Rhizo Magazine Fall Equinox 2023

Fall Equinox 2023

Taos, New Mexico

Fall Equinox 2023

About the Cover: Creative Direction, Styling, Hair & Makeup by Salma Vir-Banks. Photographed in Salma’s studio by Diggy Lloyd.

Contributing Artists - RHIZO Community

Moon Chart - Diggy & Sue Letter from Sue - Editor’s Note

What the Heart of the Mountain Knows - Elaine Heather Christensen

Rooted Truth - Nechelle Dismer

I Feel like a Bird - SMKM

Creative Living & A Sustainable Vision - Andrew Brant, Sue Hunt & Jenna Peffley

Caving In - Vanessa Lamorte

Writing into the Void - Nicole Nardone

The Panes - Audra Knutson

On Writing and Emptiness - Grace Powell

This is How it Goes Down - Beth Kelly

The Altar of Art & Healing - Salma Vir-Banks, Sue Hunt & Diggy Lloyd

Editor & Creative Director - Sue Hunt

Designer & Photographer - Diggy Lloyd

Editor & Story - Beth Kelly

Published by - RHIZO Magazine - Taos, New Mexico

Photograph by Hollie Bertram

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Audra Knutson

Audra Elizabeth Knutson is a weaver, painter, writer and jewelry maker. She lives in the quiet wild of Northern New Mexico. Find her work at desertshipbuilder.com & @desertshipbuilder.

Beth Kelly

Beth Kelly was forged in the hot furnace of teenage lust. She learns everything the hard way and sometimes she writes about it.

Diggy Lloyd

An accomplished professional photographer, contributing to campaigns from Teen Vogue to Target. Diggy is the co-founder of Eleven : Eleven Creative , and the principal designer behind RHIZO Magazine . Find her at diggylloyd.com11-11creative.com & @diggylloyd

Elaine Heather Christensen

Elaine is an aspiring mermaid, a nurse, and a word weaver. She is also a yogi and proud mother of three kittens. On the weekends, you will often find her in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, where she and her husband enjoy climbing magical sandstone cliffs.

Grace Powell

Grace Powell lives and works in Taos, New Mexico. She is an ecologist, currently perusing a Masters of Natural Resources.

Hollie Bertram

Hollie is a product and food photographer based out of the Northeast. When it comes to her personal work she loves shooting things in simplicity. She is also starting a new business focusing on making eco-friendly products to rid this planet of all that virgin plastic that plagues it. 6

It’s new, scary, unknown and exciting all at the same time. She lives in Fairfield, CT with her husband Mike, several cats some her own, some fosters. Find her work at holliebertram.com

Jenna Peffley

Jenna Peffley is a photographer, artist, and multihyphenate creative branding and marketing advisor based in Los Angeles with her husband. Her happy place is on the road, she likes to pretend she lives part time in New Mexico, and thinks of Taos as her spiritual home. You can see her work featured in various publications and advertising campaigns. She hates talking about herself in the third person for bios. Find more of her work at jennapeffley.com / @jennapeffley

Nechelle Dismer

Nechelle is a spiritual seeker, artist, and healing facilitator. She has been diving deep into her own psyche and healing for 8 years now and is always creatively bringing the people in her life along for the journey. She is the founder and owner of ELAN Body Wisdom - guiding clients through a nervous system based body and spinal healing evolution. She lives in Sacramento, California. Find her at nechelledismer.com

Nicole Nardone

Nicole Nardone plays within the intersection of primal creativity, sensual embodiment, cosmic + archetypal consciousness, and the wild places within + without. A devoted student for over 30 years, she’s been sharing public teachings since 2010, in the US and abroad. Shaped by the sweet waters of MniSota, she now creates in the starlit mountains of Taos, New Mexico. Find her at nicolenardone.com

RHIZO Community

SMKM

SMKM is an artist, mother, doula, curator, and space builder. She produces community conscious events through her businesses Maggie Knox, an arts incubator/non-profit for women and families with a mission to inspire through creative expression and 1020 Collective, an arts and event center based in Erie, Pennsylvania. She works in darkroom photography, clay, painting, and writing as well as curating art exhibitions, and happenings. Find her at sarahmkmoody.com, maggieknox.com, & 1020collective.com

Sue Hunt

Sue, a radical Buddhist and Astrologer has been sharing public teachings on spirituality, living ethics, yoga and the internationality of being human, for the past 15 years, all over the US and overseas. Sue published her first book Transitory Nature: Breaking Binaries For Integrated Being in 2021. Taos, New Mexico, her home has been deeply influential to her creative process. She is the Creative Director and Editor of RHIZO Find her at suehunt.com & @suehunt_

