Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Crazy Brave Feminist Offers Empowering Perspective on Grace

By ADA SEINE KAI, a student in the Writing and Consciousness MFA program at CIIS. She received her MA in East-West Psychology and splits her time between writing poetry and sharing poetry through movement and myth in the yoga sessions she leads. She lives in San Francisco, where she is working on her first book of poems.

This post was written as an assignment for professor Brynn Saito's multi-genre MFA-level writing workshop, WRC 7093. In this class, students produce new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, while reflecting on their lives, influences, and processes as artists and writers.

I know better than to judge a book by its cover, but I’ve met some life-changing poems after judging them on their titles. I knew I was going to like Joy Harjo’s prose-poem "Grace" the moment my eye caught that word. Grace, so soft and unassuming, is packed with the grating feeling of masculine power-over and divine withholding. I remember too many hell-talks on Sunday to be able to think of grace as meaning much besides: I am doing it all wrong. Other traditions helped me soften to the concept some, but that early imprint—as they tend to do—stuck.

The need for resolution and the promise of emotional depth drew me into the poem. It helped to know that Harjo is of both Western European and Native American descent (Cherokee and Creek). As a young feminist of similarly mixed origin (Shawnee and Irish), I resonate strongly with her indigenous voice and use of natural symbols. The first lines of Grace are bold and elegant. “I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox.” She plainly says what she wants to say; there are no contrived line breaks or mechanisms to toy with us.

The whole poem is right there. Harjo unpacks it with a bit of narrative arc, but the meaning is ours for the taking, if we like. It is an invitation, on our terms. These lines define an ambivalent relationship with grace, and they express a complexity between the invisible and visible world that is developed later in the poem. At once there is a heart-breaking depth of pain alongside the lightness of language that perfectly captures the empowered experience of grace. “We had to swallow the town with laughter, so it would go down easy, like honey.” It is a tough choice, but it is still their choice.

As a perpetual outsider, Harjo provides insight into how we see ourselves as women from culture to culture. From her poem, "Book of Myths":

There is Helen in every language; in American her name is Marilyn / but in my subversive country, / she is dark earth and round and full of names / dressed in bodies of women / who enter and leave the knife wounds of this terrifyingly / beautiful land; / we call ourselves ripe and pine tree woman.

The sensuality of earth, nature, and roundness provide images that empower women away from the violent and oppressive symbolism of patriarchal systems that might call a beautiful woman, say, a bombshell blonde with killer legs. What does it take to live in that subversive country? It definitely takes bravery to change our word choice and meaning-making systems. And it must also take a little bit of crazy to provide that unique perspective in the first place.

The poems cited here are from the collection of poems “She Rises Like the Sun,” edited by Janine Canan. Joy Harjo's memoir, “Crazy Brave” came out this summer. For more on Joy Harjo’s music, writings, and poetic adventures visit her blog.

Loom in Essence, Part II

By GERARDO MEDINA

 This post was written as an assignment for Professor Brynn Saito's multi-genre MFA-level writing workshop, WRC 7093. In this class, students produce new fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, while reflecting on their lives, influences, and processes as artists and writers.

 Since my first blog on knitting, published on September 20, I have continued my meditations. In fact, after the initial post, I had the opportunity to listen to some classmates, many of whom were experiencing difficult times in their personal lives. I was amazed at how well they were coping with their adversities. One student said something to the effect that sometimes relationships change beyond our control.

Because the image of the mixed fiber scarf was so fresh in my mind, my thoughts came back to it... in the case of knitting, whether using mixed fibers or not, sometimes we need to let the yarn dictate itself; but even then, we have patterns to give us structure and no matter what happens in the end, it’s still part of the tapestry of our lives.

The images below are all in simple garter stitch but with different yarns:

 

Book Nerd

By LAURA TOWNE, student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

 This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees. 

I’m the first to admit I’m a book nerd. I actually get excited about looking things up in the dictionary and hours magically slip by when I crack open my atlas. I have way too many books for someone my age. At last count, there were 402 books in my personal library, but that number has surely grown since then. They occupy four bookcases—no small feat in a tiny Bay-area one-bedroom—and when I am deep in my creative process, they overflow to stacks beside my bed and on my desk, sometimes taking up more space on the couch than I do. It’s reassuring just to have their energy near me—I am a collector of books because it’s the closest I can get to the people who wrote them.

