Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Arts Gospel: Reconciling My Artistic Identities

By LESLIE JOHNSTON, MFA student in the Writing and Consciousness MFA program

This post was written as an assignment for Professor Cindy Shearer’s Aesthetics of Value course. In Aesthetics of Value, students explore their arts heritage and inquire into the values that guide their creative work.

The church of my childhood overtly embraced the arts, using music and performance to open hearts and minds, a zealous form of evangelism known throughout our community. These were my earliest beginnings as an artist: a vocalist singing in the choir or as a soloist, an actor participating in one of the many theater productions, and even a puppeteer—my own beginnings as an evangelist.

My grandparents infused their art into their ministry. For over 30 years, they were an integral part of one of today’s most widespread Christian radio stations, Heralding Christ Jesus’ Blessing. Grandpa was given the gift of his hand and his heart. He studied art education, only to become a minister, and later a missionary in Quito, Ecuador. He used chalk art as his medium for spreading the gospel, telling stories from the Bible to children and adults across the world.

Grandma was given the gift of her hands, her voice, and her heart. She played the piano most of her life, using it in her ministry, and produced records, while spreading the good news in English and in Spanish to children and adults across the world. Sometimes my grandparents married their art forms, creating entire programs in which grandpa would draw and grandma would sing—the visual and the oral combined made for a captivated audience.

The church has had a long-running love affair with the arts, for better or for worse, using the arts when it benefits their cause, shutting them down when they begin to challenge their position. The situation becomes even more hairy when the church and the state have a shared interest: not only do the arts pose a threat to the position of the church, but can intimidate those with political power. There is great power in the arts, but more often than not they are seen as something superfluous—an oxymoron in and of itself. The arts are usually the first thing to be cut in our schools. The Dark Ages happened for a reason.

I suppose it is rather easy to equate republican with Christian in our country these days, but both my grandparents are actually democrats. As an adult, I understand that the world is not as black and white as it sometimes appears. I do not want to have to be one thing, or another. Republican or democrat. Christian or not. Artist or not. Gay or not.

In all actuality, I am what some people would call a recovering (gay) Christian. I’ve had a lot of messy territory to navigate within the church, within my family, and with my own self, after realizing that I loved women. Words have been a very important part of that process, and so has my education.

Knowledge truly is power.

Words offered me a tool to better understand the deeper meaning of life, to look more closely below the surface of things, to think more critically and to evaluate. The arts have played a big role in the development of my self-esteem, self-acceptance, and communication skills. My arts education has made me a better person, as did the church.

Like my grandparents using their art to spread the gospel, I want to spread the arts to as many people as possible in my lifetime, making my mark, using my gift, advocating change, while encouraging expression for those people that remain in silence or in isolation. 

It is only fitting that I ended up pursuing my master of fine arts degree at California Institute of Integral Studies in an arts program that emphasizes integration, interdisciplinarity, and the importance of finding the educator in the artist, the artist in the educator. As they say, teach the student, not the subject. Over the years, I have come to realize what I love most about the church: its sense of community, how it brings people together. It is the same reason I love the arts. 

The Courageous Nature of the Detail

By APRIL SERR, student in the Writing and Consciousness MFA program

This post was written as an assignment for professor Cindy Shearer’s Aesthetics of Value course. In Aesthetics of Value, students explore their arts heritage and inquire into the values that guide their creative work.   

When I entered into the Writing and Consciousness MFA program I thought I wanted to learn how to write stories. And I did. I already had an understanding of how to write essays, but I had these incredible scenes swimming around in my mind. Oh, I thought, if only I could capture these scenes into words that tell a story.

What I did not understand was that the yearning to tell stories was all tied up in a deeper yearning to understand my own place in the world. And that this would require bravery and tenacious grit, the same qualities I wanted my heroines to have. I found myself writing lines and lines of abstract scenes because I was afraid of the details. In the details lurked sensory memory, and sensory memory evoked my own repressed memories, both childhood ones and adult ones. Not just the mental memories; oh no, those I had categorized and filed in safe form. I mean the in-the-gut, sensory experience of grief, loss, shock, love, awe.