Vanessa Lamorte

Vanessa is a double Aquarian, Leo Moon mother, musician, and liminal space guide. She shares teachings on lucid living and creating meaning through dreams. She has a love for creating floral dyed sacred wear in her playtime and enjoys having tea parties in the desert with friends. A Mojave Desert resident, she lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband Matt, 2 year old son, Olivander, 2 kitties and doggie. Connect with her here: @vanessalamorte & vanessalamorte.com

MOON CHART

September 29th

Full Moon Aries

Head, Teeth, Tongue, Arteries

October 14th

New Moon Libra & Solar Eclipse

Kidney, Urinary, Bladder, Veins, Skin

October 28th

Full Moon Lunar Eclipse Taurus

Neck, Vocal Cords, Throat, Thyroid

November 13th

New Moon Scorpio

Genitals, Anus, Sex Organs, Sex Energy, Womb

November 27th

Full Moon Gemini

Shoulder, Arms, Hands, Bronchial Tubes, Lungs

December 12th

New Moon Sagittarius

Liver, Hips, Thighs, Sacrum

+ From the Studio of Salma Vir-Banks

LETTER FROM SUE

Editor’s Note

Earlier this year, in the depths of my own suffering and massive life explosions, I led a writing group with fourteen women from all over the United States and Canada. This month-long writing workshop evolved into a healing container, finding our voices and sharing them with power. This Fall Equinox issue of Rhizo has a similar tone, the power of the creative process and the ways it heals. The healing that arises from sharing the dark parts of us that we often keep hidden from the world. As well as unabashedly sharing our joy with one another in emotionally safe spaces and everything in between.

It is a tremendous honor for my sister and I to edit, share and publish your work in these past six volumes of Rhizo Magazine. I have decided to share a deeply personal spoken word I wrote earlier this year to help me find creativity in my suffering. That helped me find humor, rhythm and reflection amidst some of the deepest betrayal trauma of my life. I like to remind myself and many of my clients, my work is not for everyone and it takes extreme bravery, acceptance and a commitment to intimacy to continually put your evolving work and voice in the public space. Now for some spoken word, read it aloud with some power in your voice.

Choking back tears, this is true

And it’s so long overdue

The last three cycles around the sun

I thank my karma they are finally fucking done

Devastated, scattered, drowning, slowly dying

No more freeze mode and done with fawning

Unsurmountable pressure caused me to grovel on my knees

It was your hateful pride that actually saved me

Another pink pussy to suck from you parasite

Not a twinge of jealousy, for mine is still tight

Shivering, sobbing, with a swob in hand

Testing from HIV to BV, as you strut around without your wedding band

This was the rebirth earthquake

And I grabbed it even though my hands still did shake

Take your condescending demeanor off into the sunset

To know you will forever leave me alone makes me fucking wet

You used to scare me to my core

Then I remind myself you are a predictable mother fucking bore

It was your callousness and lies that changed me

Your dagger eyes, silent treatment, and calculated greed

Softness was the shield that did set me free

Over the years your threats of self-harm trapped me behind closed doors

Withholding sex, and treating me like your mother, guilt-tripping me into my chores

I finally reclaimed my own dreams and said no fucking more!

And Thank God I did it soon enough that I can still crimp hard and chug a coors

My hands soon to be steady and sure

Touching myself, basking in my own sensual allure

IT’S ME THAT WILL REMEMBER DEEP OPEN PLEASURE AND THE HUMAN BIRTHRIGHT OF JOY BEYOND MEASURE

It will be the soles of my feet

Stepping with care in the summer heat

My Dress and Cancerian spirit free on the breeze

Never to suppress my sexuality again to appease Receiving someone a new, I love, from behind on my knees

Feeling filled up, turned on and in love

As I look into his eyes from above

An earth shattering connection

That reminds me of the futile nature of this dissection

My heart is healing and my legs are open

Even though I believed you for years, I was never fucking broken

It was the painful realizations that opened me wide And now my pussy’s my guide

The best closure is no contact

It took me years to trace your lies and realize you never had my back My spirit is no longer under attack

You told everyone I would be a lonely crazy bitch ..and to which…

I stop wearing your projected blame, we were never the same I cleared you of my karmic field and swore I would never again even utter your name.

