To celebrate the completion of their new sanctuary, my
friend Petie Padden and their program chairperson organized an awesome array of Mother’s Day weekend events
for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Chico, California. I was honored
to exhibit framed prints of my Pilgrimage series, conduct a Dream Mandala
Collage workshop, give a presentation on Pilgrimage, and do the Sunday sermon
on Honoring Our Maternal Heritage. The weekend began on Thursday, May 9.
Our spirits soared as Petie drove south on I5 after picking
up my artwork and me in Eugene. We took in breathtaking views of the Willamette
Valley with its tree-laden rolling hills, farmland, and surrounding mountains. Stopping
in Ashland, home of Oregon’s Shakespeare Festival, we had lunch at a peaceful
creek-side restaurant.
It was fun to pass shop windows filled with funky do
dads that no one really needs but that make you smile nonetheless. But the real
treat was seeing current work at Howard Hanson and Davis & Cline galleries.
My soul was fed by exquisite design and carefully honed creative expression.
Arriving in Chico in early evening, Petie catered to my
desire to experience Chico. Weaving through tree-lined streets, she took me to
a delightful organic restaurant for soup and salad. Next morning we went on a walk in Chico’s extensive Bidwell
Park. The park feels as though it completely surrounds the town with upper and
lower sections that contain both wetlands with heavy vegetation and dry lands
where the sky is wide open. With its numerous trails and amenities, in many
ways it is the heart of the community.
Friday evening, Petie indulged me with a tour of downtown
and introduced me to the campus of Chico State University. Besides the youth-oriented
places typical of a collage town, I was taken with a recently renovated art
deco building and the architecture and sculpture on the campus. Saturday
morning the treat was Chico’s farmers’ market.
Each show has its unique hanging challenges, from crooked walls to cathedral windows and glass partitions to racks of olive oil containers. In the UU sanctuary the challenge turned out to be a hanging system for fourteen items while I had twenty-one. Two fellowship members assisted us and fortunately one of them had brought enough easels to make up for the missing hooks. Kudos to Petie for being the brave person who ascended the ladder!
Next up was preparing for Saturday’s Dream Mandala Collage workshop.
Three weeks before the workshop, I began developing a construct that would
reduce my 18-month or weeklong mandala classes down to a one day workshop. As
my plan evolved, I had a dream that included this segment: “I decide to comb my
hair with my fingers the way I have seen women do on the bus. It is long. I
pull all of the top hair into a spiral knot. I make a spiral knot above and
behind each ear. “ I did my own dream mandala collage so I could more easily
guide students in making theirs.
What fun we had! Participants brought amazing dreams with
powerful images such as castles, spies, horses, split rail fences, mysterious
objects hanging in trees, solar flashlights, and radiating dances. After
sharing in a dream circle, it was wonderful to see how individuals found
magazine images not just for themselves but also for others. Actually placing the images in their
circle is where integration of the dream message occurs.
One person was at a life turning point and we decided
she would do a vision, not dream, mandala. Focused on who she is becoming, the
image she put at the center was of a path into the future. As we shared and reflected together on
our mandalas, the support for each person’s journey was palpable. Next time I
do this workshop I will call it a Dream or Vision Mandala Collage.
Saturday evening, after a quick trip to Petie’s for a
wardrobe change, we returned for my presentation on Pilgrimage at a reception
for the show. It was gratifying to have persons from the workshop come back and
join others for the evening. My presentation is filled with images of the
creative process and stories of some of the villages in which I have lived and
worked. Those attending had marvelous questions that we carried on into a full
discussion as we munched on all the goodies Petie and others had brought.
To set the tone for the Sunday morning service I led a
conversation with the children in the congregation. Using a print of Rift
Valley Origins, I brought out the fact that every child that is born carries a
heritage that goes back hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. That
heritage passes through Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago, through
Australopithecus (Lucy) 2.5 million years ago, through Ardipithecus 4.4 million
years ago, all the way back to a common primate ancestor we share with
gorillas.
Petie did a reading from Wade Davis’s “The Way Finders”
about the fact that contemporary science shows “race is a fiction” and “We are
all literally brothers and sisters. We are all cut from the same genetic
cloth.” My talk centered on Rebecca Kahn’s scientific breakthrough
in genetics, tracing all people back to one woman in East Africa 170,000 years
ago, Mitochondrial Eve. After describing the journey our ancestors made from
East Africa to all corners of the globe, I shared copies of the prototype for
Eve’s Imprint exhibition. I gave the context for the traveling exhibition and
then opened for questions. I appreciated the respect with which members of the
congregation corrected some of my language and brought out the importance of
art and science going hand in hand.
Art Work: LiDoña Wagner
Photo Credits: Willamette Valley & Bidwell Park – Google Images, Rift Valley Origins – Walt O’Brien, all others – LiDoña Wagner
Photo Credits: Willamette Valley & Bidwell Park – Google Images, Rift Valley Origins – Walt O’Brien, all others – LiDoña Wagner
