"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.”

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify."

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Wilder Publications; Reprint edition (2008)

There are a lot of people I've met who think that travel is a young person's game. It's something that you're supposed to do when you're 20 and figuring out yourself, but after that, you're supposed to stabilize and settle down. However, travel isn't just about having fun. Science proves that it's healthy for you in a variety of ways. 

Decades ago, public thought didn't grasp the link between diet and exercise making you healthy. Researchers are now saying the same things about travel adding to lifespan and capacity. As these benefits become more widely studied, t's not too far-fetched to imagine a time where doctors will prescribe a trip as a necessary part of a healthy life.

1. Travel Makes You Physically Healthier

You may not feel very healthy when you're throwing up in some foreign land from some lousy food you just ate, but travel substantially boosts your immune system. When you travel, you expose yourself to new bacteria that help you create stronger antibodies. When you move between different locations, you force your body to adapt to thousands of new bacteria, which will make you stronger in the long run.

When you're on the road, you're also proven to be less stressed. Studies have found that after only three days, travelers feel more rested, less anxious and in a better mood while increasing their overall activity and fitness levels. Some studies also show a compelling connection that in certain groups, this change in stress lowers the risk of heart attack and disease. These improvements don't immediately go away after returning home either but will add to lifespan and overall wellbeing.

Travelers are also more active and less stationary on trips. Because there has already been a buy-in to get to your new location, people are more motivated to get out and experience it. You're likely to walk more than you would at home, try a new sport, or engage in a physical activity like hiking or swimming. It's also more likely that these things become a part of your daily experience while traveling, and you're less likely to do sedentary actions like watching tv.

2. Travel Exposes You to Healing Properties

When you travel, you tend to visit sites that you don't have access to at home, and many of those have healing properties. Soaking in the mineral-rich waters of a hot spring, swimming in the salty waters of the ocean, or even just getting out into the sun can expose you to things that will add to your overall wellness. Getting outside exposes us to many properties that can heal, uplift, and rejuvenate. Health and Wellness Tourism has even become a huge part of the travel industry, with a resurgence of people pursuing health-related amenities. Resorts and spas have surged in popularity, as well as activities like yoga, fitness, and lifestyle retreats. Whether that's the focus of your trip or not, you're more likely to participate in a wellness activity while you travel than you would be at home.

3. Travel Creates New Neural Pathways

When you explore, you naturally have to problem solve and adapt to more situations. You have to meet new people, encounter new languages, deal with other cultures, and solve new problems. Neural pathways are created due to environment and habitat and are sensitive to change. When there are new sounds, smells, languages, tastes, and sensations, you're telling your brain to be more aware and to spark new synapses.

When you put your brain in different experiences, it is proven to increase your cognitive flexibility, creativity, ability to make connections and integrate ideas. It's has been shown that those who work and study aboard are more open and emotionally stable. So the more you engage with new environments, the more activated your brain will become, and the more likely you are to stave off brain degradation and disease.

4. Travel Creates Meaningful Social Experiences

Humans aren't meant to be isolated creatures. A crucial part of our physical health comes from having meaningful social connections with others. When we don't have functional interactions, it increases the chance that we'll feel sensations of loneliness, depression, and pessimism. When people stay home, they are more likely to do similar actions every day, which lessens the change of getting out of unhealthy patterns of isolation.

When you travel, it forces you into situations where you have to connect with others. Even if you're alone traveling or backpacking, it puts you into scenarios where the only way to solve specific problems is to meet people and make new friends. You will also be encountering other travelers who will be in a similar state of openness to connection. Engaging in this process will increase your confidence in human interactions.

Travel also deepens the connections with those around you because peak experiences make for more intense and lasting memories. It will also make you less biased as you connect with others who are different than you and increase your skillset for communication and conflict resolution. All of these things are lasting skills that will improve your quality of life, even after your trip is over.

5. Travel Broadens Your Perspective

Travel helps you broaden your view of the world and yourself. By putting yourself into new situations, you have to learn to live outside your comfort zone and find the beauty in different circumstances. While this may make you uncomfortable at times, it allows you to transform how you understand the world.

Studies even prove an increased chance of epiphanies while traveling. There is also an increased ability to problem-solve issues we otherwise have been stuck on. When you're in the middle of a problem, it's often hard to detach yourself from it enough to come to any resolution. By separating from a familiar environment, you gain psychological distance from a situation at hand. Getting away from where you live is important because it's often the only way you can achieve a new perspective.

Travel Helps You Live Longer and Better

With all of these aspects combined, travel is one of those rare things that not only increases your life expectancy but also increases your quality of life. When you take a trip, even if it's short, it boosts your immune system, heart, brain, capacity, connections, and mood, keeping your body healthy inside and out. All of this means that travel increases your chance of living longer and having more fun doing it.

Want more travel content? Follow me at @jodithesharp for daily updates! 

To live in this world 

you must be able 

to do three things. 

to love what is mortal; 

to hold it 

against your bones knowing 

your own life depends on it; 

and, when the time comes to let it go, 

to let it go” 

-Mary Oliver

Photos from a grieving ritual, performed Montreal, 2017

So this weekend, a good friend of mine unexpectedly passed away. A key member of my community, it was a shock to all of us to lose him right now. One of the things that I keep hearing people say is, "how do I deal with death?" Many have no idea how to handle his passing. For many people I know, it was the first close friend they lost.

It's not the first friend of mine who's passed, and certainly won't be the last. It doesn't get more comfortable, but I think that it's often even harder than it should be because we come from a culture that's terrible in dealing with death.

As a western culture, we like to ignore that death exists at all. Until it confronts us, we go through life with the perspective that our loved ones and we will live forever. And when death happens, it blows us sideways because we'd forgotten all about it as a possibility. We become wholly distraught and at a loss for how to handle it.

But death is the only real certainty of life. And building a skill-set around how to deal with it is an essential part of being human. Everyone deals with grief in their own way; it's never going to be easy or comfortable. Here are a couple of things that I've found have worked for me.

Give Yourself Time

In dealing with death, there is no timeframe for your grief. After first losing someone, the pain may be constant, or it may come in waves of intensity. Let it happen when it comes, and be gentle with yourself.

