Upcoming Author Tour

PILGRIMAGE Wonder Encounter Witness made its debut on amazon.com this fall. Now I would appreciate your help with promoting sales.

1. Can you post a review of the book on amazon.com? It does not have to be long. Just a couple of sentences would be wonderful.
2. Please encourage, cajole and/or coerce friends into attending one of my author events. Below is the upcoming schedule to date. In Washington state, there are a couple near Seattle, one in Bellingham, and two way over on the eastern border of the state. 
3. I will be making up postcards and flyers for these events. Let me know if you would like postcards to mail or a flyer to post. I will by happy to send the postcards already stamped.

Mon Feb 27 Ashland, OR	Bloomsbury Books Reading & book signing 7:00 pm
Sat, March 17 Lake Forest Park, WA	Third Place Books Reading & book signing  6:30 pm
Sun, March 18 Bellingham, WA	Village Books Reading & book signing 2:00 pm
Mon, 3/19/12	Open
Tues, March 20 Stanwood, WA	Snow Goose Bookstore Reading & book signing 7:00 pm
Wed, March 21 Pullman, WA	WSU Bookstore Book Signing Table 3:00-4:30
Thurs, 3/22/12	Open
Fri, March 23 Spokane, WA	Auntie's Bookstore Reading & book signing  7:oo pm

Coming Home to My Self

At the 2011 Winter Solstice, I made the decision to do 12 Days of Coming Home to My Self. This 12 Days would be different than others I have done because the days would not all be sequential. I set aside four days around Christmas, five days around New Year's, and three days around a lecture and workshop on Calling Our Primordial Ancestors.

The focus on Coming Home to Myself was chosen because in actuality my home was being restored following a flood on November 28. Home restoration symbolized to me a desire to come back to center after many years of overextending myself. Three threads were woven through the 12 days: Physical Care, Studio Time, and Spiritual Practices.

Physical Care meant caring for my body and my home. I began with a facial on the first of the 12 days, a massage on the first day of the second time segment, restorative Yoga on the last day of 2011, and getting back into walking as the torn tendon in my right ankle has begun to heal.

  

Caring for my home began on Christmas Day with washing the front sidewalks of sawdust, plaster, and mud from all the workmen coming and going for the previous month; unpacking all that was stored during demolition and restoration and putting it back into place; getting the washer and dryer serviced; smudging my home of all foreign energies brought in by strangers; and having the carpet cleaned throughout the entire house. Moving and replacing everything for the carpet cleaning was quite a physical workout, so it was both body and home care.

I knew that Studio Time would involve working on completing the narrative cycle of my Heritage Mandala. A mandala is composed of several concentric circles around a central square. The narrative cycle is the fourth circle from the edge. Based on each of us having had a DNA analysis, this is where we have painted the journey of our maternal ancestors out of the Rift Valley in East Africa to some place in the globe.

Because we paint one segment at a time, the completed narrative circle is not always a balanced art form. Mine was really out of balance, like me over the past year. It had dark and light segments that needed to be integrated. Although it took far longer than I had anticipated, mandala work is very meditative, and I found it restful and healing. It seemed somehow important to complete the narrative cycle in 2011 and to begin the Sea of Human Life in the New Year, which I did.

The big surprise was my decision to create a Who I Am Becoming sketchbook. The concept for the sketchbook was a marriage of two ideas. I had committed in my Career Shaping group to do a sketchbook to record my explorations. Then I met a woman who wants to curate a self-portrait show of paintings/artwork based not on who we are but who we are becoming. The moment she used that phrase, I knew that was what my sketchbook needed to be.

I began it on the second of my 12 Days by doing the front and back covers. When I began working on the interior pages, I was amazed by how their execution and my understanding of them morphed and changed. Two collaged pages show how deep my struggle with this process is. I thought it was a simple matter of merging artist and writer, but I discovered that something deeper wants to happen.