+ Sue Hunt

WHAT THE HEART OF THE MOUNTAIN KNOWS

Teach me what the heart of the mountain knows

Teach me the wisdom beneath where the pine trees grow

Teach me the magic of the aspen grove and the unity that wove them all in one together so

Teach me the secrets of the canyons’ coves Among the rocky folds where the whisper wind blows

Show me my place in the Milky Way in this swirling slice of cosmic fray

Teach me the dance of the honey bee and how a cocoon sets a butterfly free

Teach me how the hunting hawk seeks and the cunning in her feathers’ sweep

Teach me the lightness of the cricket’s leap and the joy in the jeweled hummingbird’s wing beat

Teach me the love the sunset spills

Coloring these clouds and hills

Teach me to see myself in my neighbor’s eye

Teach me the kindness of this wide blue sky

Show me my place in the Milky Way, in this slice of swirling cosmic fray

Teach me to read the stories written in the spider’s web

Teach me to hear the words unsaid

Teach me the games the darting bats play, and how to see the moon’s changing face Rising at the close of each day

Show me my place in the Milky Way in this swirling slice of the cosmic fray

Teach me the hardness of the hail storm

Show me where the raindrops are born

Teach me the strength of the river’s way

Carving through rock and clay

Teach me the tears the forest seeps

Where the thick moss keeps and mushrooms creep

Teach me the softness of the night moth’s wings

When at last death comes to sing

Her slumbering song into my bones and with great stillness lay them home

Show me my place in the Milky Way

We are stardust swirling in the fray

+ Elaine Heather Christensen

ROOTED TRUTH

I’ve been inflamed, Full of shoulds, Steeped with doubts, & searing with insecurities

Buried underneath a young girl’s direction.

My tissue aches for release –Please, let me be free

This isn’t, Quite right

And it hasn’t been for who knows how long

I slither And writhe, in the muck of it all

Desperately hoping I will emerge from here

This place of dark decay has been keeping me for quite some time now.

Or is it holding me?

Depending on the day, I’m not really sure.

This muck, This sludge, This shed, – it’s all I know right now

I eat it for breakfast and see what comes out the other side.

Usually, more sludge

But sometimes! – there’s a glimmer A word, or two, Maybe a poem

Something small, but real.

I scoop it up, hold it in my heart, let it caress my skin & whisper it’s soothing essence of rooted truth back into my soul

So it goes –This season of sludge – which moves to its own unique rhythm It has not yet made me privy to the way that it works

And I hope, I desperately hope, I am regenerating

As I sit back down to eat it again for lunch

+ Nechelle Dismer

+ Hollie Bertram

+ Hollie Bertram

21 + Hollie Bertram

I FEEL LIKE A BIRD

Falling in the layers of the wind

Down down

Around

And up again

Surrendering to the currents

As they push and pull and dance

I feel like a butterfly caught in a gust of wind Unknowing where I will land

Here for the ride

Only stopping on a petal

For a quick bite to eat

And off again

I feel like a piece of pollen

Will it work this time?

Or will I land in the earth and get buried Only to wait for next season to be discovered again

Sometimes being dormant

Underground

Allows for the depth and strength

Required to bloom high in the sky

Reaching high and strong for the sun

I feel like a leaf

Unfurling

To show myself

Fully in the sun

+ SMKM

CREATIVE LIVING & A SUSTAINABLE VISION

WITH ANDREW BRANT SCULPTOR & ARTIST

Tell Us about your move to Santa Fe, if you feel comfortable sharing the nitty gritty details; we want to hear what moves you and inspires you about creating there!

So many places I could start, I grew up just outside Kansas City, Missouri, spending a lot of time in the Ozark Mountains or in Colorado. One very special trip was through backpacking the Sangre de Cristo mountains near Cimarron when I was 15. I fell in love with the way the land transitioned, spending sunrise at 9,200 feet.

Life took me to Chicago for college, studying philosophy and studio art at both Loyola Chicago’s downtown and north shore campus, and abroad in Rome, Italy. There I was an illustrator for a newspaper, screen printed t-shirts in my apartment, and worked at a furniture shop when I wasn’t behind a bar or making coffee. I got an offer to join a management training program at Apple, which led me and my day job to Cupertino, and me living down the street from Stanford, where I managed animations and motion graphics in their marketing dept.

Interview by Sue Hunt & Photography by Jenna Peffley

Sue Andrew

I STARTED MAKING MY OWN FURNITURE FROM SCRATCH, JUST SELFISHLY FOR MYSELF, AND PEOPLE KEPT ASKING IF THEY COULD BUY IT FROM ME SO I KEPT MAKING IT.

Knowing I wanted to be an artist full time, and accepting the pressures of a day job at least in art production, I studied everything I could as hard as I could every second I was there, while building up my woodworking and design skills. I had outgrown my shop and the market in our sleepy little, beautiful coastal village. I made all kinds of furniture but I was getting asked more and more to make wooden bathtubs. We talked about New Mexico, and though our marriage didn’t last through the transition, I’m halfway to my home in Kansas City and I can get to my Santa Fe shop in fifteen minutes. Gorgeous lumber from California is totally accessible, as is shipping back to customers in California. Friends and family love to visit Santa Fe, it’s perfect for me.

We love hearing the twists and turns of your back story, do you know your astrology, your main three, sun, moon, rising? To create work that lives in someone’s life must take a certain kind of vantage point, how do you wrap your head around this and get organized to build?

