STORY OF CREATIVE PASSAGE told by Aviva Gold

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.  Before my 5th Birthday, I was sent for two months from my home in the tenement in ethnically diverse Corona, Queens, New York City, to summer camp in the wild Catskill Mountains. 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 doing art in nature is launched. The seed of Creative Passage is planted in fertile ground.

Fast forward 

The mission to awaken the artist’s soul in everyone through the mystical painting process has defined my life.  (Details on “Aviva’s Journey”). Looking back, I realize that the “Painting From the Source” workshops I developed and facilitated for many 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 Conceived

It was not really surprising that, in the late summer of 2000, two of my devoted students and friends, 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, we observed the profound heart opening by participants authentically painting and witnessing in a group as well as 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 to awaken people 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 lead workshops together.  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

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.

In 2005 I am called in a dream to move from wooded hills of New York State to the blessed sunny valley of Ojai, California, also known as Shangri-La, the perfect location for Creative Passage. During these past few years, the paperwork has been dutifully renewed annually by Mego, the Articles of Incorporation recently transferred to California, and Elise, Mego and I have remained close, bonded through shared creative experience. But I am the one who has most actively kept the dream and the vision alive.

A few years ago while writing and researching my recent book, “Source Art In the World“, it became clear that Creative Passage needs to be resurrected. 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 with whom to work in collaboration and a foundation to carry on the work. I see eco-sustainable buildings, vegetable gardens, animals, creativity workshops in all modalities, as well as dance, music, writing, etc, like summer camp for Source seekers all year round. … the full circle and fruition of my childhood salvation.

The intervening years have presented a world in even more need of creative re-enchantment. The ecological, financial and social fabric of our culture further collapses. The Mayan calendar ends. Yet glimmers of new hope appear. For 13 years Creative Passage like sleeping beauty, gestates remaining only on paper and in my dreams and prayers- Pure potential awaiting the kiss of action.

The Time is Now

Thirteen years gestation! I am ready! The World is ready! The time for Creative Passage: Arts to Re-Enchant People & Planet is Now! And Ojai California, Valley of the Moon to the Chumash Tribe is the mystical magnet to host this monumental vision. The official documents, web site, bank account and donation buttons are in place! All we need now is YOU!  Your contribution of skills, net working, collaboration, devotion, donations, blessings, questions and suggestions are all needed to materialize OUR mutual dream!  We need you.

Please participate by donating funds for land and buildings.