Made for These Times:
Art to Alchemize Fear
A Transformational Container for Artists
Made for These Times:
Art to Alchemize Fear
Tuesday Evenings, 6-8pm Eastern
Live Online
March 24, 31
April 7, 14
May 5, 26
facilitated by Olivia Carle and Sarah Kowalski
Hi, fellow artist. How are you, really?
How are you metabolizing the devastation, violence, and chaos in the world?
The onslaught of fascism is explicitly designed to overwhelm our nervous systems, to invoke fear, numbness, dissociation, and a sense of powerlessness. It can at times be immobilizing, especially for highly sensitive beings. You may find yourself looping back into questioning whether your own personal artistic practice is still valid when so much is breaking in the broader world.
Does your art still matter?
What if it matters more than ever?
Can you find the courage to meet that expansive possibility?
You don’t have to do it alone.
That’s where this series comes in.
Artists play a vital role in times of fascism. And yes, that means all of us. Every voice, every story, every facet of the wholeness. You are needed. Your work matters. YOU matter.
Authoritarian rule and oppression seek to trigger our worst fears, to make us turn inward, seeking smaller and smaller circles of “safety,” and making everything feel like an emergency. Fascism operates by pitting us against and closing us off from one another, constraining our ability to vision, and to dream.
Art is a powerful means of alchemizing our fear, transforming challenging emotions, connecting our hearts across difference, and bringing visions of other ways of being into the world, where new possibilities can be felt, seen, heard, and experienced.
Art is a vehicle that helps us transform ourselves and others.
But as artists, we ourselves need to be resourced and supported as we face our own fears and meet our own edges.
In these times, you may be:
navigating your own trauma triggers and nervous-system freeze states
getting stuck in old stories of your work being too much or not enough
or feeling isolated and needing more community where you feel understood and seen.
In this 6-part workshop series we will reflect deeply on how to work with and through our fears, as artists, in order to be better resourced to end fascism.
We’ll do this by conceptualizing and creating a new piece of art about alchemizing our own fears, and then after creating that piece we will find a way to share it in our communities, expanding the reach of our connections.
Throughout the series we will:
learn from artists who came before us and created transformative and unapologetic work in times of crisis
participate in guided meditations, ritual, discussion, and prompts to support our practice
share our process and progress with each other, building community
and develop art journals to deepen our exploration of our personal practice.
Most importantly, we will be held in a supportive container that will facilitate shining light into the darkest corners of our souls, and bringing what we find into our work.
By the end of this series, you will have:
completed alchemical art
shared it with the collective in some way
made deep connections with fellow artists
and expanded your courage and sense of your own personal power in transformative ways.
Investment: $390 for the 10-week transformational container
Payment Plan Available: $130/month for 3 months
No one turned away for lack of funds:
inquire about sliding scale options in your registration form
About the Series
Made for These Times is designed to be a journey that will take you deeply into yourself, expanding your capacity and courage, and supporting you in bringing more of your alchemical art into the collective.
Week 1: We Were Made for These Times
In this session, we’ll reckon with the view that our souls have agreed to the assignment to be here on earth at this time. Whether or not we agree, how can we accept the assignment? We’ll also meet the fellow artists in our cohort and begin to map our current fears and opportunities.
Week 2: Universal via the Personal
In this session, we’ll take inspiration from other artists who have made art that was both deeply personal and also political. We’ll investigate our personal positionality, stories, and fears, as we begin to call in a piece of work that will feel deeply meaningful.
Week 3: Your Edge in This Moment
We’ll explore more resources of artistic inspiration, and use visualization and ritual to approach the material that is feeling truly edgy for each of us in this moment, knowing that’s where the aliveness lives and where the alchemy happens. There will be support for meeting these dark places within us with love and transformation.
Week 4: Opening the Heart
We’ll look to examples and inspiration for how artists have shared their work in community, and begin to call in our own right-sized offering. By the end of session four, you’ll have a better sense both of the art you’re creating and how you might be envisioning sharing it. There will be a 3-week gap before the next session during which you’ll work on your piece, with support from a discussion forum of fellow participants.
Week 5: Alchemizing Fear
In this session, you’ll check in about how your work and offering is going, and we’ll share practices that help to meet the fears that are arising and move through them. The supportive container of the group will be a place to troubleshoot any place you may be getting stuck, see bigger visions, and expand your sense of possibility. There will be a 3-week gap before the final session in which you’ll ideally complete and share your work, with support from a discussion forum of fellow participants.
Week 6: Widening Circles
In our final session, we’ll reflect on the process, art, and offerings that have come through during this series, and you’ll explore practices that help you fully digest the lessons learned and integrate all you’ve met. We’ll share a discussion about what’s opening for next steps, and experience a closing ritual to seal in the transformation of this journey we’ve been on together.
About The Facilitators
Olivia Carle (she/fae) is a queer and non-binary artist from rural NH. Her work is heavily influenced by the land around her, and grapples with the tension between the practice of queerness as freeing and external forces of oppression and constraint. Fae uses faer practice to insist on the power of imagination as crucial in our fight for collective liberation. Her body of work transcends medium, and she often produces mixed media pieces. Olivia is the founder/catalyst of Queer Artist Gathering, a fledgling, yet blossoming, event series and community building project focused on championing and protecting rural queer artists in NH. Through Queer Artist Gathering, fae facilitates collaborative experiential work that is grounded in liberatory theoretical frameworks. Olivia recently graduated from an interior design program through RISD Continuing Education.