There are books on yoga, dreaming, intuition, poetry, shamanism, astrology, Buddhism, art, reincarnation, ayurveda, astronomy, physics, mythology, energy healing, writing, gardening, tantra, entheogens, sacred geometry, metaphysics, spirituality...as well as novels and practical books about tangible things like 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions. I could keep going, but you get the idea. Clearly, CIIS is the right school for me. Before moving to the Bay area to attend CIIS, I was the only person I knew with such an eclectic collection of books, a fact I kept hidden most of the time, as if spirituality was a secret I was afraid to admit. Now, a year and a quarter into earning my master’s degree in Writing and Consciousness, I am surrounded by people immersed in these subjects—so immersed that we often pause to laugh at ourselves: when did we become these people that “hold space” and talk about “the divine feminine” and say “hold on a minute, let me get back in my body”? (I’m delighted to know we aren’t the only ones laughing at ourselves – check out this video.)

Power to Be the Gatekeeper of my Own Borders

By MELANIE TORMOS, second year student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

Be proud of who you are, reads my Yogi Tea flag. I admit that I sometimes look to these tiny words for guidance; these Chinese fortune cookies of these post-modern mystic times. Illumination radiates from mundane places.

Who am I?

Female. Heterosexual. White. Slavic. Puerto Rican. Student. Artist. Teacher. Yogi. Sister. Daughter. Employee. Business Owner. Ego. Soul. The list of labels ticks on and on, and yet I don’t find an answer to my question. The list is convenient. It is inaccurate, even as it tries to constellate my identity into a definitive shape. The brittle connections between the labels feels without flesh, without warmth, making me reach for cup after cup of tea. My inquiry has become a quest to get to the deep roots of image as it relates to my body, my heart, my mind, my spirit. I have challenged myself with the task of translating the sensual creature that is my body into paint marks and color, into pattern and texture.  I bridge worlds with art-making, feeling it necessary to explore why our society hungrily consumes the image, but cannot be satisfied by the skeletal, stripped-down meanings often assigned to it.

I am by way of connection, and I am by way of distinction. My process of art-making has become a way of mapping out those pathways and boundaries. While my experience of this world is porous, I still claim the power to be the gatekeeper of my own borders.  Creating a piece of artwork is a way to honor the territory before it changes, and to honor the inevitability that it will, indeed, change. Each piece gives me a moment of recentering, crystallizing the liminality of being.

Vision and Dream/Dream and Vision

By AARON ROSE, second year student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

I came to the MFA program with a dream and a vision: to become a writer of fiction, and to create a ceremonial practice that reclaims art as sacred ritual for individual and collective transformation and healing.

Coming of age in the 60s and early 70s, I am a child of the generation that came careening out of convention, dazzled by glimpses of the Age of Aquarius.

My own rebirth, a radical and traumatic process, required a 40-year journey of deep personal healing and repatterning, finding along the way a like-hearted community of seekers who found home in ancient wisdom and medicine ways carried by indigenous brothers and sisters throughout the world. From the ones who walk in harmony with the Earth, I adopted a cosmology and container of love and knowing that supports every aspect of my life.

Seven years ago, I stood on a street in a west side Chicago neighborhood, asking if I might create a work of art that would propel the social justice to which I had dedicated my passion and professional career. What came to me from the collective unconscious was an idea, a story that has become my novel-in-progress, “Lawndale,” about place, race, and healing the past to midwife the future.

Making the decision to enter the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts program, I thought that dedication to my spiritual vision and the service of community building would support my heart’s desire: to write a novel.

After a year of attempting to think my way toward creating a ceremonial arts practice, three weeks ago, on the Autumn Equinox, the beating of my heart called me back to center: to the writer I am and to the novel I had taken such pains to birth. Now focused on nurturing “Lawndale,” I realize that clarity on the journey toward serving community will come when I am aligned with my primary soul purpose.

Where Saltwater Meets Sea Sand and the Richness of Interstitial Space

By NANCI PRICE SCOULAR, second year student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

I am currently reading Mark Doty’s "Heaven’s Coast," his memoir on losing his beloved partner to HIV/Aids in the mid-1990s. Ever-tuned to “insight(s) from the seemingly commonplace," Doty’s coast is a uniquely interstitial space and a metaphor for Life as a whole. “Any shore is a meeting place of continuous activity, of constant negotiation between earth and water, relations shifting by the hour and season. What is land at noon may be sea at three."

Doty goes on to comment that “(T)his shape-shifting makes the forms and aspects of things mercurial, inconstant – as if this conjunction of elements, life on the boundary, made things themselves restless”.