The holiday season has always been an opportunity for me to do a variety of Spiritual Practices. Every day I played the Dalai Lama chanting the Maha Mkiiyunjava Manika. The healing force of this chanted mantra sends forth ripples from body to psyche and from psyche to soul. I would often stop whatever I was doing, sit, and allow the vibrations to wash over me.

Other spiritual practices included dreamwork, editing a friend’s book of poetry, divination readings, and attending a lecture and workshop on the Primordial Psyche. My divination readings were the I Ching, Sacred Path Peace Tree spread, and Medicine Cards to expand on the Peace Tree reading. The immediate take away from these readings is the awareness that I need a fallow period during which to replenish my self. If I do, like the dried Hydranga blossom above, roots will grow and the old stem will send forth fresh shoots.

The lecture and workshop on the Primordial Psyche took me back to a big dream I had in 1991, shortly after I arrived in Victoria, B.C., and to my travel around the continent of Africa many years before that. As more work is done with tapping into this deep layer of the unconscious, insights will feed into my Children of Eve series.

Like the Dalai Lama’s chanting, these practices set something in motion. Dream images, ideas and thoughts are tumbling around like seeds shaken in a jar. It will take patience to sort the seeds, nurture them, and allow them to sprout. As I was talking with my poet friend, the issue of patience arose. I mentioned that on the counter in the newly reconstructed downstairs bathroom I have a small rock with the word “patience” on it. She said, “The Mystery really picked up that rock and threw it at you recently.” Although we both laughed, it is not a laughing matter.

I hope for the patience to continue the healing begun in my 12 Days of Coming Home to My Self. For I know what has been set in motion may take months or years to manifest.  

Winter Solstice! Rejoice!

Winter Solstice, the time when the hours of darkness have reached their peak and the imperceptible increase of light begins once again. I rejoice in the painstaking snail's pace with which resurrection builds its energy all through the winter months and suddenly erupts in spring with crocus and daffodils. I delight in Winter Solstice because this is the time of year when I reaffirm my uniqueness.

The December holidays underwent a major change for me several years ago while I was living in Brussels. My daughter wrote to say, "I have good news and bad news. Bad news first: I'm not coming this December. The good news is, I've fallen in love." I was delighted with this wonderful turn of events in her life. Yet, at the same time, I was devastated. Through the best of times and the worst of times, before my divorce from her father and after the divorce, the holiday season had always been the time we were together and caught up on each other's lives.

As I walked the parks, seeking solace in nature, I worried about how to care for myself during what I felt would be a very difficult couple of weeks. I asked myself what this season was about if it were stripped of the family framework in which I'd always celebrated it. Having tuned into the rhythms of nature, I knew it was about the rise of light after the descent into darkness, the ascendance of hope after the plunge into despair.

My world travels had taught me that cultures the world over celebrate this annual beginning of a new cycle. Whether it’s the Festival of Lights in India or the elaborate astronomical observations and seasonal festivals from Ireland to Cambodia, all cultures celebrate the infinitesimal return of the light as if it were the birth of a child, a divine child. Steeped in this global awareness, I brooded over Carl Jung's image of the Self as a divine child within the psyche of each of us. That meant the divine child was within me.

 "What would it mean," I wondered, "for me to celebrate my own birth, my own worth as an individual?" I thought back to my actual birth and to the onerous situation this was for my parents. Expecting a boy, they had no name for a girl. Disappointed in the gift I was to them, they asked the nurse to name me.

"Well, maybe my parents were unable to rejoice in my birth,” I reasoned, “but that is no excuse for my not doing so?" Enchanted with the image of celebrating my own birth and the center of being within me, I  turned my attention away from sadness over my daughter's not coming. Returning home, I heard one of the season’s popular songs, The Twelve Days of Christmas playing on the radio. "That's it. I'll celebrate my own birth for twelve straight days!"

