Deborah​ K. Tash​​/White Wolf Woman

In Her Image Studio

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What's up with Deborah K. Tash and In Her Image Studio?

In Her Image Studio/What Will 2021 Bring?  Mestiza Dreaming...

Deborah K. Tash/White Wolf Woman

05DEC20 - I hope this blog post finds you continuing to weather all the change and destabilization of our times to find renewal for your life.  I am looking forward to the coming great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius that will occur at the end of December.  Many of the deeply challenging planetary positions and aspects of the last several months have ended and 2021 is predicted to be a time of beneficial beginnings.  I am encouraged by the election of Joe Biden and especially Kamala Harris, with an increase in awareness of the need for racial equality not only for Black Americans, Asian Americans, but also for indigenous Native Americans and an end to sexism, the end of the fires in Northern California, the production of a vaccine for Covid-19 and a general feeling of relief.  Admittedly there are still many challenging conditions in our country and worldwide, both around the pandemic and economic issues, but I continue to be hopeful for the spiritual   evolution of humanity as we move further into the Age Of Aquarius.


In my own personal journey I have been discovering more about my identity as an artist and a Mestiza.   I started doing research for a new painting titled, In The Shadow Of Childhood.  The piece will feature a blonde girl child holding a candle wearing a pink dress and white ruffled apron and dark brown orthopedic shoes with a leg brace attached to the right one.   I have been exploring how to deal with my continuing disability as a result of childhood polio in a series called the Leg Project, but it has been on hold with all of the SIP issues and not being in studio.  This piece will address more of my interactions with shadow aspects.  In the background to the right will be a Yaqui Indian inspired mask, possibly a Deer Dancer mask and on the left in the background will be a shrieking shadow of a black jaguar, not a black panther of Africa. 


I started looking for images of both black panthers roaring, and feeling guided, decided to look for images of Yaqui masks as well.  I didn't expect to find any as I was ignorant of Yaqui ritual culture.  Imagine my surprise when I found hundreds of images including Deer Dancer mask images during my internet search!  Because I was raised to be assimilated with an inculcation of internalized racism (which I have only recently begun to fully uncover and deal with) I had no idea of the richness of this part of my heritage.  My mother carried her internalized racism out front; telling me as a child that she was taught to "purify" the race by marrying someone of European descent.  My father (with his English, Irish, Scots ancestry) and I were the only people in our families with blonde hair and blue eyes.  She warned me not to tell people I was Mexican.  And, she was openly racist about Native Americans either from the US or Mexico. 


My internet research uncovered some startling information.  The proud Yaqui heritage of that indigenous native people who populated the land named Sonora and parts of Durango in Mexico has opened new questions for me about my identity.  The legacy of mask making sheds light on my work as a mask maker.  And are these people possibly my ancestors?  My grandparents both looked like images of the Yaqui I was finding in my online search.  My maternal grandparents were from Mexico; my abuela from Sonora and my abuelo from Durango.


I will definitely be doing more research into all this, working with my guides for deeper understanding and allowing my art to be even more of a blend of my dual heritage of Celtic and Yaqui influence.  I look forward to getting a 23 AND ME ancestry test in the near future.  And I plan on rereading all of the Carlos Castaneda books which have sat on my shelf for nearly forty years. 


I still haven't been to the In Her Image Studio/Art Grotto in quite a while, due mostly to the state of my back and legs, but plan on returning in the near future.  I have continued with my daily writing practice and have become a member of a writer's group called The Writer's Life having just submitted poems and art for the upcoming Spring anthology for the group.  I also continue to be a member of  Story At Home; reading both stories and poetry.  I have been loving continuing to be part of the community as we meet bi-monthly on Thursday evenings via Zoom.  And I look forward to continuing to participate in the Zoom meetings of Sacred Grounds more regularly as a forum for reading my poetry, as well.


