Ispirato

Here is a SoulCollage card I made yesterday to give as a present to my friend, Robyn. Robyn attended the SoulCollage class last weekend run by Karen Mann. Then just this Saturday night past, Robyn celebrated her birthday here at my house. We had a karaoke machine and put it to good use. What fun!

Robyn’s alter ego is “Queen of Cocktails”, and she made us some beauties at the party. Yum-yum. That’s probably why we thought we sounded so good singing karaoke.

In her own artwork of late, Robyn has been using bird images, nest images and house images. So I used these in her card. There are five different pictures collaged together here.

In making this card for Robyn, I felt really free to just trust my intuition. I didn’t have to THINK about personal meaning to be assigned to the images. Karen told us this is the best way to work - don’t think and analyze and plan too much when making cards. Let the intuitive mind take over.

I recently read a fantastic book called “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” by Leonard Shlain. He is a neurosurgeon with an interest in art and history. Shlain’s suggestion is that, as cultures have embraced literacy, they exercise more of their left brain hemisphere and all its yang attributes predominate: masculine, intellectual, analytical, sequential, etc. As different cultural groups have become more literate, they have also become misogynistic, particularly when the making of art is discouraged. Art and images are very “right brain”. Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam all rejected art, which had been an important aspect of earlier cultures that worshiped the Goddess. “Thou shalt make no graven images” really was taken to an extreme.

In the Middle Ages in Europe this attitude relaxed. Statues and paintings of The Madonna were exalted in churches. Women were allowed to become nuns and create their own spiritual communities.

In the last 100 years, women have become increasingly more valued by society. Shlain points out that this corresponds to a rising prevalence of art, symbols and images in our cultures world wide. Photography, motion pictures, television, and now, the computer and internet, are helping to balance the left and right hemispheres of our brains. Even the fact that we use both our left and right hands to type on a keyboard, is an improvement over the fact that most people had used their right hands to write - the right hand being “powered” by the left brain hemisphere.

There was so much to this book. I learned heaps about history - especially the early history of major religions. As an artist, it gave me new insights into the power of visual symbolism.

Karen said people are often tempted to put words onto their SoulCollage cards, but she recommended we avoid doing this. Having read this amazing book by Leonard Shlain, I have a greater appreciation of why imagery without text, can help us access our subconscious/unconscious minds and speak to (and from) our very souls.

When I first read Seena B. Frost’s book “Soul Collage - An Intuitive Collage Process for Individuals and Groups” I was very excited by the concept. I started saving images from magazines … but never got around to making any SoulCollage cards. I needed someone to light a fire under me.

I discovered Karen Mann was a SoulCollage facilitator, living not so far away from me and trained by Seena herself. So I talked four friends into joining me in a workshop and we hired Karen to come run our introduction session this past Sunday.

Karen was a fantastic teacher! She explained the process of SoulCollage and got us started making our own cards right away. One of my cards is shown here - I call it the “Reading” card. It is about my passion for non-fiction books and learning, the ideas and inspiration I get from books, and the fact that I would love to spend more time reading.

Karen taught us to use our cards for readings. You can pose a question, then draw a random card from your deck and speak from the images on the card saying, “I am the one who …” and then “What I can tell you about this issue is …”. When you draw parallels between your question and the statements that emerge as you look at your card, interesting answers are revealed.

My friends in the class were just as enamored as I with the process, and I know most of them have spent time gathering images and making cards in the days since our workshop.

The very first card I made was about looking after my body and being mindful of what I feed it. But the more I examined the card and the different images I’d collaged onto it, the more I learned about my own feelings regarding my illness.

I have withheld this information from my blog readers for several months now, but I’m just going to blurt it out now and be over and done with it: In April I was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer.

My original cancer was diagnosed in late 2002 and I had a lumpectomy, chemo and radiation, then hoped that the whole cancer-thing would never again rear its ugly head. I’d learned and matured through the experience of having breast cancer. Now the learning and maturing seems to have kicked into full-gear again. I had surgery on my right lung in April. I am having the same procedure now on my left lung next week. Physically - it has slowed me down. Emotionally - I am holding up very well. I have wonderful friends and family. I just had the best holiday ever. There is so much to be grateful for, not least of which is the fact that the medical treatment is making me better.

So while I don’t want to turn my beloved Ispirato blog into a journal about living with cancer, I can no longer hide the truth about my health because it is starting to creep into my artwork. As a lover of the transformative nature of art - its healing effects, the personal growth that come about through it, I intend to gift myself with more time to be creative.

SoulCollage has come along at the perfect time for me.