Category: Existence

Categories
Art Existence

Canvas Rebel, Voyage Baltimore Interviews

Before Canvas Rebel, in 2021, I was interviewed by Voyage Baltimore,

Canvas Rebel

Hi Raine, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, with my mom, dad and two sisters. My mother is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and attended boarding school from the time she was 6 until she graduated. As a result she learned very little about our ancestral teachings. So I grew up in typical American culture in the 1980s. I got where I am today because of those who came before me. I am Turtle Mountain Chippewa and German Irish. My ancestors survived many things, and it is because of their resilience and love that I am able to be who I am today.

It all started when I was a little girl, watching Bob Ross paint happy trees and mountains. I remember setting my paper up like a canvas on an easel, mixing colors, and tapping the brush on the paper along with him. I always loved to create. I remember during the holidays I would use construction paper to create real-life scenes of fireplaces and Christmas trees with presents under them on the walls in my room. I would doodle on pages of paper and fill each space in with a different design. Or build little towns with scrap blocks of wood in the yard. Creating has always been my favorite pastime.

Canvas Rebel Interview

In October I received an email from a project off shoot of Voyage Baltimore and was interviewed by Canvas Rebel online magazine

Here are few highlights from the interview!

Is there a mission driving your creative journey?

My goal and mission is to help people to remember we are all connected, through the use of our imaginations and sharing our stories. My goal as an artist is to create art that expresses my story, which is to share with the world my experiences and how I interpret my connection to all around me. My mission is to use my art and passion for creative living to inspire others to share their stories through creative expression. Filling the world with humans who have self-awareness through a connection with themselves and the world around them helps us remember we are all connected. I often ask myself what happens when we all remember we are all connected? Simply asking the question leaves a person with the realization that we must respect each person’s part in this dance of life. Living life in harmony, with gratitude.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding thing for me as a creative is sharing my intuitive gifts. I tap into energy, to create one-of-a-kind art for each individual person. Intuitive henna readings, and birth chart paintings are a few ways I share this gift.

Intuitive Henna readings are when I spend time meditating with a person’s energy and see their energy through visuals and feelings. I use those images and the feelings of the flow of the energy to create their unique design at that moment. The design is created as a temporary tattoo which lasts anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks. When I am creating the design, I share with each person the feeling of the energy and how it relates to them. Every time I do a reading the client is surprised by the images I create, and the feeling I share with them. Being able to share my gifts with someone through art, and allow them to connect with art and themselves, is such a rewarding experience.

I love to be able to sit with another person and share my creative gifts to help them know themselves better. This is the most rewarding and the reason I started doing intuitive birth chart paintings for clients. I read the energy of their birth chart and create a piece of art that helps them see themselves better. Sharing the reading with each client helps them to know more of who they have come to this earth to be. The mission is to remember we are all connected, and I do this by helping others see themselves through art.

What does it mean to be a Canvas Rebel?

To me a canvas represents a blank slate to create new works of art. Its a new beginning and a perfect place to build a reality that I desire.

As for the word rebel, it is one who resist authority, control, or convention.

When I paint I am totally a rebel… on canvas. Resisting conventions or ideas that painting has to be one specific way.

<3

Categories
Existence

Yoga Love Festival 2022

  • Yoga Love
  • Image gallery image

The second annual Yoga Love Festival was held at Amethyst Retreat Center. This year was wonderfully planned to flow in and out of sound, yoga, and art experiences at a beautiful and sacred space.

Yoga Love

The first festival was held before the lockdown, and was a beautiful event, but this years topped it.

There were local artist, healers, food vendors, musicians, and dancing!

There was an amazing artist from Pennsylvania that created a performance piece! King Prolific painted this upside down and then lit it on fire to reveal the woman!

There was Yoga, and Love.

Every year I look forward to this event! If you haven’t been, you need to keep your eyes out for it next year!

Categories
Existence

Inclusion Festival 2022

This was my first year at Inclusion Fest. It was held at the Kempton Community Center in Pennsylvania.

Inclusion Festival is an accessible music and wellness festival for everyone! Designed to accommodate all ages and abilities, featuring sensory-friendly and empowering live music, immersive experiences, and a large variety of educational and recreational workshops.

Inclusion Festival

Inclusion Festival and our year-round inclusion programs are initiatives of Accessible Festivals, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to making music and recreation accessible to all people.

Inclusion Festival was co-founded in 2017 by Amy Pinder and Leah Barron. Amy and Leah met at a music festival in 2014, where they realized they shared the same passion and vision of creating a festival that welcomed people of all abilities. A few years later, another festival brought them together as they found themselves serendipitously camped next to one another and spent the weekend discussing how to turn their dream into a reality.

