Member Zine Issue 14

by Member Coordinators Marnie Dangerfield & Chatelle Jeram

Creative Collage by Chatelle Jeram

Dear Musea Members and Guest readers,

With Earth Day this month (though isn’t everyday Earth Day?😊) and our Mother Tree Art Call Exhibit Opening it feels so good to be exploring the theme of ecology with you.

“The word ecology is derived from the Greek oikos, the word for home.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer – Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

It’s so important for us to pause, create and explore our relationship to the Earth and our local Ecosystems. It’s Spring where I am, but I know it’s Fall elsewhere, and other regions don’t experience the same types of season rhythms that I do. Being lucky enough to work with Chatelle I get to connect with the weather she experiences and the pictures she shares with me of the land and trees and beings that are in New Zealand, that I have never been lucky enough to meet (yet). Chatelle is always a day ahead of me too, it’s fun to joke about how she’s always ahead of me😊

During our Musea Members Artist Circle this month we asked for people to share what time, day and season it was where they are, so that we could witness and connect with this truth that while we are all connected along the red thread, we are experiencing the seasons, the days, the diurnal cycles at different times and in different ways as we connect in the quantum in our virtual Museum circle.

Taking note of the season that you’re currently experiencing and the land that you inhabit, we invite you to enjoy this musing from Chatelle on parallels between painting a canvas and gardening.

Is there anything more delicious than immersing in a nature setting? Walking amongst Redwoods, lying on the lush grass sprouting in the shade of an oak tree, barefoot on the sand as fine grained as flour, jumping into a lake.

For centuries, artists have been inspired by nature, as are many of us in our Musea community. Some of us might call ourselves artists. Most of us will consider ourselves creative beings. I have discovered that as I paint on a fresh canvas using Intentional Creativity® approaches, I am planting a garden or witnessing the growth of a thriving forest.

The first layers of paint are applied without expectation. We bring in intentions and mix with water, making the soil. We might add compost or waste products to these first layers of paint by acknowledging what we want to change or release as particular colors.

We add water to help the mixing process.

We indicate on the canvas the seeds of thoughts we are planting. Maybe we bring in an outline of a recognizable form such as a face or a tree or a bird.
And we tend, just as we would tend to plants. Pruning leaves, spraying water, shifting in and out of sunlit locations. In this way, we tend to the canvas, creating intricate marks, changing outlines, filling in blocks of color, bringing out details.

As the plants grow in unexpected ways, so our art grows on our canvas. And we remember the roots of where we started with making this image and witness what has grown out of the soil. Fruits and flowers blossom, as we stand back and observe what we created on the canvas or the page. Some fruits taste better to us than others; sometimes we want to add a little sugar or transform it into a preserve, or jam. Other times, we enjoy the fruit just as it is, fresh off the branches.

Whatever the outcome of our gardening/painting efforts, we can be surprised by what has grown, what has shrunk into the soil to nurture what wants to come forward and what is flourishing. And now we can sit with the plants or the artifact and muse about what comes forth.

This theme this month inspires us as we think of you and all our members; our community consciously choosing to explore their relationship with the Earth. How do you nurture nature and how are you nurtured by nature in return? If you have not had a chance to watch this months Artist Circle, it is available on your Membership Portal and there is an Intentional Creativity process for you to create and explore with this month. We’d love to witness your journey in the iMusea app and see your musings.

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe — to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it — is a wonder beyond words.”
― Joanna Macy

~ By Marnie Dangerfield with input from Chatelle Jeram