Conjuring Sisterhood
A GATHERING LIKE NONE OTHER — GIFT EXCHANGE, NO POSTAGE. “We should conjure sisterhood wherever we can.” — Ava Duvernay _________________________________________________________ “One Moment” by Sylvan Adams Read More Donate and Join A Room of Her Own with Bhanu Kapil “I am ready to release the devastating gasps of self-doubt and debilitating fear. My breath shall be pure...
Bring to Life What’s in Your Heart and Mind
OUR WAY IS SISTERHOOD AND RECIPROCITY Our global sisterhood is growing, and it matters. Your donation makes room for us all. We thank you. Give to AROHO and receive gifts of sisterhood Donate “As a mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are mine because I am every woman’s sister … ” — Gloria Anzaldúa “37th Floor” by Mimi Dobelle...
We Leave Deep Impressions As We Walk
OUR ROOM. OUR WORK. OUR WAY. This year’s Global Summer Camp summoned a growing circle of women who crave AROHO’s uniquely personal, artistic program that seamlessly weaves wisdom sharing into the fold of sisterhood. “AROHO brings me into a circle of artistic friends; like-minded, focused, adventurous women who, by definition, welcome, encourage, and respect me, and the work I do. This gift of inclusion helps me...
Come Be With Us En El Jardin
Dear Creative Woman, WE ARE FROM THE DESERT, THE DEEP FOREST, THE CLEARING BY THE RIVER, A UNIVERSE OF SECRET GARDENS. “Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.” — May Sarton “In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” — Alice Walker “En El Jardin” by Karina Puente,...
That Which is Created Out of Chaos
OUR WORK IS PROGRESS. Each one of us has the authority to speak urgently, moving beyond barriers to physical connection. Month after endless month, sister creatives have forged personal rooms spanning space and time. In competition at times with workplace productivity metrics, our children’s growth, and the tenuous safety of all, where does our creative well-being fit? Since 2019, WAVES has served as a vessel for our narratives and...
Our Rooted Boundlessness
OUR ROOM IS SACRED. We honor our evolving self-agency as creative women and insist on our responsibility to each other by entering shared space with profound mutual respect for our personal time, dignity, artistry, ancestors, and culture. Original sharing, August 10, 2020, Inaugural Global Summer Camp Lend Your Voice and Vision to WAVES Submit “Stream of Reason” by Hilary Druley ...
Woman’s Voice Singing Songs From the Savage Lands
…[they] heard a woman’s voice singing, as if to her babies, a song so high and clear, it matched the flutes…She brought her songs back from the savage lands. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts It’s always important to tell the truth because if you don’t, there are all kinds of terrible social and psychological consequences. There are implosions...
The tide of creative women is rising in waves
This Women’s History Month we are invited to consider the gifts of our hard-won “irrevocably altered vision.” Shaped by heroic journeys and the braid of our collective memory, our circle of sister ancestors shoulder to shoulder with contemporary sister creatives is a tide rising in WAVES. —what haunts us and what we would rather not inhabit, {is} the gulf between what is and what should be. The tool we marshal to cross our gulf...
A dream that won’t let us sleep. Answer the thumping from within.
This Black History Month, the world is buoyed by the beauty and power of Amanda S. C. Gorman, first National Youth Poet Laureate, and the legacy of Anna Julia Cooper, whose 1892 classic feminist text, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South, argued for both racial and gender equality. Each of us, as creative sisters, has a dream that won’t let us sleep. “I constantly felt (as I suppose many an ambitious girl...
Reaching the water in time. Beginning anew.
It seems we are hardwired to take stock on New Year’s. Dreams of a creative life, elusive but persistent like a loose tooth, negotiate their way onto a list in a new journal or – if too crazy, too impossible – scream their way out of our consciousness. At the New Year, we are supposed to begin anew but how do the leftovers of last year’s creative intentions allow space for this year’s? How do we begin anew day...