When I finally sat my butt down with the focused determination of a stubborn cat and sunk into the details of the scenes, I found myself carried away into the life of my characters. I cried and laughed for them and with them. It all happened by paying attention to how the details of life evoked experience, memory, emotion, and action in a character. In paying attention to the details of my character’s lives, I find myself ever more present with the details of my own life.

I feel a certain vulnerability allowing these sensuous, lively details to surface into my writing, as if I’m allowing myself to be revealed naked before a world of people I do not know. Perhaps this is because, as Patricia Hampl says in her essay “The Dark Art of Description,” “in descriptions we hear and feel the absorptions of the author in the material. We sense the presence of the creator of the scene.” By writing the intimate details of a story I am revealing something intimate about myself.

This is frightening in its vulnerability yet beautiful in its revelation. For not only am I revealing something of myself to others, I am revealing something to myself. The details of my character’s lives allow me to step out of the way of what I think I think and what I think I know. It is there that I have moments of letting go, or surrendering into a creative expression that teaches and informs me. This aspect of my creative channel expresses for me that which my own thinking mind cannot describe. I learn something about myself, or life, and I am changed. I know now that this change is the source of the yearning that pulls me into writing stories. While I want my stories to be admired and loved, I see now that it is the moments of realization and understanding that come to me through my characters that will keep me engaged in my writing. And it all happens in the details.

Integral Ecology: PCC Professor Elizabeth Allison on the Spiritual Effects of Melting Glaciers

By BRYNN SAITO, poet, program coordinator for the Department of Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry, and instructor in the Bachelor or Arts Completion program

Most research on climate change examines its physical effects on the environment: the rate of rising sea levels, the pace of melting glaciers, and other measurable material shifts. Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) faculty member Elizabeth Allison is intent on going deeper: “I’m interested in the spiritual and emotional impacts of climate change: What is the interior, human response?”  Dr. Allison’s research is part of the burgeoning field of religion and ecology, with PCC faculty currently offering several new courses in this area of study.

As Dr. Allison began reading journalistic accounts, she noticed that reporters often referred to melting glaciers as if they were living, breathing entities that once were “alive,” and now were “dying,” like “lepers, losing their parts.” Such personification underlies the intimate connection we form with our surroundings—it’s this connection that has propelled Allison’s past research on religion and environmental protection in Bhutan and Nepal.

“In Bhutan, Buddhists believe that deities inhabit different parts of the landscape—a grove of trees, mountaintop, a patch of forest, a bend in the river, for instance.  In those areas,” explains Allison, “there are certain restrictions and rules around what you can and cannot do to the land.” This is a striking example of conservation practices shaped by local religious beliefs.

Last October, Allison joined dozens of scholars in discussing such issues in Kathmandu, Nepal, as part of “Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalayas,” an exploratory initiative organized by The New School in New York City and funded by the Luce Foundation.  Scholars from Tibet, India, China, Bhutan, Nepal, and the U.S. gathered in this hot spot of cultural and biodiversity to pose research questions about what contributes to human and environmental sustainability, and to consider the role of religion and spirituality in environmental conservation.

Allison’s interest in melting glaciers extends from a similar question: What is the relation between environmental change and religious and/or spiritual perceptions?  What sorts of spiritual and philosophical quandaries does environmental displacement raise? In 2003, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term “solastalgia”: a condition in which people feel dislocated and anxious in their home landscape due to material changes around them. “Solastalgia is a combination of solace and nostalgia,” says Allison.  “I’m doing preliminary research on three places where people have a spiritual connection to glaciers.  Local people in the Yunnan region of China, the Andes, and the Himalayas associate their deities with mountain glaciers.  I want to understand the consequences of glacial retreat for local religion and spirituality.”

“My desire is to have this sort of dialogue between religion and ecology be more present in public life. CIIS is the perfect place to begin this interdisciplinary dialogue.” Furthermore, Allison notes that “religion and spirituality have been largely left out of the analysis of environmental problems.” As her work at an environmental restoration NGO taught her, many activists can easily lose sight of the larger picture and experience burn out. “Many people have a spiritual affinity with nature, or at least a special place they’re nostalgic about, or want to preserve for their children,” says Allison. “It was this place or connection that brought them into environmental concern in the first place.  When the connection to a special place or plant or animal is lost, people lose their connection to something larger, and their motivation for environmental action. Surroundings matter.” If your surroundings begin to shift on a huge and irreversible scale, then preliminary research suggests the emotional effects may be even more prevalent.

