Learning to Share
These past few weeks, I have been rolling a question around like a shard of glass in the ocean of my mind, heart, body, and spirit. The question appeared simple and was asked by someone who saw recent artworks of mine and expressed their appreciation and desire to have them: "I would like to buy your artwork. How much does it cost?"
I was caught off guard.
This past year, I began making ceramics after a five-year hiatus from creating studio artwork. As soon as I started making them, I recognized a specialness in their appearance as a finished object and the magic in their personal utility because the creative process of construction is medicine for my overactive mind. My recognition of their specialness was echoed by the outer world. Any time I’ve shown them either virtually or in person, I received praise and the requests to represent them or have them. While this external affirmation validates my own perception of their specialness, it also pokes my innards with a molten capitalist rod, a feeling that I recoil from in pain. The feeling is so sharp that it agitates my desire to discontinue creating objects. It is also partly why I stopped creating studio work and rid myself of studio materials years ago.
With this recent question, I found myself suddenly trodding through the mud of my mind, attempting to make sense of my desire to create objects in direct contrast to not wanting to contribute more objects to an overly manufactured planet and enter art into the capitalist market. Suddenly, what is precious to me about my ceramics feels thwarted, and I lose my grounding.
Once again, I am wrestling with a question that haunts me: How do I share what is precious to me?
I told the person asking that I would reply later with an answer to the vessel's costs. Weeks passed in energetic anguish. Being able to answer this one person felt necessary as it would provide the scaffolding to also say yes to the art show I was invited to have later this year.
First Thought: I will happily give this person my work as a gift. I believe in sharing and giving away our gifts. I desire that my work is not built up in my home but instead finds places in other people's homes. Giving away my artwork is more aligned with my heart than selling my artwork.
Second Thought: How can my work be affordable when creating it takes me so long? (This Thought is followed quickly by mean thoughts that berate me for taking a long time to make an object)
Third Thought: If I learn to make this object routinely, the time will be cut to ½, and then I can make the price less if I do more in less time. (Are you starting to see capitalism brainwashing in my thought patterns?)
Fourth Thought: I want freedom. I don't want to have to make these objects routinely, nor do I want to make many of them. (This is more of a feeling that I felt in my chest and stomach)
Fifth Thought: You don't have a choice. To make them affordable, you need to do more in less time.
Sixth Thought: If I charged for my time in the same accounting system used for my day job and considered that others may sell these objects, I will need to double my costs to account for the other's commission payment for selling them. Now, the objects are too expensive for a non-rich person to buy. Now, I will be creating art that is inaccessible to most people. I will be actively contributing to further inequity. And, in the inexplicable variant of art market pricing, where do I fit in? Am I too cheap or too expensive? Who is the expert that I can trust to provide an answer?
Seventh Thought (s): What is the difference between art and craft? What is the purpose of art? How has White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Capitalism distorted our collective understanding of our value and expression of value?
Eighth Thought: There needs to be a different way, a revolution for how we exchange value and meet each other's needs and desires.
Ninth Thought: (My current location in this cycle of thinking) While recognizing a fair cost for my artwork, I will also create new exchange methods that center my values and needs. I will investigate where I need to ask for financial exchange in my practice and where alternatives exist. I will examine my fate and childhood poverty trauma and work to alchemize it from personal poison to collective medicine. I will continue to create, remembering that creating makes me feel good. It is capitalism that makes me feel sick, not creating. I will remember that capitalism is a shared agreement. I can disagree with capitalism and create new agreements while living under its dominance.
In line with this thinking, “How do I share what is precious to me?” I have been revisiting my purpose for Sunday Circle. After a full year's circle around the sun, I am considering what it set out as, what it is, and what I want it to be or become.
Firstly, I am amazed at the natural cycle of thought. I did not know that it has been precisely a year since I sent my first note out, and reading it today, I am amazed that I wrote about almost the same thing; the challenge of enumerating art in capitalism. I also wrote about playing versus working and my word this year is playful. If you have been reading along, you know I have mentioned that my lifeline is that of a snail whorling around itself. Here I am again! But it is not precisely the same place, and I am not the same person. I have grown a year's worth of experience.
Last week, I found myself puzzling over a feeling when writing Sunday Circle. I felt self-restricted. I had a desire to share freely, but a nervousness crept in. Suddenly, and for the first time, I wondered why readers read and share my writing? What are readers doing with my writing itself and the information I share? Am I safe to share freely in this space? Safe from the pain of theft, slander, judgment, cruelty, and jealousy. And, do I feel regenerated by writing and sharing weekly or do I feel depleted in the efforts?
I felt ashamed for feeling fear, fear that is rooted in historical pain from having my creations stolen and my overgiving. I wanted to brush it back under the bed, "Stay in the dark, you ugly feeling!" I jumped up with a wand of idealism, shouting: "Silly, you! You have nothing to fear–don't let fear stop you. You have gifts to share, and share them you must!"
