Artist in Residence

Margaret Davis, the Artist in Residence for 2021/22

“I am delighted to have been selected as the 2021/22 Artist in Residence of the Society of Ritual Arts. I look forward to collaborating in the creative design of Coreopsis and to sharing my artistic vision with the Society.”

About the Artist: Artist and calligrapher Margaret Davis has been creating art and calligraphy since kindergarten. Her media include gouache watercolors, ink, 22-karat gold, and linoleum blockprint. Her works incorporate playful themes and imagery inspired by nature, myth, Medieval manuscripts and tapestries, and Egyptian tomb paintings. She has worked for San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, NPR correspondant Andrea Seabrook, etc., and she is a member of the Diablo/Alameda Chapter of the National League of American Pen Women.

Please explore her mythic, visionary art and calligraphy here: https://www.margaretdavisart.com/

About the Society For Ritual Arts Artist in Residence

The “world” that the Artist in Residence creates through her or his art, is the world the Society members “play” in for the duration of his or her tenure. Everything we do is informed by that artist’s aesthetic, vision, and palette, from the look and feel of the Society’s webpages to the table settings at the Annual Awards Gathering. The artist works most closely with the editor and designer for Coreopsis Journal, selecting profiled artists and cover art and influencing the overall aesthetic of the journal.

Board Members and the current artists working on Society projects may nominate any artist that he or she feels would add to the Society’s aesthetic sensibilities with works that inspire a numinous sense of wonder.

Volunteer may contact one or the other of the nominated artists and informally interview the nominees. The Editors of the SRA Newsletter and Coreopsis Journal, in particular, try to get to know the nominees over a several week period.

When we’ve narrowed the field to four or five, and we know that all of the artists nominated can commit to their tenure, there is a simple voting process among the volunteers and Board members. The current Artist in Residence holds a weighted vote and the founding editor of Coreopsis Journal holds the tie-breaking vote.

The Artist selected is given a permanent feature, “Between the Worlds” in Coreopsis Journal and blog space on the Society for Ritual Arts web pages. The artist holds, in addition, a vote on the Society’s Board for the duration of her or his tenure.

Carly J.J. Turner, Artist in Residence 2019-20

Carly J.J. Turner (aka Mede Potawatomig Ikwe) is a Pipe Carrier and medicine woman, O’Jibway from The Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, The White Earth Indian Reservation, and Wisconsin, The Bad River LaPointe Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Her Clan is Mukwa-Bear.

When Carly isn’t skipping through a pink-glittered desert speaking with her animal friends, she’s likely to be away fasting and praying or simply enjoying a cup of puerh tea and creating art.

Carly has an Associates Degree in Art and a Journalism and New Media CCL. She hopes to spread her words, art, and healing to many.

For consulting work or to see her ritual art visit: Phosphenesandaether.com

She accepts donations for her shares, if you’d like to donate:

Venmo: @journeyhawk

Helena Domenic, 2018-19 Artist in Residence

Helena Domenic

“I am honored to have been selected as the 2018/19 Artist in Residence by the Society of Ritual Arts, and am pleased to be able to add my voice here to Coreopsis. I have done a few reviews and interviews as well as an article for Coreopsis in the past, so it is a thrill to be able to serve in this capacity.”

Please explore her visionary, mythic art here: http://www.artofhelenadomenic.com/

Lauren Raine, 2017/18 Artist in Residence

Inspired by Balinese Temple mask traditions, artist Lauren Raine MFA created 30 multi-cultural “Masks of the Goddess” as contemporary Temple Masks devoted to the feminine faces of Deity. The collection travelled throughout the U.S., used for community ritual theatre for over 15 years, and is the subject of a book. In 2009 Raine Resident Artist at the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C., and in 2015 her masks were presented at the Parliament of World Religions with Macha Nightmare and her collaborators. Her work can be viewed at: www.laurenraine.com

Chip Thomas, 2016 Artist in Residence

Introduction by David Arv Bragi, SRA writer.