No Matter What State I’m In I Can Be Beautiful
How easy it is for us to find beauty in our creative sisters. In contrast, what images of our own creative selves do we tolerate or, worse, defend? Made from photos of her that she had previously rejected, “Self Portrait” taught Amber J. Deltorchio that “no matter what state I’m in I can be beautiful.” How can our artistic approach flip our perspective? Imagine what can be learned from our creative sisters. We crown our 20th year with...
Healing Across Time and Space
Dear Creative Woman, To begin to comprehend our need for each other, consider the medieval pair Hildegard von Bingen (a mystic cloistered from age eight) and Eleanor of Aquitaine (a queen imprisoned by her husband for sixteen years), who forged an epistolary relationship. Today, we are no longer forced to wait patiently for letters to cross seas, yet our connection is equally precious....
And Rose Our Voices Like Waves
Dear Creative Woman, Today we respond to the call of our times and our community to release the confluence of women’s voices — both from our anthology and new work — into shared, published WAVES. Our New WAVES “Dragging Virginia Woolf’s Body Out of the Ouse” WAVES digital cover art by Christy Sheffield Sanford, Artist in Residence, Global Day Camp, Oct. 24 ...
We Ask Our Ancestors to Speak to Us
In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés says, “Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation.” The process by which AROHO invites submissions is an invitation into call-and-response, a shared dialogue as women of the world and, deeper still, into our own transformations. We paused on Friday for 9/11 to remember; and in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month this September, we celebrate the...
What Does It Mean to Be a Creative Woman?
What does it mean to be a creative woman? In the call to gather in a virtual women-led, intention-setting creative workspace called Global Summer Camp, so many of you responded from around the world that we expanded our original attendance to include more women. We are from seven different countries and stunningly-diverse backgrounds, and AROHO is galvanized to make more room for more women in gatherings to come....
A Gift to the Silenced
You hold space with us in this world for diverse women’s voices. It is the call of our times to reach together across limitations to connect in rooms of our own making and to amplify each other’s voices and our creative work. We are excited to share a new vision for AROHO gatherings, Global Summer Camp. This is one way we are making more room. Inspired by women’s requests in The Q and our recent “Voices of...
Voice of Women Artists During the Pandemic
On June 24, 2020, St. Paul’s College and AROHO Foundation participated in an international webinar on “Voice of Women Artists during the Pandemic.” Panelists Darlene Chandler Bassett, Karina Puente, and Sun Cooper participated live with Moderator Saranya Francis, with a special video message from Bhanu Kapil. AROHO is grateful to Saranya Francis and St. Pauls College for making this shared space possible, and to...
The Fire is a Kind of Breath Too
A Room of Her Own Foundation has always worked to elevate women’s voices from around the world to help us find each other and make waves. This is why AROHO aligns in principle with anti-racism and justice movements. We are committed to our moral and mutual responsibility to each other, and to the principle of inclusion that honors, engages, and sustains our diverse, global community. We stand with our sisters for love, equality, and...
What is Summoned Forth?
What is summoned forth for you these days? At our April invitation for creative women to submit, a surge arrived speaking to ancestors. Whether by sirens of courage or whispers of persistence, we are compelled to meet each other in the waves and listen to the stories coming from the depths, “from everything.” Find and share these women and their works in full. Names are in bold for those who have provided more about where...
In a Time Apart, What Does It Mean to Have a Room of Your Own?
In a time spent apart, our creativity becomes resourceful. Our rituals are a reminder of what roots us. Our community and virtual acts of connection are all the more vital, and yet the claim to our own space all the more necessary, too. What does it mean now to have room of your own? Has it changed or remained the same? If a photograph, an essay, a poem, a piece of art could reflect your “room” in these historic days, what...
UPCOMING OPEN STUDIOS
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SUMMER WAVES | 2024
A global virtual adventure rich in inspiration and sisterhood.
This August, details coming soon
Zoom-enabled
Recent From Waves
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A Clearing in the Waves Mar 29, 2024
