Art is Life in the Form of Beauty

I grew up in a house full of art. My parents met in a high school that promoted art. They married at 19. My dad did fine line drawing and worked his whole working life in film animation. My mom loved being home with us six kids and did watercolour paintings, made clothing, quilted, wove, carved in stone and with clay, made tie-dye and batiks, braided rugs, made furniture, and with her father helped add a room to our house. We learned how to sew, dig clay in the yard, and always had paper, pens and paints to explore with. My mother and aunts taught me embroidery which I still do, from time to time. We camped in the woods every summer and I learned the art and beauty of nature. I was given a patch of ground in the back to create my first garden. My parents’ friends were artists too, and costume parties, filmmaking in the backyard, art projects and lots of exciting conversations are what I grew up on. My parents were my teachers. Nature has always been my muse.

From early on it was books and writing that became my passion, but all forms of art were deep in me. I do fine line drawing, play with material for costumes, loved dance from an early age, took some ballet, taught myself tap dance and mime, did street theatre, was part of creating women’s shows as we figured out how to do it in the 1970s. I did public speaking, sang, read poetry, designed bigger gardens, built buildings, taught myself how to make wooden bowls, made an outdoor oven, and am always gathering shells, feathers and bits of wood to turn into some form of art.

Artists are the storytellers, the preservers of what has been and the creators of what could be. It is in the creation of what we imagine and share, that we dream up possibility together. The poems, drawings that have been arriving on World Pulse’s call for art have been such beautiful songs from the heart. The stories not simply stories, but writing into reality all that we have experienced, and all that is possible now that we are together.

Here is a poem I wrote for all of you. I have read it out as I travelled across my country describing what we have together because of World Pulse. Click on the Gallery (top left of the second picture) for a stroll through the past...

We Are Rising

We are rising

We are rising

Now our voices carry

On the wind across the oceans

On the wings of the birds

By the sound of our drums

By the beat of our hearts

By the sound of our feet

Dancing on the earth

We are rising.

We are calling out to sisters

And our sisters call out answers

And we know

And we know

We are rising.

And we know what is possible

We know what is needed

And we know that with each other

Our voices vibrate with our fury

And our fury is the healing

And our fury is what’s needed.

Our voices vibrate with our joy

That we now have each other

And our drums sound out the message

Our drums are now connected

And we dance this dance together

We are here for each other

We are here with each other

We are here to make this happen

We are rising

We are rising.