Scene change: In walks 2024 me, an adult woman observing these young parts of herself wrestling on the bed. She sees the wounded one as young and noble as the idealist.
She sees they need an understanding of conditions that support giving freely and feeling safe.
Basic Needs Met
Shared Agreements
Reciprocity
Mutuality
Approximately five years ago, I was invited to become an ordained minister to marry a friend. Funnily, I loved becoming a Sunday speaker. (Again, this warrants a personal essay as a child who grew up in Church and can think of no less safe place!). I loved becoming a Sunday speaker because I had been toying with offering a Sunday service at Instar Lodge, not a service rooted in any one religion, but a weekly discussion to inspire goodness, connection, and personal spiritual growth. Instar Lodge was initially built as an Odd Fellows Hall, a non-denominational fraternity whose creed was Truth, Love, and Friendship. Resurrecting their mission in their space felt resonant.
Many North American communities no longer have active churches. Churches represent the body of Christ, which is the community. The Church is the physical container and can be found dotting the corners of most historic townships. Interestingly, the word nave means the central area within the Church where people gathered. It also shares roots with our navel and with ships. This image inspires nourishment in my mind's eye. We come together to our center, to the actual location of where we were fed in the womb, to then disperse goodness in the sea of our lives with our bellies full of spirit. It is from a state of fullness that we can share freely. Without a church in our community how and where do we come together for inspired nourishment and unity?
This ties to the origin of the word charity. A word rooted not in Christianity but in Greek mythology. The karites were minor deities often invited to parties. They were the graces. They were representative of an overflow of goodness and joy and they shared these innate qualities freely.
Charity is an overflow of goodness shared freely with others. This is very different from today’s philanthropic system to redistribute capital in ways that uphold inequitable power.
Let's skip ahead to the concept of tithing, a practice that was and is the financial backbone of most churches. Tithing is a small percentage of one's material wealth given away and often given to the Church to redistribute to those in need. This concept is not only practiced in Western culture but was practiced in Native American cultures, too. Each season, families shared their crops, and the extra was given to the Sachem, who then was tasked with redistributing the wealth to the elderly, and orphaned in the community. You can easily see how this system of giving is a social system designed to help aid social equity while also recognizing the value of spiritual nourishment and community.
Ok, are you still with me on this thought journey? I am traveling quickly and not carefully tying all thoughts into bows but rather creating a pool of thought ribbons… back to my joy at the whimsy of imagining myself as a minister. One of the things I have considered about the minister's job that I love is the cadence. Each week, they determine a main lesson and spend the week studying, researching, and preparing for that lesson. This is how I used to spend my time teaching Creativity + Courage. I would dive deeply into an idea and then create a weekly workshop. This cadence works for me and is one I enjoy with Sunday Circle.
When I started teaching Creativity + Courage (C+C), I wanted to offer my workshops for free. I spoke to my therapist about my plan to pick up more private chef clients packed into the day so that I could take a day off to teach C+C (I was then still actively working as a private chef). Lucky for me, she gently asked me to try imagining what would happen if I received income from C+C and instead was able to work less rather than doing more private chef work. OH GOD! The initial misery of figuring out pay related to my artwork (similar to what I described at the top of my letter today). However, I saw her point after a good roll around in the mud. I created a model that would allow for several scholarships and simultaneously fund my time dedicated to creating and sharing C+C.
Guess what? When I started Instar Lodge, I made the mistake I almost had made when I began Creativity + Courage. I worked harder everywhere else to give away what I created with Instar Lodge. Guess what? I went broke in every way. I became financially overstretched and physically, mentally, and spiritually depleted to the point that I developed health-related problems due to the stress. I have no regrets about what I created and did with Instar Lodge; I am grateful in some ways for the naivety and boldness that enabled me to do that social project, but I learned the hard way what overgiving feels like. And yet, overgiving persists as a personal tendency.
Overgiving is synonymous with not having boundaries. (Throat clearing from my adult self, as this is my winter solstice intention.) Overgiving tips easily into being taken from. Overgiving tips easily into having basic needs not met. Overgiving is not charity because it is not overflow that is shared. Overgiving is self-harm, and in my case, its tendency is a symptom of unintegrated trauma. I believe it is the flip side of miserliness, which also may be a symptom of unintegrated trauma related to poverty and capitalism's inequitable care of the community and the earth.
Ok, ok, back to the top. After a year of playful exploration with Sunday Circle, I recognize both my desire to show up and give fully in this weekly newsletter and my need to feel safe to do so. In this next week (or so), I am going to be creating new shared agreements for the readership that will help me grow my practice in alignment with my needs and desires. I am excited about this as an opportunity to practice liberatory boundaries. Yes, those seemingly opposing words can belong to one another!
I am looking forward to sharing my agreements with you. And I leave this week's letter with a collective wish.
May we all unlearn capitalism and systems of oppression and may we all learn how to share and receive what is precious from one another in ways that engender more goodness for all.