If you need to take a couple of months off work or away from people, do it. If you need to go on a spiritual journey to Tibet for four years to handle it, do it. If it only takes you a week before you feel a sense of stability, that's okay too. There are no rules for how long any of this should take. Let the way you feel guide how much time you need to dedicate to sitting with your feelings. 

Let Yourself Feel It

It will hurt. It is supposed to hurt. It is a big fucking deal to know that a soul has left your waking life. You will miss them. You will be surprised by the finality of it and the hole that they've left.

When you're alone or with people who can support you, do whatever you need to do to realize your emotions. Yell, scream, cry, punch a pillow, laugh, write, stare into space. Any feeling you have is valid. Don't keep it inside your body. Feel your emotions. If you don't give yourself time to feel them, they will come out in times where you may not be in a supportive space to handle them. 

It's Okay to Need a Break

There will be times when the grief is too much to handle, and you can't sit with it anymore. At this point you may need to turn on a tv show, or go out for a drink, or go dance and laugh. It is okay to need to numb the pain at times. It's okay to take a break from the heartbreak.

It's common to need to take a minute, and then it's common to feel shame around needing that time. There have been situations where I've gone out and had a good night and then felt so much guilt about trying to be happy when something so tragic has happened. But speaking from experience, that guilt is not useful. Sometimes you need to cap the pain and remind yourself that even in tragedy, the world is still a beautiful place. 

This pain may be with you for a long time, you need to find sustainable ways to feel it and still live. Your friend wouldn't want you to live in misery for the rest of your life, so take the time to enjoy your life if you need it. It's okay.

Be Around Others Who Are Feeling the Same Way

If you're feeling this distraught around the loss of someone you loved than other people are feeling it too. It's easy to feel like you're going through this alone, but you aren't. Coming together as a community during this time is essential in staving off the hopelessness.

Make sure to share your memories and joys about the life lived. The soul you've lost may be gone, but their memories are not. Tell the people around you how they positively impacted your life, how they made you feel joy and love. Look through photos and feel the gratitude for the connection that you had. By honouring their life you extend their impact. In this way they will still be with you for as long as you have memories in your head. 

Rituals Are Useful

You may feel like the stuffy form of funerals doesn't do life justice, but don't discount the healing that rituals can have. The point of a ritual is to acknowledge the impact of that soul and release some of the pain. The goal is to help start to bring closure to that loss.

There are many traditional rituals around death. You can look at them and see if something resonates with you, or you can make up your own. The goal is to do a set of actions that brings you into remembrance of that unique life. The focus of the ritual is to let go of some of your intense feeling around the loss. A feeling of releasing them into the unknown, and coming to a sense of peace is the ideal outcome. You can do whatever you need as often as you need it to try to get to a sense of peace around it.

Do What is Right For You

No matter who you are or who you've lost, you are allowed to grieve in whatever way works for you. Do your best to stay in touch with what you need, rather than doing what you assume grief is required to look like. You may feel these feelings for a long time, or even in waves throughout the rest of your life. It is good to feel whatever you feel however you need to handle it. 

The Point of Death

It is important to keep things in perspective as well. Because at the end of the day, death has an essential job. It reminds us that life is fleeting and that every single moment is precious. The goal shouldn't be to live forever but to create memories and contributions to the world that will be meaningful.

My friend knew that. He contributed to his community deeply, he loved his friends and family so much, and he was always up to living a full and vibrant life. Even though these feelings suck real hard right now, I wouldn't trade my friendship with him for anything.

Death is a part of life, but I always want to keep in perspective that death makes our lives meaningful. I will use this incident to feel so much gratitude for my connection to this person, and as a reminder to make sure I live life to the fullest.

I’ve gone through a lot of transformations in my life. I have lived enough lives for seven people, and each new direction and trajectory has taken a lot of work, focus, and commitment. The process of my life has been full of twists and turns, change, re-organization, and temporary chaos.

When I look back on my life, there’s one thing I often forget about transformations; the amount of pain I feel during them. I often see past transmutations as the divine plan and growth that they were, but I rarely remember just how much pain I was in at the time. But when I go through the next stage of change I'm reminded that pain is a huge part of the process, and it’s easy to question why so much agony is necessary.

There’s a reason that the symbol of transformation is the butterfly. There is a massive amount of struggle the butterfly has to go through before it metamorphizes into that beautiful creature we love.

It is a long and painful process, but not without reason. When a caterpillar enters its chrysalis, its entire structure has to be broken down and turned into goo so that the wings that were forming on the inside of its body can break free. The molecules of this soup are then reformatted into an entirely new framework that looks completely different than it was before. This process can take up to 21 days, which in the span of a butterfly's life, is a very long time.

The final emerging process takes hours and if you were to watch it you might feel the desire to help the butterfly out with the last steps of getting out of its shell. It looks so uncomfortable and you might think that it would be helpful to spare this poor creature the slow and tedious pain.

But if you were to do that, you would be removing the creature before the vital fluids in the chrysalis finish forming the wings. The process of breaking free gives the wings the final shape and strength to fly. If you took the butterfly out prematurely, the final result would be a creature that’s deformed and crippled, not able to fly or go out into the world as the beautiful butterfly it was meant to be.

Much like the butterfly, any sort of personal transformation has to take the same steps.

Firstly, ideas and beliefs you thought were “truth,” have to be completely broken down. You have to let go of a dream, a way of being or a connection, often without knowing what’s coming next. You have to let your past desires become goo, and this process will always run the gamut of emotions. The ability to let go of something that was so valuable to you in order to accept a new and different vision will often cause a lot of pain. It’s important to feel the grief around this because if we’re not honest about the real difficulty, we shut down to the world around us and can’t be open to the next phase.

After breaking down your past beliefs, you need to then go through the process of growing something; of breaking those new wings out from somewhere deep in your body. You need to create and attach to a new idea for your life. This will take a lot of experimentation, seeking and discomfort as you go through the process of figuring out what’s right for you.

The final process will be breaking into your direction. You’ve decided what you want, but you’re starting at the beginning of something new. This will take commitment as you learn a new skill, engage in a new relationship or start implementing a new belief. It will be a lot of hard work at this stage, and you may be tired of the work and pain you’ve been going through. But if you don’t push through this last process, then just like the butterfly, your new dream will become crippled and malformed. But if you really commit to this new process, this phase will be where you make your new direction strong and viable.