Nonetheless, Allison remains hopeful: Environmental awareness and protective legislation have increased substantially over the last 50 years, and more universities continue to develop programs in environmental studies. “In PCC, we talk a lot about what Joanna Macy calls ‘The Great Turning,’ a large scale movement toward a more environmentally-sustainable and socially just future,” she explains. “We are fortunate to live in a time when people all over the world are working to bring about this vision of the future.”

Artistic Heritage(s): What Do You Love, Why Do You Love It?

By STEVEN ARMSTRONG, MFA student in the Writing and Consciousness MFA program

This post was written as an assignment for professor Cindy Shearer’s Aesthetics of Value course. In Aesthetics of Value, students explore their arts heritage and inquire into the values that guide their creative work.

Arts heritage: What is this and what does it mean? The term alone sounded interesting enough to warrant a closer look. At the end of my first year in the Writing and Consciousness program at CIIS, I was presented with a taste of the notion of one's arts heritage (or as faculty member, Anne Bluethenthal, called it, one’s "spiralage”) by asking the question, What do you love? This question allowed for a fun way to explore what interested and influenced me as an artist, and to share that proudly.

The Aesthetics of Value course with Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts professor, Cindy Shearer, offered another doorway that lead into a deeper space for the exploration of my arts heritage. The process of digging into the trunk of my arts heritage felt like doing an extensive search for my earliest known relative on Ancestry.com (which I have tried, in case you were wondering). Beginning at the beginning, I charted the path that led me to where I am today. Drawing was where it all started for me, as a kid in elementary school. I often daydreamed, and relished every opportunity I got to unleash my imagination and pour some of what I saw in my daydreams on to a sheet of paper. During that same time period, I was also introduced to writing as a way to express my thoughts and feelings. I resisted writing at first, feeling that it wasn't as interesting or as fun as drawing. However, it wasn't long before I was using both drawing and writing as outlets for my creativity. Going through and reliving the accomplishments and heartaches of my formative years regarding my arts endeavors, I was brought back to that place of past joys and discovered the how and why of what I do. It was about finding the simplest, most uncomplicated reason for making art: it made me happy, as cliché as that may be.

After having stopped drawing for a number of years—with little dips back into drawing, my “arts mother"—I focused most exclusively on my “arts father,” writing, which led me to CIIS. I've now returned to drawing while still using writing to express and also challenge myself. I also picked up other forms of expression along the way to CIIS, in music and film, and discovered the love affair that writing, music and film can have. Inquiring into my arts heritage took the question of What Do You Love beyond the fun factor: that is, it reintroduced me to what I am interested in with a more analytical and curious eye, in order to understand why. Merely identifying what I love doesn't go as far as figuring out why I’m drawn to what I love. For me, that's what Cindy Shearer’s Aesthetics of Value course has been about, too. Yes, these pieces of my arts heritage make me happy to explore, but they also test me, both consciously and unconsciously. In the end, I think that this is the task that artists choose in creating their art.

Art as a Tool of Transformation

By SARAH LOOMIS, visual artist, CIIS student, and CIIS staff member

This post was written as an assignment for professor Cindy Shearer’s Aesthetics of Value course. In Aesthetics of Value, students explore their arts heritage and inquire into the values that guide their creative work.

In Cindy Shearer’s "Aesthetics of Value" course, my classmates and I explored our personal artist lineage as a method of deeper inquiry into our aesthetic choices as artists and writers. As I’ve delved into my past, I’ve gained insight into the larger impact of my childhood and family life, and I can now see many profound ways in which my current body of work was shaped by my upbringing.

For instance, I'm discovering how scale and size, drawing style, subject matter, and material choices are not just something I am drawn to, but rather, have a specific source. Having experienced trauma and abuse in my family, I’ve struggled with vulnerability and being "seen" throughout my life. I’ve often been drawn to the small and hidden. I am aware that wounds both seen and unseen can become ingrained parts of all of us, and I understand how this has surfaced in my aesthetic choices.

