ArtStorming

ArtStorming the Art of Remembrance: Elizabeth Fergus- Jean

• Lili Pierrepont • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Memory can move like a boat in a draft, and that’s exactly what happened the moment we stepped into Elizabeth Fergus Jean’s dream studio in the woods. Suspended vessels, flickering shadows, stones with rings of time, and a labyrinth set on a forest power point created a space where grief felt present, tender, and strangely full of life. We set out to talk about legacy and found a living bridge between ancestry, art-making, and the land that holds us.

Music for ArtStorming was written and performed by John Cruikshank.

SPEAKER_01:

Have you ever wondered what makes creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? Is their life really as much fun as it looks from the outside? Hello, I'm your host, Lily Pierpont, and this is Artstorming, a podcast about how ideas become paintings or poems, performances, or collections. Each episode, I'll chat with a guest from the arts community and we'll explore how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new. In our inaugural season, Artstorming the City Different, we dipped our toes into the vast ocean of creativity with a focus on some of our favorite creators of Santa Fe, New Mexico. That conversation was enjoyed by artists and non-artists alike because it showed us how we can all benefit from learning how to generate something from nothing, dream bigger, charter new territories, and solve problems in new ways. In season two, we're going to take that concept of generating our lives with intention to the next level. This season, we're talking about legacy, art as legacy, and how the most creative among us tackle this rich and deeply personal subject. Welcome to Artstorming, The Art of Remembrance. I met my next guest, Elizabeth Fergus Jean, this summer while visiting magical northern Michigan. We connected instantly. Turns out she also spends a month every year here in Santa Fe. But touring her enchanted studio near Lake Michigan was an otherworldly experience. I was immediately struck by these full-size painted memory boats suspended from the ceiling, and her nature-inspired imagery everywhere. This cemented my desire to have her on a future episode of Artstorming Based on Biophilia. But then, when I was mentioning the upcoming season's theme, Elizabeth shared that she had created an entire body of work called Veils of Remembrance dedicated to the loss of her mother. Well, that sealed the deal. We recorded the episode the very next day, and then afterward, walking her mossy labyrinth in this enchanted forest. I can't tell you how much gratitude I felt for the serendipity that brought us together. I am really excited to be here with Elizabeth Fergus Hyphen Jean. I'm in Harvard Springs, Michigan, and I came to visit relatives, and of course, I had to have an introduction to one of their artist friends. So we got here yesterday, and of course, I had to have a podcast with you because this place is magic. You called it your dream studio. So say a little bit just for our listeners, because they don't get the benefit of visuals, but say a little bit about this space and how special it is and how you came to have it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it is literally my dream studio. I've been dreaming about having a big studio with a fireplace in the woods with a long white, literally a long, windy gravel road back to it. Why I don't know, but that's been part of the dream. And and really, it was basically a barn sheep that I always saw in my mind's eye. And so that was the turret part of it. So the turret is from that's really a nod to Carl Jung in my depth psych background, depth psychology background. So Carl Jung had the Bullaging Tower, and so that's my tower. The nod. And it's a great way. It's it invites you into this imagable space. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's it's surrounded by windows, I would say, and it's huge ceilings with these amazing canoes. They are canoes, right? Or some some type of boat shell. You know, they'll say they're uh when I designed these.

SPEAKER_00:

And so it's a cross between a sailboat hall and a canoe hall. Okay, except for the big one. And they are I had a local boat builder, Steve Van Dam, make the frames for me. And then my husband and I stretched them with canvas, and they were foiling canvas.

SPEAKER_01:

And they are suspended from the ceiling, and it just creates such an otherworldly experience when you walk in. Of course, walking into that round space with the cove with uh smaller versions of these, so those smaller ones are called memory boats.

SPEAKER_00:

And they are actually when I began The Veils of Remembrance, it was dealing with my personal remembrance and personal memories, and then I moved out to community memories and cultural memories, and then of course, memory of the land. And so those pieces are really tapping into the memory of the land and wanting the viewers to remember their personal encounters with being out and experiencing different parts of nature because it's so important that we have an eye-bow relationship with our natural world. And I try to with my work to reach through the heart. It's what matters most to me. So I'm just wanting to, if you remember, if you Oh, I remember walking through and seeing all the oak hydrangeas. And that just kindles my childhood. You're gonna want to take care of what's going on around you, rather than an I it relationship with so many people have. So those are those small boats, those are all two footboats. The hulls themselves I designed after Nordic burial ships. Really, because they again it's dealing with environment tending to the environment. So it's that shadowy reference to if we don't tend, it's it's the burial. And so they're floating boats rather than literal boats because when they're imaginable, right? And so you it takes you out of the literal into that imaginal realm where you can have your own encounter with it. Those boats are actually all these boats were originally designed to move with air current so that when you walk into the space, they move. And the shadows with the lighting, you know, they kind of flicker on the walls.

