Women and Art – Feminism and Religion

Soul-Fully Scripting Flesh: Poetic Justice & Joy by Margot Van Sluytman

Ours is a city of abundant tattoo shops. Places, I was to learn, where art and heart are rife. Places in which rich conversations occur. Conversations that linger long after the ink has begun to settle.

Wending my way to find the place to begin the process of scripting my skin, I spoke with a young man. His back was bent as he focussed on his animal friend and for a short while, before approaching him with my questions, I read the ink that covered his arms and legs. So many designs, descriptors, expressive strokes of thought and meaning known only to him. Hieroglyphs wherein his voice, his many selves, were revealed, yet hidden unless conversation were struck and desire to speak forthcoming. Wherefrom grew his choices?

I decided to cross the street and to ask him the meaning of some of his tattoos, the ones that spoke most vocally to me. As I moved closer, I spotted the script on his wrist. Script among an array of the colours and images. That script struck me. A fragment from The Tempest. Caliban’s words.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of
noises,
Sounds and sweet airs that give
delight and hurt not.

She Changes Everything She Touches: A Reflection on Love and Loss, part 2 by Sara Wright

part 1 was posted last week, you can read it here.

How much I like clipping by hand. Surprised by this realization I feel satisfaction rising. I was bored by this task as a child. I am delighted to meet a bevy of fat nubbly toads who appear out of the overgrown ground covers and in between sun warmed stones. Both child and ‘old woman’ feel happy that none will get mowed down by a polluting gas guzzling machine. The Peace of this Land that we belong to steals over us. Less is more. I’ll tackle the patch of bracken later, or maybe not until tomorrow. In this weather accomplishing one simple chore a day is enough.

Well not quite. I am creating a serpentine path of fieldstone that stretches from my front door to meet the path that climbs the hill. My original intention was to have someone ‘more professional’ do the work, but they were too busy so here I am, an almost eighty-one-year-old woman, creating a mosaic out of cracked stone! ‘I am the artist’ I say, as I carry a few more irregular rocks down from the huge pile sitting in front of the garage eyeing the mosaic for the perfect fit. Illumination strikes when wind hits the stones. Blowing seeds, withered crabapple bits, pine needles and leaves into the cracks I see what is happening. Small plants like violets, creeping charlie, ground ivy, and catmint will find niches in the soil that is being created before my eyes. Mosses will follow in the shade. Ah, Nature is going to help me craft a unique and imaginative fieldstone floor. Each time it rains the stones flatten out becoming more stable. That same feeling of satisfaction steals over me again. Vaguely I think that I may be doing something else besides laying stones in an artistic way and trusting that Nature will fill in the cracks, but I am not clear just what this might be. All I know is that it doesn’t matter how long this project takes. Process has taken precedence. This much feels just right.

Toni Cade Bambara: How to Care for Oneself While Healing The All (American Woman Writer 1939-1995), part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday

The mud mothers, ancestors, began to make themselves visible to her when she was a girl, in the movie theater, on one of the walls in a cave like indentation, “with enormous teeth painting themselves with long hair brushes, painting pictures on the walls of the cave”( SE 254), at church, and in her attic. “In the attic they came in the mirror once. Ten or more women with mud hair, storing yams in gourds and pebbles in cracked calabash. And tucking babies in hairy hides. They came like a Polaroid. Stepping out of the mouth of the cave, they tried to climb out of the speckled glass, talk to her, tell her what must be done all over again, all over again, all over again. But she hung an old velvet drape over the mirror and smothered them. They were not going to run her off her own place, Not the attic “(SE 255). In church and at the theater she avoided looking at them.

For Velma and for Bambara, it is the spiritual roots of her ancestors and ancestry from Africa that come calling, the mud mothers. In Velma’s town there are mentors and guides and Aunties and godmothers, all levels of support and care available in claiming her gifts that Velma has left behind, rejected. Yet, when the book ends she will return to this, she has agreed to take up the mantle in order to be well.

