Night-Blooming Flowers and Wings
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In her last two years of life, Janavi expressed herself through digital art pieces she created from her deathbed using her own archived still photography. Hardly able to move, these art pieces, inevitably, became Janavi's means of travel: visual narratives of alternate realities, of places from which she was able to draw beauty even while experiencing unimaginable pain: "As I attempt to emerge from my own Dark Night of the Soul, I seek transformation, and the gifts it bestows. I watch as those gifts gradually blossom in my heart, and emerge in my art. These gifts--born from a deep plunge into the nether regions of my psyche--are precious gems cut from invisible places the conscious mind cannot see nor interact with. It is the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the world, the person of God, who can see and transform darkness into a blooming flower. I wait and watch as tectonic plates in the depth of my being shift, and the gift of love leaps into my ever-waiting heart." |
Coping with my illness has been my own Dark Night of the Soul. My art is the light that has, unexpectedly, emerged from it. |
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My art tracks the plunge into pain and despair, the tuning to God, the expelling of inner demons, and, ultimately, the phoenix rising from the flames. |
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I Wish I Had Wings
I wish I had wings I’d leave this prison of gravity behind and go up and up grazing the tops of dazzling green trees swaying in the wind I’d soar through the mists of bright clouds breathing in freedom and moist particles of fog and rain I’d turn my face to the sun warm warming my insides breaking the prison of flesh and bone wide open I’d bathe in sweet moon rays and drink the dust of stars filling my heart with ancient light I’d look down at the swarming earth, but I’d never look back. Janavi Held © 2017 |
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