I am a Taurus sun and an Aquarius moon. I’ve always felt aligned with the creative, dream-like qualities of Aquarius, in my imagination, and Taurus, because I selfishly make and design everything for myself.

While I consider what other people might want, I certainly make what I want and love. I play a lot of music, and though I’m not much of a songwriter I try, and know that the only way to write a good song is from your heart, as soon as you try to anticipate what the audience might want, you lose them. It’s been a long road to get here, but I feel like my personal process is built on a really solid foundation.

The materials that you use are so organic and luscious, can you talk about your relationship to the raw materials you build with and how it supports your creative vision?

Yes! I love all kinds of materials. I have loved furniture and vintage furniture stores, sculpture and fine art before I came to wood. My dad built a redwood sailboat I helped maintain growing up, and did ornamental lathe turning with fancy exotic woods; this was definitely an early influence.

I started spending every weekend at the lumber yard whether I needed anything or not just to see if anything new had shown up, I was hooked. Reading the books of George Nakashima, the japanese-American woodworker from New Hope, P.A. was a huge shift. Both with wabi sabi, letting the natural be, letting the cracks be and not hiding them. Influenced by Krenov, asking ‘the wood what it wants to be’. The tree was alive, the wood is still alive, growing, shifting in the sun or the humidity. Swelling when it’s in a boat or a bathtub, sealing it tight. Alive. I’m also exploring more metal working and leather working. Wood will always be my main focus, and making furniture to last generations.

Sue Andrew

Sue Andrew

Sue Andrew

This resonated from your writings “People with the treasures and scars from a life lived as creatively as possible, as curiously as possible, as imaginative as I’ve ever seen.” Here at Rhizo we can totally get behind this! It’s often something we as onlookers don’t see about the creative process, ‘the scars from a life lived creatively’. Will you share the risks you have taken on yourself as a creative, and how they might have been scary and caused deep growth as an artist and sculptor

Sure, the sacrifices in my life have been huge. My craft, my art, is the main focus of my life. Building something with my own two hands. I’ve broken bones, worked exhausted nights, pushed my muscles and sinew to the limit. Hours after endless hours because I’ve had such a clear vision of what I want to be building with my life from a very young age.

A SHOP WHERE I AM BUILDING WITH MY HANDS MOST OF THE DAY. IT’S MY THERAPY. IT’S MY TIME ALONE. IT’S MY ZEN. I THINK THIS DRIVE HAS BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD BY SOME, MY FORMER WIFE TOLD ME MANY TIMES MY WORK WAS NOT THAT GOOD AND I SHOULD QUIT. BUT, A BIG BUT, I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SEE WHAT I WANTED TO MAKE; AND I KNEW THE SKILLS I WOULD HAVE TO BUILD, IN SERIES, TO GET THERE.

I built the skills one after the other with persistence, love and dedication. I’ve also been very willing to jump in with both feet and have terrible results. I learned from the failures quickly. But I’m still a punk at heart, an idealist, someone who will scream loud and get angry. If half the audience leaves, it wasn’t for them I guess. The half that stays always seems to really love it even more. I will always work my ass off to make this great and support the team I’m building. And I’m really appreciating the support I feel now, in Santa Fe, and around the world!

Sue

Andrew

YES! I am going to say that again, fuck yes! It’s reassuring to hear the ups and downs, and the level of love and commitment you have to your work. You must have developed quite the eye for something special in all those pills of wood over the years. How has reclaimed wood hunting influenced your understanding of sustainable cycles as well as the impact of your art?

I have, slowly and surely, developed an eye for wood. My Dad’s enthusiasm influenced me, with a basement full of little bits of every kind of wood imaginable, from a time when things were certainly less sustainable. An assortment of woods from South American or African rainforests, taught me about variety and beauty. Then looking at local, sustainable, reclaimed if possible expoanded my understanding.

In Palo Alto, where I spent time they would put a tag on every tree and check once a year that you didn’t cut one down, even the new growth. Cherry comes from orchards, Sycamore is beautiful and tall and straight but not very good at building houses out of, so I’ve been loving that lately.

Sue

NOTHING HAS EVER TAUGHT ME MORE ABOUT THE CYCLE OF DEATH, AND REBIRTH, THEN THE OLD GROWTH FORESTS OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. IT’S LIKE TIME SLOWS DOWN.

This massive tree grows for a thousand years, and finally falls down, taking most of a day to do so. And a new tree grows right from the stump, and you can see the fern covered forest floor taking another hundred years just to decay back to soil, to start again.

Explain your relationship to the interconnected nature of human expression, art and our relationship to it as humans. There seems to be an important link here for you, because your creations contain function, beauty and a sustainable purpose in daily life.