SPEAKER_01:

And well, it I love that it sort of talks about the in the space in between, those that liminal space, which is a word that gets overused. But in this case, we're literally talking about this space in between life and what else comes later or whatever. Yes. But what I think is so amazing about this encounter is that when I can walked in, obviously I was thinking, oh, you'd be a perfect guest for my biophilia podcast series, which will be coming later. But then we started talking deeper, and I told you about our next series, and you said that you had done a whole body of work that dealt with Death as Muse, which is sort of the theme for this season. So say a little bit more, because I haven't had a chance to look at that series that you did. You said it was inspired by the death of your mother.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So my mom unexpectedly died in 2000. And shortly thereafter, I got very injured. I told you about that back injury. And so I couldn't go to my studio and work on big works because I was working on larger pieces. And you're just so it's so incredibly difficult to move through that. And what I had from my mom, I had photographs, and I had some of her clothing, and I physically couldn't do anything, and I've worked with Leeans my whole life. It's part of the female line, we all work with our hands, and so I just thought I started taking these photographs, taking the photographs of her, and I printed them on a material called polyso, and I then started applying images of my mother onto articles of her clothing, and then started beading them, started putting lace with them. And as I did that, so the whole time I'm just every day just sitting with my mom and working, doing this handwork with there is an aroma still in the clothes, and these images of my mom, and they're most of them are when I didn't know her yet. You know, I hadn't been born, and so I was imagining what was her life because I hadn't asked her those questions, I didn't know a lot of the background of a lot of the images, and so I was just weaving, it's like weaving her life, beating her life, and so I ended up creating a body of work, and I had a large museum show a year later, and you know, you always want to include your most recent work, and so I had some big boats and yeah, I had work, but that was my most recent work, and I really wanted to include it. And my husband said, You can't include that, that work is entirely too personal. Why would you ever and I'm like all the only work is personal, you're always speaking from your heart, what matters most. I said, I I need to. And so it I included in the show was a lot of people, it was the work that resonated the most because it was an honoring of an ancestor. And from that, I was offered another exhibit just on that work, and so that got me going into um my father who passed away when I was 20, and working with his images. I had one piece of clothing, this old army coat. My son, who was in art school at the time, and he's a phenomenal photographer. I had these photographs of dad in that coat. And so I made uh I put the coat on and had my son take studio shots of me in the coat. So those are side by side, and so those became pieces. I found my mom's wedding dress. So then, you know, there are all these with me trying on my mom's wedding dress, and I found her wedding gloves. Oh, but they didn't fit. So then I made a piece with a photograph with the literal gloves over them because it was the only way they fit. And then I made it, I found their honeymoon pictures, which I had never heard anything. So I made a piece about that honeymoon. I got I had my grandmother's veil, I made a piece about my grandmother's veil. So a whole body of work was born out of this, and it was it just was a beautiful way to honor them.

SPEAKER_01:

And how did it feel to share something so vulnerable?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. But it opened up for me I never knew that how other people would respond so strongly. And it really rekindled their own imaginations and thoughts about their parents and how could they do something with their photographs. And I've had people who've seen the shows actually contact me later and say that they've put something together. So I never expected that, and of course, and um yeah. It really touched me in a in just unexpected ways.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, one of the reasons I wanted to do this particular series is because I think that it's such unexplored territory and a way for us to come together in community in ways that we just don't have access to right now because we get so I'm gonna say English about the way we what we share and what we don't share. Yes, yes. And this is such, you know, we we can talk about the you know, saving the environment, we talk about all the things, but when it comes to our our humanity, yeah, it's this like siloed, contained thing, and we're all so uptight about it. And it it it just felt like there was a a barrier that needed to piercing a veil that needed to kind of happen. And artists are always going to be the ones that introduce that conversation. Yes. And so I'm so curious to find out all the different ways that that veil has been pierced. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It um so one of the things about myself with my work and this body really shows that we're motivated by what matters most. And a lot of that is that deep, deep sorrow. And they're mixed emotions when you think about like when your appearance are snatched early, there's grief, but there's anger, but there's you just don't know how to work through that. And I do think there's something to giving voice to the beautiful aspects of um of things. You feel the utter grief, but it doesn't have to be portrayed harshly to really communicate the deep love and memories that you have.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, and there's this bittersweet quality though, I think that when you give yourself permission to go deep enough into it, it reveals layer after layer.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Yeah, and I don't know that I would have done that like when my dad died, it was when it was I was in art school. Uh I didn't have the tools to be able to do that at all to go deep. Um, and I I did literally can English up, as you said. You know, I I really didn't outwardly express that, it didn't manifest overtly in my work. I was embarrassed to cry in public. I'd go into the bathroom stall and cry.

