Today, November 15, combines two personal holidays for me. One is Georgia O'Keeffe's birthday. She wasn't a saint by any means. But I've had many of the same conflicts and obstacles. It has helped me to learn how she worked through them or at least survived them. Just knowing, for example, that she felt like throwing up if someone saw her work in progress, has been a comfort to me. She needed to work in privacy.
Privacy is hard won for any person, but especially so for a woman. A woman is expected to be nurturing and available. This is the "good mother" archetype. When a woman demands privacy and time for her own work, she suddenly seems like the "bad mother." Here is where goddesses like Kali can be useful. If the "bad mother" can be a goddess, maybe she has some legitimacy in life.
The "bad mother" and Kali played a role in creating my other personal holiday for November 15: Freedom Day. This is the date back in 1990 when I said "no more" to doing commissions for ironwork. I'd been trying to balance commissions with making bowls, and the bowls always lost. The commissions always took priority because they had deadlines or target dates, people writing or calling to inquire, live people for whom I had a lot of caring. I was a sort of "good mother" artist-blacksmith.
Yet I was very far from my own path. All I really wanted to make was bowls. Every day I betrayed myself. Every day I did violence to my soul.
On November 15, 1990, I summoned enough courage to say good-bye to commissions for anything but bowls. I "gave myself a grant" to start making bowls. This led to the Creative Power series of openwork iron bowls.
So my Freedom Day is about "freedom from" but even more about "freedom to" - freedom to make the bowls that most want to be made by me.
8:44:56 AM 
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