Create New Dreams…Seeding the Future Vision

We had a wonderful weekend camp…thanks to the gorgeous Goddesses who came from two Communities up north to join us in the Riverland.

Along with the Mandala art and making clay beads, we work-shopped the Vision for the Womens groups…then painted terra cotta pots and planted the Sunflower seeds that will grow along with the new changes..

Thankyou to the Women for allowing us to photograph the art work and capture the many wonderful moments where Nanas and great grandchildren, Community leaders and members sat and enjoyed the  creative processes  together….what better way to spend a weekend in the Riverland sun?

Deanna Nungala and I feel very privileged to have been invited to host the Celeberating our Community camp and look forward to our Miminis Nopin Inc ventures in 2009 when we can return the gifting by visiting the Women and seeing how the Sunflowers have grown….

Miminis Nopin – Women on the Move…

 

We think we have found art based activities that everyone- young and old -can enjoy together…and sme1954 …you may find new pathways open when you get creative too!

 

Deanna and I wearing the clay necklaces we made during the Apology week, to honor the Mothers whose children were stolen from them.  Nungala is a Stolen Generation survivor and a Warrior Woman of the heart in the truest sense….

 

Our Vision Workshopping Board….

 

Painting the clay beads they have rolled earlier in the day is wonderful for concentration for the little kids and fun~creativity for all ages…

 

Little sister can create and paint her own beads too!

 

 

This pot-painter will seed some fantastic changes for her  Community I am sure…

 

 

The gorgeous goddess with the smile that lights up rooms and hearts…

 

Our Chef extraordinaire took time out from her delicious food-making to paint a pot of her own…

 

 

Lady birds for good luck turned up on the top of this artists work….

 

…as you can see….

 

Mother and Daughter creating together……they have a vegie garden at home and the new Sunflowers might fill that garden one day! One single  seed births the seeds of many new flowers over one single season… 

 

…seeding the Vision is a journey of process, attention, watering and ….patience….

 

…all pots are sealed with varnish and the upper torso lean, with head titled upward is a spraying skill learnt after accidentally inhaling a nostril full of varnish dust on the first ever pot.  Interesting shadow cast on the ground there….

America goes to the polls…

It’s time for a Change…

 

NAIDOC 2008 – Adelaide

Here are three gorgeous gals who caught up with one another during the NAIDOC march and Family day on the banks of the River Torrens.

Katrina Power, Pilwauk White and Jo Rigney…

“I AM at Home with Peace and Prosperity”

This was the theme for our empowerment art work this week…to become comfortable with Peace and Prosperity when there has been a history of chaos and poverty….

I am ever amazed at the completely individual and unique creations that emerge from the same black and white template……..

Adelaide [Tandanya] – City of Contrasts…

People often relocate to Adelaide because of the beauty and the lifestyle, the smaller population and the general sense of not-quite-a-city-and-bigger-than-a-country-town.
Sometimes those same people complain about Adelaide being slow to change and resistant to development whilst also appreciating the things that make this city unique.

Heritage listed buildings (there are many) are protected from the 21st centuries vastly different architecture, though sometimes only the outer facade remains as the inside of the old blue stone buildings undergo radical surgery and extraction of almost all body parts.

The other day we were attending an event in the relatively new Mawson building in North Terrace and looking out of the window I was taken by the light of the late afternoon sun and how the new overshadows the old along this stretch of the city that overlooks the railway station and River Torrens behind it.

In the background St Peters Cathederal looks like it has a team of 2 storey fly swatters in front of it…the fly swatters being the lights that surround the staidly old home of tradition, The Adelaide Cricket Ground…

It is a good place to live and the surrounding country side produces some of the best wines from MacLaren Vale through to the Barossa Valley, from grapes that are perfectly suited to this climate.

The hills form an arc shaped range and we are nestled between the hills and the sea and the land in and around the city and in the further afield country side is rich in the Dreaming stories of the Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Nurrunga people – three of the largest tribal groupings of this part of the land..

The Adelaide Central markets offer fresh, locally grown fruit and vegetables, breads, cheese and scrumptious cafes and all along Grouger and Grote streets, (the back and front of the market) there is a wide vareity of restaurants and more cafes that are a constant reminder of how truly fortunate we are to be living in a place such as this.

The Winter of content…

It was raining yesterday afternoon and after the months of drought and over 10 days where the temperature reached 100oF a few months ago, the winter rains and green-sheen everywhere are very welcome in this desert state.