SPEAKER_01:

Well had you grown up in a more reserved context?

SPEAKER_00:

Or was it was more reserved. Yeah. My dad was the big personality. My mom less uh from she's from the South. So I don't need the same one. I mean they're they're proper.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. Well I think sometimes too, until you get mature, I I lost both my parents relatively young as well. And so I think that, you know, when you there's certain thresholds that you get to, yes, like when you're the age that your parents were and you reflect that you've now lived one year beyond them, two years beyond whatever that is. And you have such a different, it's a total paradigm shift because when you were 20 something or under 20, you have a different world view. And then you get to 40 something, 50 something, 60 something, and you keep changing your so I I I go through different periods. My experience is that almost every decade I have a whole different vantage point from which to process those losses. Yes. Yeah. And I I feel like a body of work like you've shared gives people so at all those different stages, different opportunities to go back and revisit that in a way that's not so close to, you know, it's sort of distant, but but um authentic. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I mean, I had to do it. And it's interesting that because I was so injured, I was so injured, it was my healing of my body and my heart by making this work. Because it was just in that in that holding rather than painting big things. Um and that it so with with my work, so much of it it just flams into me way before it's been made, right? Interesting. Like I knew I had to make boats before I even knew how to oil paint. I knew they needed to be in oil, so I knew I needed to learn oil. Um, so I like I've got all these series that want to be foreign that are just waiting, just tweet and just saw my shoulder. And that were was clearly not preconceived, was clearly not it just it was just through. You know what I mean? Just sitting on the floor with those boxes. Just yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And so did you have a sense that either of your parents were with you as you were working, or was this something that was sort of your own independent process?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think they're always with us, aren't they? So I do think that they're with us. I I don't think that like the notion of being guided and led to do certain things. I didn't have that sense, but I certainly could feel and sometimes like you see out of the corner of your eye their shadow fly. And and they're there and it's moving. So I I definitely experienced that that I didn't feel yeah, I just felt like I was doing what I needed to do. I it felt like a weaving together. It really felt like a really important weaving their life with my life. Was really coming together and literally stitching together.

SPEAKER_01:

So it was just so do you think your the the depth psychology component of your study played into that in a way? Did it give you access?

SPEAKER_00:

Because my mom she had a massive stroke, and I was called the day I was leaving to go at my first dissertation meeting, which I was flying out to California. And um Were you at Pacifica? I went to Pacifica. That's where I'm also on Caly. But um so I got a call from my stepfather and he just said, Your mom just had a massive stroke for they were in North Carolina and so of course I immediately literally immediately got on a plane. And so it was uh it was a big shift for everything because here I am working on this big dissertation project and so everything stopped. That this my whole life stopped that this you know, that attending to my mom, right? I was her person, so I stayed with her until we had to take her off life support and yeah, and then all I it was all I could do.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And it obviously what it what's very um tender for me listening to this story is that clearly you processed a lot, but you processed it obviously in a way that you still have access to it because I can feel, you know, the the the sadness that is still there. And uh that is such an incredible thing to be able to share with people, especially for I I'm acknowledging that at a point in time where you had to go into a stall to express and and feel those emotions, and yet you can be so present with it right now. I I feel very honored that you feel safe enough to do that. Yeah, that's that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

But yeah, I think it was a gift to be able to do that. But it was a gift to to imagine their lives, to see my mom dancing with someone I'd never seen before, way before she got married. And just imagine, I mean, all just imagining joy and events in their lives was also it brought joy into my life. So it was a really healing process.

SPEAKER_01:

And do you have siblings?

SPEAKER_00:

Were they part of this process? So I have two older siblings. And they um it is a curious question, and and the answer is yeah. So another question would be how did they respond to this work? Because they certainly weren't involved with the work. And we'll just leave we'll just leave that a mystery.

