This autumn, I felt a calling to return to my studio art practice, specifically to the artwork I had made in Iceland a decade ago. To return and begin again. As I sat with this desire, I considered the word return which, like all "re" words, means to do again, but the turning part interested me.
These Icelandic artworks felt so close, just beside me, not ten years behind me. I felt as if the questions I was asking then were nudging me again. As I sat with this curiosity, I was lucky enough to enjoy a synchronistic conversation with an artist colleague I had been in a fellowship with many moons ago. And like in a fairytale or quantum jump, we briefly popped into space together and discussed our artist paths, which were timeless and not straight. That, yes, my past work was a hands-reach away. I had just completed a decades whorl, having traveled a great distance but also in the shape of a spiral. The gifts I had put down then I placed there for me to pick up now. In this way, I may have met this colleague years earlier to find me this day, in the future, to remind me of this truth.
Yesterday, I had an estate sale. I have moved to another town and am renting our home for a while. I decided to sell the furnishings rather than hold on to them for when we returned to the house. In many ways, it doesn't make rational sense, but in others, it honors an uncertain future and gives me spaciousness for new choices or, said otherwise creativity.
During the sale, a dear artist friend mentioned she would be visiting Iceland with her colleagues. She shared a story. One of the formidable people she was going to Iceland with had said: "Dawn Breeze did her best body of work when she was in Iceland." She said it as encouragement that my work had imprinted a strong affection in this notable somebody. It did feel like that, hearing it. AND….then I thought about the work I have been creating in this decade that has not been made to be sold as objects in galleries but has been alive with company and could also be my "best body of work."
Ten years ago, in Iceland, I was on my first artist residency in a place I dreamed of going to. Whose geography looked like my expressive abstract landscapes at that time. During the residency, I left my 3.5-year-old son and spent a month in mostly solitude in a vast nightless landscape. Before departing for the residency, I had seeded the possibility of developing Creativity + Courage, my experiential arts curriculum for personal transformation and empowerment to be led in dual diagnosis treatment centers.
During the residency, I experienced a radical reshaping of my artwork as well as my desire to create artwork. I didn't want to be in a studio. I wanted to be outdoors. I wanted to do something other than predetermined work. I wanted to engage in co-creation with life. All edges blurred for me. My paintings became artifacts of shared experiences of time in place, recording ocean laps, smudged dandelions, swan squawks, and muddy fingerprints. My paintings were ritual, sanctimony, and not like anything I had a reference for in the lexicon of "art." My paintings were questions of belonging. My favorite piece I titled; "Unearthing: To Be Enough." During this residency, I also discovered my penchant for words, wildcrafting, and deep history. I left this residency with more questions than answers.
I wondered:
What type of artist am I? What type of artworks are these?
When I returned to the states, I began developing Creativity + Courage, which I designed by translating my art practice into exercises for personal discovery. My artistic focus moved to design this series of workshops. When I began facilitating the workshops, they gained a powerful momentum and jumped borders from dual diagnosis treatment centers to corporate leadership retreats to private groups to children's classes; they won grant funding and were in popular demand. With their success, I wondered:
What type of artist am I? What type of artwork is this?
As a self-taught artist1 the question of identity and lack of language around the lineage of my work challenged my belief in its value. This prompted me to return to school to understand my work's place in the world through an academic lens and provide me the language to communicate its positionality.
My decision to attend Grad School in my mid-thirties was powerful self-acknowledgment and indicative of our overculture’s devaluation of unorthodox knowledge or lived experience.
A fire was lit in me during those 2.5 years. With the discovery of artists I could relate to, such as Joseph Beuys, I was buoyed to explore even more co-creative community arts ideas: What if Creativity + Courage could translate to a k-8 arts curriculum in elementary schools? What if I created a community project space that supported women and mother artists? What if writing became a community practice of building intimacy and empathy? What if a walk in the footsteps of a historic artist empowered others to claim their own artistry by looking at trees and the sky? What if a program for 18-21yr old provided the skills needed for radical living and creative empowerment and fostered belonging in their places? What if art was life, and we could learn to live differently by restoring our identities as creatives?
And soooo…I set out to investigate these questions through active research. This led me to write books of poetry, create Throwing Seeds arts program and River School for children, make Wayfinding: Imaging History with Our story, Instar Lodge, and more recently, Place Corps. I successfully supported many artists' events, projects, and becomings during this time. Most recently, I secured a significant grant well over a million dollars to support Place Corps, the thriving non-profit fellowship program that supports local youth to discover their calling to know, love, and serve their places in the world. I have always described Place Corps as a living painting and each fellowship its own canvas. How incredible to have been able to “sell” this type of painting in my lifetime. I feel a growing pride in having helped create something that not only makes a positive change in young people's lives but also provides livelihoods for many amazing creatives.
Please note I use the term “I” with recognition and immeasurable gratitude for the many people who have helped these social projects come into fruition!
None of this would have happened had I kept making physical paintings these last ten years.
Funny, though, as I find myself with a newfound desire to create objects again, write more, and definitely take an artist residency soon, I am asking the same questions:
What type of artist am I? What type of artwork do I make? Where do I belong?
I may still struggle to write an artist statement that can answer these questions on a residency application, but I know the answers. I am the type of artist who will follow my curiosity. The kind of artwork I make is reflective of my heart, and I belong here now.
Exercise: Take a string and cut it. Imagine this is the next ten years of your life.
Do: Move the string in 100 different shapes. Recognize they are all the same amount of distance.
Dare: What is the shape you want your life to be? Write about it.
Tell me how it went!
There is a critique for the term ‘self-taught’ as no one is truly self-taught, we are always informed by life around us. I use this term to indicate I did not have a traditional education as a college drop-out.
hi dawn- val shared this post with me. and once again we find ourselves spinning in the same galaxy. keep asking questions and one day we will have a cup of tea and tell each other what we have seen.
paula forman