Deciding to give myself twelve gifts, one each day beginning with Winter Solstice, I made a list of things that give me pleasure. It included chocolates, a new teapot, getting a set of Motherpeace Tarot cards, and going to the ballet. On December twenty-first, I bought Belgian chocolates and a small ceramic nativity scene made in Peru. That evening, after wrapping gifts for friends in the area, I created a ritual with candles, music, and, yes, chocolates. Each day as I awoke, I would spontaneously decide what my gift that day would be. When going to the ballet presented itself, I hesitated; afraid it might make me despondent because my daughter and I had always seen the Nutcracker Suite together. Remembering one of my Latina friends who was also alone, I invited her to go with me for dinner and the ballet. We had a fabulous time.

Twelve days passed swiftly. I spent many delightful evenings reading Vicki Noble's book MOTHERPEACE, A Way to the Goddess through Myth, Art and Tarot and learning to use the lovely round cards. It was my first exposure to systems of divination and I found it fascinating to see how the cards echoed what was happening in my life. The Osho Zen deck has since become my favorite Tarot.

When I reflected on why my Twelve Days of Christmas had been one of the happiest times of my life, I realized it was the most self-affirming thing I had ever done. I realized that our unconscious registers our self-nurturing behavior. This healthy new appreciation for who we are encourages other healthy behaviors. Being good to yourself is good for you.

Moreover, a time that might have been lonely had been filled with anticipation, fun, and surprise. The negative symbol of my parents' rejection had been overpowered by my own self-acceptance to such an extent that since that breakthrough December, I have gifted myself with my present name, LiDoña. I took the name given to me by the nurse, Donna Lee, turned it around, and adjusted the spelling. Li in Chinese means fire or light. Doña in Spanish or Italian means woman or lady. Thus, LiDoña is Fire Woman or Light Lady.

I've never forgotten the power of self-affirmation and as Winter Solstice approaches each year, I feel a surge of anticipation as I contimplate my Twelve Days of Christmas. One year I celebrated my Artist Child with gifts to enhance my creativity. Another year I gave myself twelve days just for writing. This year, my home restored after the flood on November 28, I will do Twelve Days of Coming Home to Myself.

2011 was the year of the book. I helped edit Prayers for Transition, In Memory of Sandra Anderson True. I helped edit Art Twenty-Eleven, work by thrity-eight of the artists with whom I attend an open studio every other year. I achieved a twenty-five-year goal by publishing PILGRIMAGE Wonder Encounter Witness. The photo above was the state of my home on November 30, the night of my author event at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene, photo below. Stay posted for information about my author tour in mid-March to independent bookstores in Seattle, Bellingham, and Spokane in Washington and Moscow, Idaho.

Tonight is the longest night. Tomorrow light begins its magnificent return.

May your 2012 be filled with joy and light.

Memo to the Universe

Those who know me well, recognize that I have a strong streak of independence. Thus, you will perhaps appreciate that the universe has been delivering some strong messages to me about the fact that we humans are dependent upon one another.

The messages began to arrive in late August. I cut my left thumb while framing for my September Ancestral Lines show. A neighbor’s quick thinking got me to urgent care for five stitches by a female doctor from Barbados. Several wondrous friends stepped in to help me hang the show. I was filled with gratitude for my neighbor’s thoughtfulness, the medical care I received, and the compassion of my friends.

Then, in the fading light of an October evening, a curb and I had a miscommunication, my right ankle wrenched and I landed with a yelp on the cement parking lot. Three college students and a friend rescued me and got me started on RICE, rest, ice, compression and elevation. My seriously sprained right ankle has been in an air cast and I've been using a walking stick for the last month. In spite of the pain and stress, I am so grateful not to have broken any bones and for the wonderful care I received from friends, medical practitioners, and a young physical therapist.

The restorative power of physical therapy made me more stable and I was just celebrating being able to put away the walking stick, when the universe decided to upend my life in yet another way.