At the end of all of this pain and hard work, you get nature's true gift; you get to fly into your new direction open and free, more beautiful than you were before.

I’m not sure why nature has decided that metamorphosis needs to be so painful. Maybe it's a way to ensure that those who level up really want it. All I know is, if you don’t fully engage with it and be present and open during the stages, then you’ll be missing out on the next incredible shape your life will take. And I don’t know about you, but I would like to fly.

Follow me daily at @jodi.sharp.art

Cultural appropriation has been a major buzzword of the last couple years, and with good reason. Images of drunk white people in sacred native headgear, horribly butchered tribal tattoos and racist Halloween costumes. These images often make people who desire to be conscious feel ashamed and nervous about engaging with any sort of imagery or practice that isn’t from their exact bloodline. People desire to be respectful and because the term “cultural appropriation,” is ambiguous and confusing it tends to mean people shut down to participating in any cultural space other than their own.

But the PC behaviour of not touching other cultural space is in of itself problematic. The more we segregate from each other the greater the divide becomes between us. Less understanding and shared problem solving leads to higher instances of ethnocentrism, racism, segregation and misunderstanding.

Right now we are at a new height in knowledge exchange and capacity. With this new era of interconnectivity, shutting down to an exploration of what other cultures can teach us means losing a massive amount of learning and expansion. Our world is also in a state of environmental crisis. Having various Indigenous knowledges permeate the greater cultural sphere could help provide some necessary perspective and solutions.

Cutting out sharing culture also just lessens the beautiful diversity of the world around us. How bland would it be to only be able to eat the food that your specific ancestors cooked? How horrible would American music be today without the incredible influences Black culture brought to the scene? Without integration of cultural influences, how boring would our clothes be, how sad our spiritual practices, how lost would indigenous knowledge get, how lame would our holidays be, how limiting would be our world view?

But in order to be able to share culture respectfully, we need to understand this very confusing term of “cultural appropriation.” What it is really? What are the behaviours that are damaging, what are the behaviours that are healthy, and how can we do our best to navigate it respectfully?

Why Real Cultural Appropriation Sucks

"First they came to take our land and water, then our fish and game. ...Now they want our religions as well. All of a sudden, we have a lot of unscrupulous idiots running around saying they're medicine people. And they'll sell you a sweat lodge ceremony for fifty bucks. It's not only wrong, its obscene. Indians don't sell their spirituality to anybody, for any price. This is just another in a very long series of thefts from Indian people and, in some ways, this is the worst one yet." -Janet McCloud, Tulalip elder and fishing rights activist.

Unhealthy appropriation/ exploitation occurs when people outside of a specific cultural space can make money or gain social capital from artifacts or cultural ideas, when people who are in that community cannot. This is a complex idea, but the basis of it comes down to a power dynamic.

A good anecdote to describe this was the New Age movement in the 80s, where Native American spirituality was suddenly seen by the white population as something to be desired. There was a large disconnect between the perceived “Native American spirituality” and what was actually happening in the lives of people in that cultural group. It perpetuated the stereotype of the “noble Native,” sharing spiritual wisdom with the white man, all the while these New Agers had no real understanding of Native people and no touchstone with their actual struggle for survival. What occurred was a huge movement of people and companies selling and profiting off of distorted “Native American “spiritual artifacts.

At the same time that Westerners were profiting off of these objects, there were still laws all across North America that BANNED Native Americans from even owning their own artifacts, let alone selling them. We were deep in the governmental process of trying to forcefully assimilate Indigenous people to a Western way of life, and denying them any right to language, land, communities and spiritual artifacts was part of that horrific process. This transcends to today where the largest producer of “aboriginal” artifacts is China, while a large number of Native populations are still impoverished and can’t make money off of their art or artifacts. This is what super messed up harmful appropriation looks like. It is not okay.

What is Cultural Appropriation Really?

Cultural appropriation is defined as the “taking,” from a culture that’s not one’s own, of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge. But the terms “culture,” and “taking,” are completely indeterminate, so even this definition alone can’t really define the boundaries of where cultural appropriation begins and ends. This definition bristles with uncertainty, which is why it’s so confusing.

If we’re talking about taking from a culture that’s not one’s own, that means that the line of culture needs to be well defined. But culture is one of those things that’s extremely fluid. Defining the parameters of where a cultural group begins or ends is complicated, as is connecting a particular practice to that one group. Also, since cultural practices are formed from a bunch of influences and shared histories, it becomes difficult to assign them to one group or another. This means that the lines of where “culture,” begins and ends are convoluted at best.

But let’s simplify it and make it personal. Let’s say that each human being can roughly define the type of ideas and practices you grew up with, and that everything outside of that is another cultural space. How do we engage with those spaces in a healthy way that’s not damaging so that we can grow and expand our ideas of the world?

Culture theorist Richard A. Rogers places appropriation into 4 categories: dominance, exploitation, exchange and transculturation. Two of these practices are damaging, and two of these practices are healthy.

Dominance is the practice of desiring power over another, while exploitation is treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work. Both of these actions can be seen in the example of Native spirituality being commodified.

On the flip side, exchange is the act of giving and receiving where both parties benefit equally. Transculturation is defined as, “seeing oneself in the other.” It doesn’t mean acquiring another culture (acculturation) or of losing or uprooting a previous culture (deculturation). Instead, it takes multiple spaces of cultural phenomena and merges them into something new that benefits both cultural spaces.

So How Do We Apply This?

Let’s simplify an example around what this means. Let’s pretend that someone physically smaller and weaker than you has something you want. You have four options.

-You could physically make that person afraid of you by yelling or force until they give you that object. 

-You could just take that object. 

-You could trade them for that object with something of equal value. 

-Or you could connect with that person, start a relationship where you benefit their lives and they benefit yours, and in that process the object becomes shared property because it benefits everyone.

For me, the last option feels far and the way the best, and it feels the best for the reason that it’s focused on the RELATIONSHIP. We we stop focusing on the world around us for what we can get from it, and instead we desire to make real connections and contribute, the conversation around cultural appropriation becomes a whole lot simpler.