I began to look for other artists exploring interstitial spaces. Two in particular captured my attention, based on the diversity of their respective approach, medium and artwork.

C Dougherty, a video artist, writer, photographer, and blogger, photographed “unintentional art emerge(ing) in the interstitial space that occurs between one advertisement and the next” in the subways of New York. He caught the moments after one poster has been torn down and before the next one replaced it.

 

Photo by C Dougherty

Photo by C Dougherty

Painter Roger Chavez takes a different approach in his current show at Ursinus College outside Philadelphia. Titled, "Interstitial Spaces: Void and Object, Recent Works by Roger Chavez," the paintings live in the space between portraiture and still life, creating a very atmospheric and dreamy sense of interstitial space.

 

Work by Roger Chavez

 

 

Work by Roger Chavez

They are in sharp contrast to the jagged edges and ruined images that define Dougherty’s photographs. Chavez’s paintings feel as though they are changing in front of our eyes, despite the fact that the brain registers dry paint.

In my own work, I am drawn to where the sea and the sand ebb and flow. It’s a no-man’s land, constantly in flux. Conquered by the invading ocean, then reclaimed as sand when the tide recedes, only to be invaded again by gentle eddies until the waves regain their strength. The constant give and take is not in vain however—it erases the boundaries between two forces of nature, creating an interstitial space of watery sand that constantly shapes and reshapes the contours of the shoreline itself. A space that is rich in its diversity—strands of seaweed, thousands of broken bits of shell, small pebbles, bird’s feathers and tiny crabs.

What would my interstitial space look like? Could I weave together different elements of myself to create such diversity and richness? Would that comfort the immigrant’s longing for a deep sense of home? Align more fully the responsible full-time corporate persona with the joyously creative part-time artist? Integrate the spirit of the woman on the land with the selkie in the sea?

As a start, I am weaving together the seawater and sea sand as homage to "Heaven’s Coast." This is a very simple response to the question above, and I will see where the journey takes me.

Bring Back Memory

By NICOLE KLAYMOON, student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

 Dance is like a lucid dream; fluid, indefinable, and ever changing, with a unique ability to transmit meaning that surpasses conscience thought. Beyond aesthetics and entertainment, dance is a form of coded language. Over the past three years I have been on a journey to more deeply understand the multi-faceted layers of nuanced communication through movement-based narratives, which culminated with my most recent production, "House of Matter." Through virtuosic street dance, poetic text, gesture, theater, and live song, "House of Matter" inquires into and articulates the subconscious stories that arise from distinct senses of embodiment. In essence, embodiment means to invest a spiritual entity with the physical form (e.g., ritual based dance, unearthing memory, and coming to voice with ones honest expression.) "House of Matter" is an investigation of the ways that our individual familial patterns become ingrained in our subconscious minds; consequently affecting our ability to find home in our physical bodies.  Through radically transparent language, both spoken and encapsulated inside of dance, the piece reveals a tapestry of each performer’s defining memories, secrets, and under-told stories; namely, ones of familial abuse, humanity, and heroism. 

The artist illuminates what dominant culture masks or buries. I seek to excavate buried lived experiences and belief systems, while simultaneously connecting personal story to its greater social cause. In essence, I am bridging the gap between my internal and external worlds, much like the symbiotic relationship between dreamtime and waking life. The subconscious mind naturally creates narrative through dreams. Dreaming is vital for our human survival and consciousness—if it wasn’t, then we would have gotten rid of it by now through the evolutionary process. The resolutions to the stories of our personal lives exist in our subconscious mind. We possess all the answers to our own problems, within the sub-terrain of our being.  Deep within the darkest R.E.M. cycles of sleep, we piece together our memory.  

"House of Matter" examines specific questions; how does the brain know how and when to block certain experiences? When we lack conscious awareness of something in our past, does it mean it never happened? Is all memory solely stored in the brain, or is it stored throughout the entire body? Is retrieving memory essential for our collective human evolution and if so, how? Understanding that narratives are the life-blood of our sub-conscience minds allows the company, as a whole, to embrace dance for its capacity to tap into, and express from, the multifaceted under-worlds of identity. In "House of Matter," the live vocals interwoven with the dance creates an emotional landscape where memories from the households in which each performer was raised can co-exist. The texture of the sofa, their mother’s perfume, the emotional undercurrents that commonly filled the air; the stories they do not tell but wear as heart frown or joy. 

