Photo Interventions
I painted the Democracy Healing Pattern the week after the January 6 insurrection. Here it holds the space above the U.S. Congress. This pattern holds energy signatures for the possibility of democracy as well as medicine needed to heal it. The pattern is one of the most readily interpreted and evocative patterns that have ever emerged from collaboration with my spirit guides—see my interpretation below.
I printed t-shirts with this pattern in early 2021 and sent them to activists, policy makers, and state employees so the pattern could support them as they work to heal democracy.
The vertical half circle in the middle made of chevrons is painted in indigo, a dye that is central to many traditional cultures in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It is one of the only lightfast plant-based pigments. It’s history is tied with U.S. history and oppression in the name of freedom/democracy. It was used by ancient Mayans in their murals. Expert African dyers brought indigo dying to the US during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, enabling production of the quintessentially American denim/workwear/jean.
The pattern these chevrons make feels like many things, the stitching on a pine needle basket, patterns in beading, or on Hopi pots—perhaps honoring the sovereign governments of tribes within the U.S. and the origins of democracy within tribal systems; a murmuration of birds; hearts all going different directions, together; and the array of seated legislators on the floor of Congress.
The X on the right feels like both a warning and a protection against the white delusionist violence that has come from the right. We are going to have to find a new way toward wholeness and healing; that way is barred. There is no centrist approach that can be found that includes these diseased beliefs and violence based on power hording. And this X is given the most pigment/healing energy in the image, creating clarity.
The fertile belly from which we come (below) is purple (both red and blue) and serves to remind us that we are all human and all bleed, ache, grow, are Earth.
The rising sun over this landscape feels like it calls us to center on what we actually want our future to look like (a call that is far different than compromise)! And it feels like a new and separate overlapping reality is emerging—I honor this happening already in communities creating mutual aid as a norm and valuing the gifts each person offers as essential to the whole—This new vision is crowned by the rainbow arc.
That’s what this pattern tells me. What does it tell you?