Nesting of an Art-Care Study Circle

The Art-Care study circle formation was supported by a think-tank of 8 generous art-care ‘midwives’ who met twice prior to the start. We are coming to the fifth of six gatherings (salons) that have been attended by 19 co-inquirers. The salons open with a ritual of welcoming and connection to place and a grounding of our bodies. This is followed by Spontaneous Creation-Making, the sharing of creations, and discussion of interconnections between creations, chapters in the book and the lived experiences of art-care taking place in peoples lives.

The overall study has unfolded with the following themes drawn from the book Art-Care Practices for Restoring the Communal: Education, Co-Inquiry & Healing. These are: Fear Vaccines (and, art is not an escape), The Matrixial Gift Economy (and, restorative seeds), Time Freedom, Art at the Edge of Understanding (and, orienting intentions), Decolonizing and Re-Enchantment, Art-Care & Spiritual Activism, Matrixial Aesthetic Practices, Creativity-in-Communion, Matrixial Mediators & Responding to Creations.

“Nesting” has been one of the emergent meta-theoretical frameworks for collecting ourselves and to build a living container for art-care theory and practices. We have drawn together the processes of nurturing and resistance to make the base fabric of art-care sustainable within the context of decolonizing and pre-colonizing. Some would call this Indigenizing care philosophies and models that have been dominant in the modern Western world. Nesting is an evolutionary psychological concept, called the Evolved Nest, from Darcia Narvaez’s work on the essential universal elements that are required for raising a ‘healthy’ human and community.

A major aim of this Art-Care Study Circle, is to concentrate on a deeper co-inquiry into the nature of caring itself and how we imagine it, and then to bring that into juxtaposition with the nature of matrixial artworking (a la Bracha Ettinger). This circle has offered a wonderful re-generative spirit and expansion to the art-care theory that began in our 2023 book. A budding community has been incubating through this process. Ideas have been percolating along with visions of an ongoing movement of restoration, transformation and regeneration. We are excited to synthesize the findings after the six classes and begin building the nest for the next art-care study circle that we envision as a bi-annual happening. An Art-Care practitioner’s certificate is being offered by Studio M* to any of the participants if they desire.