On February 17, 2021 Musea launched the Anthropas : A Rites of Passage in Paint group exhibit at our monthly live Museum Show. This dynamic event was hosted by Curator, Shiloh Sophia, and Curatorial Director, Amber Gould, and was attended by nearly 200 of our Musea members and guests to celebrate and honor the work of the Anthropas students. 

The Anthropas painting course developed by Shiloh Sophia, is a devotional 13-moon journey from October 2019 to October 2020, in which students were guided through the 42 teachings of Intentional Creativity with the vision of  ‘becoming fully human’. This is a slow cooked, action-oriented creative learning experience that inspires and supports each student to truly inhabit ourselves and our ‘cosmic address’. Over 100 women embarked on this incredible voyage, and the Anthropas : A Rites of Passage in Paint exhibit features 53 Anthropas images from students who completed their painting. 

“Anthropas is an Intentional Creativity Curriculum for Curating Human Beingness and Alchemizing the Anthropology of Self. An invitation to expand your framework beyond your defaults. Repattern the unconscious programming. Let’s ‘think’ in color, symbol, texture, shape, swirl, dive, dash, dot, dabble, doodle OUT ONTO and INTO the canvas. YOUR WAY OF KNOWING is UNIQUE TO YOU is what is at the heart of our work. Our time together was a field of practice for exploring, discovering, and articulating our ways of knowing.”
~ Shiloh Sophia

Each student was asked to paint on the largest canvas they could accommodate in their studio and home spaces, and some were over 12 feet long! This gave each student the opportunity to have a more somatic and embodied engagement with their painting, moving their bodies in graceful flow and putting in a stronger effort to actually move paint around the canvas. This in and of itself was a powerful aspect of the experience – stepping into bigness, to expansion of the self, and having this be mirrored in the material world with the canvas.

Each month, the students would gather together on the new and full moon for connection and teachings with Shiloh Sophia. They examined the Intentional Creativity teachings for that month, reflected on their experiences and any blocks or insights that were arising, and spend time with one another in true creative sistership. Jenafer C. Owen was the curriculum director and main support for the course, providing activating creative journaling prompts and her cherished wisdom around all that can arise in a transformational and liminal creative journey such as this.

Many of the students reported that Anthropas was life changing in ways they did not anticipate. It is not every day that you find yourself in a container with over 100 women connecting regularly to paint, share, learn and move toward deeper access to your own consciousness and embodiment – it brought healing and new life to many.

Below are a lovely testimonials from students:

I am very grateful to have joined Anthropas this year. It has been an amazing healing journey in these very special times.

To be able to always come back to my painting has been transformative. Whatever pains, losses, challenges I experienced have been transmuted in their own way, as I listened to which stroke, which shape, which color wanted to be included on the canvas. The healing effect has been exponential!

I had made many sketches before painting her and she really surprised me by wanting to emerge in the midst of dancing, singing and drumming, landing very freely on the canvas not at all the way I had planned! She also insisted on wanting to be dressed with light!

She continues to nourish me, inform me, energize me, transports me into other dimensions and fills me with joy!!
~ Nona McKinney

This is a kick-ass class! Intellectually it is like Shiloh Sophia’s Manifesto of Intentional Creativity, the culmination of her life’s work. Emotionally and spiritually it was a deep exploration of MY life’s work. Doing a single painting for a full 13 moons is an amazing way to record, amplify and integrate your life’s journey.
~ Colleen Crotty Good

“It’s your Pandemic Painting!” exclaimed my best friend, and with that I realized that Anthropas was just the creative structure and collective alchemy to make this tempestuous year a treasured year in my life, one worth commemorating with wonder, pride and Great Gratitude. THAT was an unexpected boon, for sure, in 2020! I LOVE my Green Womon painting and the story She tells. Of course, the extraordinary journey that is Anthropas is just about a guaranteed fantastic odyssey for anyone who invests in the adventure. BRAVA to Shiloh Sofia, Creatrix, and Jena Joy, Doula Diva, for a truly epic experience.
~ Christine Marie Cappelletti

As with most group painting courses, viewers will notice similar themes running throughout the exhibit but all of the artists have represented their own very personal and original symbolism and style of her work. Each painting can be considered an artifact of the artists 13-moon journey and her arrival into a new kind of self knowledge, consciousness, and embodied self awareness. 

During the Anthropas journey, Shiloh Sophia wrote and shared a powerful poem, reflecting on our connection to divine mystery and the cosmos from which our beingness comes. We invite you to enjoy this video of the poem read aloud and set to music, read by Shiloh Sophia. The images from this video include Shiloh Sophia moving through her medicine painting rituals and actively painting her Anthropas – Stardust Transit.

This is a beautiful introduction and first stop before you visit the exhibit page.

Helix : A Psalm of Human Being ~ by Shiloh Sophia

Visit the complete Anthropas : A Rites of Passage in Paint Exhibit Page
and don’t forget to leave a comment in the comment section!

 

 

We thank you for taking the time to visit Musea : Intentional Creativity Museum
and for being the many muses, many lands, many voices, and many hands of our collect art movement. 

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Special Thanks to: 

Curator and Anthropas painting course creator:  Shiloh Sophia

Curatorial Director and Exhibit Designer: Amber Gould

Virtual Show Design and Museum Communications : Maia Lemann

Museum Communications and Promotion: Sarah Mardell

Museum show article author : Amber Gould