CREATRIXES
I used to live at 8,000 feet, in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico. My husband Todd was offered a job there and it was the perfect time to leave my old career in advertising and graphic design behind on the East Coast, and focus my energies on making art full-time. It was something I had wanted to do for a very long time.
On the second day of my life in Santa Fe, I took my dog Barnabas on a walk around the neighborhood. As we trekked up the mountain, we took in our first impressions of the landscape. Cactus, chamisa, aspen trees, pinion trees, the mountains, a big expansive sky, the ravens who soared overhead, and rocks. Lots of rocks.
A glimpse of the landscape along El Paseo, my favorite route to walk Barnabas and look for rocks.
Later on that evening, my husband and I went into town and there, we just so happened to meet a woman who, as it turned out, I had known about through her book, The Artist’s Way. It first came into my life when I lived in Sag Harbor NY. I devoured her book and adopted the ritual of writing morning pages as a daily practice…for a while. Then, when I moved to Richmond VA, a friend gave me a copy. So I got back into it again. When I moved 8 years later to Arlington VA, I read it a third time and took up writing morning pages…again for a while. So imagine my sheer delight upon meeting Julia Cameron on Day Two of my new life in Santa Fe! I remember feeling that evening, when we got home, that moving to New Mexico was already proving to be a good decision.
After introductions, explaining my background, and sharing my desire to focus exclusively on making art, Julia mentioned that she was conducting a workshop in a couple of weeks and invited me to attend. I didn’t have to think twice about it. I was “in.” It would be a perfect way to transition into my new life as a fine artist.
Early on in the workshop, Julia assigned us a “natural abundance” exercise, to collect five stones, while we were taking our artist out for a walk. “Our artist” meaning ourselves. So I went walking up my usual route, around “the loop,” as my husband and I referred to the roads we walked Barnabas along. As I surveyed the options, I was drawn to a particular rock that was pink, grey, and white. So I picked five up and took them home and piled my treasures in a nook in the kitchen. On another walk, I found more of those rocks and brought them home, and they also went into the nook.
One day, I found myself playing around with the rocks, probably while talking on the phone, and afterwards, I noticed that I had arranged them into a figure. At the next workshop, Julia gave us a new task; to come up with a creative totem. As soon as I heard the assignment, my mind whooshed back to the kitchen, to the little nook where my reclining rock figure was resting.
As soon as I got home, I looked at my loosely-assembled rock character and was struck by its uncanny resemblance to ancient, prehistoric sculpture. When Todd got home from work, I told him about my workshop assignment and asked if he could help me turn my collection of a bunch of loose rocks, into a standing figure. He was game.
The base needed to be another natural element, so wood was the logical choice. I ultimately selected a piece of Douglas Fir, for the wood’s distinctive growth rings. Then, I counted out the rings, and a base was cut to coincide with my age at the time.
It took four hands to put my creative totem together and we got it standing firmly on its base. I completed the totem by adding a feather to the top of its head. Then I started referring to it as “her” and likened “her” to those ancient Paleolithic fertility goddesses I had seen in books and museums. In my mind, my creative totem’s fertility was really all about her fertile, creative mind. Nevertheless, I did have an extra little rock and there was a space on her back where she could carry her “child.” So we added the little rock and topped it with a feather, too. I named her: “Mother and Child.”
Then I recalled a book I had read many years before, The Chalice and the Blade, by Riane Eisler, who introduced me to the word “Creatrix,” as she described representations of the original mother goddess in Catal Huyak (an ancient city dating back to 7100 BC, in what is now Turkey) and other Neolithic societies.
“Creatrix. That is what my creativity goddess is. That is what I will call her. A Creatrix,” I thought.
Gathered rocks for an assignment took on a life of their own, becoming a "Creatrix" creative totem.
I showed up at the workshop the following week, when everyone was presenting their creative totem, very excited about introducing the first piece of art I did in Santa Fe, my Creatrix, "Mother and Child."
As the workshop continued, I began noticing all the other rocks on my walks with “my artist,” along “the loop.” For the first time, I truly appreciated rocks and all the colors and textures and densities there are. So I gathered more. Some looked extremely strong and massive, yet they were very soft and broke into pieces easily. I had never spent so much time looking at rocks. But here I was, falling in love with them.
After the workshop ended, I kept on doing my morning pages (which I am still doing) and walking, collecting rocks, and making more Creatrix totems. Each Creatrix told me how they wanted to be made. Some imploded until they were put together in the way they felt comfortable being. I discovered that making all the Creatrixes was cathartic; the perfect way to get back into making art. Working in a tactile, three dimensional medium, after decades of working on a computer.
Somewhere during the process of making my Creatrixes, I thought about how to transport them safely, should they need to be moved around or sold, and thought a mini-crate would be a good idea. So Todd built a small wooden crate, made of Douglas Fir, with a leather handle, and we added foam inside to provide cushioning. The crates are beautiful in their own right. So as I kept making Creatrixes, Todd kept making crates. Until one day, when we realized that we were going to be leaving Santa Fe and they all needed to be packed up safely.
A collection of rocks I gathered to take with us back East, to make even larger Creatrixes someday.
There are a total of 15 sculptures in the series. Each and every one of the them has great spirit energy and are made with a material that has a long history on this earth. A few stones have fossils of shells embedded in them, a visual reminder that even at 8,000 feet above sea level, this mountainous region was once under the sea. My first tangible foray into doing my art full time yielded a series of Creatrixes that began as rocks, reimagined by a fledgling fine artist, into an expression of the spirit of Creation that infuses everything in this world and beyond.