It’s evolved over time, though I’ve always had a love for the earth, a conservationist through the Boy Scouts, the Martha Lafita Thompson nature sanctuary where I spent hundreds of volunteer hours tending to native Missouri tallgrass prairie. I think it’s key that people understand that they have a choice, not to get a plastic bathtub; furniture that is made of wood and can last a lifetime. On top of that, I believe in having an artful life. A full life, a life full of pleasures, whether they’re material or sensual in any other way.

I’m not anywhere near the sort of person that thinks things should regress back to the past and how things were, but I do think we’ve forgotten some basic things like how to build furniture well, how to build houses to suit the climate they are in. How to conserve water or food and share it in a community. Cost and capitalism are always the demon we are all fighting. I have connected with so many amazing people, just loving what I do and doing it the way I feel is right. Many have responded to that, it amazes me daily! I feel so fortunate and it gives me hope.

What are you currently working on? What support do you currently need as an artist?

Right now, I’m building orders for half a dozen redwood bathtubs, I’m building two large sycamore and cherry dining tables. I’m making a piece of hanging wall art, sycamore inlaid with wood, for the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness for an auction at SOMArts Cultural Center.

I’m building a pond shaped slab coffee table inlaid with some Magatama shapes from Japan and with a hand carved edge. It should be a real treat, for a repeat patron in Los Angeles. I love making the redwood Ofuros, doing inlay, making new things. I’m also doing some vanities lately, I’d love to do the whole bathroom of my own space here in town, or someone else’s with a shared vision. I love connecting with architects, interior designers, home owners, spa owners, and anyone else with a vision we can collaborate on to bring it to life. My goal is to have a whole house’s worth of various furniture I’ve designed and produced with the team soon, and keep pursuing pure fine art myself alongside.

I’ve got work in art shows happening all the time around Santa Fe, either by myself or with my art collective, Abstract Picnic. I’m super proud of putting it together.I hope to see you soon when I’m not covered in sawdust and glue!

AndrewBrant.com

RedwoodOfuro.com

@_andrewbrant / @redwoodofuro

CAVING IN

I had this dream once of descending down earthen-made stone steps into a vast cave with many caverns.

Reminding me that we forget to look at things simply sometimes, that meaning is made right before our eyes.

The Earth will mirror to us what we are.

So in that moment I remembered, I am a cave with many rooms, sempiternal pockets waiting for the interplay of light rays and shadows to dance through clay halls, photokinesis making conscious what has always been, but yet unknown.

+ Vanessa Lamorte

+ Hollie Bertram

WRITING INTO THE VOID

Like a spider hurling filaments into the wind

Hoping to catch a wheel spoke

The first words are always the trickiest

You repeat the pattern weaving

Casting lines toward a humming center

The hub is not a point, but an opening

A space within which to wait and feel

If placed well through wisdom or luck

You might catch something winged and vital

It’s not enough to build the web

You must completely devour what arrives through it

Leave only the husk of a life when you’re done

Give the rest to the joy of creation

+ Nicole Nardone

THE PANES

Butterfly in basil

How the air floats warm

I am in stillness

Taking in rays

No movement towards It is levitating

Soaking in.

+ Audra Knutson

+ inhallow by Audra Knutson

9/16”

8

x 11 1/4” x 2 1/4”

Wood, glass seed beads, nylon thread, brass wire, brass chain

ON WRITING AND EMPTINESS

You want to be a writer but your mother’s friend from college, Janice, a successful author, says you need more life experience. So do this:

Leave the farm where you spent much of your childhood –with something that feels like finality.

Drive yourself through the thick Pacific Northwest Fir forests, into Eastern Oregon where the sage brush squats low on the land. Drive through empty Nevada and on to red Utah dirt. Camp on the edge of the Salt Flat and at Donner Springs. Wonder about the Donner Party, about their loneliness. You bet it could fill up the night sky and then some. You’ve read everything you can about them. You don’t think cannibalism is what Janice meant by life experience, so you buy extra food at Trader Joe’s.

Drive on. Visit a man in Southern Utah you’ve been writing letters to for three years. He forages from the land and calls everything “The Mother”. You wonder if he is sexualizing the earth or respecting it. You want space. You’ve been vegan for four years so you kill 6 trout and try not to think about the Donner Party. Eat them with limes and lamb’s quarters that are beginning to bolt.

You read two books to fill the crushing nothingness. The second is a book of short stories about cowboys, sex and wide open skies. The cowboys make you hungry, the wide openness, the space on the pages of the book, sucks you up.

You sleep in your car, parked in a large canyon; the silent walls in their looming. You hope it doesn’t flood, in the quiet canyon. You’ve heard that outer space sucks sound up, or maybe you heard it is quiet because no one else is there. This terrifies you. Wedge yourself through slot canyons and jump off of sandstone cliffs with your ex lover and his partner. This terrifies and excites you too. Time to roll on.

