Art sparks imagination and gives us the freedom to create what we imagine! When we make art we can explore our inner world in a way that allows it to be expressed and connected with our outer world. In this way art is the bridge between our inner and outer vision that helps us to feel whole and be complete.
There is also a feeling of satisfaction in being able to see what once was an idea in your head come to life in a piece of art! Art is magic in that way being able to take a thought and turn it into something others can see too! That is what inspires me to lead the art-sharing efforts with Free Art Friday Albuquerque. Dare to create your own magic and make some art! Happy Free Art Friday!
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Stephanie Galloway
Stephanie Galloway is from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has been writing poetry since she was a child and still loves to explore the magic in words and their power to touch others deeply. She taught art to children as the Children Zone Leader of the Rail Yards Market and is the founder of Free Art Friday Albuquerque.
Community Publishing brings local artists of all mediums together in creative collaborations for distribution as Multimedia Books while promoting literacy in our communities.
It is easy to forget yourself when you are in motion. Inertia has its own way of making our blood pump and synchronize with the present place and time. There is an insatiable desire I carry around with me on a consistent basis, some would call this the human condition, I call it passion. My desire seems to be amplified significantly in comparison to many people I have experienced. It is vicious and feels similar to a black hole in my chest cavity that is consistently wrenching matter into its center, eating it and burning for more. As blissful as this desire can be, it can also be a tricky entity that challenges the mind to a game of chess on a board of sanity. This is where inertia enters stage right. Movement has been my sanctuary, my solace and a healing force over the years.
Life moves on with or without you. Some can try as hard as possible to remain stationary, but this is an illusion. Stillness is not a construct in this universe. Collapsing down into a more succinct subject matter, we come to the trees. The tree is a strong force and the symbiosis of its anatomy to human life is more intertwined than one could possibly understand. New Orleans is full of magnificent, inviolable trees. There is
a primeval wisdom that exists in all lifeforms. Reasons being that we are made of strands of information and have access to this information, through practice and receptivity we can tap into this vibration.
When life is too heavy to bear, climbing a tree stimulates the blood to pump, gives it motion,
and the chance to pulse through and mirror us into a digestible pieces of matter we call the mind. Mind can be a deep, dark place; when eyes remain shut it is even harder to see that we are the light filling the landscape. In all the trees I have climbed in New Orleans I have found a different story, a subtle and wonderful story waiting to be told. Symbiosis with the trees brings more than comfort to my spirit, it makes me understand that when I laugh, the tree laughs with me, we breathe together and share a shell. The home of the mind, no matter how dark, can be illuminated by a tree.
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Pan Bourcier Hidalgo is a Dancer who is originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has relocated and embarked on a journey of discovery in New Orleans, Louisiana. Join her as she learns about her new city and herself in Pan’s Labyrinth!
Art In Our City: Creating Pride & Identity by Stephanie Galloway
It is important to take pride in the place you live because it creates a desire to take care of and feel positive about your surroundings. If you we feel good about the place we go about our daily activities in we can know that we are doing our part to make a living space that reflects the joy and excitement we are feeling on the inside.
Sharing art in our city through participating in Free Art Friday Albuquerque is an opportunity to express your love and respect for your community. Albuquerque has a vibrant creative community with many talents that are unique to our city! You have the power to inspire others to get in touch with their creativity through your generous random act of art!
Free Art Friday strives to inspire artists to be a positive sharing force in every community. Please consider being a positive force in the place you live by sharing your talents with others you make your town and world a better place to be.
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Stephanie Galloway
Stephanie Galloway is from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has been writing poetry since she was a child and still loves to explore the magic in words and their power to touch others deeply. She taught art to children as the Children Zone Leader of the Rail Yards Market and is the founder of Free Art Friday Albuquerque.
The moon comes forth, bright in the sky;
A lovelier sight to draw my eye
Is she, that lady fair.
She round my heart has fixed love’s chain,
But all my longings are in vain.
‘Tis hard the grief to bear.
The moon comes forth, a splendid sight;
More winning far that lady bright,
Object of my desire!
Deep-seated is my anxious grief;
In vain I seek to find relief;
While glows the secret fire.
The rising moon shines mild and fair;
More bright is she, whose beauty rare
My heart with longing fills.
With eager wish I pine in vain;
O for relief from constant pain,
Which through my bosom thrills!
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“Confucius was an influential Chinese philosopher, teacher and political figure known for his popular aphorisms and for his models of social interaction. Kong Qui, better known as Confucius, was born in 551 B.C. in the Lu state of China (near present-day Qufu). His teachings, preserved in the Analects, focused on creating ethical models of family and public interaction, and setting educational standards. He died in 479 B.C. Confucianism later became the official imperial philosophy of China. It is widely believed he was born to a poor teenaged mother.” READ MORE about Confucius.
