Reflecting

This residency started out as a wander, as a connection with Kate the Art Therapist at MFS about water. We both loved the book the Water Protectors, how water flows and heals and we cry and are made of water, and it is the same water as our ancestors. To protect the water is to protect ourselves, to defend the water is to defend ourselves. To trust the water.

And meeting with Phil, the director of MFS, and hearing about his model of wholistic care. How everything can be healing, how we all need different kinds of “medicine”. He said the weekly bike rides were the most popular, into the woods down the bike path, this is healing, moving our bodies together in nature! Phil and MFS felt like such a natural partner in this project. We were all on the same wave, in the same river, art is healing, anything can be- so this residency felt like a pilot of how arts can be healing, the art groups I believe will continue, and the watercolor station we set up in the hall. People young and old made such beautiful watercolor paintings, which we hung on the bulletin board, this community, we all have so much to share!

MFS and Phil’s vision of care are so inspiring! He is working on building a network of trauma informed care sites all over Cheshire County. Looking at the whole lives of people, the minds and the bodies, how there are so many ways to hold and heal, and so much to learn, to listen to. And then walking around Keene all fall, I saw that there is water everywhere, little rambling streams popping up after the rains, marsh grasses and cat tails all over, Beaver Brook, the Ashuelot, Ash Swamp Brook being the main waterways. Took a canoe down the Ashuelot and learned about river time, what would take 7 minutes to drive, took 4 hours in a canoe. What do we remember in River time? What is present, what is noticed? These swaying green river grasses keep the time, sandy bottom, such slow movement, as it has always been in this place, the pace of water.

Craig and I wandered the waterways, found where Beaver Brook and the Ashuelot connected, behind Norms! Following the water, the old map of the land. Craig and I canoed down the Ashuelot in River Time, portaged over the land where a tree was down, talked about art and life and memory. He was a great project manager. We met weekly in the fall and talked about ideas, kindred artists, the evolving framework of the residency, the importance of artistic research, of getting lost. The site was always Brewbakers to meet, such an amazing community space, the flow of people, where we connect. We did a mapping workshop there in the fall too, and a talk about the residency, which ended up being a conversation between Phil, Craig, and I, about healing, about listening, about evolving models of care. Craig’s art is up all over MFS, beautiful abstract paintings with colors and shapes, to find your own way into, they hold us all too.

I learned that Ashuelot means water place, or place between waters. And that the rivers and streams used to look different every year, every season, braiding and weaving through the marshes as they wanted to, different patterns every year, a land of many waterways. The Abenaki lived in close relation with the marshes and marsh beings, the ash trees, silver maples, beavers. They were all relations, baskets made of ash bark strips, a story about the great beaver to tell the story of a place (reference) The beavers making different beaver ponds each year, a way to turn the water into ponds which the Abenaki people enjoyed. (footnote and thanks to Denise Burchsted for her amazing expertise and connection to this place, to the beavers, this was all learned from her)

When the industrial revolution happened, the waterways needed to be controlled so the power of the water could be harnessed for the mills, for producing textiles from all of the sheep. Faulkner and Colony was a woolen mill, right on the Ashuelot, which was channelized for easier use. As Keene became developed as a city, the rivers needed to be controlled, channelized like the Beaver Brook- you can see the channel if you walk behind the Monadnock Co-op, the Ashuelot is dredged every year, the beavers are removed from Beaver Brook.

So I started thinking about the metaphor of channeling the rivers, and how this connects to mental health, how we are channelized to fit into a conformist society, a one size fits all mold, like the channelized rivers, controlled so we will fit into and be useful to this capitalist society. And how “mental health issues” are not individuals problems, but result from a society that does not support all ways of being, does not support being sensitive, but expects us all to fit into it. Who would we be if we could all be our true wild rivers, changing every year, meandering…

And Kate and I started to talk about trusting the process, trusting the river, letting things emerge as we began to think about the Art groups, how to let them be like rivers, how to create a container- an expanding and changing container- for our ideas and projects for the waiting room to grow. Knowing that what we were building was community, care, a safe space to be. The relationships were central, we knew a project would emerge, and we trusted that. This was a bit difficult, to let go completely, but the teens said, “we don’t know what this is going to be, let’s trust that” so we did!!! No big writings on the board as we expected, or assignment like art activities. Just doing the art together, whatever came out that day, that moment, from the spirit and heart, and we were all there for it, being the container, being the trust, making the we, slowly, the speed it needed to be. The speed of the Ashuelot, river time, our own time.

And somehow, through shared feelings, an idea for a whale boat emerged. I am not sure we could trace its origin, it just became this idea, that then made so much sense. We had been talking about water, and whales, and boats in both of the groups, and this seemed like a beautiful connection. And we thought it would be beautiful if the boat was made from river sticks. So we collected sticks from by the Beaver Brook, Ash Swamp Brook, the Ashuelot. And we wanted everyone to be a part of this whale boat, so asked staff and clients of MFS to participate in painting a stick to be added to the whale boat, in addition to the sticks painted by the young people in the art therapy groups. The boat you see is made of sticks painted by 30(?or more people), a community boat to carry us through all of these waters of life, with all of our energies in it….

And a map emerged too, through conversations about throwing rice on canvas, and tracing its contours for a map. I also do not know quite how this emerged- but then we spent the final 5 weeks of groups sitting around the map together for the hour, tossing the rice, tracing our continents, talking, and painting our continents, each in its own style, each perfect in our shared ocean on the map. The map a trace of our trust, created in the group, each a unique being, each a part of the whole.