Women. Water. Wild.
Beloved Water,
What do you want to say? I’m here listening and feeling you wise one. You know since ancient times. You know all over the world, and sky, and all of us.
What is it like in the leaving? When you go, a bank turns to the wall of a ditch. A desert stays behind in your place. I flew over the Rio Grande and I could sense and see the leaving. My aunt took me to you and I stood on your shore, windswept, watched your coffee and cream color, mesmerized. Feet swollen with heat, heart swollen with song for you and your leaving. The heaviness of your importance.
I walked with a friend one day in Berkeley and she said something about Strawberry Creek. I felt an electrical spark in my heart for you. I went back the next day to find you and felt I’d found a friend I lost — once sacred — still. Cement blocks on your bank, children playing. Song came over me. I could feel how much you’ve been loved. Heaviness at how you’ve been mistreated.
We use your name to describe the heaviness, the depth, the waves of emotion, feeling lost. But we also know you cleanse. We know the feeling of warm tears. We know your healing.
What is true — you can take us and our poetry and tragedy out of it — the fact is, you are life.
This project is dedicated to your protectors, to the women who commune with you, and of course to you.
XO,
Autonomous Muse
All words in quotations are from the women who participated in this project.
A very special thank you.
Your thoughts have shaped the art, like water makes crevices in earth.
Luna
acrylic on canvas
We start with Moon, the greatest water keeper. We honor you & the tides that move through us.
You who holds the emptiness & the filling up. The letting go and coming in. The cycles of growing and washing away.
A Woman on Water
collage
“Water can look calm and serene, but underneath there is so much more. Another world.”
My depth threatens
to take over
daily.
I balance on the surface.
T R U E E L E M E N T
digital collage
What do you think of when connecting the word wild to nature?
“I think of true freedom. Of not being held down and that beings can live in their true element.”
The Wave & The Womb
digital collage
Who is the Wild Woman? What does she do? Where is she found?
“The wild woman is within every woman. She walks in the forest, swims in the water, dances, looks at a bonfire, plays music or sings, draws, journals.”
Life
Drip
Drop
Rush
Fall
Splatter
Move
Float
Clean
Hold
Love.
(collage)
Status Quo
collage & acrylic on paper
“Men have always tried to hold women back, to ‘tame’ us. The world knows the Wild Woman is dangerous to the status quo. Their power will be threatened.”
Without You
collage
S A C R E D
collage & acrylic on plywood
“Beauty is in the ordinary too.
Find water.
It is precious, necessary, loving.”
Grandma River
photograph
When rivers are old they start to turn back on themselves
Trace the river with your finger, trace your story, the water in your body, trace your healing.
Ancient Wild
mixed media - found & reused
What happens to the wild when it is repressed, hidden, tormented, captured?
It moves underneath the ground. A hidden spring, until we are ready to carry it forth for the ancestors who couldn’t. It waits patiently for a wave, for a tide, for a way. When we open our hearts and come home to our wild, the water breaks through barriers and can’t be stopped. We are the wave of wild water. The tide is rising.
While We Were Living & Dying
video
“Water is patience, the cycles of things, beauty, play, contemplation, hidden depths to discover.
Water makes me feel joy, gratitude, true happiness, peaceful, vibrant, alive, small, part of something bigger, loved and held.”
If water could talk it would say…
“…go with the flow. “
No Choice but to go Forth
digital collage
What does it mean to be wild?
“To be free!
To be reminded of who we are deep down, stripped from social conditioning.
Not contained by anything.”
Wild is spiritual
Wild is creative
Wild is pure heart
Wild is laughter
and cries
from our deepest parts
Wild is roses
that grow at the beach
in the summer heat
Wild is my spirit
Wild is me.
∞
There is a movement to protect water & land, and thus protect life. Learn more about land & water protectors & ways to get involved here.