Journey to Gaia; an Interview with Jackie Juno

Jackie Juno, celebrant, performance poet, artist, singer and comedian, has been leading women's groups for nearly 30 years. She will facilitate 'Journey to Gaia' at this year's Wise Woman Weekend. Her interests lie particularly in Goddess-centred cultures, prehistorical sacred sites, simple meaningful everyday rituals and joyful supportive shared creativity with women. She has travelled widely for much of her life. She lives with her guitarist husband and young daughter on Dartmoor, which is a constant source of inspiration to her. Her ease in communication, confidence and grounded humour make her a popular workshop facilitator. She is enthusiastic and dynamic, sensitive and warm, allowing women to experience the fragility, depth, and wildness of their true natures. Here she answers a few questions posed by the Wise Woman Team...
 

What is your main area of interest /expertise?   Simple rituals, creativity, journeying and facilitating sharing.

If this is your first time attending the Wise Woman Weekend, what is its appeal to you?   One of my favourite things is to spend time creating and sharing with other women in a focussed supportive environment. Also, I have always had a wonderful time when visiting Ireland!

What are your hopes for the future of the Wise Woman Weekend?   Meeting like-minded women, perhaps collaborating with them in creative projects; furthering my experience and broadening my knowledge. Having fun! Forging friendships and professional relationships.

What qualities do you bring to the Wise Woman Weekend?  Humour, experience, curiosity, excitement and very dark chocolate.

Do you have a few words or a gem of wisdom you would like to share with other Women?  We can help to change the world for our children and theirs, and beyond... by joining together and helping create a more loving, caring sustainable future.

What do you think are the greatest challenges facing Women today?  Environmental disaster (that affects everyone of course); violence against women seen as the norm; desperate inequality in many countries around the world; poverty and lack of education, which affects women and children more than men, statistically-speaking.

Describe the workshop you will be giving at this year's event:    A safe supportive environment will be established by the communal building of an altar, with each woman bringing some special object which represents her connection to the earth. We will use relaxation and visualisation to prepare for an inner journey to meet the goddess archetype Gaia. We will spend some time writing afterwards, and sharing our experiences.

Learn more about Jackie:

www.myspace.com/jackiejuno

Learn more about Wise Woman Weekend 2013:

http://www.wisewomanireland.org/

Story Quilts

I recently attended a one-day ‘Quilt Making’ workshop in Boho Community Centre run by the 3 Cap Project – Three Communities Advancing through Peace. Roberta Bacic, a Chilean researcher in human rights & exhibition curator and Deborah Stockdale, textile artist facilitated it. The quilts in question were Arpilleras (pronounced ar-pee-air-as,) colourful 3D appliquéd South American textiles. These small tapestries of everyday life often have big messages, as Deborah puts it,

“Both domestic and universal, sometimes confrontational in message, they engage the viewer and the maker in a special journey “

During the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (1973 – 1990), many Chilean women made tapestries depicting the harsh conditions of life and the pain resulting from the disappeared victims of Pinochet’s repression - the sons and husbands of the women themselves. Arpilleras came to symbolize ordinary women’s protest against the brutal dictatorship. Although these women worked quietly using a traditionally feminine method, their arpilleras had wide influence within Chile and internationally. The arpillera workshops brought about solidarity amongst the woman, empowering them to speak out and become politically active in opposing the regime.

I was quite unprepared for the profound depth of the experience that followed in the creation of my own story quilt. Having watched a short film about the history of the craft, and looking at a selection of works we were shown a newly created Arpillera by women who had been subject to Robert Mugabe’s campaign of ethnic violence. We were then let loose on Deborah’s large collection of fabric, beads, threads and embellishments.




Detail showing the burning of a church depicted
by the women who had witnessed it

 

My own creation was a personal look into my journey of grief that followed the deaths of my parents, both from cancer and both too young - in their early 50’s. The process of making the quilt was a gentle, healing and creative act – a way of symbolically portraying my story, and also a way of deepening my own understanding of where I am in that journey. The result is simultaneously a cosmology, a spiritual unfolding, an act of gratitude for and an acknowledgment of my parents and also the ancestral line which proceeded them, right back in time to the cosmic unfolding of the universe – a big story indeed for such a little quilt!

