Nané Jordan:
Ma Whales: Arts and healing practices
During our week at McLoughlin Gardens, we experienced co-sustenance by gathering together as women, immersing in the natural beauty of this place in co-presence with the more- then-human-world of trees, plants, earth, rocks, seals, seaweed and shoreline of the powerful Salish Sea. Waking each morning to hear and see waves crash into the shoreline from wide windows of the Cottage, we were beckoned outside by this naturally healing land-place. We worked outside and in the studio space with the doors open to the Salish Sea, taking turns leading each other through an artmaking process each morning. We committed to time for personal or further collective artmaking in the afternoons, with evening check-in circles. We offer descriptions and highlights of our arts and healing practices, and the experiential, art-making impacts of dwelling on the beautiful land of McLoughlin Gardens.
Nané
Our initial multiple arrivals at the Gardens felt tinged by over-business, yet we each arrived in awe of, and grateful for, being in this beautiful place together. As mothers and community caregivers we often feel a sense of overwhelm as an impact of our maternal gifting work. We long for co-creative spaces of community care and restoration. Feeling our energies scattered and wanting to collect ourselves, I offered to lead the first artmaking process on Monday morning. The intention was to open a grounding way to feel into ourselves, attune to and draw from the natural beauty of the land. I offered a gently-led process of cyclical wisdom teachings, embodied womb-movement, followed by a period of resting on Mother Earth to sense into our dreams, with art making of textile-based dream flags in the studio.
We experienced powerful results with this workshop by collectively taking time to breath, feel into ourselves, and lie down on Mother Earth, leading into an imaginal art making space of the dream flags. We spent the afternoon sewing these through a calming sewing and chatting bee, as women have done for millennia. Later the next day, we co-created a spontaneous dream-releasing ritual by parading our flags onto the beach, sending our dreams and love out with the elemental forces. Later on, we brought the dream flags up on the Cottage porch to hang outside and be elementally blessed throughout our residency.
The artists at work in the studio at the McLoughlin Gardens
Parade of dream flags on the beach
Paula
I offered a Mandala/personal symbols artmaking process. We started with a 14-minute moving meditation of dropping into ourselves and the Earth, seeing if any symbols came to us through movement and music. “Mandala” means the centre, coming from all patterns and rhythms of life. As humans we have a fascination with circles, which are used for self-expression. Circles are in every part of our lives from the egg we grow from and the womb that first encircles us. We are birthed through circles; they are integral to our lives. Circles of the seasons, the round Earth and moon, the spiral of all our inspirations from the time of the ancients. As an art practice, we took an hour to create a pattern/Mandala that reflected how we feel and where our energy was focused at the moment, using the question of: What is your personal direction/compass guiding you to at this moment?
The artists working on their mandalas in the studio.
The mandalas
Personally, having space and time to reflect and sit quietly on the beach, watching seals and the waves, and just being, was time to process my own life and enjoy nature. Also, reflecting upon nature through art making, poetry, and song was so fulfilling within our week of shared art-making.