Category: Arts

ASWM’s mission extends to the influence of scholarship in Women and Mythology on the arts. These posts highlight some of our activities and members.

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Scholar Salon: Filmmaker Emily Packer’s Vision of Mythic Motherhood on the Border

February 22, 2020
2pm Eastern Standard Time

ASWM Online Scholar Salon with Filmmaker Emily Packer

La Frontierra Chingada is a 2015 poetic non-fiction film about motherhood on the US-Mexico border. Mythic figures like Tonāntzin, the Virgin Guadalupe, la Llorona and la Chingada, manifest themselves at Friendship Park–a space where families on either side of la frontera can come together, but meet there under extreme conditions of surveillance. Guided in part by conversations with the filmmaker’s matrilineal family, the film concerns itself with relationships betweenwomen’s bodies, space, and the shared land and history in the San Diego-Tijuana region.

 

Scholar Salons with Emily Packer, Filmmaker

Emily Packer is an experimental non-fiction filmmaker with an interest in border culture and border theory.  She says, “A huge part of my trepidation in making this film was about not wanting to presume to be able to make a relevant film about the border as an Anglo American filmmaker.  But I think it’s incredibly important for white artists to make reflexive work about the border, given that we are implicated in its existence, and that our understanding and perspective shift is necessary to improve the situation (which includes death, dehumanization, and forced separation of family). At some point I gave myself permission to trust that I could make meaningful art about the border, and that the story I had to tell was important.”

See the one-hour film, available now in ASWM’s member-only resource library, and join us for a conversation with Emily about crossing and transforming borders that separate us. The Salon discussion will be moderated by Natasha Redina, a filmmaker and ecotherapist who is a member of ASWM’s advisory board.

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“Masks of the Goddess” On View in Retrospective Exhibition

Featured ASWM artist Lauren Raine is holding a retrospective art show of her beautiful Masks of the Goddess Project.  She describes her work this way:
In May I will be concluding the 20 year MASKS OF THE GODDESS PROJECT, which began as an Invocation to the Goddess at Reclaiming’s Spiral Dance in San Francisco in 1999.  I have been so privileged to collaborate with Priestesses, Playwrights, Dancers, Ritualists, Community Organizers, Photographers, Choreographers, Writers, Singers, and Psychologists in sharing the “Faces of the Goddess”. The spirits of so many collaborators are in every mask and photograph.  It’s my hope that as the masks leave me, they’ll go out to be used by others, to continue their work in some way. 
Just want to thank you and all of the amazing women I met at the Women and Mythology Conferences I have attended.  If you or anyone you know will be in SF at that time, please be most cordially invited to the Opening, or to see the show.
She has also just revised and added to my book “The Masks of the Goddess”, which is a collection of photos and archives, and  is available at http://www.blurb.com/books/9353862-the-masks-of-the-goddess .

May 5-July 28  at Arise Gallery at Womanchurch

678 Portola Drive, San Francisco, CA

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“Still Powerful,” Feminist Art by Rae Atira-Soncea

Still Powerful: Artworks by Rae Atira-Soncea

Feminist visionary artist Rae Atira-Soncea passed away ten years ago. Now in a new retrospective show, her dynamic work will be on display again in the Spring of 2019.  A longtime leader of the arts community and a disability rights activist, Rae was featured at the first symposium of ASWM in 2008. Her work also appears in ASWM’s proceeings volume, Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, and the Arts.

“Still Powerful: feminist revisioning of domestic objects by Rae Atira-Soncea,” will be March 23-31, 2019, on the 3rd floor Common Wealth Gallery, 100 S Baldwin, Madison WI 53703  Open 10-4 weekdays, and 9-5 on the 24th, 30th and 31st.

Reception will be Saturday, March 23, 2018 4-7:30PM.  Much of the art featured in her blog will be on display and on sale.

Rae working on her Earth Goddess for “The Yurt”
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La Frontierra Chingada: a film

by Emily Packer, Filmmaker

ASWM Winter Warmers Film Festival 2019
ASWM Biennial Conference Film Series 2018
Synopsis

La Frontierra Chingada is a poetic non-fiction film about motherhood on the US-Mexico border. These figures (mythic and otherwise) manifest themselves at Friendship Park–a space where families on either side of la frontera can come together, but under extreme conditions of surveillance. Guided in part by conversations with the filmmaker’s matrilineal family, this Spanglish film concerns itself with relationships between bodies, space, and the shared land and history in the San Diego-Tijuana region.

