Honoring Our Maternal Heritage in Chico, CA

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

Meeting with Asphalt

Easter Sunday. The sun is shining. I’ve completed my March blog just before the deadline. I’m eager to plant more flowers in the garden and I need a few groceries. So off I go to the local market.

Heading home with a backpack full of groceries, including a dozen eggs, I am excited about the flowers I’m carrying in each hand. Two blocks from home, I check the traffic as I step with momentum off the curb. Ahhhhhh! Ohhhhhh! Crack! Owe!

The curb being twice as high as it was two feet earlier, I have flown through the air and landed, both arms extended, on my left shoulder. Strapped into the backpack, my upper (humerus – but not funny) arm bone has taken the brunt of my momentum hitting the asphalt.

The sports convertible whose progress I had marked as I stepped off the curb slows and stops. The middle-aged blonde female driver advances. “Do you think you need medical attention?” I hear a disembodied voice speak from the pavement. “Yes, I think I broke a bone. I heard it crack.” “Just a moment while I park my car.”

A man on a bike has also stopped. They help me to the curb and remove my backpack. I have chills and am sweating. “Where do you live?” “Right down the street. Can we take the groceries home and then go to Urgent Care?” “Sure.”

My Good Samaritans put my packages into the sports convertible and help me into the passenger seat. I am holding my left arm with my right, trying not to scream or cry from the pain. The driver's name is Debra. We arrive at home. Debra unloads the groceries, observing that not a single egg has cracked or broken. I’m thinking it would have been nice if my left arm and shoulder had been packed safely in my backpack.

“You live alone?” asks Debra. “Yes.” “Then I need to take you to Urgent Care. You’re in shock.” “Weren’t you headed somewhere before you stopped?” “Well, I was thinking of going up to the Skagit Valley for the tulip festival, but the tulips will be there next week.”

My Good Samaritan took me to Urgent Care, filled out the paperwork since my glasses had broken in the fall, waited while they took Xrays, confirmed that the humerus bone had two cracks, gave me a sling to hold the arm and some narcotics to ease the pain, handed me a prescription for eight sessions of physical therapy to begin in eight days, said to see my regular doctor in a few days, and then she graciously helped me back into her car and took me home.

Thank you. Thank you! Thank you. Debra would not give me her last name or phone number so all I could do was ply her with thanks as she headed off to a barbeque at a friend’s home. I entered my home to begin a six-week to six-month journey as a one-armed fool.

You Can Make It Happen

Some of you may have found last month’s blog in which I envisioned an exhibition of Eve’s Imprint a bit much. You’re right, it is. Eve’s Imprint is the bigger story behind PILGRIMAGE Wonder Encounter Witness, my book and traveling exhibition honoring villages around the world in which I have lived and worked. Here's how I arrived at this overwhelming project. 

The vision of Eve’s Imprint has inspired me since the age of twenty-three when I inadvertently retraced my ancestral path from North America back to Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, and all the way to our origins in Ethiopia. Traveling in six-seat prop planes I traversed East, Central and West Africa. A plane engine’s failure prevented me from reaching the ancient city of Timbuktu, but the second engine got me back to Accra, Ghana to continue living the Eve’s Imprint story.

Rift Valley Origins, LiDoña Wagner
acrylic, stones, and sand on board, 24” x 18”

Since I became an artist, I have carried the idea of a series of paintings about our One Black Mother. Three years ago I got serious about it and began researching our human migration journey.  Participation in National Geographic Society’s The Genographic Project greatly enhanced my research and augmented my lifelong fascination and engagement with all things archaic, multi-cultural, anthropological, archeological and related to human evolution. I shared some of my first Eve’s Imprint paintings in my September 2011 blog about a show I did called Ancestral Lines.

This past August I took a leap forward when I began to visualize geographic segments for the painting series. As I tried to imagine putting all of these geographic segments together, I recalled visiting the Elora Caves in India. Niches had been carved into the walls of the cave and each held a statue of Buddha: Buddha standing, sitting, lying down, speaking, praying, meditating, blessing, and laughing. These many variations of Buddha left me with the impression of one multifaceted Buddha. Similarly, that is what I want this series of paintings to reflect, one multifaceted human family descended from mitochondrial Eve. This is the origin of the twelve alcoves in the Eve’s Imprint exhibition prototype.

Out of Eden Walk 

Paul Salopek Walking in Ehtiopia by Paul Salopek

Then last December, a friend sent me an article about the Out of Eden walk by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek. Salopek is walking, retracing the global migration of our ancestors in a 21,000-mile, seven-year odyssey that begins in Ethiopia and ends in Tierra del Fuego in Chile. For the walk’s storytelling, please visit outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com. 

From website of Out of Eden Walk

At first it seemed outlandish for Salopek to devote seven years of his life to walking our 70-50,000 year human migration journey. Then it occurred to me that it will probably take me just as long, or longer, to complete the paintings in Eve’s Imprint. What makes it possible for Salopek to do his storytelling walk is that he has supporters and partners. Bingo! Suddenly it struck me that perhaps I don’t have to do everything related to Eve’s Imprint by myself. Perhaps there are others who would like to join me in this venture.