This is my finished Arpillera which includes beads, shells and some holy medals

Here you can find a list of current and future exhibitions curated by Roberta Bacic.
On the 13th of March 2012,  International Women's Day will be celebrated at the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry with a taster of all the exhibitions that have been there non stop since 8th March 2008.

The Wonderful World of Craft

With 2011 the ‘Year of Craft,’ I would like to share with you some musings on two great passions of mine: wool craft and wisdom.

The wonderful wisdom of craft is alive and well and blossoming in this information age. The Stitch ‘n’ Bitch movement has helped make craft trendy. The discovery of mathematician and crochet lover, Dr. Daina Taimina, that models of the complex hyperbolic plane of geometry could be made using crochet was a wonderful inspiration to crafters, and has slowly seeped into crochet patterns of all sorts. This also led to the fantastic hyperbolic crochet coral reef project, which has been exhibited all over the world. Crochet and knitting are starting to make it into the galleries of high art and be recognised as art mediums in themselves.

Online opportunities to sell hand crafted items like Etsy.com, where anyone can set up an online shop and offer their craft for sale to a worldwide market are a great boon to those of us wanting to make a loving living from our skills. Online communities such as weavolution, and the wonderful ravelry offer places to chat and share ideas and projects with like-minded people, check out some of the amazing work being done, and get inspired.

On a local level too there are gatherings of women who come together to knit, crochet, mend, inspire and motivate each other in craft. Skills are swapped and shared between young and old. Projects are discussed and admired and encouragement meted out. I have attended three such ‘craft circles’ in the last three years. I learned to turn a heel, to weave on a peg- loom, and marvelled at the amazing ‘backwards’ knitting of the Europeans! I taught a few crochet stitches and shared in the passion of the participants for all things wool. These gatherings are not difficult to organise, a poster in your local craft shop and library will bring the nimble-fingered out. One of those I attended was in a library, one in a craft shop and one in the homes of the members. All were wonderful, full of stories, skills and wisdom. Many are acts of generosity, where women produce items for charities, such as blankets for homeless shelters, or knitted egg-covers for sale at Easter to raise funds.

Women’s wisdom, their creativity and their loving kindness towards their family is made manifest in the items of clothing they lovingly create. One of my own cherished possessions is an Aran Geansai my mother knit for my father when they were courting 35 years ago. Both of them have sadly passed on but this symbol of their love remains and, fashioned from pure wool as it is, is still in great condition despite being worn regularly by me for the last 15 years!

Anyone who has been gifted with or made for themselves a hand-knitted jumper, scarf or hat knows the special quality inherent in such an item, a quality increasingly rare in our age of mass production. I refer here to an energetic quality as well as the physical quality arising out of attention to minute detail; literally every stitch is carefully knit with loving intention for the eventual recipient. The work is repetitive, meditative, and meaningful. How many of us know an Irish mother or grandmother who selflessly makes socks, hats and jumpers for all around her, but never for herself? She enjoys the abundant generosity of her work.

A great inspiration to me in my own path has been the work of the women of a remote Amazon rainforest people called the Shipibo. As the women weave they bring to each piece their healing songs. The energy of the song is imbued into the fabric, the songs become manifest in the geometric designs, which are then used as aids to healing. Their fabrics are prayers of good wishes and intentions for their community. Weaving and needlework is sacred work, in every action is sacred process.

Perhaps you are one of the mothers who gave up knitting when the kids got bigger, and haven’t touched a needle in years. If so I would like to encourage you, in this year of craft, to rediscover your craft, channel your creativity into it and maybe find or even start up a craft circle in your area. Perhaps enroll in the felting workshop planned for this years Wise Woman Weekend. I promise you that the rewards will be wonderful, many and wise!

Niamh