Is there something from a space that you didn’t grow up with that you’d like to have as a part of your life? Instead of just ignoring it or feeling ashamed that you want to engage with it in the first place, or just taking it and using it however you want, why not find other humans who did grow up with it and get them to teach you about it? See what you can give them back that actually benefits them, whether its something from your life experience, another object, money, time or friendship. Be humble. Be willing to learn.

When we do this we actually begin to expand the understanding and skill set available to us as humans. We also get to learn new skills and practices that start to benefit everyone and help heal the world around us. The more we respectfully share ideas, with humility and a desire to make the world a better place, the better everything becomes.

Try Your Best and Don’t Be a Dick

Yes, the ideas of culture and appropriation may be very complex and convoluted. But whether we’re dealing with culture or just our daily lives, it can all be whittled down to something very simple- Don’t be a dick. 

If you don’t know about something, ask someone who does. Be kind, present, and willing to learn. And instead of asking what you can get out of a situation, why not approach it with how you can contribute to the world around you?

Want to read more? Check out the resources this article came from-

From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation

Borrowed power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation

Wanting to be Indian: When Spiritual searching turns into cultural theft.

New Age Commodification and Appropriation of Spirituality

Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality

“Everything is created twice. Everything you ever see first has to be a thought before it can become a thing.” -Mary Morrissey

The Hidden Code For Transforming Dreams Into Reality | Mary Morrissey

Every day I do a divination practice of pulling cards. It consists of pulling several oracle cards in succession, and then sitting with how I can apply their meaning and insight to my life. Not everyone will resonate with divination actions and that’s totally fine. But the practice of sitting with yourself in self reflection at least once a day is invaluable and I would encourage that for anyone. These things are also a great metaphor for what we experience.

Today the message I got from the cards was particularly pertinent to where I’m at and I feel like going down this thought rabbit hole may be useful for others out there as well. Especially as we move into a New Year. (Pulled from the new Kim Krans Archetype Deck) 

The first three cards I pulled were “Agape,” “The Starborn,” and the “Gnosis.” These are all cards that tell you that the thing you really need to be focusing on is your true destiny, as well as connecting to something greater outside of yourself.

For me, my true purpose is making art, but each individual will have a different calling. I also believe that the whole point of me making work is to connect myself and others to the divine. But this could be read as anything that has a greater purpose outside of ourselves and our own ego. To have these three cards in a row was really like, “Hey, listen up. Focus your true purpose. Tap into something greater than yourself.” 

The fourth card I pulled was “Venom.” In the hero’s journey, venom is the thing that sidetracks from the true purpose. The hero is meant to be completely focused on their goal, but eventually, some monster or something comes along and drags the hero down into the muck, and then they have to spend a whole bunch of time trying to heal their wounds and find some magic cure for what bit them, etc, etc. It basically means a whole bunch of life distractions that knock you off course from what you truly should be doing. 

But if you push through that venom, then comes “The Threshold.” The place where you have extracted the venom from your body, you get back on track, and through that committed focus to your greater purpose you accomplish your goals and level up into the next great adventure.

This story is as old as time. A person knows their true path. A person commits to doing the hard work of achieving their goals and in doing so making the world a better place. The person gets sidetracked by the crap of the world. 

Unfortunately, this is where most of our stories stop. We get so mired up in the little dramas of our lives that we forget all about why we’re here in the first place.

This type of “snooze” can go on for months, years, sometimes our whole lives. We get so caught up in the minutia that we start to forget what our purpose is altogether. We start to make our drama mean more than our goals.

But right now it just turned 2020. It’s not only a new year but a new decade. What a perfect time to take a step back and realign with our core purpose.

One of my favourite tools for this is vision boarding. It’s where I take a giant poster board and divide it into a bunch of sections that I want to pay attention to. For me those sections are Work, Home, Relationships, Travel, Money, Health, but for you they could be anything. I like vision boards because I get to cut out a bunch of photos, which works well for me since I’m so visual. But you could do this by writing things down as well. The key is to really take the time to

suss out what you actually want from each of the areas, and make some physical record of that. 

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to see if stuff I’m picking is actually in alignment with my true path, is whether it makes me feel lighter, or heavier. If it makes me feel heavier than I know I’m committing to it out of obligation rather than joy and pure purpose. Even though the things we have to do to achieve our goals may be really, really hard, the end goal should always feel exciting and completely worth the process. 

When I’ve spent enough time sitting with these things (sometimes that can be days or even weeks), I put the final product somewhere I can always come back to when I get stuck in the venom of life. This helps me keep on track and pushing towards the things I truly desire. 

At the beginning of this monumental year, I highly encourage you to prioritize the time to realign with your actual purpose. Your future self will be so glad you did.

How To Achieve The Life Of Your Dreams | Jon and Missy Butcher

Need a guiding tool to help you go even more in-depth? Right now these guys have a whole life plan course that’s free online (as long as you complete it! You loose your $500 initiative deposit otherwise) I’m going to start it this week. If you’re starting it too, reach out! We can chat.

Enjoy hearing me talk about divination and art stuff? Follow me on Instagram @jodi.sharp.art for daily updates.

One facet of my art practice is by bringing craftsmanship into people's homes in the form of interior design and custom art. I can do almost anything, from concept design and consultation, to insertion of custom art and feature building, to full renovations and rebuilds. (For a list of the skill sets I have to offer, head

HERE

.) The work it takes to make an area full of art and intention is a lot, but at the end of the day there is nothing like being able to exist in a space that truly speaks to who you are. 

This last project was a long one, but hands down my favourite yet! An incredible woman who wanted to take her personal space from a basement full of storage and difficult memories, to a full floor that would deeply resonate with who she was as a person. It was just me working on the space alone and the whole project was treated like the transformational process that a home renovation should be. There was lots of talking and dreaming and processing. The intention was that she would be able to come home and and feel completely like herself. The keywords were "juicy, playful and sensual," and the colour palette was like a Costa Rican sunset. What an awesome place and intention to start from! 

I think that it's essential to have your home space match your heart space. It is the place where you spend the most time, where the things around you truly soak into your skin. When you're surrounded by things that uplift you and make you feel bright inside, then coming home replenishes you and nourishes you. But if you're surrounded by things that you feel indifferent to (or worse, make you feel bad), then that's the energy you're going to be carrying into the rest of your day. 