Can You Help Make Eve's Imprint Happen?

2018 is the target date for my completion of artwork for the exhibition. Because museums schedule 4-5 years out, the work of securing sites and lead sponsors needs to begin now. Perhaps you can help lay the groundwork for Eve’s Imprint by assisting with scheduling and handling exhibitions, fundraising, and managing finances.

As Eve’s Imprint travels, Our Common Future alcove is reserved for depicting the story of a site-specific sponsoring partner: a Native American, Latino, Asian American, African American, Middle Eastern, or Indo-American group; an environmental or sustainable community effort; an international agency or voluntary organization. Do you have connections with possible sponsoring partners?

In the exhibition prototype, discovery corners have twelve panels and surrounding space that can be devoted to the work of major contributing partners. Perhaps you know of a foundation, agency, or sustainable energy business that can underwrite production, promotion, shipping, and installation costs?  

Or maybe you'd like to share your own ancestral journey with me? Personal stories mean so much. To learn about your own ancestral journey contact: The Genographic Project of National Geographic Society at https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/.

Eve’s Imprint: Where do you come from?

Migration Map: National Geographic Society Genographic Project

In spring of 2010, I began working on Eve's Imprint. This work consists of creating fine art that is based on my thirty-plus years of personal multi-cultural and global experience; a lifetime of reading anthropological, archeological, and genetic research; and discovering my own DNA results through National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. The intent of Eve's Imprint as an exhibition is to establish an environment that evokes contemplation and reflection on our global family, the human genome. It is an extensive project that will take several years to complete.  

Imagining Eve’s Imprint Exhibition

I currently imagine Eve's Imprint exhibition consisting of twelve alcoves arranged in a circle around an image of the earth as seen from space and encircled by twelve figures that correspond to the alcoves. Marking the perimeter of the center will be pillars that represent climatic realities humans have always confronted such as comet, typhoon, cyclone, hurricane, flood, earthquake, volcanic eruption, and wildfire.

Each alcove will be created by hanging or standing panels that hold paintings. It will contain three-dimensional elements as well as sketchbooks revealing my creative process. Alcoves will be grouped in quadrants that include:

Beginning Our Global Human Journey

1.    Evolving Hominids Produce Homo Sapiens

200,000 Years Ago: Cooled by Sumatra’s Volcanic Eruption

South and Sub-Saharan Africa

2.    Crossing the Red Sea

70,000-50,000 Years Ago: Near East/Levant

Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

3.    Fishing Our Way Eastward

70,000-50,000 Years Ago: Southwest Asia

Iran, Iraq, Syria, India, Pakistan, Nepal

Following Receding Ice into New Lands

4.    Inhabiting the Ice Age Culprit

50,000 Years Ago: Southeast Asia/Oceania

Former Indochina, Australia and the Pacific Islands

5.    Creating Coastal and Cold-Bearing Cultures

45,000-35,000 Years Ago: Northeast Asia

China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia and Siberia

6.     Moving North and West as Population Expands

45,000-35,000 Years Ago: Mediterranean

Balkans, Greece, Italy, France, Iberia, North Africa

Migrating Inland and Westward

7.    Following Animals to Water

30,000 Years Ago: Central Asia

Tibet, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, former Soviet Union countries

8.    Traversing the Caucasus

30,000 Years Ago: Northern Europe

Germany, Scandinavia, United Kingdom

9.    Crossing Beringia

20,000 Years Ago: The Americas

North, Central and South America

Cherishing Our Global Family

10.  Occupying Planet Earth

 10,000 Years Ago: Inventing Agriculture 

 Begins Taxing Earth’s Systems

11.  Sharing My Ancestral Journey

 Merging Mediterranean Cave Painters and 

 Northern European Artisans

12.  Our Common Future

 Witnessing Site-Specific Sponsor's

  Cultural Contributions

The corners of the exhibition space will be discovery centers with videos to watch, books to peruse, binders of related articles to read, as well as emblematic cultural artifacts to observe.

EVE’S IMPRINT: A Global Family

Seven billion people live today on this awesome planet, a place that needs to be returned to a sustainable natural state in order to support continued human life. All seven billion are descendants of one woman in East Africa, Mitochondrial Eve, making us one global family. To save our beautiful planet and to preserve the rich diversity of our family’s many cultures requires a new era of peace and partnership.

After mastering survival skills, Homo sapiens created art. These ancestors collected feathers and bones to wear as adornments, made bones into beads and chiseled images into rock. Some sketched animals on cave walls to assist hunters in envisioning a victorious hunt. Others painted their bodies with dyes derived from plants and minerals for ceremonies honoring nature for her bounty and humans for their resilience.

