For this Hard Head Woman: And for All Those Dying to Emerge from the Shadows

In the 3rd week of the Shadows series of workshops at Ashe Cultural Art Center www.ashecac.org thus far, has been a wonderful experience.  With an exhibition to follow in March 2015 entitled Standing in the Shadows (no More), the vision of all this will be for not only for this Hard Headed Woman & hopefully others, to continue to define & refine.  

 

Photography by Gus Bennett,Jr for the New Orleans People Project

 

"You choose. That's what this says to me: whether it be praise or surrender, to dance or cry, to be still or move . . . this picture says a lot to me about the power of a woman who chooses". D.L. Reid

 

 

 

So ones will know, I was not having a "Glory"! moment.  I was actually grooving to Parliment/Funkadelic totally oblivious to anyoe around me when Gus captured this shot.

 

 Standing in the Shadows, is part of my Fig Tree Project based on the Bible Scripture in Micah 44.  That Scriptural prophecy resonated for me in many ways.

 

The purpose of the project is multi-fold... layered.  On a personal level, I'm at a stage more then ever to not be in the shadows though some who know me would balk at the idea of my being in the shadows at all!  But 5 of the last 6 years, I felt like I was, that somehow I had lost me starting a forced "sabbatical" one not of my liking or choosing.

 

Now reflecting back, I see that time as a molding, a shaping that will render a deeper rhythm while I'm reemerging.   The "shadows" have been embraced, the stories & experiences that were reaching out sometimes whispered, sometime with a plaintive cry,will definitely frame with not only my art but in other ways yet to be rediscovered.

 

just in the last several months, I thought I was feeling like my old self until I came to grasp I had not.  I actually came to be a far better me & what has been showing up, I really liked. I've always liked me, but this enhancement is even juicier.

 

 

 

There was no major, dramatic made for TV moment that cause this to happen.

 

I simply was ready...

 

This Hard Head Woman was ready...

 

"Sometimes it is the smallest decision that can change your life"~ Keri Russell