Drive on to Colorado, to the steep valley of Telluride, where you run through groves of aspen and suck air at 12,000 feet. You taste the wealth in your mouth. You wonder how everyone here can be so clean. You wonder if they’ve ever killed a trout. Feel superior, says the former vegan, nevermind that.

You spend a week in Boulder and try psychedelic mushrooms. You puke in a rosebush and cut your leg climbing a 20 foot fence to go night swimming. 42

Drive to the headwaters of the Rio Grande, into the belly of a valley stacked with glittering aspens wavering on the steep slopes of the rockies. Hike until the first star is hinting, when the midsummer dusk is making shadows. Listen to the early frost crackle as it forms on the tent. As it crusts itself lovingly, protectively over your wet boots. Follow the Rio Grande downstream.

And now–– a month after you walked across the stage, which, in some frustrating way, was much more meaningful than you wanted it to be, you are settling into sage brush in Northern New Mexico tucked between the Rio and the Sangre de Cristos, the big river and the bloody mountains.

It feels like loneliness is sitting next to you, it’s hard on your thigh, teasing.

And that space is scary because you are wedged between Space and Loneliness on a futon couch on the floor, and they are both leaning closer. Is this it? My first threesome? Will it be a good life experience? The mind trepidatiously taking it all in, ass on the futon, wedged between loneliness and what ifs.

During the afternoon monsoon when it is too electric to venture outside, check your pockets:

a goji berry

a threesome

a slick blue river rock

apricots

The Donner Party Spaces

Spread them out on the tiny table in the tiny red house and observe the data you have collected, all of the life experience. Perhaps you are not happy yet, but you are collecting information, sorting yourself closer to some semblance of a collection of shiny moments, filling your pockets with magic.

+ Grace Powell

THIS IS HOW IT GOES DOWN:

FROM THE JOURNAL OF B - NOT AN ESSAY AN EXCERPT.

Touching touching touching. Grabbing at my hat. Punching my butt. Pinching my nose. Pulling at my arm. Tapping my shoulder, my arm, my cheek.

###

Someone told me we each can stake claim on having been inside our maternal grandmother’s bodies. I’m not a biologist, you’ll have to get your own second source on this.

Does everyone identify more with one side of their lineage over the other? Is this not the nature of the contemporary western brain? It’s a this or that kind of life, is it not?

I am a Roberts.

But what if I was a Hunt.

What if I am a Roberts and I am a Hunt.

What if I had been born into a life of abundance.

What if Mom wasn’t only too ready to rid herself of her Huntness. A -ness she felt her sister had tainted. A -ness that rhymed with the female anatomy (as I had once heard her intimate to a friend, years before I would understand that Hunt rhymes with Cunt). What if she wasn’t willing to shed the -ness that reminded her of her.

###

Even when they aren’t talking they’re talking. They start conversations with me from different rooms, different levels of the house. Everything I say is repeated six, seven, eight times.

They want more, always more. Can I have three cookies, can I watch a show, mom can I look up who won the 2008 World Cup, can we watch a movie, can I get new sneakers, mom, guess what, mom, will you play horse, mom can I have a snack, can I have water, mom, can I have a peanut butter jelly roll up, can I brush your hair, mom can I have a sugar drink, have you seen a pen, can I bake a cake, where is my ball? Where is my ball? Mommy, where is my ball?

###

I’m always thinking of you — or about to think of you. Or have only recently finished thinking about you.

###

Bill Moyers: Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?

Joseph Campbell: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time—namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

### I say:

Right at the moment you think you can no longer muster one more wisdom, or wit, or rule, or fact, or metaphor, or lesson. Right when you’ve had enough of hearing yourself drone endlessly into the abyss about how to do this, or how to do that, or why this is important, or why that is not just. Only at that moment when you have said fuck the fuck off to all of it, they’ll turn and say: Mom, I’ve already salted the pasta water.

Or: Don’t forget to call your mom. It’s her birthday.

Or then also this: Please stop referring to yourself as mommy.

###

When I stand here in my underwear, that’s when I know.

###

What I know:

It’s happening

It’s a pony that I ride

###

Benevolent philosopher queen.

Phone down.

Benevolent philosopher queen.

This is it. This is everything.

This phrase encapsulates the whole of my being. I’ll probably die soon. This is me. This is the final integration.

I was The Queen, before I knew it. They called me The Queen when I wasn’t there. But then later they called me The Queen bitingly, contemptuously, gleefully to my face.

She’d say: The Queen is here! You better listen to The Queen!

I can hear her saying it.

Does The Queen have to come?

That’s what Matt and Steph told me she said.

She wasn’t wrong. I am The Queen.

And why shouldn’t I be? And why shouldn’t we all be? And who is not The Queen. Pity!