Sarah Tarr Kowalski (she/her) is a multidisciplinary painter and book artist, writer, teacher, and healer based in Philadelphia, PA. Her art explores themes of radical transformation -- personal, cultural, and natural. In 2022, Sarah created Entering the Cave: Sacred Practice for Artists, a series designed to foster community, inspiration, and miracles among artists and creative people facing their next block or pushing against their next edge. She brings a background in yoga, somatics, Buddhist meditation and philosophy (including Radical Dharma training), shadow work, and Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects into her offerings, which all aim to create supportive containers for liberatory growth.
Made for These Times will take place in six sessions, held over the course of ten weeks. Sessions will be held online via a secure video platform, and live participation in at least 5 of the 6 sessions is required, since a key component of the series will be discussion and partner work with fellow artists.
If you know you have a scheduling conflict, please include this in your registration form, and we’ll discuss.
Sessions will be held at the following times:
Tuesday Evenings
6-8pm Eastern
March 24, 31
April 7, 14
May 5, 26
In between sessions, artists will have suggested homework practices to support and deepen the work of this container. This will include:
keeping an art journal,
visioning and creating a new work around the theme of alchemizing personal fear,
and creating an offering of some sort to share this work / this concept.
This offering will be unique to each artist, and could be anything from hosting an open studio to creating a public gathering in a park or community space to curating a show in a coffee shop, gallery, library, school, etc. You’ll be guided to find the opportunity that pushes you to expand enough beyond your current comfort zone to honor your courage.
Throughout the series, you will have access to discussing your process with fellow participants. By the end of these 10 weeks, you’ll have grown your practice and your connections, faced deep fears with new resources, and taken your next step toward expanding as a courageous artist.
All the Nitty-Gritty Details
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Outside of our 2-hour sessions, you should probably expect to devote a minimum of 4-5 hours a week to your creative and self-reflection practice in order to integrate the work we’re doing together. Our hope is that this is work you’d want be doing anyway -- spending time in the studio, and in your own inner work -- and that this container will be a support, not a “task.”
Here’s a preview of what we’ll be suggesting that participants take on.
We will be asking you to keep an art journal, and giving weekly prompts for it. This practice can fit into your available schedule; perhaps an hour or two a week, spread out however it works best for you: 15 minutes a day, or one or two longer chunks of time. Of course if you get deeply inspired, you may spend more time during some weeks.
We will also assign brief (5-10 page) optional readings to deepen our discussions, and ask you to do some reflection and self-inquiry (e.g. journal prompts) between sessions about the art you’ll be making and the fears you’re confronting. All of this can be at the pace that fits your process.
You’ll be supported in working towards producing a new piece of work that pushes toward an edge around a personal fear. There are no expectations or requirements for what that has to look like: we only hope it will feel meaningful to you.
You’ll also be supported in working towards and hopefully enacting an offering in which you can share your work more publicly. We’ll have lots of suggestions for what this might look like, and our hope, again, is just that you will use the support of this container to lean into and move beyond a current perceived limitation, expanding your sense of courage and possibility. You’ll know what’s right for you.
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This series is about meeting YOUR next personal edge, which is different for each one of us. As artists, we are always being called to meet the present moment. If you are new to exhibiting your work or don’t have experience bringing your art into the community, we will help you find the right-sized step to take.
We believe that the Universe conspires to support us when we are opening to our true path. As you delve into your personal fears and the material that is feeling most alive in your heart, you will attune more deeply to your intuition, and you may discover that opportunities to share or exhibit your work become easier to discover.
If you already have a community-engaged practice, we will invite you to meet the calling that is feeling most aligned in you at this time -- are you feeling called to a new medium, to a new collaboration, or to explore an area of personal material that you have not yet made space to bring forward in your practice? This group will meet you where you are.
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This series will help you reckon more deeply with your personal fears, in and out of the studio, and invite you to meet more of yourself with loving acceptance, as well as help you consider your practice in the context of artists both in the present day and throughout history who have made art that was both deeply personal and politically timely.
In a climate that requires emotional numbing, seeks to limit free expression, and functions only when we anaesthetize ourselves to the pain of the world, creating art that expresses something about your most authentic experience of existence is inherently political.
The question of political art and what it is will permeate this workshop, and we are committed to holding space for you to honestly wrestle with how your work is political, and whether your work is truly aligned with your values and priorities.
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Absolutely! Because this is a workshop that is focused on working beyond the current system, both within ourselves, and for our art practices. We are seeking experimental and autonomous ways of sharing our work with others. While part of the process could mean showing it in an exhibition, we are asking everyone to expand beyond that idea as well. Additionally, much of this workshop series is based on the artistic process, and we know that artists at all stages of their careers benefit from deep reflective work about their process.
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We understand that this is an intensive series. We will host an optional discussion group on Signal where you are welcome to be in touch with other participants. We might pop into the space from time to time as well.This is a space where you’ll be able to bounce ideas off each other, provide affirmation, address questions, and more.
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We understand that over the course of six sessions, something may come up. Please include a mention of any known conflicts in your registration form. We will be recording each session, and if, for example, you will be out of town or happen to get sick one week, it will be possible to catch up via the recording. However, if you know you will miss most of the sessions or are planning to participate solely via recording, this may not be the best fit for you, as partner work and group discussion are a key component of the process.
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Yes, please do! We want everyone to be able to do what they need for their bodies to be cared for and present in the space we create together.
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Of course! We will share potential paths that we and other artists have taken as inspiration, and help you think about what resources you have around you that you could use. We will support you as you take this leap!
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No, we understand that this could be overwhelming or a big endeavor! There are many reasons why this timeline might not be right for you. This is something that should be done well, not necessarily fast. However, we encourage you to use the container of the series to your advantage. For example, if you know you work best with deadlines and accountability partners, please use those tools. We think the series will be a great opportunity to figure out how to get your work out there.