If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years.
Anne Carson
. . .
“Ode to Georgia O’Keeffe” by Nancy Iannitelli
[This work] is a tribute to a woman whose fearless vision helped expand possibilities for woman artists. Inspired by the organic forms and intimate relationship with nature found in her work, I allowed those influences to pass through my own visual language… This painting is not an imitation, but a conversation across generations—one woman artist acknowledging another while continuing to find her own voice.
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We are never
So mindful
Of the beauty
In this world
As when we are
In danger
Of losing it.
A diagnosis,
A death,
A parting…
Waves designed by
Sheer magnitude
To take our
Breath away…
Submerge us
Gasping for air,
Designed
To shake us from
Mindlessness and
Beckon us
To the savoring
Of each infinite
And yet fleeting
Point in eternity
. . .
What we face
Will be
our teacher
The lesson is of
Our choosing.
Will it be the
Tsunami of rage
And drowning gasps
Of regret?
Or will it be
. . .
This moment
Now
With the spirit
Of the student
Who steps from
Shore with bare feet
Into the edge of
Ebbing and flowing sea
. . .
Neither holding on,
Nor letting go
. . .
And instead
Smile
At the recognition
Of our perfectness
And serenity
That has come
To be….
Like a tiny
Drop of water
Or an ocean….
In your hand.
“Mindful” by Mac Morrison
“Kith, Kin + Smoke Trails” by Alexa Wheeler
Being part of the AROHO circle means contributing my voice to a larger, evolving archive of women’s creativity, experience, and collective memory. I am drawn to the idea that our individual stories, however different, become part of something greater when brought together.
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There have been stories I have been telling myself, solid truths that now I realize
were nothing but sandcastles, fanciful things, elaborately made, full of turrets and
ramparts and drawbridges, now all sweeping out to sea.
“Six Objects” by Gargi Talukder
. . .
Q: What does my writing/art mean to me? Writing is the way I understand the world, my place within it, and the events of my life. Writing is as essential as breathing, but I am currently in somewhat of a penitent’s state, because I kept placing my writer self last among all my other identities. Now that so much in my life has become upended, I am turning the bulk of my attention to the one part of myself that was always the most important, though I may not have been acting that way this entire time. Writing is everything now, as it should have been all along.
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Head to tail to back to belly, you begin…
spin salt sand into shell. No one tells
you, you just know skin hardens into what protects.
Remember to lie low beneath the tidal surge,
keep still, up to your slits in sand.
But always and inside in spite of you and your glossy shell,
the body grows beyond its own protection.
. . .
Shrinking is the only way at first:
inside the softness of your body,
the part that knows how to, flows, released.
It’s the sliding out that makes you cringe:
what if the shell doesn’t split with the press of your wanting?
What if you don’t know how to lift and bend?
But it does, you do, you inch out raw,
shed the whole of that other coating,
the barnacled and the brittle parts:
tendons of claws, membrane of ears…
And because you are sea-born sand-shifter,
daughter of transformations,
you recommence your wild, spinning fandango:
hide, harden, sleep, grow, shrink,
slide out into your most constant self,
shedding the shell again and again and again.
“Horseshoe Crab Fandango” by Nancy Krim, from Waves: A Confluence of Women’s Voices
. . .
Three hours. Sacred sisterhood.
Braving our artistic intention shoulder to shoulder.
Click each date to register and join us for two back-to-back sessions:
11 AM to 2 PM ET
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Because the water holds our stories and the waves lift them up.
Our invitation to submit and receive is free.
SUBMIT Your Art & Writing to WAVES Editions
Our art, our words, our names, our experience.
An inclusive mother archive of our longing and significance.
The call-and-response of a sacred sisterhood.