"as long as we shall live" by Sarah Loomis

My art focuses on my personal history, how my story may relate to humanity as a whole. Through the metaphor of trees and the body, I explore concepts of wounds and healing; I investigate notions of absence and presence that exist between loss and recovery, destruction and preservation in varying degrees.

My work examines the vulnerability and complexity of emotions and the human experience. Working on a very small scale and with delicate pieces, I often make use of found, used, and discarded materials, such as wood, photos, or bottles.. By using materials that already have a past and their own stories, I engage in a healing process by taking these objects and interweaving new life and beauty into something that was once thrown away or considered useless.

“if only it were that easy” by Sarah Loomis

One of my greatest insights from Shearer's course is that, in my personal process of healing from my past wounds, my art has changed and transformed into a clearer and stronger body of work since I initially began several years ago. The transformative process within is changing the art, and, more importantly, the practice of making art is becoming the transformative tool for personal growth, like a symbiotic relationship giving to each other over and over. 

“the capacity to give” by Sarah Loomis

The process of knowing myself more substantially has led to a more meaningful artistic inquiry. For years, I’ve been aware of my reasons why I make the work I do. As a serious artist, this is critical in developing a concise, meaningful body of work. However, what has changed for me is that I’ve realized, since first making this body of work, that I’ve changed significantly in positive ways. My past few years have become about me shedding my past, identifying ways that I limit or hinder myself due to wounds as a child, and ultimately, fully realizing myself as an artist. As a result, my propensity to be small, hidden, and safe is no longer as relevant for me. In these exercises overall, I’ve discovered that striving for perfection in myself is just an illusion that keeps me small, and that the real perfection and beauty is in the imperfect. I’ve learned that there is immense strength in self-acceptance, vulnerability, and revealing my personal story in my work, and ultimately I am more engaged and alive in my creative process because of it.

The New Generation of Chicana Art

By BECKY FARRAR, arts intern

“I use art as a tool for the transformation and education of our country,” said Favianna Rodriguez during last Saturday’s ChicaChic Intergenerational Panel, hosted by The Arts at CIIS. “It’s a human right to have access to arts and culture.”

Rodriguez joined fellow ChicaChic artist Angelica Muro in conversation with local artists Patricia Rodriguez and Lorraine García-Nakata to discuss art’s role in shaping the future. Moderator Viva Paredes and the artists discussed the shifting concerns and circumstances of artists of Chicano and Latino descent in relation to their work, audience, and community.

Art by Favianna Rodriguez

The event was held in conjunction with the ChicaChic exhibit at CIIS, which features the works of five contemporary Chicana artists with Bay Area roots. While the works of these artists explore contemporary issues, the artists show reverence for the tireless visionary work of the veterana/os, the artists who emerged during the Chicano civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s, also known as El Movimiento.

For instance, art-based campaigns and public service announcements were common forms of expression during El Movimiento, reflecting shared ideas about community and audience. The ChicaChic exhibit was promoted partially through BART campaign; posters were plastered in BART stations throughout San Francisco, which brought the work of these five artists to a wide, diverse audience.

The challenge for "la nueva ondo," the new generation of Chicana artists, is to address the emerging conditions of the millennium, such as environmental degradation and the dangers of consumerism, while still honoring the legacy of El Movimento.

Saturday’s panel discussion focused on the importance of art as a means of catalyzing change. Muro, a professor at California State University, Monterey Bay, described the challenge of teaching her students that art can be created with a purpose and not simply for the sake of making art. García-Nakata echoed Muro's concerns and said that creating art as political work is crucial, arguing that now more ever it’s critical for people to step up.

Art by Angelica Muro

García-Nakata knows firsthand the importance of building community to generate change from the ground up. During the 1970s, García-Nakata was one of the primary members of the renowned Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF). The mission of the RCAF was to bring together the Chicano civil rights movement with the labor organizing work of the United Farm Workers of America. They formed a community; bilingual/bicultural artists found avenues for public, artistic, cultural, and educational programs and events.  For the past 40 years RCAF has continued as a collective to engage communities, celebrating their culture and history, and supporting the continued struggle for equal rights.