First, we needed to clean out the rooms. The dark basement was full of storage and a full purge was in order. We made a lot of coffee and worked together for several days to go through each object and decide what things should be carried forward. Stuff holds a lot of energy, and it was important that the things kept were in alignment with the new feelings she wanted to have in her life. 

When the basement was fully cleared we needed to decide on the priorities for the rooms. Of course there would have to be a bedroom, but everything else had to be decided upon. Although the whole floor was meant to be her personal space, she also has a son and wanted to make it available for him as well. Because of this we thought that a modular design would be ideal, so that every room could have multiple uses.

The first room was to become a modular lounge with boho cushions that could be made into couches or laid out flat to become a fun roll around space. One wall would get painted with magnetic and dry erase paint so that she could draw on her wall whenever she felt expressive. The goal for this room was to have a relaxing and sensual space for dreaming, rest, and sometimes hosting.

The pressboard bookshelf got ripped out of the room and a wall was built to replace it. 

My FAVOURITE part of this room was the feature wall that I got to build. I painted the whole wall in a gradient from yellow to orange to pink. 

Then using wood moulding I made a design that sticks out from the wall just a little. It made the whole wall look like a giant art piece as soon as you enter the room. 

It was actually relatively easy to build compared to a mural, but it really made the room feel like it was full of art. 

Add to that a low table, a fuzzy carpet, a bunch of boho couch cushions, tons of blankets and fuzzy pillows, with just a few cute designed objects (and a wonderful little lamp designed by

Dylan Toymaker

), and voila! A sexy, cozy, juicy multipurpose lounge. 

I love this space so much. I don't think I ever would've thought that such a bright colour palette could also be so calm and sensual! 

The next area was going to be the workout room / crafting space. The focus of this room would be beautiful storage and an inbuilt fold down table to be used for craft days. When the table was up the whole floor would be available for workouts. The room need to feel calm and meditative, but also useful. 

First off the whole space needed to be painted. It was was full of dark wood panelling that made everything feel small and a bit oppressive. I loved the texture of the wood and didn’t want to remove it, but adding a few coats of bright white made it feel fresh and new again. Two of the corner walls became a calm mint green. 

In the corner I built a floor to ceiling shelving unit. The open shelves would show her beautiful book collection and make sure that whatever she was storing was intentional, since she’d have to look at it every day. 

The fold down table could be sat at with floor cushions. It had small shelving built in behind that was the perfect size to store craft paints, brushes and cutting boards. Whenever her and her son wanted to craft they would be able to open up the table and make a mess, then close it up again to keep the area clean. 

My favourite thing about this room (and possibly the whole house) was the mural I got to paint on the feature wall. She wanted to have something that fully represented her as an individual. A piece that she could meditate on during her spiritual practice and feel grounded by. 

We started with dozens of mood board images and from there picked out the type of shapes that were resonating. She really wanted to go for a feeling of femininity and balance with a focus on circular shapes and symmetry. I made half a dozen different sketches and we honed in on the ones she liked and the ones she didn’t. A few more redraws and we came up with something that really resonated. 

Then the fun part- painting! I love painting murals. I find the whole process calming and engaging. 

My first degree was actually a bachelors in painting, but I haven’t made paintings as a part of my studio practice for years. I mostly work in glass and installation art these days, so when I get the chance to paint a mural I get to do something that was one of my first loves. 

This piece was particularly special because it had such a deep meaning for my client. It felt magical to work on, like painting out another woman’s power. When this piece was finished she actually resonated with it so much that she decided to get it tattooed on her body. To me, making something that another human feels that strongly about is the absolute highest honour as an artist. 

The mural really completed the room. The white and green of it tied that whole room together, and the gold made it feel like a sacred and cared for space. The same gold got painted on the edges of the bookshelf to really make everything feel special. 

The end result was this stunning and practical space. It felt really special, but also was super useable and set up for exactly what she needed it to be. 

Next, the bathroom. 

The bathroom already had good bones, it just needed a few special things to really draw it together. The sink, toilet and shower were all still modern, but the room lacked a theme and some design. 

We decided to go for a Moroccan themed room, in purples and greys with low and sensual lighting. 

There needed to be some storage created, and we found this beautiful wooden wardrobe on Kijiji for a great price. I painted some details in purple and gold to really give it that moroccan feel. 

The metal toilet seat got switched out for a wooden one to match the wardrobe. I painted a dot mandala on it in the room colours to really make it special. 

The wall also got a matching mandala. I love painting details directly on walls in a bathroom. It means that your bathroom can feel full of art without you having to worry about your art collection getting water damage over time. 

Finish the whole thing off with a Moroccan lamp, matching wooden towel and toilet paper holders, and a couple of cute design elements and this room is good to go! It’s amazing just how quickly a room can transform just by focusing on a few ket pieces. 

One more room to go! 

The bedroom was the last to get the juicy, playful boho theme. Three walls got painted different colors of pink, with the wood panelled wall getting painted white. 

We reoriented the room so that so the room could have a more zen flow. She could see her eraser board wall from her bed and have bedside tables on both sides. We found adorable side tables from a local Montreal wood worker. 

Her comforter was already perfectly on theme and she found a cozy carpet to warm up the floor. She had these lamps with marble bases that I really liked, but had boring white lampshades on them. Through a bunch of Pinterest searching she found these lampshades made out of string that we both loved. 

I had to make them from scratch, including soldering the lamp frame. Tying off the string took forever, but the result was amazing.  The final result was these adorable boho lampshades that matched the colour scheme of the whole room. 

Most people don’t realize just how long handwork takes. Generally when we buy objects the labour we’re paying for is unfair wages to individuals overseas. Because of this we have no concept of how much time it actually takes to make the beautiful objects we want to surround ourselves with. My desire is that we pay what things are worth, we buy less, and we cherish the the things that we own. I’m so grateful when I get to work with clients who commit to ethical production. 

The final touch was another Pinterest idea that she had come across- painted sticks. My partner and I went on a nice walk to gather small driftwood sticks from the shore of lake Ontario. Then came the fun part of painting little designs on them with all of the colours we had used during the renovation. 

