Member Zine Issue 3

by Jessica Richmond

Last week’s exhibit, Dream A Nu Dream, deeply affected me and has had me thinking about the nature of dreams. I’ve always thought of my ancestors as quintessentially skilled and talented but it hadn’t really ever dawned on me how much of a dreamer you have to be to be a farmer, to be able to live off the land. I understood it as an act born out of a need for survival, an integral part of it to be sure, but it also requires a great deal of dreaming as well as the ability to have faith in your dreams. A dream that needs to be planned for and organized with great depth, tended to hardily with infinite care, and patience for delayed gratification in the hopes that the fruits of your labor will come into being, while knowing that a thousand tiny or one gigantic thing could go wrong that could prevent the harvests from ever coming in.

The poem below was written during my Red Thread Guide Training. Part of the deeply personal work that has been emerging for me the past few years through the path of Intentional Creativity has been around ancestral healing. My ancestors were farmers, folk artists and musicians, and folk healers from deep in the Appalachian Mountain Range of Kentucky. While they would have never conceived of a name for it, they did it all with Intentional Creativity. They passed their skills along for many generations…as near back as my grandmother. However, she was too ill to continue these traditions so they became almost lost with my mother and I’m just now slowly beginning to reconnect with them.

I’ve realized that, for me, this is what it is to seed a dream. To invest your whole heart into your choices without any certainty that your dream will become a reality. And I think all the ways in which we create every day as an artists’ community here at Musea involve a parallel process of the seeding of dreams. From, will I like the painting I’m spending so much time creating when I don’t know what the outcome will be, to let’s create a Womens’ Museum on a wing and a prayer without any guarantees of what the turn out will be. The only grace we have with the process is the simple faith that the seeds we plant today hold the future potential of our heart’s desires. Just as Shiloh Sophia often teaches us – “Daring to Dream the Seemingly Impossible Dream”. And perhaps some of the ancient dreams of our ancestors, even the earth herself, still living within us can help us dream our new dreams as well.

This is a part of our collective identity here at Musea, something we claim and are proud of. We, are DREAMERS.

I hope that those of you who didn’t get a chance to view the Dream a nü Dream museum show, will consider visiting it today, allowing room for your own new, wild, artistic, beautiful dreams to be inspired!

A snapshot from last week’s live Museum Show

Last week Musea Intentional Creativity Museum had the great pleasure of hosting the Dream a nü Dream Museum Show with Laüra Hollick and photographer Kevin Thom – partners in creativity and life who make magnificent, intentional photographic artifacts of Laura artistically and colorfully intertwined with the natural world. Laüra and Kevin showed up for a live interview, which was hosted by Curator Shiloh Sophia and Jonathan McCloud, focused on the process of creative discovery, how Laüra comes up with the ideas and inspirations for her ‘scenes’, and the dedicated and often challenging process of putting their creative sets together, working as a couple, and the powerful devotion it takes to bring these dreams into reality.

So many of our Musea Members showed up to this experience, offering their supportive comments, reflections, smiles, and nods of appreciation and witness. There was something so special about this experience – the way that Laüra and Kevin’s intentional curation of their exhibit truly was an invitation for all who were present to Dream a nu Dream… It is enticing. It is full of possibility. It is a generous canvas for the imagination!

As a community we have been exploring the topic of IDENTITY in relationship to our overarching theme of We Are All Related. When considering your Identity, there are facets that may arise in your awareness. Your Identity may be constituted by many things, some that feel more predominant or more defining than others. Perhaps you Identify as an Artist, a Mother, or a Healer as your overarching identity (that which you are most passionate about, and committed to). And then there are the subtler hues of your identity, like sex, gender, culture, vocation, etc. Looking at the reflections from many in our community, it seems that our Identity is a combination of that which we inherently are and that which we consciously choose to do which ends up shaping who we are! So there is a tie in here with dreaming, can you guess what it is?

In order to shape our IDENTITY consciously, we often need to have a dream about ourselves and our world that we can tend to. A dream that calls us forward to show up every day in dream-making action. It really is how we become – we tune into the dream of who we want to be and how we will go about being it, often from a young age – and then we devote our lives to curating this dream. We live in response to dreaming.

When you consider Laüra Hollick and Kevin Thom’s incredible photographs, the way Laüra dreamed herself into being in these beautiful contexts, and then went about the daily work of putting all of the intricate pieces together that would ‘complete the picture’ (sometimes months of work!), it really comes into focus. Dreams catalyze devoted creative action, and devoted creative action shapes our Identity in service to the dream. And when we are dreaming together – for the healing of our earth, ending poverty, expanding the reach of love, world peace, safety for all children and women – we are attending to a dream together, one that becomes more of a reality with our shared devotional action. That is the power of individual identity and group identity woven together and held in place by dreams!

As we move into our final week of our exploration of IDENTITY, we invite you to revisit your watercolor journals once again, to paint and write out your ‘harvests’ of insight from this months relationship exploration. Perhaps on this page, allow yourself to tap in to your wildest dreams for your life and how this ties in to your current Identity. What new dreams can you allow yourself to dream and become into this year? 

We also invite you to read this beautiful museum show review of Dream a nü Dream, by Curator, Shiloh Sophia, who shares her personal reflections on the way this show impacted her, inviting further inquiry of course, as well as soak in the words of her poem below.

“Divine Wisdom” painting by Shiloh Sophia

Join us February 16 at 12 pm PT for the Museum Show and exhibit opening of Carnaval of Spirit Love! Our first BIWOC Member Exclusive Exhibit and Art Celebration! 

This Museum Virtual Show will be hosted by Musea Intentional Creativity Museum, with Collaborative Curation from the MUSEA BIWOC Leadership Team, including Elder Semerit Strachan and Elder Lauren Adorno-Weatherford, Sumaiyah Wysdom Yates and Milagros Suriano-Rivera, Curator Shiloh Sophia, and Curatorial Director, Amber Gould, as they take you on a visual journey of music, poetry, and an array of paintings that hold the souls and hearts of each BIWOC member.

This is an opportunity to take yourself on an Artist Date, and invite your family, friends, and community to join you at the virtual museum! We hope you will join us for an amazing show! Get Your Ticket Today