SPEAKER_01:

Excellent. I love that. No, I really, I really do, I really do, because that is how it goes, right? I mean, and and you know, just like there's the mystery of who were the people, who was that man in the picture dancing with Ma? Yeah, that's a question we'll never know the answer to. And that we have to kind of fill in the pieces. Yeah. And that's that's sort of the that's I don't want to say fun because that seems to minimize it, but that's that's sort of where a lot of magic and possibility live, right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so when you're teaching, you said you are involved with teaching creativity or have some creativity process. Yeah. So has death become a muse for that practice?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I really, because of this experience, I really wanted to do workshops very specifically with this material and to work with people who were moving through grief. And reached out to a colleague at Pacifica actually to see if she wanted to get together to do that and and work on a book together. Timing wasn't right for her. The timing wasn't right for her. I think timing wasn't right for her, and and I became very swept off with needing to give voice to environmental issues. It just became very forefront in large measure because of this body of work. You know, when you're dealing with death, we're looking at the deaths of our environment. And so that work really led into those small votes and giving voice to those and yeah, and then remembrance and and making pieces about community memories and what lasts and what doesn't, and that type of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that that's also really interesting because my first series was based in largely in Santa Fe and New Mexico, and I've spoken to a number of Native American artists, and lineage and legacy is such a huge component of theirs. And I've gotten such a much deeper appreciation. As somebody who lost your parents early, there's not a lot of continuity in either direction, right? Right. And so I have this deep appreciation for cultures that are much more deeply rooted in this idea of that they have a responsibility to their ancestors to live with this kind of responsibility towards the future generations. And so there's this continuity that the landscape is such a perfect expression of, right? And so we have this, what comes before us and what what we're leaving behind and how we take care of that whole lineage. So it's a perfect segue in my mind. I mean, the two are all really deeply related. And did you grow up in a forest? Was that part of your childhood?

SPEAKER_00:

So I grew up by a ravine and woods, and I was super duper shy. My family will tell you I was painfully shy. People who know me now can't believe that, but and so the woods were that was my companion, all the trees, all the exploring. So I was held from an early age by the woods, and then we've my whole life have summered in northern Michigan, which I consider my soul home, which is why I'm in love, love, love to be able to finally live here year-round. And so the lake is also, you know, growing up by the lake. And the lake just listens. There's so much wisdom. We're surrounded by so much wisdom. So we just need to listen. We just need to listen to them as well. So yes, I was I was clearly brought up, and I was also brought up with kind of an infinite view, and so that's why in designing the studio, I really wanted to make it the outside the inside. So yeah, I'm very much at home.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And say a little bit about the stonework that surrounds the place because there's a the steps leading up to this dream cottage are absolutely phenomenal. And the stonework around, and I happen to know there's a labyrinth out there somewhere which I haven't seen, but yes, I think I might have to check out before I leave.

SPEAKER_00:

You absolutely have to look at the labyrinth. Yeah. You know, you're the first person who's ever talked about the stones. Are you kidding me? No one.

SPEAKER_01:

How is that possible?

SPEAKER_00:

No one has mentioned the stones. No one. And it's so interesting because I've always collected there, they're everywhere. They're they're everywhere.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they have that's why I'm so flabbergasted that nobody's mentioned them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So they just hold so much memory, and there's there's a narrative in each stone. It's tumbled through so many millennial, and so of course you want to be supported by that. That energy is just all around. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And did you select each stone for that fireplace?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was really important. Because the center stone is magnificent. Yeah, well, that's a wishing rock. So you have to have a wishing rock. Um so you know, I've always called them wishing rocks, and I think also that I don't know. A wishing rock is a rock that has a band around it. Uh. A continuous band. And then so when you're walking on the beach and you find a wishing rock, you hold it your hand, you make a wit into the sea or lake, wishes come true. Yeah, that's the wishing.

SPEAKER_01:

So there must be a ton of um wishing stones in in uh Lake Michigan with your dreams of creating this this studio. There are.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, there literally are. Yeah. Yeah, this the studio is is truly a dream come true. You never and I was unaware because it's all the pieces, when we were finally able to build, you know, to buy some property. I was looking for I needed at least five acres. And I was looking for a barn, because remember that whole barn image? Or acre, you know, some acronym. And I had my, I had been looking for five years, and we finally were like, okay, now we really have some money together to be able to do this. So I came up with my son who took the photographs, right? We came up to really do a deep dive up here because I had I needed to find something. And this property was had been listed. And I'm like, no, no, this is too close to my home. That road does I've never heard of that road. What are you talking about? And you know, looking going in, oh, this is actually a road. And when we drove, it was a two-track, you couldn't come back, you had to just drive to the beginning of the property and walk back. My son and I, we were not five feet into the property. We looked at each other, and it was just we both knew this was it. And I mean, it was just there was no questions, and it felt like this landed waiting. So when we built so we started building two years later, and the workers, the property had been on the market for 14 years. Waiting for you for sure. Waiting for me. And the workers when they came back here, and these are people, this is not a huge community. So these guys are doing jobs, everybody knows everything. I said, How did you find this? How did you find this property? And I'm like so nobody, it was like it was cloaked. It was cloat waiting. And so yeah, it really felt like this was really meant to be. And you can see and the the stags will probably come out, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

We saw a stag yesterday. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

There are four that live on property, and two that are best friends that that come around together all the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Sometimes you see all four together and I know what they're up to, but well, it's clearly a magic place, but I'll I want to hear more because the stones are so intriguing to me. And, you know, you've created a labyrinth back there, and that's a whole other layer of magic. It is a layer of mandate. Obviously, either extracted from this place or given to this place. I'm not sure how that relationship goes, but say a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00:

I've been a labyrinth facilitator, right, since 95, 96. And I've always wanted a labyrinth. I mean, before my son would literally mow a labyrinth in our backyard. And so uh knowing as much as I do about labyrinths, I knew I needed a stone labyrinth, right? Because we were by the water, and that's the tradition. When you're buy water to have a stone labyrinth. And so in walking the property, trying to decide where to cite the structure, I found a PowerPoint on the property. And so that's where the labyrinth is. It's on the ley lines, and it laid itself out. I knew the orientation it had to be. And so what's interesting about the labyrinth, I actually call it my acorn labyrinth. And then again, that's so there are two nods there. One is from our home in uh my ancestral home in Ohio. They uh my mom found cook concretions, which are condensed minerals. They're like the pearls of the earth. And so they are in the, you know, and they're beautifully round. And so I, when she sold, I said, Can I take these? So I have three, two perfectly orbs that are on property, with ones here, one's at the other place, and then one that looked just like an acorn, right? And um, and then studying dev psychology, James Hillman wrote the book, The Acorn Theory. And so the acorn, well, it's it's not called the acorn theory, but it's about the acorn theory. And that's looking at at Plato and the and the notion that we're born with a daemon, with uh this seed inside us that we're meant to nourish and grow, and that's what we give back to the world, right? That's our life calling. And I was brought up with that. That's how I was raised. To you're born with some, you know, with this inner ability. It's your responsibility to to nurture it, become the best that you can, and give that to the world. And so I call it my acorn theory because two things, three things happen back there. One is it really helps individuals when they're not sure where to go with their life when they walk it, what has transpired with because it's set in the middle of the woods, it also uh the woods are catching in the birds and all the insects and uh and all the uh the non-seems they're communicating, and so you're being held so it opens up individuals to that relationship. But the center of the labyrinth is like the ancestral well of remembrance and it's a power point, and that's where you can tap into your ancestral knowledge. It's amazing. And so that's not I've learned that as I walked it, but that was not a preconceived notion when I built it. That's what's transpired over the years walking it and it revealing its story and its holding. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So amazing because as I was walking up the beautiful stone steps surrounded with ferns and all kinds of ground cover. I mean, it's really magical. There was come that I will get the name, do you and the forget me not.

SPEAKER_00:

You want to talk about magical what you're seeing there, and that's just wild forget me not just just going crazy.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I I would manage to come back and see that because as I was walking up the stairs, there was a an acorn that was the head of you know, the top of an acorn that was perfectly sort of set in the crevice of the stone step. And I almost stopped and took if I hadn't been running a little bit late, I would have whipped my phone out and taken a picture of it because it was so picturesque, like you have all these little people that you have kind of perched in nooks and crannies. It looked like it was literally placed there. And I I'm uh it absolutely made such an impression on me. And here we are talking about the acorn. Here we are.

SPEAKER_00:

And so it knew, and that just happened. That something's happened, right? Yeah. Tree wanted you to acorn wanted you to see it.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So how soon after your mom died did this manifest?