Early on Monday, as I was tending my plants, a water pipe in the upstairs bathroom broke and water began gushing out of the wall. Plumbing Dummy that I am, I threw down some towels to soak the water and raced for help. My neighbor’s light was on so I banged on her door. She grabbed some shoes, raced up my stairs, tramped through four inches of water and turned the water off. 

Together we threw down all the blankets, sheets, and towels we could find to soak up the water. We stopped the water from going into the room where all of my finished paintings are stored, but gravity is an irresistible force. Water flowed down the walls to the downstairs bathroom and dining area. I spotted water pouring through the light fixture above the kitchen counter. I pushed aside my computer modem and threw a quilt over the counter. My friend and I tossed more towels on the downstairs bathroom floor to catch the water running down the wall.  

Having done as much as we could, I tried desperately to find a plumber. When references from my neighbor and another friend produced nothing, I turned to the yellow pages. I called the company with the most professional advertisement and lucked out. He would arrive in less than an hour. Once the pipe was fixed, his knowledge of restoration professionals proved as important as his plumbing skills. We could have a team on site within another hour.

Next on the docket was the insurance claim, something else about which I had no previous knowledge. As I launched into what would become a day of phone calls with insurance representatives, the restoration crew arrived: two young men, one an ex-Marine and the other from the navy. Great, I thought; they will know about water. And they did.

I appreciated the way they began assessing and documenting the damage before crafting a restoration plan. When flashes of Katrina and the various earthquakes of the past two years visited me, I was aware that what I was experiencing did not even begin to compare with what others have endured. I was grateful for having lesser issues with which to contend.

As the marine team began releasing carpet edges so they could direct heat from drying fans underneath, they recommended that I go to a hotel. I saw the wisdom in their suggestion. However, I opted to remain in my home, at least for now. Yes, the noise from the fans is very loud, making it difficult to sleep. But it is probably no more difficult than trying to sleep in a strange hotel room where I would have no idea what was happening in my home.

They warned me that today the bathroom fixtures would be removed because both floors and some walls have to be restored. Then it will be one to two months before everything is shipshape. As I contemplate the disruptions and discomforts of the upcoming weeks, I am nevertheless once again filled with gratitude. In a world where children go to sleep hungry, elderly people find themselves isolated, and rocket fire keeps thousands wondering if they will greet the sunrise, I have been given so much. I have a job. I have a home. I have been blessed with awesome friends.

It would be nice if I could somehow send a memo to the universe that I wouldn’t mind having fewer reminders of just how lucky I am. However, for now I shall just allow gratitude to be my overwhelming message.

PILGRIMAGE Available on amazon.com

PILGRIMAGE Wonder Encounter Witness is now available on amazon.com for $17.90 along with a super saver discount of free shipping for orders of $25 or more. If you order 5, the price goes down to $15.88 each.

Your participation in LiDoña Wagner Studio's first publishing venture is deeply appreciated.  You can:

1. Purchase a copy for yourself.
2. Write a book review on amazon.com; the more the better, I understand.
3. Recommend influential people you know who would be willing to write an endorsement of the book.
4. Advise me on ways to reach my target markets of art lovers, world travelers, and spiritual seekers.
5. Include PILGRIMAGE on your Christmas list, gifting those you love with something you have enjoyed.

www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=lidona+wagner&x=0&y=0

Not sure why, but you have to click the title before you see the book cover.

Learnings from Ancestral Lines

Two things about my recent show, Ancestral Lines, pushed me to take a step closer to installation or site-specific art. First, the gallery space was unique. Two walls were primarily windows onto busy streets. A third wall was brick. A hallway entrance, metal vault, and air vent interrupted the fourth wall. A post stood in the center of the room.

Secondly, my Children of Eve paintings contain multi-sensory elements: bone beads, sand, sticks, twigs, matches, and textured surfaces. They point to events that happened hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years ago. It seemed to me that invoking a massive time warp requires an immersive environment.