The painted sticks then got hung on the wall with string to hang jewelry on, as well as getting placed in different areas as a design element. The result was fantastic and made the bedroom feel arty and cute. 

I am SO grateful for all of the fun things I got to do and explore on this project. But even more than that, I was grateful to go on this transformational journey with this incredible woman. It was such an honest and intimate experience getting to create a home in alignment with how she wanted to express herself in the world. The zone you inhabit is powerful, and being able to come home to a place that matches your soul is essential. Helping this storage basement transform into a place of rest and expression and care was such a beautiful journey. I loved every minute of it.

If you were inspired by this journey and are looking are looking to create a transformational space but need help with management, inspiration or fabrication, I have well over a decade of experience and education available to assist you or your team. It all starts with a discussion of the infinite possibilities available to accomplish your goal! Head over to 

jodisharp.ca

 where we can start our conversation.

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I’m part of a community of people who call themselves Burners, a group of individuals that attend and participate in Burning Man and related events. This is an article written specifically to that community and may not relate to others, as it’s about one of the 10 Principles that Burners follow as an ethos. 

The 10 Principles are a set of guidelines that are in place to help the community stay sustainable and ethical in its practice. The intentions of them are noble and I fully stand behind them, but today I want to discuss the specific principle of decommodification and how it’s practiced.

Our current world is flooded with commercialism. Ad Campaigns, influencers, big business and a constant message to buy more stuff. The principle of decommodification had the explicit purpose to keep that message off the playa and create a more sacred space where we could shape our own identity.

On the playa (or other regionals), you’ll find no sponsorships, corporate branding, or exchanging of money. Everything that is brought is a gift once it’s on site. This helps change our social practice from transactional to pure unattached interaction, an experience we’re not able to have almost anywhere else in our lives.

As stated by Larry Harvey in 2004, “In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.”

This is an INCREDIBLE goal, one that I fully and completely stand behind as a principle. Unfortunately as a practice I’m watching it be more damaging to parts of our community than it’s intended to be, and that’s what I want to address.

Photo by Owen Wiltshire

To understand where I’m coming from you have to understand a little bit about me. My full-time job is as a professional artist and I’ve been working with the Burner community and others like it for well over 15 years. I am extremely passionate about this community. One of my life passions is to help create solutions specific to this community, as well as bringing the spirit of this culture into the world on a daily basis. Because of this, I’ve headed several organizations and initiatives, some of which have turned into sustainable businesses in the default world. 

One of the businesses I’ve been a managing partner in for the last five years is a company called Archimedes Design. Archimedes was started by my two business partners who had been on the playa for many years running a theme camp. They wanted to see if they could build better structures that would go up faster and offer more shelter specific to the playa environment.

By the time I joined them we resolved a dome design that solved for a bunch of problems. A 26’ dome that could go up in under 30 minutes, pack down smaller than the trunk of your car, parts that could be switched out and fixed so you never had to throw your gear away, fabric that could be easily switched out for art and designs, all that offered you ideal shelter in the desert.

It was something made by Burners, for Burners, and we were in love with the solution we’d come up with. We wanted to make it sustainable to create so we made it into a business where we listed the product as cheap as possible, made all the parts ourselves by hand, made the plans open-source, and we were willing to teach and work with anyone who was interested. But of course, we still had to have a price tag on it. Materials aren’t free (although quite frankly, we completely donated our time for about the first two years). We were passionate about sharing this and just wanted to get it out there.

But then we faced our first dilemma- how do we talk about this solution with a bunch of other people who don’t want to talk about it? This created my first real experience with the problems of decommodification.

Because we didn’t want to step on the toes of this specific principle, we were very careful about how we handled talking about this product. For the first couple of years we were only doing word of mouth, handing out cards to specific people who asked, etc. And yet the backlash to us handling it in this way was still HUGE. On average I would say about 2 out of 10 people would inform us that we shouldn’t “profit,” off of Burning Man (and let’s be clear, we weren’t even breaking even for the first while).

I have had random people chew me out when they watched me handing a business card to a stranger and they weren’t even part of that interaction. I have had my skin torn off on forums for even mentioning that I sell a product that could solve the problem in question. I have gotten emails from strangers who’ve seen photos of the domes in the desert and have chewed me out for using the playa as a background to sell my stuff. 

It got so bad that by year three of the company we stopped selling to Burners entirely. We stopped giving Burner discounts, we stopped making it open source and we stopped trying to have any conversation whatsoever about selling these domes in that community. We completely switched markets because of the aggression our own community showed us over trying to make a sustainable solution that was literally built for the playa.

This, unfortunately, is an experience I and others like me have had again and again. I meant to write this article last year when I saw a forum explosion about how the Burner artists in the Smithsonian were becoming too commercial. I meant to write it this spring when the Manish Arora show was verbally hacked to pieces by the local community because it showed at Paris fashion week.

But I’m writing this today because yesterday my link to my new clothing line got posted in response to a specific question about it on a Burner Facebook group, and I immediately got an email and two Facebook messages informing me that I was breaching the decommodification principle.

So let’s break down this principle and how we use it because I think that the way we are currently applying it does more damage than good to our actual community.

Photo by Michael Holden

Let’s look again at Larry Harvey’s quote. In it, he talks about protecting our culture from exploitation and focusing on participation rather than consumption. Those are two excellent points I’d like to break down. 

Protecting our culture from exploitation 

I actually wrote my Master’s thesis on transculturation vs. cultural appropriation/ exploitation and one of the things I learned was this- Unhealthy appropriation/ exploitation occurs when people outside of a specific cultural space can make money or gain social capital from artifacts or cultural ideas when people who are in that community cannot. This is a complex idea, but the basis of it comes down to a power dynamic.

A good anecdote to describe this was the New Age movement in the 80s, where Native American spirituality was suddenly seen by the white population as something to be desired. What occurred was a huge movement of people and companies selling and profiting off of Native American spiritual artifacts.

At the same time, this was happening there were still laws all across North America that banned Native Americans from even owning their own artifacts, let alone selling them. This transcends to today where the largest producer of “aboriginal” artifacts is China, while a large number of Native populations are still impoverished and can’t make money off of their art or artifacts. This is what harmful appropriation looks like.