As humans we make a variety of excuses to justify the bad behaviors that keep us in stasis. It is easier to remain in familiar life cycle than to face the unknown. This could possibly explain why a battered women will stay in an abusive relationships. The need to hold ourselves accountable couldn’t be of more importance in society and the individual today.
The mind and our emotions have the power to consume us in repetitive thoughts and feelings. One minute our emotional mind could be fixed in a state of longing and the next minute you could be thinking about making a sandwich. It is the mind’s disposition to be flighty and chaotic. It is important then to understand that we must hold ourselves accountable to training our minds and safe guarding our inner peace.
Intelligently Emotional
Emotional intelligence is, “Knowing ones emotions, managing emotions, motivating oneself, recognizing emotions in others, & handling relationships.” (Goleman p.43). People who understand their emotions as they arise can make better decisions for their lives. Through conscious acknowledge of our emotions we are capable of transcending beyond their sometimes debilitating grasp. An example of this may be the Buddhist teaching of quieting the mind through meditation, acknowledging the emotion when you see it arise and allowing it to graciously fall away in order to be fully present in this exact moment.
Managing emotions is the ability to embrace resilience and move beyond debilitating emotional strife. One could relate managing emotions as having to focus diligently on your trade while experiencing emotional distress at home. Motivation comes from the ability to maintain self-discipline and not act immediately on wants. By removing emotional reactivity one could better focus on what motivates positive change. What a person wants may not always be what is in their best interests. The ability to recognize emotions in others is self-awareness through empathy. Through empathy we are capable of experiencing life simultaneously with those we wish to strengthen connections with. The term metacognition means “to refer to an awareness of thought process” (Goleman).
Through metacognition, self-discipline and personal accountability it is possible to correct negative thoughts and behaviors. Through patience, temperance and empathy is it possible to correct our emotionally reactive natures and embrace emotional intelligence. Change is possible and it is theorized that it takes “32 days to change a habit” (OnCourse p.147) if the individual is willing to hold themselves accountable and has a sincere desire for change. The stronger one has a desire to change, the more motivated they will be to holding themselves accountable.
Views from Within
Despite how we may see ourselves, we are all very delicate creatures. The resources to pull ourselves out of dysfunctional living are all around us. With great discoveries in neuroscience, behavioral science, & technology being revealed more and more every day, we as a civilization have more information and tools available at our disposal than ever before in history. Through kindred spirits we have the gift of companionship and communication in order to grow together.
Without acknowledging the need to become self-aware and self-actualizing, we will remain disconnected from ourselves and left seeking happiness outside of ourselves. Awakening to how we destroy ourselves can be a very painful experience but one of the most beneficial and expansive experiences of our lives. This process should be addressed within the individual and should be viewed through the internal eyes of compassion and empathy for one’s self. Acting out of self-love would involve asking yourself in every decision you make, “What would a person who loves themselves do?” (Scott).
To be completely honest with ourselves takes tremendous courage as it may require a person to change everything about how they live to attain true and lasting happiness. Self-deceit can be overcome through self-actualization. Happiness is possible, it’s all a matter of how important it is to the individual.
References for the Lost and Found articles can be found here.
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Chessa Peak has been in New Mexico since the age of 4 and is an honorary New Mexican. A bartender of over 10 years in the Duke City, musician, entreprenuer, and current student at CNM, Chessa is now currently working towards her own non-profit group that will support literacy, art and music programs for Albuquerque residents and her immediate community. Having come through a negative past, her writings deeply reflect the nature of her personal struggles in an attempt to help others overcome their personal battles.
Ulcers. Something I have never endured but I find that the effect will show in my writing as I have one now due to many a thing. Worry and stress, tooth pain, no money, single motherhood and a constant guilt that stems from no absolute place all play a part in the pain. However, I feel it has led me to pondering and action and may be only a smaller hurdle in the face of all that is happening in life.
I am left wondering just how things have gotten so stressful, though I know the process well for I have been working on it for the last fourish years. It began with a simple decision… moving to New Mexico. Some think my decision was a selfish one because being in love was involved. My oldest two children, living with their father after the divorce due to me being poor on my own, lived in Washington as did I before my move. They didnt understand and neither did I if I am to be honest, but we are very much still close and share the deep love only mother and child can understand.
That is how it began. After my lament of leaving and the following excitement, i had no idea what would happen. The ensuing roller coaster ride was still a secret to me when first I rolled into town in my uhaul and my independence. I was happy and found a place I love with such deepness that I know I will never call any other city “home”. This dusty, dry, windy place that is full of weirdos, scholars, freaks, hippies and the occasional businessy human won me over instantly.