SPEAKER_00:

So that was 2000, you said? Yeah, that was 2000, and so we began so I was able I f got the land in 14, began building in 16, it was finished in 17. And um And was your did your son know either of your parents? So only kids knew my mom, none of my kids Oh right, your dad died while you were in college. So knew my dad. And so they that's I mean, I I'm sure you know that's really hard because he he so defined who I am. You know, I'm as an artist, I'm uh incredibly driven and in cr incredibly uh I I have a great practice. You know, I'm very disciplined with my practice. I love it. It's my it's who I am, but that that's so much of my dad, and that's also embracing is like giving back to my father and giving back to my ancestors is that honoring and and that respect to them, but that's still working as hard as ever. Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, like so yeah. So did but did your son uh your son got to know your father, I would imagine, through that project that you did with the army jacket?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So yeah, so I recent and so and that son Robbie and he did and um and what I like to do on on my dad on his birthday is I will often send pictures of my dad or letters from my dad to me, or and I do that with about my mom with the kids too. Just cool tradition. Yeah, just to give them and yeah, just little threads, you know, those yeah, to g and to keep to keep my parents alive in their minds because my mom was certainly a big part of their life, but my dad and my grandmother was part of their life too, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And was that your maternal grandmother? Yes. Uh-huh. Was she s in Ohio in Ohio? Is that she moved.

SPEAKER_00:

She was You know, my mom's from Alabama. Oh, right, you did say something. Yeah, yeah. And so she when she got she ended up getting double pneumonia, so she reluctantly in her eighties got moved to Ohio, a place she never was. And yeah, so that was great. That was like hugest gift for all of us because she was like the dream grandmother and um so it was a gift for my kids to get us spend time with Baba.

SPEAKER_01:

Baba was her name. Baba. That's what you call her. Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Um so yeah. Her she still was on. We every time we would go see her, we'd always say, Howdy bub. And so this is a a meander thread. Talk about a meander thread. So I believe I'm I'm clearly into ritual. And so I wanted my uh husband to take the boys on their manhood trip when they turned 13. And on the manhood trip, they found this big huge curved bear with the sign howdy on it.

SPEAKER_01:

And that was awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

That was awful. So they did this trip in a suburban and they were and so they brought up the bear back, you know, and some bear in the suburban. And so it's at the house out and it's on, it's lived with us ever since howdy. And so you can't look at the bear and see, I called my father bear. And so, you know, just those things are just so important because it works on you consciously, but also it's then it's just a just a thread that you're not thinking about, but there it is, and you know, it's fun for the kids, and yeah, and then it's their bear because both boys saw it. They saw it when my older son and my husband went out, and then they my younger son, they did a similar path, and it was still for sale. They bought it at a time.

SPEAKER_01:

That is such a great story. And I love that you talk about threads because you earlier were talking about sort of the the stitching together of you know the the the stitching that you did on the on the pieces of your mother's clothes. So that's clearly a a theme. And it is a theme. It's a way we it's a metaphorical theme that we talk about all the time with the warp and weft of life and that. Yeah, it's just so cool. Now, are are we on native ground here?

SPEAKER_00:

