress, and is no longer available
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