Accessible Festivals was co-founded in 2014 by Austin Whitney and Oren Shani. Six months after a car accident that left Austin paralyzed from the waist down, he attended a music festival that left him feeling joy and hope for the first time since his spinal cord injury. He joined forces with his friend Oren and decided to dedicate his life to helping others have the same positive and transformation experience.

Each of our inclusion programs celebrate the value of all abilities through music, art, nature, movement, and more— with a goal of shifting culture at other community events and spaces so inclusiveness and accessibility become the norm.

https://inclusionfestival.com/about-us/

My friend, Hex Botanical goddess, Alison Hunley invited me to join her as a vendor. I am so glad I did. It was the most wonderful weekend.

There were many wonderful activities and workshops for kids and adults. It was great that our kids were able to come and enjoy the event with us. They really had a great time doing all of the tasks and workshops. Playing on the playground and enjoying the hammocks! It was a very safe and supportive environment. Reminded me of a festival style Kids Yoga Love festival!

I had a wonderful weekend… from making bags for meals on the go, or watching Element sift for crystals! I also enjoyed doing the silent dance party. It was so fun and freeing. There were fire dancers with amazing performances. Old typewriters that we could write our manifestos on, and decorating the tablecloth with florescent ink.

Lets not forget seeing Kuf Knotz and Christine Elise play again!

It was such a creative and magickal weekend. Dancing and singing and creating with one another and our children. What a great way to bring in this new season.

  • Inclusion

I am so excited for next year! A beautiful way to bring together community and support one another.

Categories
Existence

The Other

other

There are times in our lives where we need the point of view of an “other”. When we are so far into our own set programming, it is vital to have an opposing force that generates the movement of energy. And once the energy is stirred…we can filter through the programming…and redirect that energy intentionally in a way that is aligned with our truth.

The only way to know when are aligned, is when you have intentionally made choices that lead you on the journey to uncover and remember your truth… and then the universe speaks to you through sycnronicities, and signs… bringing people into your life you could’ve never dreamed existed.

There is strength in the awareness that contrast is necessary for expansion, learning, growth, and manifesting a life that you are satisfied in.

Indigenous communities were great representations of this… There were ceremonies for when young men and woman reached puberty and really dived in deep to find their purpose…. though ritual and ceremony with themselves, with no distractions… with intention to know thyself more fully.. and to continue to learn about one’s self through every experience. Each having their own path and each person in the community respecting and acknowledging the other’s path.

Other Mirrors

When we are all aligned with our truth, we can assist the others in seeing their truth more clearly. We reflect their being back to the other more clearly when our mirrors are polished from within.

Let’s create a cultural dynamic where we seek out one another for our differences in a positive way. To learn and grow and support the awareness that we are all different, and possess different gifts that are vital to our ability to survive and thrive.

other

It also helps us to see one another and respect each others being. Like the total embodiment of Namaste. We are all connected.

#reemergence #reawaken #recreate #selfawareness #weareallconnected

*artwork created using Wombo.art in collaboration with AI.

Categories
Existence

We are ALL Connected

All Connected

We are ALL connected…. each of us. If no one shares their stories and teachings and thoughts and ideas with each other, then no one will grow or change. We are meant to be here for each other…. and not just for those we like.

Remember.

ALL of us are ONE.

People are here to show you all something about yourselves, like you are meant to show others about themselves…and how do we best do this… by first being grounded and centered within ourselves and our OWN connection to creator… and not letting things knock us off center emotionally but rather seeing all things as a challenge to grow and learn from. By polishing our own mirror.

I keep seeing others putting things down and breeding negativity by expressing how dissatisfied they are with things. There is a difference between moving through awareness, acknowledgement and action… and getting stuck in it.

Release.

When people just want to hold on to the old narratives, the energy tends to vibrate at a lower frequency. If we aren’t moving through the past and becoming more present, then we will never create a future we truly desire.

The mindset has to be shifted.

All Connected
ll

Treat others how you want to be treated. Period. Not treat others how you want to be treated, until they don’t treat you how you want to be treated.

I had this conversation last weekend about the IGGY culture, and how there is this idea that when someone presents us with something we don’t like, that we do not have to “take” it and can simply block or ignore them. Those people are VITAL to our learning about the deepest parts of ourselves. We should be examining ourselves and the things people do which trigger us so bad that we want to ignore them. Finding out where those feelings come from… where are their roots… questioning ourselves deeply, and recreating our responses rather than simply reacting.

I’ve always felt that things that are the most challenging to do or begin, usually have the greatest gifts in the end.

Reemerge.

So this means we have to sit with our shadows, and really listen for and to our intuition. Meditate. Have faith that what you feel and hear is truly aligned with your highest good, and for the highest good of all.

This is the meaning of true unconditional love. This is the living example of love… and true awareness that we are all connected. Love all ways.

