STORY OF CREATIVE PASSAGE

The Quest Begins

Wishing … waiting … for my real family to rescue me occupied my childhood. Drawing with crayons and playing with earth, wild grass and insects in a nearby vacant lot — any patch of dirt, tree, bush I could find in crowded streets — soothed the angst.  In 1945, I was sent from the tenement in ethnically diverse Corona, Queens, New York City, in which I lived, to summer camp in the wild Catskill Mountains for two months.  I was not yet five years old. My mother said camp would protect me from the Polio epidemic that ravaged New York City each summer. In camp I thought I was dying of loneliness. They gave me paint to make pictures, a black pony named Molly to feed and brush, and allowed me to sit alone in a magic brook where good fairies sang to me from the rushing water. I saw stars in the black night sky for the first time, heard folk songs and watched the miracle of my pea seeds grow into vines offering juicy pea pods to eat. Drawing and painting pictures and being in nature saved my life — a few loving teachers, horses and storybooks as well. The seeds of a gypsy life as an Art Medicine Woman were planted.  The life quest to find my tribe of kindred spirits launched. Creative Passage a glimmer of what might become.

Fast forward to 2011.

I am 70 and live in the blessed sunny valley of Ojai, California, also known as Shangri-La. The mission to awaken the artist’s soul in everyone through the mystical painting process has defined my life. ( Brief details of my creative passages from Corona, NYC ,to now, can be read on “Aviva’s Journey”). Looking back, I realize that the Painting From the Source workshops I developed and facilitated for over 25 years were the creative reparative experience I craved for myself but could never find. In creating PFTS I got to participate, paint, love and heal with kindred spirits. Each time I posted and advertised for workshop participants, I was  inviting my true Art Medicine Tribe to gather…. my soul family to reunite. At the end of the workshops, hearts open; we often want to stay together. Many return again and again.

Creative Passage is Born

It was not really surprising that, in the late summer of 2000, two of my devoted students, Elise Crohn and Mego Johnson, came to live with me for three months in my home/ studio in the New York Hudson Valley woods. They came to explore with me an idea both obvious and revelatory….  a non for profit residential center devoted to ecological awareness and healing through authentic arts practices.

Again and again, I observed the profound heart opening by participants authentically painting and witnessing in a group — heart openings to deeper needs in themselves, each other, community and environment. Unintended, nature spirits and guides poured out of the paintings and spoke to us. The potential for creative transformational experience with communal support to open and wake people up to the needs of planet as well as personal healing was obvious. Here is a recent example.

Elise and Mego, like me, were social and environmental activists at heart and in practice, as well as process painting enthusiasts. Mego who was active in co-housing community was also Assistant Director of non for profit Friends of the River in California and a white water river rafting guide. Elise was a recent graduate in Ecology and Sustainable Community studies and was preparing a ritual art healing journey to sites of environmental devastation, called Gaia’s Witness. My book, “Painting From the Source,” was just published by Harper Collins and the first PFTS Teacher Training was about to be launched.

For three months we devoted ourselves to conceiving and planning a non-profit organization that included an eco-sustainable center offering authentic creative experiences for people with the purpose of raising eco/political awareness.  A place of “Passage” to a saner world through the heart-opening use of “Creative” expression. During this time we painted, danced, talked, dreamed, brainstormed and wrote — plus leading workshops. We fought, loved, laughed and cried.  At the end of that time, Creative Passage was officially conceived on paper, and received its IRS tax ID number in New York State. Looking back I see how our process of birthing Creative Passage was a mirror of the Creative Passage concept.

Gestation

For the past 20 years, Creative Passage has been gestating (paperwork dutifully renewed annually). At the time of official completion in 2000 we put feelers out for a board of directors and funding sources. We could plainly see the dire needs of the planet and the inspiration of our vision. We expected everyone else to be eager to join and support. But that did not happen. Soon Elise and Mego went home to their lives and projects in distant states. I assumed Creative Passage was an idea ahead of its time — the concept, its founders and the world not ready yet for manifestation.

Now Is the Time

Over the years, Elise, Mego and I have remained close, bonded through shared creative experience. But it is me who has most actively kept the dream and the vision alive. While writing and researching my recent book, Source Art In the World, it became clear that Creative Passage needs to be resurrected. This is the time. After all, the wandering Gypsy Art Medicine Tribe needs a home base to gather strength, make roots, invite others and share Creative Gold with the world. I in particular am slowing down, not wanting to travel as much. I want a home with like-minded souls, to work in collaboration. I see eco-sustainable buildings, vegetable gardens, animals, creativity workshops in all modalities, dance, music, writing, etc, like summer camp for Source seekers all year round. Also, the intervening years have presented a world in even more need of creative solutions/revolutions.

Right now there are wonderful properties in Oracle Arizonia for sale at the best prices ever. One in particular, Harmony Springs, 54 acres adjacent to National Forest with mountain water springs flowing into a beautiful bubbling brook is inviting. And an informal group of advisors is forming. And just last week, Creative Passage was officially incorporated to do business in California. We can now officially receive donations. But we need bright, creative, enthusiastic people as much as money.

I know that every part of nature, authentic art and dreams have a soul, integrity and a voice — a voice that needs to be heard, and when consulted will tell the truth. My vision of Creative Passage is a center actively devoted to cultivate this ability/creative activity for every person, to live and make decisions in alignment with this guidance and teach this mindful way of authentic creative life to others. Creative Passage is a place generating creative rites of passage, facilitating creativity as a role model for the world. A place where we live daily with the principles and practice of consulting nature and our creative guides in all we do.

For me, Creative Passage is also the fruition of the dream of gathering my kindred spirits and making an enchanted home and vision together, which re-enchants people and the planet as well.

Please share your response to the ongoing story of Creative Passage: Arts to Re-enchant People & Planet. Does creating this center and participating in its growth appeal to you? We need you.

If you feel called to participate and / or donate funds for land and buildings, don’t hesitate to contact us.