Truthiness. Intuition. Goodness.

The Queen who prevails and thrives and reigns benevolently. The Queen who is proud and righteous and forgiving and gracious.

I type it into the chat bot. Tell me what I’m saying. What even do I mean? Tell me, weird oracle internet.

I don’t have a question. I have only “benevolent philosopher queen.”

I’m satisfied. I’m aligned. I’m integrated. I’m on time. I’m in place. I’m relevant to myself.

Oh — to be relevant. If to no one else but to myself.

I Google “benevolent philosopher queen.”

Point me to the books about the Benevolent Philosopher Queen. The blogs. The memes. The podcasts. The lyrics. The references. I want them all.

No.

Can a woman be a philosopher king?! Fuck off.

Consolation: I can have this. I can make this mine. I can own this.

But the truth keeps expanding.

And I’m hunted by The Queen.

Exhibit A:

Here’s where it’s supposed to end. I miss this cue. I’m locked in my story. I’m sure she doesn’t get it. I’m sure she’s going to send us Cali and Colo options so that she can avoid doing the hard thing of telling us what’s actually best for her.

Exhibit B:

This is me going too far. “Pushing.” “Prodding.” This is the recurring theme. This is the moment I overwhelm people. Here lies the “too much.”

Final Exhibit:

Please love me please.

Still Exhibiting C, D, E: Refer once more to pushing, prodding, too muching.

On knees now.

Opening. Promoting. Growing. Working. Working Working. I’ll be dead soon.

I should get another tattoo. A crown. On my knuckle. Next to the other knuckle that I only yesterday learned to conceal. I should die one million more deaths of embarrassment before I die one last time and once and for all. Which will be soon.

But Queendom. That’s good.

###

+ Beth Kelly

THE ALTAR OF ART & HEALING:

The Surreal Merger of the Multi-faceted Human Experience with Salma Vir-Banks

Interview

by

Sue Hunt & Photogarphy by Diggy Lloyd

Sue

Salma

Salma your work contains a grounded, yet ethereal quality and its vibrancy sucks us in. Can you give us a bit of your journey as an artist, you work across mediums, how did all of that unfold for you?

My journey as an artist began at a really young age.

Dance was my first realization that there was something there…

Something I needed to pay attention to. I was about seven or eight years old and was listening to music in my childhood New Jersey apartment. I found myself in syncopated and complex movements and decided I needed to show my mother. Needless to say she was speechless. Up until that point I had not had any major or influential dance training, besides maybe a few years at the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

I always knew movement felt especially fluid and easy for me.

As you courageously healed your relationship with your body and past with movement, did that open your voice and vision to explore other forms of art? We are curious about your evolution of expression. Can you elaborate on the link between trauma and ritual? Has creating from this place been a healing journey of expression for you?

I began painting and creating 2D art when I was about twelve years old. During that time my father and I became estranged and the impacts of my childhood trauma were manifesting as an eating disorder and self-harm behaviors.

Art literally saved me and continues to help me heal. It not only saved my physical life, but it kept me from becoming detrimentally changed and altered as a result of my childhood wounds.

TODAY, I IDENTIFY AS AN AFRO-SURREALIST ARTIST AND CREATOR. AS AN AFROSURREALIST, I AM ADAMANT ABOUT ADDRESSING THE PRESENT REALITIES OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLES AND ALL THEY MUST CONTEND WITH.

The Black experience is surreal, absurd, and very strange. To have your humanity neglected and almost blatantly mocked is a surreal experience. To be separated from your ancestral lands and people is a surreal and disorienting experience. I aim to explore these surreal realities in my art.

My work is always a conversation between resilience, mythology, iconography, trauma, ritual, and the surreal realities marginalized people must occupy and contend with.

Thank you for your clarity and craft, this is deeply profound and so needed in conversation and image and creative process. Your work seems to transcend worlds, cultures and mediums. How does this merging happen for you, in body, craft and finished pieces?

I grew up in a multiracial and multicultural home. My mother is from Northern India and my step-father is Black American from the Southeast. My biological father is also Black American. I am incredibly proud of my cultures and identity. This bridge informs my art all the time.

Sue

Salma

Sue

Salma

Your words here open new vantage points for those who engage with your work, “Afro-Punjabi woman dealing with personal restoration and reclaiming personal mythology and archetypes” How has your own creative energy and drive to create been a healing force in reclamation? Also, please share any insights into mythology and archetype from your Afro-Punjabi roots that have deeply influenced your work and worldview, we are all ears!

Healing and restoration have been major themes in my journey. I recently graduated with a masters in Art Therapy and Counseling and currently work as a therapist. I personally have over eleven years clean from active addiction as well as ten years abstinence from disordered eating.