Trailer

 

"A huge part of my trepidation in making this film was about not wanting to presume to be able to make a relevant film about the border as an Anglo American filmmaker. But I think it’s incredibly important for white artists to make reflexive work about the border, given that we are implicated in its existence, and that our understanding and perspective shift is necessary to improve the situation (which includes death, dehumanization, and forced separation of family). At some point I gave myself permission to trust that I could make meaningful art about the border, and that the story I had to tell was important." - Emily Packer

Bio

Emily Packer is a non-fiction filmmaker with a focus on women's stories and an interest in Border Culture and Border Theory. Her documentary style ranges from observational to reflexive, experimental, and poetic. Emily graduated from Hampshire College in December of 2015. The following year, she organized the three-day event Arte on the Line in San Diego and Tijuana, where she screened her second feature-length film La Frontierra Chingada. Emily’s first film, Nationless, explored the unique socio-political situation of Tibetan refugees in Nepal. In addition to her independent work, she has consulted and edited for Deliberate Healing Productions and Ashbourne Films. She works as a media manager for Zero Point Zero Productions in New York City, and in her spare time volunteers for Tribeca Film Festival’s programming team. Emily collects voicemails for future use; consider yourself notified.

Scholar Salons with Emily Packer, Filmmaker

For more information on Emily's films visit marginalgapfilms.com . 

Scholar Salon 4

Feb 2020 live online salon with Emily Packer about the film.

Feature Film Screening for Members Only

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What’s the Buzz about “Vibrant Voices”?

Vibrant Voices: Women, Myth, and the Arts

Volume II of Proceedings of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, edited by Sid Reger and Marna Hauk

“Vibrant Voices is an essential guide and touchstone for all future work on women and mythology.”
–Miranda Shaw, author of Passionate Enlightenment

 

We proudly launch this beautiful proceedings volume on March 17, 2018 at our ASWM Conference.  At least 15 of our contributors will be on hand, and book signings will be happening at the Marketplace from4 to 8pm. There is a special introductory price for those attending the conference.

With over 30 contributors, this full-color book explores the many facets of women’s arts as they illuminate sacred stories from many traditions. In her Foreword, Judy Grahn says,

These essays add to our sensual experiences as well as to our ever-expanding knowledge base. The invitational qualities and broad diversity of origin and expression of the selections in this volume are balanced by histories of the colonization that the foremothers and preservers of indigenous religions and community have had to endure.

 Our goals in creating this book were to honor artist-scholars’ work and to inspire further explorations of women and the arts. We include visual arts, poetry, and scholarship from over 30 contributors who have presented at ASWM events. In her Afterword, Cristina Biaggi speaks to this intention:

This amazing small gem of an anthology – full of wisdom and new ways of seeing and inspiration – is a welcome addition to our growing Goddess library that serves to nourish and inspire us and beckons us toward a new world filled with hope and light.

Here what other goddess scholars are saying about Vibrant Voices:

 

“A stunning testimony to the importance of the path-breaking, boundary-crossing work of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology.”

–Carol P. Christ, author of Goddess and God in the World and A Serpentine Path  

 

“So many forces in our hypermodern culture have denied the ancient triad of women, art, and the sacred that we can barely grasp all that has been lost to us. Vibrant Voices makes an insightful and deeply beautiful contribution to the recovery, as well as inspiration for creative new directions.”

— Charlene Spretnak, author of The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art, 1800 to the Present

 

 “This stunning volume reveals and celebrates the female divine through artistry, poesy, and superb scholarship.  The thorough integration of historical, experiential, and visionary voices is a pivotal achievement. Vibrant Voices is an essential guide and touchstone for all future work on women and mythology.”

~Miranda Shaw, author of Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism and Buddhist Goddesses of India

 

“This collection of wisdom of women’s spirituality scholarship is indispensable for understanding the possibilities today in the midst of converging environmental, political, gender, and spiritual crises – – and to birthing a new civilization where nobody is  ‘othered;’  everybody creates a society of love and justice.”  

-Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, author of Dark Mother: African Origins and Godmothers

Vibrant Voices will be for sale for a special introductory price at our conference in Las Vegas. It will also be available at Goddess Ink and on Amazon.