Chip Thomas, aka “jetsonorama,” is the Society for Ritual Arts’ Artist-in-Residence for 2016. He is a photographer, public artist, activist and physician who has worked between Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon in the Navajo Nation since 1987. He coordinates the Painted Desert Project – a community-building effort which manifests as a constellation of murals across the western Navajo Nation painted by artists from all over the world.

More after the gallery…

Thomas’ own public artwork consists of enlarged black and white photographs pasted on structures along the roadside on the Navajo Nation. His motivation is to reflect back to the people in his community the love and elements of the culture they’ve shared with him over the years.

Chip Thomas, Artist-in-Residence 2016

He is a member of the Justseeds Artists Co-operative, an international collective of 30 socially-engaged artists. You can find his large-scale photographs pasted in the desert, on the graphics of the People’s Climate March, the National Geographic Blog, Lens Culture and on350.org.

In beauty it is finished.

A Heartfelt Greeting from the Old King to the New King

Ivan Szendro, the Society for Ritual Arts’ Shaman Advisor and 2015 Artist-in-Residence, welcomes his “replacement.”

In Hungary, by the ancient shamanic tradition, there is a New Year celebration when people in the villages elect a “New King,” which many times today is a ridiculous mock ceremony. But in old times, accordingly to Geza Roheim, a much quoted and disputed Jungian psychologist and folklorist[1], this was a very big thing in the “Pagan” Hungarians’ calendar. ‘Twas a very democratic event, indeed. They chose a “King” who could do and decide practically anything he wanted, they admired and celebrated him – then after 10 years he became again just like any other tribal member.

Now, I don’t feel myself truly in the shoes of the Old King, but with some side-glance I was checking out; who’s gonna be the next, who comes after me, who will sit in my Old Year’s throne?

So I saw the new guy, Chip Thomas’ things on web, and in a second I was enchanted of his works. He is not only an Artist, he is a visionary shaman, a spiritual environmentalist, a ghost evoker.

In the midst of nowhere or in the dilapidated, polluted urban scenes he helps recreate and re-evoke the wonderful tribal cultures that flourished before. On the rusty bungalow you can see a giant Navajo boy swinging ecstatically on an old tire; on functioning water tanks by windmills you might witness enlarged photos of people from his community celebrating the sacred Spirit of Life.

“He is my man!!! And yours too, let’s celebrate that he is among us. Hail to the New Society for Ritual Arts’ Artist in Residence for 2016, Chip Thomas!

Discover more of Chip Thomas’s work and read his blog at jetsonorama.net.

[1] Dr. Geza Roheim’s Hungarian Folk Beliefs and Traditions(1925) Atheneum. New Edition: 1990, Universum, Szeged, Hungary

Ivan Szendro, 2015 Artist in Residence

Ivan Szendro, our 2015 Artist-in-Residence, is a mythologist and healer shaman from eastern Hungary who now resides in New York. He wrote this short piece for us about how he first became involved with the project that started out as a journal called Coreopsis and evolved, over the course of his year with us, into the Society for Ritual Arts. 

A PLACE WHERE I FEEL WELCOME AND HOME
My first encounter with Lezlie, the inventor of this particular modern tribe, Coreopsis, who dreamed up this fire that people sit by to tell their – …life?…legend?…love? – is a blur in my memory.

Ivan Szendro, our 2015 Artist-in-Residence

I penned online, on a Christmas Night, that whoever wants to hear her or his shamanic legend, just ask for it, I am here, Ivan the Shaman, to do it. And Lezlie was one of my late-night online companions on that “silent night” while we saw unfolding her legend and our mutually inspiring friendship.

Since then, her generous interest has resulted here on these pages some four published essays, interviews and my sweetest contribution to the tribe, a Collective Legend of Coreopsis,  “The Seven Enchanted Buffalo Sisters.” It’s our baby.

I came to Amerika from my ruined, flood-devastated Hungarian village with a preconception induced by Hollywood action movies, but Coreopsis was the place and people, who widened my narrow-sighted view about this country. Thanks to them, I found a new fire to tell my legend by.

Ivan Szendro,
Artist-in-Residence in 2015,
Mythologist, Healer Shaman
www.TheLegendofYou.com
“Self-Made Shaman” award-winning documentary (trailer)