I spent most of my adult social life in and around healing communities, 12 Step fellowships, and spaces dedicated to personal transformation. I don’t say this to garner applause or recognition but rather to speak to a deep desperation I felt to “feel better” as a young adult. I struggled a lot and often felt alienated due to my issues with addiction and self destruction. I feel as though I have come full circle now as a therapist - many of the things I endured now make more sense.

I have decided to use my experiences to help empower others and do this primarily through my art and therapy practice. The alchemist is a strong archetypal energy I work with. I have had to repeatedly transform my trauma into abundance and love. Sometimes it’s hard and I feel real resistance - these are the pains that need more time, compassion, and forgiveness.

Deep respect for sharing the truth of your personal path and the courage to alchemize trauma for self and others.

Wow, the vision and intention behind Meridian Ink, l ove the name by the way, is phenomenal. As a lover of tattoos myself, our flesh tells quite the story of darkness and light, as well as history, memories and future karmic roads. This feels like another level reclaiming earth, flesh and future by reframing how we hold our bodies in the past. How and where can the RHIZO community learn more about Meridian Ink and support its launch in 2023?

In 2015 I received the download for Meridian Ink. I initially wanted to reclaim and celebrate my self-harm scars and since then the idea has evolved into an intersectional holistic practice where tattooing, eco therapy, biomimicry, art therapy, and somatic practice come together.

The process begins with the harvesting of eco fractals and symbols/art forms found within natural landscapes. As a biomimetic practice, Meridian Ink is inspired by the abundant creativity found within nature. Common forms and shapes are often replicated by natural processes. The eco fractals harvested for Meridian Ink all correlate to specific principles found within nature, i.e. courage, openness, cooperation, trust, selflessness, self-preservation, endurance, surrender, etc. These eco fractals are brought together in mandala-inspired (self circle) patterns to become body fractals. The body fractals are then placed along intentional points of the body, usually meridian lines and acupressure points.

Sue

Salma

Sue

Salma

For example, a surrender fractal, inspired by visual f orms of surrender and acceptance, can be placed along the kidney meridian to bring consciousness to the body’s response to anxiety and a need to control. Meridian Ink took a temporary back seat as I finished my masters, but I intend to get this process revived in the coming year. You can learn more about Meridian on my website, salmathegiant.com.

Sue Salma

Can you tell us your main three- Sun Moon and Rising Signs? How does this affect your creative process?

My big three are Aquarius Sun (Sidereal Aquarius), Cancer Moon (Sidereal Gemini) and Sag rising (Sidereal Scorpio). More than anything…

I feel like some form of an amalgamation between cancer and scorpio! My art always incorporates some sort of sensory experience for my viewers - whether it’s bright colors, engaging graphics, sound, or dance. I want people to experience my art, feel deeply with it, and move in harmony with it. I want people to feel deeper into themselves when they experience my work. Art is an ancient medicine. My cancer moon is always worshiping at the altar of creation and I constantly envision my work as forms of birth and regeneration.

Sue

Oh yes, I feel so much of how you described Cancerian Energies, as a Cancer myself. Lastly, share some closing words that feel important to your heart and our reader.

My work is not just a performance or spectacle of Black pain or the Black experience. It is meant to help us all recognize our own humanity so that we may recognize it in others.

How can we turn recognition of each other into a ritual itself?

When will we return to seeing the sacred in ourselves and in those around us?

When do those bodies that are repeatedly exploited get to experience reverence and humanhood?

I hope my art can rise and maybe even answer some of these questions.

To learn more about my work and offer support you can check out my websitesalmathegiant.com and follow me on instagram @salmavir

Salma

I LOVE YOU LIKE

The redness clings to the soft, lucious pedal of a rose, characteristics inseparable and deeply complimentary in their beauty.

The way water flows with power and relentless forgiveness, a love that connects all shortcomings wrapping us in a silk cocoon of rebirth again and again.

Like the lake hugs its banks gifting the beauty of the willows, they need one another to flourish.

A love so bottomless it rests in the fertile soil, and it knows darkness, Everytime I touch it and dare to share it, it swallows darkness

It holds darkness with attention, pure loving awareness as our eyes meet and we see with one gaze.

My head on your chest, one with your heart beat. The sound of a drum that keeps the rhythm of our future, summoning us to the mossy valleys and up to the rocky snow peaks.

I love you with a tender heartened brokenness, it hides nothing All of the light shines through the cracks of my forsaken past, and this love knits it to the present like the spider weaves itself between worlds.

A thin iridescent sometimes invisible cord

There is space for everything in the way I love you. Everything belongs here.

Even when we don’t see it, those times will come and pass. We must wait for the light to hit just right in patience.

To see that iridescent chord, sometimes invisible to the eyes and always felt in the rhythm of our future by the heart.

I love you.

+ Sue Hunt