So if you translate that to our space we can use the example of companies or influencers who are not a part of and don’t contribute to the community. Exploitation happens when they come in and use images of that space in order to sell product, while (and here’s the key component) the actual artists and designers who exist as a part of that environment cannot.

So, if we’re harassing our own community members who are trying to make a sustainable space from their practice, we are actually contributing to an unhealthy power dynamic that keeps our own community impoverished.

The balance of power is shifted however when actual community members begin to make their contributions to the world sustainable. Interactions where community members can intake money as a resource, which then can get put back into the community, closes the loop, and retains power in the culture. Then, instead of members having to work for corporations and companies that are of a different ethos in order to fund their “gifted art habit,” the member can instead start to contribute to their community and the attached culture full time.

Participation rather than consumption

Participation is part of a complex eco-system that takes a lot to sustain it. There has to be a framework built that meets our basic needs as well as creating all of the art and happenings that we can engage and interact with. The art, theme camps, events, gifts, etc, are what make the Burn such a magical place, but we need to be clear about one thing- creating all of that takes a lot of STUFF. (Extra reading about Burning Man and Capitalism)

While we’re on playa we like to forget about all of the objects we had to buy to get there, and I fully approve of creating a Temporary Autonomous Zone where we can imagine living in a transaction-free environment. I agree wholeheartedly that there should be no sponsorships or logos and that space be made a pure as we can make it. But let’s talk honestly about the before and after.

When I go to the Burn, my standard cheapest possible budget is about $1500. This is just my personal budget and doesn’t include any of the art or structures I build. So let’s say that part of that is travel, tickets, and food and that about one-third of that is buying things I need/ want to survive on the playa. So let’s say I spend $500 on goods. Tents, water containers, gear, clothing, etc. This is an extremely conservative number compared to a large majority of people I know who attend.

So at this basic smallest number of $500, let’s multiply that by the 80,000 people on-playa yearly (not even counting regionals) and we suddenly have 40 million dollars spent on products just for Burn week. That is an unbelievably large amount of buying power.

Now, let me ask you this- how many of you shopped at places like Walmart or at any other large scale company with horrific values and sweat-shop labor and predatory business practices? How many of your costumes came from online shopping and cheap labor in Asia? How many of you bought one-time use goods for your Burn that you threw away immediately after?

So if we honestly want to talk about consuming less so that we can bring Burner values into the real world, let’s talk about how much we are voting with our dollar. When we spend money at these places we buy cheaper goods, which means we have to buy them more often. When we spend money at these places we are devaluing people from around the world who work in horrific working conditions to give us an abundance of cheap crap. When we shop at these places we are giving power to companies who are profiting off of our culture, rather than making our own cultural economy sustainable.

The markup prices for most big business is anywhere from 70-90%, whereas the markup price for most art is generally 10-20% That means that when you buy a product from a corporation, a tiny percentage is actually going to the people that made it, the rest is pure profit to the corp. When you buy from an artist or designer, the majority of the cost goes directly to the labor that’s creating it, and if there’s any profit, more often than not it gets put back into the art process. The economics of art-making are actually incredible, and one of the only models that keep the majority of the money circulating within the community. This is how community models can be made sustainable.

On top of that, when people spend more money on objects that they find really special, they tend to buy fewer things. They tend to use those special pieces year after year instead of throwing them away or replacing them. For me, this is the best-case scenario, and the only one that truly embodies how I feel about the values of decommodification and anti-consumption.

So, before you rag on someone who posts a link to their latest project on Facebook, maybe ask yourself these three simple questions- 

1. Is that person from and contributing to our community?

If this is a person who has been shaped by and has helped shape our culture, then they have a right their personal ideas that have come from their engagement with that cultural shape. If these are people whose ethics are in check and truly just desire to make their ideas and art sustainable, maybe try supporting them instead of making their life harder.

2. Are they disseminating their ideas in a respectful and content appropriate way?

No one likes spam and I think it's essential that we address when people are pushing something without actually contributing to a conversation. But if someone on a Burner page asks, “Hey, I want to buy from some local designers, any suggestions?” then I shouldn’t get flack when I respond with mine and my other designer friends websites.

3. Is it ethical?

If the way this person is producing art or products is harmful to people, the community or the environment, then we also shouldn’t be helping support the dissemination of their products.

I want to be very clear that being a full-time artist is in no way a lucrative career. It is an extremely hard path and not for the faint of heart. It is what I do because I am so committed to bringing the values of art and community into the world at large. I want the culture I love about Burning Man to exist year round and everywhere. I would absolutely give away everything I made for free (and often do) if I could do that and still eat. In fact I price my stuff way cheaper than I actually should because I’m committed to trying to make it available to as many people as possible. 

What I want is to feel supported and cared for by my community in my goal of making art more available to the world. In order to make that sustainable, I have to sell some of it. When people make me feel bad about selling my stuff then I have less energy to make art and contribute to my community. When this community attacks me for trying to make my art practice sustainable, it makes me feel like I should take my art and go play with people who are actually exited about what I do. In my mind this is exactly the opposite of what a community should do for each other. We should be encouraging each other in our endeavours and our expressions so that we can continue to grow and thrive together.

It’s always so wonderful to watch communities come together to build something magical, and the latest rendition of taBURNak! was no exception. 

TaBURNak! is the Montreal Burning Man Decompression and this year was it’s ninth edition. 

Started by a tiny community of Burners who had come back from Burning Man an wanted to find others of like mind to connect with, this event has grown year over year. 

I was one of the event and art coordinators for a majority of years of this event, and its been so beautiful to watch this community grow. 

Photo by Yannick Carlier

Photo by Yannick Carlier

When I first connected with this community, there were almost no Burning Man theme camps that were based out of Montreal and only a tiny population who had ever been to playa.

 Now, thanks to the growing excitement of the community, we have a local regional Burn, we have several strong theme and sound camps, art teams and a solid group of humans who have gone to “Mecca,” and other regionals. 

There was so much excitement over this year’s rendition of taBURNak! that we were able to have an entirely new group of people running the event. We had a team that was organizing the event for years and, although we loved it, we were tired. It was so inspiring to be able to hand it over to an entirely new crew of individuals who felt the inspiration to carry it on. 

They knocked it out of the park! It was so beautiful to watch this stellar event get passed on to a new generation of Burners. 