Life Changing
Why does any of this matter? It matters because if you have ever been a throw away kid, a person of no kind reputation, an easily forgotten human, you will see that this tiny portion of my life is also the most important. I write to give the depressed hope for it is in every eye I look into. It offers a transparent view of how the mistakes we believe we make and can never recover from can actually change your life forever in a beautiful way.
I was raised in an oppressed environment and shown that I was, in fact, an adopted child. “Adopted” is not accurate even because they never saw fit to go through with that action. I was ignored as were huge and evil events that occurred in my life, brushed off and used. I never knew what it was like to make my own decisions or even to do the normal things rebellious teenagers do because my mom scared me every day of my life.
Then, at 19, I married a man who I loved so mightily and even took on his Christianity until I believed it was my own choice. I didn’t want to believe that he would ever show me anything but a strong Christian man, but by year two I found much of what I believed was false and my love misplaced. But I am stubborn and pig headed and stayed beyond my usefulness and his love.
I divorced him after ten years of marriage and two beautiful children and found myself in a place of happiness. That was, until I finished college and tried to get a job and found out that my seven years as a stay at home mother rendered me almost useless to society despite my intelligence and degree I earned at night. I also found myself at a loss for the children went to live with him.
I stood at a precipice. My life was shaken to the core because of my own actions, but I had a sense of bliss that stuck to me no matter how much I sobbed when I couldn’t tuck my children in, or how angry I became when my ex husband referred to me as Gomer from the Bible (if you don’t know the reference, I will be vulgar here and say she was the biggest whore in the good book), or even how disturbed I was when I realized my devotion to Christianity amounted to nothing more than a false sense of hope. I was stripped raw and had no idea what to do next.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
I met a man in the modern way (Facebook) and he taught me so much about the world I had hidden from so diligently. He was sweet and beautiful and no one would ever dare question his talent as a musician. He taught me how to think for myself, how to see beauty in the mundane and how love could feel when given with no filters. So I visited New Mexico, knowing nothing about it but for Bugs Bunny always wishing he had turned left at Albuquerque.
And in Albuquerque I was warmly and most lovingly welcomed. The man I met I fell in love with, I had crazy adventures and wild sex and found that henna is something I am passionate about even if I am only mediocre. It was the best week I had ever experienced- which we know would not be hard to accomplish for me up to then. I came back a second time and in October, I moved here.
I immediately had guilt over leaving my children and even now I still have leavings of that emotion. Within six months I was pregnant and this was the point at which my family chose to finally cut me out of their lives. I almost died before I could have my sweet new baby and no- that is not an exaggeration. I obviously made it through and was left with a premature, tiny MonChiChi of a daughter who I dote on.
Then I had to leave the man who drew me to my true home. I am no picky woman but I could not continue in the face of the reality of the relationship and spent the following year relying on my friends to offer me a place for my child and I to sleep, food for us to eat and money for gas so I could find a job. I am crying as I type this, because to say that life, though not detailed on any real way here, dealt me depressive darkness and resentment as the main theme of my hand of life poker would be understating by many a mile.
Whew. Are you still with me? That was a lot of vague sadness for which I apologize for, but you don’t want to hear about the paedophiles who groomed me, the mother who forgot to stop hitting me, or the detailed ways in which love can lead to hate and my sexual non importance. There is a point to this, I promise.
Persevere
All of the hate, lust, violence, disappointment, self loathing and deep depressive states of mind have actually done me more good than harm. I am scarred, mangled, chewed up and digested. I am a pile of human goo that few care about in any deep way. But I am thankful for such things. In my current state, I am pliable, I flow with less restriction, I am strong minded and self confident. I now live with my wee moon girl, am about to go get my oldest children for a fun time in my favorite town, I have my first teaching job and my own car. I found the independence I have always craved and though it is scary, I find it the most refreshing took in my so-called belt.
I did it. I survived the darkness, my evil and selfish thoughts about the breath I felt I wasted. I survived love and have found it again. I am goo. I gross and slippery and hard to hold in your hand. I am resilient and have been beautifully tortured. I have found that family is truly what you choose for yourself, that to be in love I must love me, that no amount of piled and stinking manure can truly crush me and I somehow have become a warrior goddess in a world where it is not cherished to be one.
Fight
So to all of you throw away children, waifs that society has forgotten, all you who are about to slice the life from your flesh or drink another sorrow down with malice, I only have this to say to you:
I love you, though I do not know you. If you are in that dark place you have already survived and won. You just don’t know it. You and I share a constant struggle- an endless wave of reality that we have not signed up for. Our lives parallel no matter where you live and for this we are connected like mushrooms- deep and wide spread across the entire earth. I am you and you are me. We rock. We are beautiful because of our scars . We made it. Don’t you dare give up on me now…keep going as I did and you, too, will find your wounds and heal them.