Was this well I I think so that's an interesting question because I'm gonna say uh it has to be, doesn't it? But I'm also native in that I feel so of this land, and as the quote that's attributed to Chief Seattle, how can you buy or sell this guy? This idea is strange. It's none of us own the land, it's it's in my DNA. So, yes, there were clearly peoples who lived here before this life of my life, right? But we're all related, and so there's stories held in the land that clearly percolate up into my work, and so I'm giving voice to stories that are so beyond my capability of memory and remembrance that are just tapping in by being here. Yeah. And and honoring because a huge part of it see you know, you nuts like from goosebow police. Everybody wants to be seen. All the trees want to be seen. The mushrooms want to be seen, the birds want to be seen, you want to be seen, I want to be seen, and we will we want that to be valued and heard and honored. And so when you just move into that type of relationship with your work with everything, you inevitably it's like how we've clicked. There's so many of our narratives, our threads, they're just like uncanny. And it's just you we're brought together, but we're we've also somehow opened up to each other that that's what's revealing itself. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it it ties back to what you said earlier about you know, when you aren't other, like when you become one with something and there is no other. So you know, at a metaphysical level, it's like that all unified field of consciousness, which ties back to, you know, your depth psychology stuff. And the if you know it's it's really uh obviously that's a a passion of mine as well. So we could go there a lot. And you know, one of the things I'm kind of excited about, you're the first person I've spoken to in season two, this whole, you know, uh, the art of remembrance. Yeah. And you've used so many of the buzzwords that I that have captured my imagination to inform this next season. And I kind of have to leave it open to where the season's gonna take me. I have my ideas of where it's gonna go. But one of the things that I learned from talking to so many artists is sometimes you just have to surrender to the process. And so I'm just gonna let these conversations kind of go where they go and see where it takes me. And I I have some some concrete ideas for it, but um, I'm just so delighted that it's this is the kickoff. I mean, it couldn't it couldn't be any more perfectly timed. And I I took this trip, I I came east to go visit family, and then I came up here to see more family, but I'd never been to this part of the world before. And whenever I'm starting a new chapter, I really like to do something completely new as a ritual for myself. Yes, and cross-country road trips are easy, low-hanging fruit for me at this stage. I mean, I I wasn't able to go to some far-flung destination, but just coming up to this part of the world, which is so new to me. And so, and here we are. I feel like the lesson is whenever you take a chance and swing out, yes you know, the world just sort of Yes. It opens up the intuition. Well, it was a total invitation on my part. This is this is the new pattern that I've learned from all so many artists is to just surrender to the to the space in between.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. It's like having your ear to the ground, right? Feeling the pulse, listening. And then responding. Even when you don't know where you're going, you don't know where it's leading. It's just having the faith to take the leap.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And that's another reason that I I started this whole podcast series is because I may have mentioned I used to do art travel and then that got interrupted by COVID. And I wanted to create conversations with people who were at that stage of their life where they weren't sure, you know, empty nest or women or whatever. People were just at that at a crossroads. And I thought introducing people those people to artists who stare down a blank canvas every day is to kind of help them learn the muscle to how you you generate your life from nothing. Yes. And sharing them now that this podcast format allows me to share it with a much larger audience than I would have been able to do with my art travel. So it's amazing to me how much it's landing and how much it's stimulating. I get a lot of feedback, which is so satisfying that, oh, I picked up a paintbrush for the first time in 20 years because they were inspired by one of the artists that I spoke to. And it's that's that whole idea of reconnecting with the greater community, helping us feel less isolated in our world. And the beauty of I want everybody to have access to the experience that we had yesterday where I just walked in here and it was like you know, the fireworks of connections. And it was just so it was for me, it was really magic. No, it was. It was amazing. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, that's kind of brings us all full circle. And um, yeah, so I have no, I'm on my way back. I'm gonna make one or two pit stops and we'll see what magic happens then. But other than that, we're this is just sort of the beginning of whatever circle. So I'm kind of I want to bring it back to a labyrinth. I don't know if all labyrinths are constructed like this, but I'm talking to the right person to answer me. But in the Shaw labyrinth, you go pretty straight in pretty quickly. You think you're gonna get to the center pretty quickly, and then all of a sudden it spins you out again, and then it takes a long time to get actually back to the center before you start your retreat back out. Is that the nature of labyrinths?

SPEAKER_00:

So do you always Well that's the nature of the unicursal labyrinths? There are two types of labyrinths. There's unicursal, which is one path then, one path out, and multicursal, which is our labyrinths with dead ends, false. Oh that was more like the the minotaur labyrinth with the Absolutely Okay. So what's interesting about that though, when it's portrayed on coins, it's a unicursal. So you often, when you read about labyrinths, they'll be multicursal, they'll be with the dead ends and the false turns. Today, we've really lost the use of those two words. So we typically think of a multicursal as a maze, right? Like a corn maze, right, right. Hedge maze. Right. And we think of the word labyrinth representing a universal labyrinth, the one path in, one path out. And what's amazing about them is that from the outside, you see the beautiful pattern that they create. They're geometric, they're gorgeous, right? But when you're in it, there is a feeling of chaos. You're not quite sure where you are in the path. So it's a metaphor for one's journey through life. You know, you're just taking that next step, next step until you get to the center, right? And so you're following, so you you don't necessarily see the the path as a whole, but when you're but the the but the former has a lot more hope.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, the idea that you're going to eventually get to the center. Yeah, you're getting to the center. But if if in the other, in the alternative, if there are starts and stops, right, it's it's like a life that gets interrupted or something. What would what was the theory behind those?

SPEAKER_00:

And well, that's the way I mean they're so they're um archetypal forms that are that are found in every culture. And so y we could easily say that they are metaphors for different journeys through life. And we all know plenty of people who have, for one reason or another, been stopped and have not been able to figure their way through um every event of so Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

And so how is there a relationship? That's really a lot for me to think about right now. I gotta collect myself for a minute because you know, obviously, you think about the people who die young, like my mother and so many people as being on this that type of labyrinth.

