Being a creative vessel
talking to my mom about her creative process
“No blue, no green,” Dr. Sylvia Earle has famously quipped. Without water, life cannot exist. As humans we begin in the amniotic fluid of our mother’s wombs, and we end by traveling out into what the Renaissance Florentines called “the great sea”—the dimly perceived waters that await us at our deaths.
This is a post on Father’s Day, and I promise, I’ll get to my dad. But first we’re going to begin with my mom, Mary Burns, who has been creating an exhibit, Women and Water: Woven Portraits from Around the World, since 2017. She recently completed it, and it has gone on display in Ashland.1
Yesterday I drove her up to the exhibit reception and she indulged me by talking about her creative process. I wanted to know how she had sustained her creative energy and belief in the work over the extended six or so years it took to create. Books and art exhibits—we go in for the delayed gratification thing in my family.
“The women kept me inspired,” my mom said. “If I had doubts, I thought about their stories and what they had faced.” Her exhibit features 29 handwoven jacquard portraits portraying some 39 women who have dedicated their lives to water—activists, scientists, water walkers, teachers, farmers, healers and more. These are people who have fought to make their voices heard, whether through words or actions, and at least one gave her life for the greater good. Their stories are humbling and knowing their triumphs against patriarchy, oppression, misogyny, racism, capitalism, gave my mom the strength to show up for her work over a long period of time.
She acknowledged that some days could be challenging. “Sometimes it’s hard to be alone in your studio and keep up your faith in what you’re doing without feedback from other people.”
“How did you deal with the tough days?” I asked. “Did you have a practice you relied on?”
“Just showing up at the loom made the difference,” she said. The actual act of weaving sustained her. (It should be said that my mom weaves on a TC-2 loom made by Digital Weaving Norway, one of about 60 hand-jacquard looms in North America.)
In fact, Mom credits getting physically grounded with helping her creatively in all ways. (Yes, she is a Taurus.) Time spent out in the fresh air or a walk or ski can be almost as clarifying as focused time in her studio.
Too, her spiritual practice forms the cornerstone of her creative process. Her morning yoga routine always ends with prayers, and sometimes longer meditations. Having that daily conversation with the divine reminds her that she is never alone and helps her to keep her creative channel open.
Her entire creative process seems to be embodied, by which I mean it’s a physical experience in her body. Though as a visual artist she receives her ideas through images and colors—not to mention vivid dreams—she also feels them intensely.
“It’s also about the heart,” she told me, touching her fingertips to her chest. “It’s about being a vessel for the work to come through.”
I had to smile when she said that. I don’t know what kind of a creative person I would be without my parents; while my creations are my own, my mom and dad are the people who taught me what it’s like to lead a creative life. Thinking of yourself as a vessel through which creative energy flows is a Mom-ism that I have totally adopted for myself.
When I say her dreams are vivid, her inspiration for her previous exhibit, Ancestral Women: Wisconsin’s 12 Tribes, began with dreams. She dreamt often about the women she portrayed in that exhibit, and she dreamed too about the people in Women and Water.
“There’s the importance of having support, too, throughout this process,” she said. “Your dad has just been…incredible.”
“Beyond supportive,” I agreed.
“A partner in the process,” she said.
“Yeah, and there aren’t a lot of guys who would do what he’s done. He’s done a lot, but this is your work, and he’s devoted himself to it as much as if it was his own. That’s usually a ‘wife’ role, not a ‘husband’ role.”
She smiled and said, “That’s true.”
After my mom did the extensive research, designing, and weaving of each portrait, my dad stepped in to braid all these stories together into a book. He did additional research and wrote the text. Not to mention the countless hours of discussion and brainstorming, going with her to shows and conferences, putting the pieces up and taking them down, and telling absolutely everyone he knows how amazing she and her work are. It is a generosity that’s rare to see.
All creativity is relational in some sense. Most of us don’t create in a vacuum, only for our own enjoyment, or even if we do, we feel an urge to share what we’ve done, to let our work be seen. We want it to matter to someone else, because it has mattered so deeply to us.
May you all receive all the support you need for your work to come into the world.
And if you would like to learn more about my mom’s exhibit, go here; if you’re in the Upper Midwest, Women and Water will be on display at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland, Wisconsin, until October 16. It will then move to the Watrous Gallery in Madison, November-February. After that, the world!
“Gone on display” is such a euphemism for my parents schlepping 31 aluminum frames and several heavy boxes of framed portraits in a U-haul up to the NGLVC and putting the exhibit up in the course of a long day with help from the staff. “Gone on display” sounds as if the art pieces have been sent (perhaps by luxury train, like the Orient Express?) off to a gallery or other exhibit site. Perhaps the pieces have sprouted legs and arms and climbed onto walls or frameworks or pedestals themselves, while the artist(s) and exhibit staff lounge about eating grapes. Er, no. If there is anything I have learned from growing up around artists, it is that artwork is a LOT of work.
Wonderful!