Rodriguez was a key contributor to the Chicano civil rights movement through the Mujeres Muralistas (The Women Muralists) collective from 1970-79. Rodriguez’s home on now-famous Balmy Alley in the Mission District was the meeting point and hangout spot for the Mujeres, and from that centerpoint the Mission mural movement continues to grow today. After the 1980s Rodriguez became one of the first Chicana artists to teach in the University of California system. Today she continues to create art and pushes youth to do the same.

Throughout the discussion the panelists encouraged the audience to redefine community and expressed the need to cultivate and support the development and visibility of artists of color. As Muro put it, “There should be more of us!”

The ChicaChica exhibit will run through March 18. Visit the Arts at CIIS website for more information.

How Potassium Iodide Can Protect You in a Nuclear Emergency

By MEG JORDAN, chair of the Integrative Health Studies program, and NEIL FREESE, online content editor

As containment efforts are hampered by an array of setbacks and malfunctions, the fate of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was critically damaged during last week’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, has become increasingly uncertain.

While the potential for a full-scale meltdown at one or more of the power plant’s six nuclear reactors remains, it’s important to remember that catastrophe is not a foregone conclusion. We should remain calm as the situation unfolds and be wary of misinformation.

Nevertheless, should a worst-case scenario become reality, it’s possible that nuclear fallout could affect California. There are no failsafe ways to protect yourself from excessive radiation, but you should consider stocking potassium iodide capsules or scored tablets in your medicine cabinet.

A little background: During a nuclear accident, radioactive iodine can be released into the air. Radioactive iodine can enter your body through ingestion or inhalation, and is absorbed by the thyroid gland.

Potassium iodide is a supplement that, as mentioned above, can be taken as a capsule or tablet. Potassium iodide blocks the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid. Potassium iodide supplements do not, however, prevent radioactive atoms from entering your body.

You should only take the potassium iodide supplement if the health department issues a warning that radioactive exposure is imminent. The recommended dose is one 130 mg tablet per day. 

We've just checked with Vitamin Shoppe and three other retailers, and not surprisingly, there are sold out. There are still some reliable online stores. We recommend Life Extension.

RESOURCES:

Learn about radiation protection, and specifically about radioactive iodine, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency >>

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency preparedness and response wesbite has a lot of useful information on potassium iodide >>

Protecting yourself in a nuclear emergency with potassium iodide >>

Crossword Puzzles, Sudoku, and…Rubrics?

By PHILIP BROOKS, associate professor in the Integral Counseling Psychology program and a long-time member of the CIIS Integral Education Committee

I recently attended the second annual Expanding the Circle conference, an inspirational and informative national conference sponsored by CIIS and held at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco, which focused on “creating an inclusive environment in higher education for LGBTQ students and studies.” In one of the concurrent sessions on assessment, "Measuring LGBTQ Student Success and the Role of Assessment in Academic and Student Affairs," I “came out” as a person who enjoys creating rubrics. Given the tenor of the conversation during that meeting, and the perceived level of interest in rubrics at CIIS, I believe this is a minority position.

For me, filling in the cells of a rubric matrix is a challenging brainteaser. It's fun to think about what exceptional performance and very poor performances looks like, and then wrestle with the spectrum of performances between the two. I offer the following row of cells on the hard to define, but clinically important dimension of presence, from a recent rubric that the Integral Counseling Psychology department created to use in our admissions process. (Presence is one of seven dimensions considered.)

Presence

Is engaged in the moment even if nervous. Is fully "alive" in the role play as therapist and client, Exhibits a non-defensive openness and personal clarity.

Mostly engaged. Performance anxiety may limit interview, but it is acknowledged. Makes "good enough" connection. Is able to show vulnerability.

Not fully "here" in interview, is in and out. May or may not acknowledge anxiety but can't transcend it. Shows a limited capacity for revealing self, insensitive to others.

Presents as disconnected or vague. May be reactive in interview, and be brittle when challenged. Seems unaware of self in the moment. Emotionally unavailable.

I can understand the resistance to rubrics, much as I can understand why people don't warmly embrace thinking in terms of mission, goals, and objectives. It seems to smack of a corporatization of The Academy, and a move toward the science of teaching and away from the art of this profession.

In actually working within this paradigm over the past seven years, my experience has been different. I've come around to sensing that it's fair to spell out what we expect students to gain from our classes, and it seems fair to then assess them based on transparent, understandable, and consistent variables.