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Acey May is an Educator and Henna artist. She was born in Yakima, Washington and lives in Albuquerque, NM. Acey is the illustrator on the forthcoming multimedia book, Bella the Caterpillar. Acey is also contributing illustrator on Fiona the Funkadelic Freckle Fairy multimedia children’s book. Read more about Acey here.
I painted my self a portrait of death for you today
Though it is bone painted flesh that you see
I still breath
I am alive in a dream
And lady death still pierces my ever beating heart
every day that she swallows the stars
like the moment that she snatched yours away from me
Like the moment that I learned to Love the night
I look to the sky every time I miss the light
that once shown through your eyes
now floats in the vast darkness of the sky
And I am left here remembering and holding on to these
objects, places and sacred things
They keep you close to me
somewhere beyond this dream
And so safely I lay them out for you my love to see
It is a beautifully painstaking feat
to decorate ofrendas with marigold memories
My heart is singing for you now
This living calavera with bone teeth all smiles
My heart is singing for you now
I will never let go of your love
I will always wish on your stars
I’ll carry your picture till forever never finds me
I walk with you now in my heart
Your death leaves me longing for awakening
though I know it’s not my turn
each day a page that I am left unable to fill with words
words unable to fill the void left by days I still sleep walk without you
Oh how I can’t wait to wake!
Oh how I miss your eyes
and the sounds that your voice would make
I’d tell the cheesiest of jokes if I could make laugh right now
I’d piss you off just to hear you yell
I’d write you poetry to make you weep
I’d do anything for just one peep
of that magnificent roar that is yours
Those that joined you on your journey
to Mictlan
must have been awed by your numinous glory
Dead but not gone
your spirit carries on
Much brighter than the noise I’m bewailing
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It was in the middle of our tragedy
And all the day long sitting at her glass
She combed her bright gold hair. To me it was
As though her calm hands quieted a blaze.
It was in the middle of our tragic days.
And all day long sitting before her glass
She combed her bright gold hair as one who plays
In the very middle of our tragedy
A golden harp without belief, to pass
The long hours, sitting all day at her glass.
She combed her bright gold hair and it seemed to be
Martyrizing at will her memory
All the long day while sitting at her glass,
Reviving still the spent flowers of the blaze,
Not speaking as would another in her place.
She martyrized at will her memory
It was in the middle of our tragic days
Her dark glass was the world’s facsimile
Her comb, parting at the fires of that silken mass,
Lit up the corners of my memory.
In the very middle of our tragic days
As Thursday is in the middle of the week.
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Free Art Friday is upon us and art is in the air! As a participating artist in Free Art Friday Albuquerque I often try to imagine what it is like to find a piece of art on Free Art Friday. In the busy life of rushing that most people live finding a piece of art is something that makes one pause and contemplate creativity and in the shifting of attention from our normal routine we start noticing other new things in our path that we had been missing.
So in a way the art of Free Art Friday helps to cultivate our attention it the details in life that we did not seem to notice before. That shift of focus from the norm could be the very spark of inspiration that is needed to start a flow of creativity that expands our personal world and helps pave creative pathways that could lead us to places we would have never found otherwise. Imagine being on your way to work or having a bad day when all of a sudden seemingly out of nowhere you see a piece of art that chose you to be its owner, that can make you feel special and change the tone of your whole day.
The artists and art of Free Art Friday create that kind of magic for people allowing us to be part of something bigger then ourselves by engaging in positivity! So please consider participating in Free Art Friday Albuquerque! You are all artists and your art makes a positive difference in your community and beyond!
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Stephanie Galloway
Stephanie Galloway is from Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has been writing poetry since she was a child and still loves to explore the magic in words and their power to touch others deeply. She taught art to children as the Children Zone Leader of the Rail Yards Market and is the founder of Free Art Friday Albuquerque.
***** Community Publishing brings local artists of all mediums together in creative collaborations for distribution as multimedia eBooks while promoting literacy in our communities. We are proud to be a community partner and digital marketer at the Rail Yards Market. Community Publishing: From the Community For the Community
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness, the
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
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Curated by Mary Ann Gilbreth, Ed.D., Department of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership and Policy, at the University of New Mexico. This collections includes the work of her students from several of her Reading Methods Classes, promoting cultural diversity in the classroom.
freedom to create what we imagine! When we make art we can explore our inner world in a way that allows it to be expressed and connected with our outer world. In this way art is the bridge between our inner and outer vision that helps us to feel whole and be complete. 
when eyes remain shut it is even harder to see that we are the light filling the landscape. In all the trees I have climbed in New Orleans I have found a different story, a subtle and wonderful story waiting to be told. Symbiosis with the trees brings more than comfort to my spirit, it makes me understand that when I laugh, the tree laughs with me, we breathe together and share a shell. The home of the mind, no matter how dark, can be illuminated by a tree.
And all day long sitting before her glass