SPEAKER_00:

And I So I I would not I would not necessarily agree with that. Oh, so say more. Because she lived her life. And she lived, I imagine, when she was here full life. And so her journey was what it was supposed to be. Um not the journey that maybe you want and or her had hoped for. But a little I think the life interrupted, the life stopped. This is a real this is a deep dive, right? This is we're segueing here big time. Would be where people have had just come to events where they've not been able to figure out how to continue on, right? And right, it becomes labyrinthian and hard to navigate.

SPEAKER_01:

So in that second kind of labyrinth is at at when you get to the dead end, can you you can absolutely find your way, you can find a new way.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's really more of a you can always find your way to the center and you can always find your way out.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

You can always find your way. You can always find your way. You can always find your way. Sometimes it's a much more challenging adventure because it's like, well, this didn't work. Let's let's try something new. Let's go back and take a different path, and then you go, and maybe you continue to make correct turns so you get to the center, but maybe you don't. And so then you end up at another dead end. So then you have the courage to turn around, go back a little bit, and then you you go the other way.

SPEAKER_01:

And well, I mean, that happens definitely looks more like that too.

SPEAKER_00:

I think most people's lives look like that. Certainly within creativity, that happens all the time in the studio. Sure. You know you're making something, and then that didn't work. Right, right, right. And so you adjust, you know, you're nimble. Yeah. And so in a lot of ways, yes, everyone's life, most people's lives, are going to be that type of journey. You still can get to the center and you still can get out. But it takes courage and nimbleness.

SPEAKER_01:

And giving yourself permission, which is I think another theme that came up out of the first uh season, was that the artists who are successful are constantly giving themselves permission to do to pivot and to kind of start something new. And that you know, once you're on a path, you don't have to go there and beat your head against the wall if it's not working.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think that's a really important metaphor for life in general.

SPEAKER_00:

The the universal labyrinth, where people typically think of as the labyrinth, it's why it's been embodied so much within the past 30 years as a form of meditation. Because you really are staying on a path. And that makes so much sense.

SPEAKER_01:

Because monkey mind is the other one. I mean, I'm constantly bumping up the start again, start again, start again. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And so it's really good to have a labyrinth. And so it doesn't have to need to be a literal labyrinth, but going for a walk in the wounds, going for a walk along the lake, to be able to allow your senses and your body to kind of unwind and tether, and you just allow yourself to get back into your own rhythm, right? So it helps attune yourself.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Which sounds like sort of what you did with the project to bring us full circle. The the project that you did with your around your mother's loss of your mother. It was a way for you to just kind of, you know, focus and get yourself back. And so was the healing of your back uh ultimately consistent with when the project was terminated? Were they were they around the same time?

SPEAKER_00:

How did you decide that the project was so what happened, like I said, the the one project took a year? And so I was significantly better because I had surgery and in the beginning part of that soon after my mom died. And so the surgery was very successful. And so my um but it takes a long time to heal your bad. And so because I was asked to do this other show, it opened up another door for me to engage in material, and that just kind of kept going. And that door has not closed, because it's still just right there. It still feels like that the surrounding here has they're demanding I give voice to them, the enchanted forest, and really giving voice. They're they want to be seen.

SPEAKER_01:

So well, it sounds like with that first body of work you completed an octave and then you kind of entered into the next octave.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And it felt like it was, you know, one of the things about art exhibits that are so wonderful for artists is that you get the body of work together and there is a feeling, there is a feeling of closure. And so when I had that uh second exhibit around that body of work, it was enough for my psyche to go, okay. And so even though I continued to do some pieces, there was a real settling that allowed me to then open up to other projects, you know, and other images that wanted to be birthed. And so yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, that's cool. Well, I hope this is the beginning of a new octave for us. And yes, yay. And I believe you ended there. It was just absolutely worth it. Thank you so much. Just been awesome. Incredible. Love talking with you. Thank you. So thanks for joining us today. Artstorming is brought to you and supported by Artbridge and M and listeners like you. Look for us on your favorite podcast platforms or wherever you listen. Your subscriptions, likes, comments, and shares help us to reach more listeners and attract the support we need to thrive in these challenging times. If you love what you hear, please consider making a contribution. We rely on your help to keep these conversations going. Every dollar you contribute goes directly into programs that support our mission. And we've been offered a matching brand that will match every dollar that you contribute. That means more compelling stories, more in depth articles, and an even greater impact on our community. Please visit our website at www.heartbridgenm.org and thank you so much for being an essential part of our work.

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Lili Pierrepont

Host