I am continuing to make art and work on getting my books published. Harvesting The Moon is now available on Amazon.com!   The fourth book, Soft Power/Reclaiming The Sacred Cunt Project, is on my publishers work bench and hopefully will be out and available in the near future.  I'm excited to share the Soft Power book with the world! Soon, so stay tuned!  Here is a new poem for today:


Daughter Of A Deer Hunter


The jaguar’s purr stirs in my blood

I feel the incendiary nature of my cells

In their dance of mingling biologies

Spirits of Celtic warriors and Yaqui ancestors

Shamans of conquered lands

Across oceans and distances

Whisper secrets in my mixed heritage

Defining my otherness for me

Giving me the missing parts

To solve the puzzle of my identity

Because I had no other guidance

Isolated in a family of insanity without adults

After my father had gone


05DEC20 TASH ©


Now that www.inherimagestudio is published and online, I am loving this fresh start.


Thank you for your support and reading my blog. I hope you are finding solace and creativity in your life during these transitional times!


                            Illuminated Poems Series/Mestiza Dreaming  TASH  c

In Her Image Studio/Productive In The Midst Of Crisis In 2020

Deborah K. Tash/White Wolf Woman

22OCT20 - I hope this blog post finds you weathering all the crazy of our times. I had to have a tooth pulled recently and the day of the surgery was the day of the orange/red sky! Boy, wasn't that a day like out of an apocalyptic dystopian science fiction novel?! I could hardly believe my eyes sitting outside of the UCSF Dental Clinic after the surgery waiting for a friend who was giving me a ride home.


I still haven't been to the In Her Image Studio/Art Grotto in quite a while, due mostly to the state of my back and legs, but plan on returning in the near future. This week I wrote a five minute erotica short story titled, Into The Dark, which I read for Thursday's Story At Home. I have been loving continuing to be part of the community as we meet bi-monthly on Thursday evenings via Zoom and participating in the Zoom meetings of Sacred Grounds has given me a regular forum for reading my poetry.


I am continuing to make art and work on getting my books published. My publisher is almost done with the work on the third book, Harvesting The Moon. I have also written another essay to add in to the fourth book, Soft Power/Reclaiming The Sacred Cunt Project, which will also have a new poem and painting, as well. I'm excited to share the Soft Power book with the world! Soon, so stay tuned!


I am working on this website and hope to publish it in the very near future for In Her Image Studio.  A fresh start.


Thank you for your support and reading my blog. I hope you are finding solace and creativity in your life during these bizarre times!

Here is a new collage piece completed recently:

For more new work go to NEW WORK in the GALLERY.

             Illuminated Poems Series/Out Of The Rubble  22AUG20  TASH  c

After Curating The March 1, 2020

ARISE GALLERY SHOW

Deborah K. Tash/White Wolf Woman


08MAY20 - Hello, hello, hello from Sheltered In Place land, San Francisco! The show at ARISE GALLERY on Sunday, March 1st which I curated for Elaine Chan Scherer was the last show at the gallery before the Shelter In Place took effect.  It has been many weeks now since I was last in my studio at herchurch, not only because of the SIP but also because I didn't want to be the only one in that huge building while Stacy was on vacation in Africa. Once she finally got back home after a bit of a perilous journey with threats of quarantine etc. I realized that I still needed to limit the amount of stair climbing I was doing until I could get back to regular weekly therapy sessions for my back and legs. Going to the studio requires going up and down five flights of stairs total twice for each visit, so I am being self-nurturing instead. I look forward to returning to the drawing board and painting easel in the near future.


In the meantime, after working on it for 14 years, I have finally finished writing the story of my graphic novel, The Gods In The Mirror/An Erotic Adventure Tale Of Spiritual Transformation and am working on editing and tightening up the writing in preparation for beginning the drawings and "comic book" cells and illustration when I do return to the studio. It has been quite an odyssey learning how to move a graphic novel story forward without using violence which is a standard way to move plots forward in comic books! I got stuck several times and had to put the writing aside until I could figure out the plot development. Instead of violence I used erotica. I wrote in restaurants and in the last couple of years did a lot of the writing sitting in ARISE GALLERY waiting for patrons to arrive. The silver lining of SIP for me has been the time to first mellow out and then get to the projects that I haven't had the time and focus to complete! I have a select group of friends reading the galley proof and am waiting to hear back from them all for feedback. So far, it's been very well received.