The Anishinaabe see respect as an awareness that we are all part of creation and so what I do to you I also do to myself… the ultimate respect is to know that others are embodiments of the great mystery and we are all connected.

Know thyself and love thy neighbor as thyself. ❤

#remember #release #reawaken #recreate #selfawareness #reemergence

Categories
Existence Art

South Africa – An Artizen Experience

On November 4th we arrived in Johannesburg South Africa. The day we had been planning and fundraising for was finally here! The airport was big and gray, as thunderstorm rolled in. We met with our fellow Artizens, the Tanzanian Magomamoto Theater Group, along with a new friend Bonface from Kenya.

South Africa

The drive from the airport to the hotel was a beautiful sign of the power of the arts to bring people together. We shared songs and drums, and sang together in our different languages.

When we arrived at the hotel, we were greeted by two local South African women who just so happened to be at the hotel for breakfast, which neither had ever done before. The universe brought us angels to help us accomplish our tasks! The one woman Hanna, my newest friend, assisted us in so many things…. from finding a local woman to purchase fabric from, to taking us to the store two days in a row to gather materials for our workshops. She even took me to the airport on my last day.

Artizen Conference Day 1 – Creation

Our first day of the Artizen – Art for Social Transformation conference was amazing. Jennifer Foylan presented the keynote speech about her journey through the life cycle of the butterfly. While she shared her story, I created a live intuitive painting for her, in front of the group. This was a powerful time to show how art can express our experiences and emotions.

I was apart of the group that presented on the birth of the caterpillar and the transitional stage in the cocoon. Linda M and Raisa J were my team mates, and we each shared pieces of our indigenous knowledge with those who attended.

Day one was the birth of the caterpillar, where Linda shared the creation story and the medicine wheel knowledge and Raisa presented the tradition of ribbon skirts and how each is connected through creator. I assisted the students that attended in creating a mandala based off of a workshop Linda does through her art therapy presentations.

The mandalas were a collaborative group project that started with 4 questions:

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

Where and I going?

Participants were asked to create a visual representation of their answers to these questions using the mandala template that was pre drawn. Each group member had a task of completing a section, while they worked together on the meaning. After the students created their mandalas, each group shared what it meant to them.

This was powerful because students in South Africa do not get the arts in school. This showed them how powerful of a tool art is to help share your stories and connect with one another.

Day 2 – Begin Ribbon Skirts

Day 2 of the Artizen 2021: Turtle Island to South Africa conference we traveled, with our new friend Hanna, to find fabric, ribbons and sewing machines for the ribbon making workshop we presented for a group of women from South Africa who are domestic abuse survivors.

Along the way we met a beautiful soul at Spirit of Stone and were gifted amazing stones and medicines. Stuart does amazing energy work in South Africa and I look forward to returning again soon to participate in experiences with him!

We were also so blessed to have found a local woman who had traditional fabric from Kenya, Mo_Fabrics_More. It was such a blessing to purchase fabric from her and support a local small business entrepreneur.

The workshop was wonderful. It was at the Turquoise Harmony Institute. Jennifer shared her story and journey through domestic violence and sexual abuse, and Raisa discussed how ribbon skirts are a form of traditional art that is healing. Even though we weren’t able to begin sewing the skirts, we had each woman pick a fabric they wanted to make their skirt from, and we measured and cut the fabric to prepare for the next day, when we worked with the women to add their ribbons and sew their skirts.

We selected fabric with the color purple intentionally, as is the color for domestic violence awareness. The women who were participating in the workshop are survivors of gender based violence, and sexual abuse. They are working with Disele May, who has created the Disele May Foundation to help women overcome these struggles.

Constitution Hill Gala

After the workshop we attended a gala… all I can say is… amazing powerful work was being done there… doors opened… and I am ready. The gala was held at Constitution Hill in the old women’s prison. There were speakers from the beginning of the apartheid, and those that worked to bring democracy to South Africa. The speakers were powerful, the performances were divine, the food was delicious and I was asked to share about my White Buffalo painting “Hope”, which was donated for silent auction. Our day even included another rainbow! Our work is blessed… as we remind each other through art that we are all connected.

Day 3 – Performance Art and Sewing

This day began with a beautiful tour of the only constitutional court in the country of South Africa. It was amazing seeing the structures of the holding cells for the jail used during the apartheid. Getting to spend time in such an historic place that was FILLED with art was super inspirational. It reinforced the need to tell our stories through art to heal past traumas.

South Africa

After our tour we participated in the keynote speech, and addressed students from another school. Linda, Raisa and I shared our teachings and stories with the students. And they were blown away by our spirit names.

After the keynote, we continued to work with the women who have survived domestic violence, to create healing ribbon skirts. They LOVED it!!