Despite the diverse cultural backgrounds, family histories, and sexual orientations among the company members, they each discover a sense of likeness through their core longing, and at times desperation, for intimacy in all its facets (familial, artistic, romantic, platonic, spiritual…). Our first understanding of love, from when we were born, is what we will always look for in all our relations.  We are walking, fumbling, dancing vessels of history—searching to reconcile our past hurt through our present relationships. In this accelerated technology and climate change era, "House of Matter" speaks to a palpable urgency to address and dress these wounds of the past in order to responsively build a better future for earth’s progeny.

Never Completed, Yet Constantly Refined

By SARIA IDANA, student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

Mentors of mine have urged me to integrate my many aspects, artistic and personal, believing this would bring me greater success and ease in life. I first began the process of integration a few years ago, in an art and activism leadership training. I am starting to think integration is a process that never completes yet is constantly refined. As a person with multiple passions, I find integration to be no easy task. Assembling all the disparate pieces to understand the whole can be painful, disconcerting and agonizing. Understanding how my personal past has affected my creative present, how my actor self informs my singer self, is like finding the puzzle pieces needed to complete the picture, yet sometimes I’m not sure I want to know what the picture is. And still to be a whole of harmonious parts has become my goal.

I came to CIIS wanting to integrate, my artist and educator, my ethnic identity and my woman, my actor-writer-dancer-singer-musician-director. I am integrating my values with my art, my aesthetic with my content. I am starting to understand how all these pieces play in harmonious, and sometimes dissonant, ways to form the symphony that is my personal and public work. I hope one day I will understand how to rearrange these pieces creating related symphonic suites, but suspect I have already been doing this without realizing.

This stretching and aligning to become integrated is making me a better artist, educator, collaborator and a better human being. I find I exert less energy to accomplish more. Yet I often wake in the middle of the night with growing pains; my mind a mess of questions, my legs and shoulders sore. My process is all shook up and in a constant state of change while in a simultaneous state of solidification.

In the Spirit of Feminine Life and Color Flows

By JUAN CARLOS GONZALEZ, student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

 This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

 I am reflecting on how brush strokes, color mixing, and texture allow me to weave my emotional responses to imagery and make meaning in this untitled painting, oil on canvas 55” by 50”.

When I started this painting, I was making an inquiry into my feminine side and how I navigate different spaces where life and death are themes. Life-making decisions are fragile and sensitive for me and when I am painting, I engage myself completely in the processes. For example, I feel that when I am in the process of painting, I have the opportunity to follow the paint where it takes me. When making fragile or sensitive decisions, where and how do I use the paint? These questions have an enormous effect on which colors I want to mix: what do they mean to the process and within the context of the painting. I am making an inquiry into my feminine side because we are all mothers. We give birth to our creativity and our art forms; this affects the painting process as it gives birth to new imagery and color themes.

During the journey of making this painting, something really interesting happened to me. In response to my personal inquiry, my consciousness expanded. I continue reflecting on how this painting really embodied what it means for me to reside in the paint and in my feminine side.

While painting, I become more aware of how my feminine side really allows me to be myself—it allows space for emotions to be born without judgment and for the illumination of the imagery and colors that are used throughout my body of work.

The Portrait Project

By MICHELLE CHAMPLIN, student in the Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program

 This post was written for Cindy Shearer's CIA 7712: MFA Project. In these blogs, students are sharing their discoveries, reflections and learning as they enter the process of creating a body of art work and culminate their degrees.

My MFA project currently consists of several self portraits. Through the process of creating these I am honing in on and exploring ways of articulating my personal experience and emotions. Through this work, I hope to convey not only these personal aspects, but a larger concept.

I’ve attempted to base most portraits around an emotion that I have felt or was feeling at the time of creating the piece. To avoid a kind of staged look, I attempt to take photos of myself while in the middle of a thought or feeling—not a simple task. I hold my camera comfortably while resting my arm on something and try to forget about the fact that I’m about to take a picture of myself. I am typically inspired to do this when I am feeling something—anxiety, sadness, joy, etc. However, sometimes I don’t feel any strong emotion. I’ve taken a few pictures of myself while meditating; I then choose a photo and draw it. Recently I’ve found myself drawing the portraits while listening to jazz.

I’ve discovered that many of the drawings resemble what I feel I look like when I feel emotion. When feeling anxiety, the lines are thick and hard and my face is somewhat distorted. To me, it appears to be holding a significant weight of some kind. The line quality varies greatly according to the way I am feeling when drawing these images.