What Do I Want To Make Today?

The 300 year public anniversary of Fort Neyuherú:kę down Hwy 58 from where I live and was born set me free.  For 300 years my Tuscarora bloodline hid out in plain sight.  Now, I’m free to be me!  The shackles of being a brown skin Indian girl are broken.  God’s grace and Divine Mercy is redeeming my mind, my body and my creative hands.  My struggles to be a clay artist have been like a song I wanted to sing that the world was hell bent on beating out of me.  Now I know why…. Because I’m really a fiber artist!  My voice in art was hiding in plain sight just like I was.  Don’t get me wrong, I still have a love affair with clay, but I finally realize that the art I’m to make and be known for involves cloth.  I’m born to it!  Momma, Mama, Mat, Ma, Big Ma, Momma Mary all sewed and made quilts.  What’s born in our blood, we can’t beat out of our flesh!  And, now I’ve reawakened indigo dyeing in me and on Skaru:’re Ancestral Homeland.  Life is a journey that takes us to unexpected places, when we let go of self and let The Holy Spirit guide us.

This blog has been an on again, off again event in my life.  Now it’s on and will become a daily habit because I have a responsibility to be the Penland Experience to 90 learners at Chowan University.  I’m humbled by the circumstances of how God brought me to this place and to these people.  The campus is on Meherrin Ancestral Homeland nestled around Lake Vann.  When God does a thing, He covers all of the details.  Vann is the name of the only man I have loved up to this point in my life.  Our story of love is a tragic one that has broken my heart three times.  However, in my brokenness I’m learning what it means to love yourself and to love another person unconditionally.  What we seek from another person must first be inside of us  If true love isn’t in my heart, I can never receive it in a relationship as part of a mated pairing.

So, the journey of my creative hands beside Lake Vann begins as I teach and create a concept art visual journal in mixed media drawing to a group of endearing, creative young people that I’m head over heels in love with.  I’m once again journaling my journey one day before 9.11 and one day after Apple introduced it next big thing.  Today, I begin anew, creating a new habit as a witness to the transformation of a redeemed heart!