I was sitting under the back verandah with the two semi-homeless garden cats, Gabrielle- [Gabi] and her daughter Shima. You can see how gorgeous they are:

The garden was humming with rain drops and birds and leaves blowing down from the Cedar Trees
late autumn fall:

…and I remembered back to when I first moved in here and all I could see was a barren, dry patch of soil…

…..and how this piece of Mother Earths blank canvas taught me more about process, time, holding a vision, weeding and seeding, than I could ever have imagined when I first moved here during a trials-and-tribulations winter of discontent….

In our ‘outcomes’ driven, western society I learnt that the answers we are seeking about sustainable change and growth are to be found in Mother Nature’s process of Time, cycles and seasons….

……and how wonderful it is to create a room with out walls and a fireplace whose only chimney is the sky….

Adelaide in South Australia is traditionally named ‘Tandanya’ , home of the Red Kangaroo.

Living and growing and learning and sharing on traditional Aboriginal Land, Kaurna Country has its own special strand of environmental magic and possibility….As my good buddy Nungala reminds me:

“It can happen so much better and so much faster if you acknowledge the Ancestors and remember the Dreaming”…..

Don’t worry… and Just Bead Happy!

I have recently introduced an ART of Change  program using beads that we hand roll from air drying clay to create an “empowerment necklace’ as mentioned in an earlier thread.

Meeting for between 2 to 4 hours a week participants shape their beads based on a Vision they hold for the future or as an expression of love / resolution / Spiritual strength / developing a stronger sense of Self and identity etc. 

Once the personal vision  beads are dry we paint them and give them life, colour and vibrancy. Das clay is FANtastic as a quick drying and very hardy medium that is not heavy once it has dried…
The rolling of the clay and shaping the beads is a very relaxing process that activates the alpha state (open eyed meditative) of optimum learning and relaxation.

The ‘bead happy’ project engages two significant aspects – process and completion, which are often difficult to attain for people who are living with marginalisation, violence, addiction, mental illness, trauma and poverty.

The talking circle format is a very relaxed, informal environment which is more culturally relevant for many of the participants from non-western /European backgrounds. This kind of environment does not have a ‘counsellor -client’ dynamic, it is a far more empowering model that moves beyond pain and issues to the place of connecting with personal power, natural talent and possibility.
The very state we knew as small children before the external world imprinted limitations upon us.
We celebrate “ME” and explore the potential we have to move beyond limitations and past patterns and programs….

Thankyou to the Women whose work is in the image below…although they remain anonymous in the photos, the very personal stories and amazing creativity that is expressed through the clay and the beading affirms to me how privileged I am to provide art based life coaching at the grass roots, community level where so many amazing people have extraordinary stories to share….

Mandala

I made this Empowerment Mandala for our discussion on “Boundaries” in the women’s group…..

Each participant has a black and white copy as a way of ‘kick starting creativity and the use of symbols as an alternative to talk, talk, talk therapy……

Death of the corner deli. Once the center of story telling and Community..

This afternoon I was driving through some of the older suburbs near where I live, about 4 kilometres out of the city, and noticed one of the old Rosella Sauce signs on the side of what was once the local store …that also been a ‘High Class Shoe Repair” store…(see second image).

Across the road was another old store, now closed that may have been the fruit and vegie store or the local butchers….perhaps even the post office back in the days when telegram changed lives and parcels from over seas took months to arrive.. Milk was delivered daily, leaving milk money out overnight was the norm and the fruit and vegies often came in the back of a truck that strolled through the streets once or twice a week…

Except for a rare visit to the city the corner store was the only ’shopping centre’ around and was also the centre of the story telling, gossip and information sharing hub in the ‘village’ of the surrounding streets.

These two stores that once supplied the groceries, meat, fruit and vegetables of hundreds of families are now old fashioned relics to an era that has all but gone…

Remember “Northern Exposure’ that huge hit tv show of the 90’s that was set in Alaska?
Ruth Ann’s store was a relic of the past, brown paper bags, tins on low shelves and an assortment of grains and goodies near the counter – stories and news exchanged over that heavy wooden counter.
It was personal and the word ’service’ really meant ’service’… not a corporate marketing theme.

What a time of rapid changes and extinction we are living in as mass marketing’ gobbles up the slow and familiar ways of not-so-long-ago-times.

Sorry Day- This is what Katrina Power and Carol Omer felt on the day…

A picture paints a thousand words and we all shared many tears and smiles and hugs on this historical, momentus day.