              The Gods In The Mirror/Monolith Study 04APR14   TASH  c

The other exciting news is that when I was working with my friend and IT guy, David, to take care of the formatting of the finished writing for the graphic novel, he told me that he and his wife have a publishing company now...Fumbled Book Press...and that they could publish my books. We came up with a plan and so far, Inspired By The Tides is now a published coffee table book and for sale on Amazon.com.


I have had a dream of having all of my chapbooks, which I have compiled for several years and saved in my files, all published and available on Amazon.com. I have always loved going there and finding groups of books by one author all available and lined up by covers, so I am especially pleased to be in the process now of setting up each of mine as art books, coffee table books and books of poetry. The process is both engaging and creative. I had no idea setting up a book and then working with a publisher could be so much fun.


With encouragement from friends, I made the second book from Voice Of The Poet In Troubled Times postings on my monthly newsletter with added photos and poems.  The third book, Harvesting The Moon is in the process of being published.  It is an expansion of one of the first chapbooks I made in the mid-2000s.  Then on to the fourth book: Soft Power/Reclaiming The Sacred Cunt Project which will have my story, a new essay, poem and painting with other expanded art and poetry, as well.  Fifth is Journal Sketches And Hidden Voices. Which as it turns out is a very large coffee table book with sixty plus pages. I am currently working on another art book for Illuminated Poems; number six, then on to the poetry books. All will be published in due time, so stay tuned!


What's New At In Her Image Studio?  Gearing Up For 2020!

Deborah K. Tash/White Wolf Woman

15DEC19 – Sun in Sagittarius/Moon in Leo – Sunday

Most of my writing about In Her Image Studio for the past almost two years has been shown in my MailChimp newsletter emails, but for those of you who are not in that database, I am going to start writing again here, as well. I have many balls in the air these days!

My show, Soft Power/Reclaiming The Sacred Cunt Project, is still exhibiting at ARISE GALLERY with an extended date ’til January 12, 2020. Oh, my Goddess! 2020 is just around the corner! While that is available I continue to work on Spirit Voices Of Light/Totem Animal Allies project and have only nine masks left to pull out of the forty that are part of the project. I was planning to not start the actual mask paintings until after all of the masks were pulled, but I just had to start with BUTTERFLY.

I spent three months making photocopies of butterflies for the Soft Power Series/The Opening #5 Monarch Prayer, cutting each one out as I made prayers for the Monarch butterflies and ended up with several extra ones after the piece was completed. So, I just had to start with the BUTTERFLY mixed media mask painting. The mask was pulled from Colleen Rosby’s face.

                   Spirit Voices Of Light/Totem Animal Allies BUTTERFLY TASH c


Here is the poem that began the process for the Totem BUTTERFLY:


Ally Of The Dreamtime VI


Playing with the breeze

Your fragile wings dance

Fluttering without a sound

Ephemeral loveliness manifest after ordeal

You harbinger of blossoms and spring

Alighting for the briefest moment

On leaf or bud to suckle

Sweet nectar your due

You mimic the wings of faeries

Reminder of grace and whimsy

After a season held captive

In a cocoon of transformation

Melted down to your essential need to fly

Your tribe gathers

Covering whole walls

In a swarm of desire

Sweet wingéd messenger

You are not just a simple pleasure

Meant to delight and entertain

Pretty and meaningless

No, not you my guide

You are a gentle beacon of beauty

A reminder of strength in adversity

And the everlasting truth of the soul


29NOV14 TASH ©

The Spirit Voices Of Light/Totem Animal Allies Project began with forty of my poems dedicated to forty totem animals and expanded into a community project working with the faces of volunteers who choose a totem animal ally from one of the forty.  I then lead each volunteer on a Shamanic journey to meet the totem animal of their choice.  Using plaster impregnated gauze to create a mask.

Once the mask is prepared, I attach it to a 2'x2' stretched canvas and begin the process of painting, collaging or adding other details to create a piece of art honoring the chosen totem animal ally.  BEAR was the first and prototype for these pieces and BUTTERFLY was completed just before the start of the pandemic which has put the project on hold since March, 2020.  Hopefully, the project will resume in the near future.

© 2020 Deborah K. Tash

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