Rubrics help students understand what is expected of them in relatively concrete ways. A well- constructed and well-utilized rubric gives a student or trainee a sense of where they are, and a reasonably defined sense of where improvement lies.

A major roadblock to the creation of clear and creative rubrics is that it takes time. It takes time to struggle with the nuances that differentiate fair performance from good performance, and it takes time to get feedback on the drafts, as well as consensus within the faculty as to the accuracy of the measures that are produced. I found the free website Rubistar to be particularly helpful. As a non-tech guy, I also found that Rubistar was easy to use (and they give examples).

Thus, if you want to generate a set of expectations for writing assignments which you can use and modify semester after semester, or if you want to specify levels of attainment of counseling skills, consider creating a rubric. The effort may help you clarify your thinking, provide more transparent measures of performance and/or growth, and help generate quantifiable data for assessment. I hope this was helpful for you, for me it’s a reminder to get back to work on those Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) that we have identified for our Final Integrative Seminar class.

Make Thought Visible: Revealing the Unconscious Through Visual Art

By TRICIA GRAME, visual artist and faculty member in the Department of Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry

Our imaginations are so expansive and fertile. Art constantly embodies our endless wonder, concerns and thoughts. Creating art is not always a replica of life, but rather a tool for insight which seems to choose our imagining. Art is a metaphor! Most artists agree that interpreting and understanding their work is not meant to be a controlled or a fixed experience. One's art can be filled with storytelling and rich, provocative information, yet may offer no concrete vehicle for its interpretation. The audience must then seek its own explanation or simply absorbs its sublimity. Thus, an internal dialogue will begin without the spoken word, and thoughts become visible.

In the last few years, words have become more integral in my paintings. The elasticity of the painted text and my ability to immediately paint symbols and images began to pour out of me. My questions, thoughts and opinions were turned into art forms. I love the way the words grab you, force you to see them, scream at you, and demand that you read them. I love the materiality of paint, script, and texture and how they can act as uncanny records of time. My work feels both aged and immediate, with obvious or subtle hints of words and thoughts surfacing just beneath the layers of paint. Sometimes my words appear to be buried within or a second thought. I feel like I am recording my thoughts as I try to understand the fragility of my Being. There really is no boundary: it is the paint, the symbols, and the written word that communicate my message.

The artist is granting permission to the viewer to enter her imagination, her journey. It is a deeply personal and intimate place. Whether the written language appears to shout or whisper, it still embodies delicate, essential thoughts, coming from deep inside, entangled and inseparable from all else that reveals itself onto the canvas. A painted word, like a symbol, can add certain emotions or different layers of meaning. This may reflect what Carl Jung described as the concept of active imagination, a kind of meditation in which the emotions are expressed as images, or entities, or stories. 

A successful work of art can consume you, encompass and at the same time jolt your senses, make you pause, stop breathing, capture your body and mind. Some people cannot let go, the art can possess and exhaust you.  Others may attempt to inquisitively snoop into the private language of the artist with a strong desire to understand the artist’s vernacular language, the mystery. The painted word is evidence of thinking that tends to reach beyond the borders of the canvas and expands conventional language. No doubt, people will read it differently and attempt to decode it. The combination of symbols and words are a subversive way for the viewer to become engaged both visually and conceptually. The viewer then starts to free-associate or to analyze the handwriting.  A dialogue between the unconscious and conscious will continue to supply the fuel for our creativity. 
 

In 1940, George Orwell wrote "New Words," an essay about the stages of creativity, the roles of the left and right brain. Art, with or without recognizable images, can be read like a language that can also reveal what has been going on in the mind of the artist. Art can objectify thought, so that it can be seen.

There is a hidden language in one's unconscious that can be revealed and released through the mystery of art and the creative process. Thus, it is not simply a matter of making original works of art, it is the discovery of linking the past to the future in a continuing cycle of growing self-awareness. My work is an exploration, a search for language, in order to express the story, through the soul of my creativity. It is a visual and textual autobiography documenting the power of art as a transformative vehicle. The language of the unconscious is revealed and released through the creative process, becoming tangible in the work of art. Together, the painted text and symbols document my experience of the transformative cycle between art and life.