Reclamations, Insights, and the Flames of a Creative Storm

26 years ago this month, with a newly awarded Fulbright Scholarship in hand, I left for a year of study at the Institue of Eskimologie in Copenhagen, Denmark.  I was awarded the Fulbright for my research in “Arctic Story Telling Practices.”  It was an incredible year of research, translation, discoveries, meetings with diverse scholars and travel to Sweden, Finland and the then still divided Berlin.  The result of that year was my manuscript, “You will cease to be powerless…”  The manuscript was in preparation for my doctoral work in Religious Studies.  Through a series of events the trajectory of my Ph.D. was aborted.  The archival photographs, translations and research were buried at the bottom of my file drawer.

This past month I had the unplanned experience of reconnecting with Anja Marais, a gifted multi-media artist whom I had met 5 years ago.   This occasion was her artist talk at the opening of her show The Ballast at the University of Northern Colorado.  We caught up and talked about her residency a year ago in  Northern Finland and the draw of the northern latitudes to our psyches and souls.  I realized that there are multiple ecologies of environments of Northern Peoples ( narratives, poetry, ritual actions, understandings of geographies) that have intertwined with my life for decades.  I thought about the manuscript, the stories of the women shamans I had come to know.  I thought about the power of story telling that reaches across time and space, cultures and genders.  I flashed back to my research at the National Museum of Helsinki: the Kalevala, the unfamiliar beauty of Soumi poetry, the struggle of the Soumi for land and water, the impact of the climate crisis.

Driving back to the mountains that night I realized what a gift I had been given by simple conversation between two women artists.  Two women artists sharing their stories.  Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) wrote: At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.  Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

I am engulfed in the flames of the reclamation project of my manuscript along with a creative storm in the studio.  I am re-visiting the stories of Greenlandic women shamans and finding the maps for the interior journey of empowerment as a painter in the 21st century.  The reading and writing I am doing is a deepening taproot for my studio work.  I am humbled, overwhelmed, and excited.  There is a major exhibit on the horizon with an installation environment created for my paintings.

Here is a poem from the Figures of Speech Theater website:

A hole no larger
and no smaller than your
soul
opens onto the face of 
the world.

The fire of sacrifice
eternally waits and nothing
less
than everything you are
can quench the flame.

— She Who Loves —