Using the long hallway into the gallery to set a mood, I hung mounted copies of photographs of ancient awe-inspiring cave art. These were from the 2001 August issue of National Geographic on Chauvet Cave in France. I placed books and DVDs on genetic research in an alcove, along with an animal bone and a historical timeline of human evolution and migration patterns from 2 million to 10,000 years ago. 

To create a sense of timelessness, I placed natural elements on clear acrylic pedestals arranged around the post in the gallery.

One pedestal held items related to the sea, another had stones and pebbles. Beneath a third was a pile of dirt and on top were two stick of cedar wood. Human touches included one of my self-box collages, an African reed mat mounted on the post, and information about tracing your DNA journey.  

To add to the sense of our connection to nature and antiquity, I hung animal bones on the brick wall between Children of Eve paintings. I placed a bromeliad plant with brilliant red foliage on a clear acrylic pedestal near one of the large windows, setting up a tension between the busy street and nature.

I began telling the story of our ancient origins in Africa by placing placards under each of the Children of Eve paintings. I was delighted that both kids and adults took time to read the story.

Although the intent was to give a sneak preview of my emerging Children of Eve series, there were other paintings in the show. A red cord strung around the walls, representing Kazantzakis’s crimson line (the human evolutionary journey) connected all of the artwork, emphasizing the show’s theme. A mounted quote from Kazantzakis marked the beginning of the red string. A cloth hung in front of the vault served as a backdrop for a show poster and my artist statement.

So much more could have been done. I am already thinking of how to integrate interactive elements, ceiling, floor, and multimedia into future exhibitions of Children of Eve. I welcome your feedback and suggestions on ways to develop a total experience of our origins deep in the heart of Africa.

Photographs 1-5, 7-9 by Mikayle Stole Anderson

Photograph 6 by Sharry Lachman

Ancestral Lines

Where do we come from? This is probably people’s second most-asked question; the first being, who am I? Poets, theologians, philosophers, scientists and ordinary folks are all equally curious about our human origins. How did we get to be the way we are?

In Ancestral Lines, I visually explore the agreement reached by contemporary archeologists and genetic scientists that modern Homo sapiens originated in East Africa. My fascination with this point of view has deep roots.

In 1988, Newsweek had an article on Rebecca Cahn’s genetic research - DNA studies showing that we have a common ancient mother, Mitochondrial Eve, who lived in East Africa around 170,000 years ago. All of us - regardless of skin color, facial characteristics, ethnic culture, or linguistic expression - can trace our mitochondrial DNA (our maternal line) back to this one woman.

Time magazine reported around 1990 that archeologists had found four sets of footprints in molten lava in East Africa, two large sets and two small ones; presumably this was a family of two parents and two children fleeing a volcanic eruption. What were the relationships and destiny of this small group of humans?

A National Geographic article, “France’s Magical Ice Age Art: Chauvet Cave,” became my muse in the year 2000. Its stunning photographs of cave art inspired my first intentional series of paintings, called Stone Age. Stone Age was followed by other series that culminated in 2008 with Pilgrimage, paintings based on my experiences in cultures around the world.

By 2010, I was groping my way toward a new series about our one Black mother when I heard about National Geographic’s  “genographic project” – a research effort that allows any human being to do a DNA test to reveal the migratory route our ancestors took from East Africa to some part of the world. I knew instantly, “This is the entry point for which I’ve been searching. My new series will be called The Children of Eve.”

In Ancestral Lines, one set of paintings takes an archeological perspective: imagining some of the cultural preoccupations and artifacts of early humans. Another set of paintings takes the perspective of genetic research: translating abstract concepts into visual symbolic representations.

Both perspectives are held in tension by the image of “the crimson line,” a phrase coined by Nikos Kazantzakis. To me it means, “You, me, and every person who has ever lived have a common heritage that is carried in our blood. We trace a crimson line through history, all the way back to one Black woman in East Africa.“

I find great meaning in knowing that I am connected to the artists of Chauvet Cave, to a family fleeing a volcanic eruption in East Africa, and to Mitochondrial Eve.