For African Americans in particular, Bambara believes reconnecting with the ancestors—the ancestors that their ancestors were taken from— is part of the healing wanting to happen. That this was left out of the civil rights movement. That honoring ancestors is part of this lineage and that the ancestors are there and waiting. That slavery often disrupted this connection but it is there, the ancestors are there, for the reconnection if one is willing.

Toni Cade Bambara: How to Care for Oneself While Healing The All (American Woman Writer 1939-1995), part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on August 11th, 2020. You can see more of their posts here.

While reading adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism for #NastyWomenWriters, I was stopped in my tracks by the praise coming forward in that book for black feminist, writer, activist, film maker and mentor Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995).

brown writes:

“Toni Cade Bambara, author of The Salt Eaters, the one to tell us writing was a tool for the revolution, that our task was to make revolution irresistible. Bambara is a main stream in the lineage of pleasure activism, not just because of what she put on the page and into words, but also because of the ways she wove community, the way she supported other writers and organizers, the way she engaged in healing work” (45).

In the chapter “The Sweetness of Salt,” author and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs, archivist and scholar of Bambara’s work, writes about five women who have been instrumental in her life and work: “scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin, filmmaker and activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons, artist and abolitionist Kai Lumumba Barrow, healer and organizer Cara Page, and editor and intellectual activist Cheryll Y. Greene”(46), who were all personally influenced, mentored, “sistered” and “mothered” by Bambara. It was these women’s recounting of their experiences with Bambara that caused me to go find her for myself.

May Alcott Nieriker (1840-1879): Little Woman, Big Ambition, part 2 by Maria Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday

May clearly defines her audience,

“For I am supposing our particular artist to be no gay tourist doing Europe according to guide-books, with perhaps few lessons, here and there, taken only for the name of having been a pupil of some distinguished master, but a thoroughly earnest worker, a lady, and poor, like so many of the profession, wishing to make the most of all opportunities, and the little bag of gold last as long as possible”(6).

In her book, she covers three art hubs, London, Paris, and Rome, providing information on means of travel, places to stay, artists to study with, galleries and museums to frequent, scenic sites for sketching and painting, and even stores to buy art supplies and clothing. A more useful document, I cannot imagine! Julia Dabbs concurs with this assessment in her article Empowering American Women Artists: The Travel Writings of May Alcott Nieriker:

“Then as now, it is difficult to imagine a reader not being inspired by May’s words of encouragement, her practical advice, and her passion for art.”

May Alcott Nieriker (1840-1879): Little Woman, Big Ambition, part 1 by Maria Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on Oct 22, 2024. You can see more of their posts here.

The Orchard House, painted by May Alcott.

The youngest sister of Little Women author Louisa May Alcott, May Alcott Nieriker, was a successful artist. Her accomplishments were many and her unflappable relationship with her sister Louisa made it all possible. Here’s to sisterhood of all kinds, where unwavering love and support make so much possible!

Visiting the literary houses lining the streets of Concord, Massachusetts, I found myself in the Orchard House, a house and family made famous by Louisa May Alcott’s blockbuster novel Little Women (1868).

Entering an upstairs bedroom, I was struck by the artwork on the walls and was told it is the work of May, the youngest Alcott sister, Amy in Little Women. Her parents, progressives in their time, allowed her to paint and sketch on her bedroom walls. I was informed that most of the artwork displayed in the house is also that of May’s.

My curiosity was stoked: Who was this woman?

Poems for Season by Sara Wright

In late November I first snowshoed our woodland trails to include the little balsam that I lit to honor all evergreens throughout the winter months. Every day when my little dog and I circled the tree I told her I loved her and called her ‘Lightbringer’. This daily encounter never lost its magic. The Goddess Lived during the darkest winter nights!!

The rest speak to the subtle changes that occurred from late winter into spring. My writing naturally follows both seasonal and intraseasonal shifts that might not be noticed unless a person is paying close attention.