Because of these ancient roots, visual art, similar to storytelling, resonates with the human heart and inspires acts of caring and daring. In modern times, Picasso’s Guernica confronted humanity with the devastation brought by war. Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party inspired a generation of women to demand equality. Frank Gehry’s Disney Symphony Hall and Guggenheim Museum introduced new visions of construction.

EVE’S IMPRINT aspires to speak to the human heart about our common ancestral roots and diverse cultural creativity. It’s objective is to create fine art that reflects the courage and audacity of our ancestors who left East Africa 50,000 to 70,000 years ago and walked or sailed to every corner of planet earth. Using beauty, color, design, and space, this project will result in content-centered artistic expressions that, hopefully, will occasion a spark of recognition and evoke a desire for reconciliation among the many branches of our human family.

Comments and questions are welcome.

Photo credits: All from Google Images

My Old Friend

"Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again," Simon and Garfunkel sang years ago in their popular song, Sounds of Silence.

The season of darkness is upon us. Whether you call it midwinter, the longest night, the shortest day, the first day of winter, or winter solstice, the latter part of December issues an invitation to slow down after summer's frenzy of activities and fall's exhuberant harvest.

Often we seek to avoid the long dark days that winter brings - constant days bereft of light, months filled with colder temperatures, the bleakness of land, the emptiness of trees, and endless gray skies.

Invitation 1: Ponder darkness as a spur to reverencing the mysteriousness of the universe. 

Our ancestors developed a cornucopia of therapies to help with the transition into winter’s dark days: large ongoing fires and lots of lights; decorating homes with holly, ivy, mistletoe, and evergreens; giving of fresh fruit and holding of feasts; time and communion with family, friends, and close ones; as well as dancing and singing.

Our sister mammal, the northern bear, shows us another approach. She sniffs the air, listens to the sounds of silence all around, and with a great yawn descends into the bowels of the earth for a long winter nap. She truly understands that slowing down is part of a larger natural rhythm and goes willingly into the darkness.

Invitation 2: Reflect upon winter’s wisdom - the need for withdrawal as an essential part of renewal.

Cultures all over the world have taken this time of year to recognize the reality of rebirth. They knew that seeds need darkness in which to germinate and eagerly anticipated that moment when Earth comes forth from this time of withdrawal into a season filled with light.

In Vancouver, B.C., some communities create and then walk a Labyrinth of Light. Lighted with more than 700 pure beeswax candle luminarias, the labyrinth invites visitors to warm themselves in a self-guided ceremony intended to release old attachments and envision new possibilities as a new season is birthed. This mimics an older ritual in which communities kept a fire burning until the end of festivities, to burn away the unhappiness of the previous year.

Invitation 3: Design your own walking meditation in which you

• Contemplate the elemental beings of earth, air, fire and water
• Honor the guides, guardians and teachers who have helped you
• Acknowledge the source of life itself
• Welcome the devic and angelic forces constantly present amongst us
• Choose individual angel qualities for support during the coming year

Technically, winter solstice is the time when the Earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26′, producing longer nights, shorter days. “Solstice” comes from the Latin “sol” meaning sun, and “sistere,” which is “to cause to stand still”. In ancient times, these astronomical events influenced everything from harvests to moods, and so people around the planet observed the occasion in a variety of ways. 

May Winter Solstice 2012 be a time of reflection, releasing of the past, and opening to renewal.

Altered Vision

Removal of the cataract on my right eye has created a different way of seeing, both visually and perceptually. After left eye surgery last August, I was able to continue functioning with my old glasses. But when the second mono-focal lens went in this month, reality took a twist.

I know nothing about the surgery on the right eye because they numbed me up the gazoo and gave me enough anesthesia to knock me out for a week. That ensured that I did not move during surgery, a good thing, but right eye follow-up has been far more traumatic than the left one was.

Evidently the stigmatism in my right eye needed to be corrected for the newly inserted lens to lie flat. Two extra cuts by the surgeon made the eye swell, creating a weird sensation of being continually off balance. That was a nuisance as I attempted to cut mats and frame giclee prints for a show in December and January. Not being able to read, with or without the old glasses, was a shock. After a week of limited computer use and no reading, I bought some cheap reading glasses.

A check up with my regular optometrist confirmed that healing is progressing just fine but no new prescription can be given until the right eye stabilizes. It seems that takes a month. And then there will be the time it takes for the new glasses to be made. That makes six weeks of seeing with “far vision” as my primary mode. So, with cheap reading glasses strung on a chain around my neck and being continuously pulled on and off, I am making my way through the world.

Initial “altered vision” revelations include:
·       Colors are brighter and clearer.
·       In order to see ‘paintings in progress’ from several distances, the studio easel had to find a new location.
·       From a five-month distance, it is clear that the toaster has lost its right to counter space, being no longer used since I went on the “hunter gather” diet.
·      After attending a mentoring conference to discern how we can better guide our students, I now see that I myself need to be mentored in relation to the next stage of my art career, and possibly for life with altered vision.
·       A short blog is better than none at all.

Photo credits: Justin Wikinator, feathers boutique, Best Image Optical