(1) Lightbringer

Will she still
be there
shining
after the storm?
Moon Bear
is on the rise.
I peer through
white flakes
at dawn
light
pierces
her powdery
fringed shawl
Love lights
the darkest
Night.

Steadfast Balsam
cloaked or not
Ever-green,
Tree of Life.
Heartlines flow
crystalline
waters
pour down
deep sleep
oh,
Daughter
of the Night
Daughter of
The Light,
Light -Bringer
Life -Bringer
The Miracle
Is that
You Live.

Brave Girls, Bad Witches: Age, Agency, and Anxiety in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia by Elanur Williams

Lewis, C. S. *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes, 1950

In the landscape of mid-twentieth-century children’s literature, C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia initially appears remarkably progressive. Long before modern fantasy embraced the trope of the fiercely independent heroine, Lewis gives us the Pevensie sisters, Jill Pole, Aravis, and Polly Plummer. These are active, clear-eyed adventurers. Lucy is the spiritual compass of the entire saga, possessing a theological clarity that routinely eludes her brothers. Jill braves subterranean terrors to rescue a captive prince, while Aravis flees an arranged marriage with the sharp wit of a seasoned survivalist. In Narnia, childhood is a meritocracy of spirit, and Lewis grants his young girls immense pluck, agency, and divine grace.

However, from a feminist and theological perspective, this grace comes with a strict expiration date, and a jarring ideological fracture occurs the moment a female character crosses the threshold into adult womanhood. I find that although Lewis champions the plucky girl, he displays narrative anxiety toward the grown woman. Could it be that in the Narnian universe, female maturity is treated as a spiritual fall from grace, an intersection where Christian purity is compromised by adult desire and bodily autonomy?

Poems by Annelinde Metzner

For five days this March, I gifted myself with a stay at the Meher Baba Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I often plan short getaways to help me find my center and decompress from everyday life. The contrast between “worlds” is very great when you’re staying in a pristine nature preserve with the overwhelming commercialism of Myrtle Beach right outside the gates. I knew that this retreat was helping me to deal with a similar conflict I felt in my body, from the pain and stress of living in this moment in time. Poems flowed easily, and I’m grateful for that.

Retreat in Myrtle Beach

A preserve of five hundred acres,
here on the South Carolina coast,
where fresh-water lagoons teem with waterbirds
just across the forested dunes from the breaking ocean waves.
Turtles sun in the grass,
deer leap and raise generations.
A preserve! and out beyond the gates,
over the protecting wall,
is Myrtle Beach, another type of Mecca.
Come out the gate, and it’s “Hooters!”
then, “Tsunami Beach Souvenir Shop!” (everything on sale!)
then, “Maui Beach Miniature Golf,” with an exploding volcano!
and of course, “the MAGA Megastore,”
who’ll sell you anything you could want or need.
This morning I awoke in my sweet-smelling cabin,
little propane heater in the old fireplace
keeping me warm.
And here is the teaching:
Plant your feet on the Earth.
Love this greenness, these creatures,
love Yourself,
because the entire off-kilter, out-of-balance,
koyaanisqatsi (*) world out there
is depending on You: feet planted,
head in the stars.

The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd

“What if the teachings within the Bible were not dualistic, but taught of oneness, connection, and the flow of energy?” (9) In The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible, Janet Rudolph (whom FAR readers already know as a FAR co-weaver) explores the definitions and vibrational elements of the sounds of original Hebrew words in the Bible. This is her latest book. In this book, Janet creates retranslations that express the energy, flow, dynamism and movement of the verses. She also discusses ways for readers to experience the power and potential of the verses for themselves. As she notes, Hebrew is a “sacred language” so that “the words themselves carry a vibrational element that we, as human beings, find meaningful and compelling” (3). In doing so, her retranslations revive the energy of “nature and its cyclical wisdom” (4). These are remnants of the original teachings, bringing forth their fresh beauty, inspiration, and world perspective we so need now.