“

We Are All Stardust

,” made its last appearance at this event and it was so amazing to watch it be filled with people all night long. 

I love that I got to bring this installation back to its home city before retiring it to make something new for this next season! 

Thanks to the amazing team that pulled this off and all the incredible burners who attended to rock it out with family. Can’t wait for the years to come!

Photo by Owen Wiltshire

One thing that a lot of people don't know about me is that one of the largest chunks of my income is though commission art. Commission art is where someone approaches me with their own idea and I design and create it the way they visualize it.

For me this applies to paintings, stained glass, murals, sewing, sculptures, tapestries, event backdrops, installations and even interior design. I actually love commissions. I find it so much fun to work within someone else's parameters to bring something to life that they were seeing in their head. 

But I realized the other day that a lot of people don’t realize how the commission process works. They’d love to ask an artist somewhere to make them something personal, but have no idea how to go about it. So, I thought I’d write up a little bit about how my process works using the example of the most recent commission that I did. 

1. Start with an idea.

This commission was for an incredible badass of a woman. She had gone to the desert and had a deep and meaningful spiritual experience that had shown her the goddess part of herself that she’d never connected with before. 

When she returned she asked me to make a portrait of her as the fulfilled, powerful, engaged goddess she was. This was the core of the idea that we started with.

2. Decide on your budget.

Before you start on anything at all, it’s important that you know how much you want to spend on your art. This will help the artist immediately define the possibilities of the project. This can help nail down the size, type of materials, amount of detail and timeframe for any project. 

Any artist that’s used to working in commission art will have an idea of how quickly they can produce something using certain types of materials. Although the creative process will always have curve balls, knowing how much you’re willing to spend is essential before starting the process.

When I charge out for commission art, I charge around $25 an hour (depending on the project). So with whatever budget the person starts with, I’ll immediately have a rough estimate of how many hours I can put into the project, minus a general idea of how much the materials I’m working with cost. I ask for at least 50% payment at the start of the process, and the final payment at the end.

3. Make an agreement

There should be a written agreement at the point of initial payment that details the commitment between the artist and client. An email for this is fine. It should include things like agreed upon budget, what you’re hiring them to do, timeline, final payment, and any specific requirements that have to be met.

4. Choose your symbols.

Every individual has certain symbols that resonate. There will be things that have come up in your life, or that you’re just drawn to. 

For this piece the symbols the client wanted included were the desert, the peyote cactus, a flowy dress, and a rabbit. From listening to her talk about it, I brought in extra idea of the snake, the moon, and sacred geometry. 

5. Make a mood board.

There will be images out there that you love and ones that you hate. Comparing your ideas to things that have been done before help me get a sense of the type of aesthetics that a client is drawn to. For this process I search online and find things that I think match what we’ve been talking about and I ask the client to do so as well.

All of the imagery goes into a shared folder and we have an in-depth conversation about each image. We talk about things they love, things they don’t love, textures they like, colours they’re drawn too, etc. 

By the end of this process we should’ve narrowed down a particular style, types of line work, colour palette and feeling. 

6. Make a sketch.

I tend to make my sketches digitally, but many artists will do also this by hand. The sketch will be the first place that the artist creates a full composition of what they’re intending to do. From this sketch the client can see the full idea before any work has been done in the actual material. Since the sketch can be easily modified or changed, it’s essential at this point to get really specific about things you like or don’t like.

 The re-sketching can happen as many times a necessary so that the final sketch is signed off on by the client. Then the real work can start! 

7. In process client feedback

Communication is key! In any creative process there will be choices that come up during the work that I want to make sure the client is happy with. Although I want to make sure this process isn’t too convoluted, I do want the client to feel involved in the process. I’ll send periodic photos of the work in process with notes about what’s coming and things I want their feedback on. This makes sure that they’re not surprised by anything along the way.

8. Sticking to the budget.

When I’m doing a commission, I’m very aware that there are some aspects that will take more time than others. I order these things in terms of priority so I make sure that I can create a resolved piece in the time budget allotted. 

With this particular piece I made sure I created a painting that I was happy with within the budget. But by the end of this process there were still things that I would’ve loved to add. So the images get sent to the client with a list of things I wanted to add in, like a more fleshed out background, more sacred geometry, painting on the side of the canvas, tattoos on the body, etc.

With this particular painting the client was excited about the extra ideas and encouraged me to keep going. We re-negotiated the budget and I went back to work on the painting.

9. Revisions and Final a-ok

When I feel that the piece is done to where I want it, I once again send photos. If there are any extra adjustments wanted at this point, this is where they happen. But by this point any adjustments should be minimal. Then I need my hard and final “YES I love it!” 

10. Delivery!

When I delivered this piece to this particular client she said that I helped her see a part of herself that she’d never seen before and that now she could look at it every day and be reminded. That’s exactly the feeling you want to have achieved by going through this process. If that’s not what art is for, I don’t know what it is! Such a wonderful experience! 

And there you go!

That’s what it takes to get an artist like me to create something completely specific for you.

If you ever have a desire for something you want to be created, just reach out and we can have a chat about it. Start a conversation with me at jodithesharp@gmail.com.

“Observer” is a sculptural installation made by Jodi Sharp and Mike Everson that showed at Nectr 2018 in Quebec. Based on the concept of the observer effect, this piece was only fully engaged through the participation of the viewer.

We arrived at Nectr in the middle of the night having never been there before. It was pouring rain for most of that day and we had to haul in our gear through troughs of mud.

 Luckily by the next day the weather cleared up and we were able to set up in the sun.

 The dome went up quickly and easily.

 The sculpture however, was a pain. I had made it out of cheap materials as a last minute option and I wasn't overly happy with the results.

 All the electronics worked though, so at the very least we would be able to test our idea.

We worked well into dark, but at last we had a working art piece.  

In “Observer,” the participant enters an unlit dome with a single lit platform in the middle.

When the participant steps on the platform it triggers a reaction in which three sculptures hanging from the ceiling light up and begin to move.

As soon as the participant steps off, the dome darkens once more.

In physics, the observer effect is the theory that simply observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.

This idea that observation affects reality and the possibility we may construct our world with our perceptions, brings up much philosophical debate around the idea that there is no reality other than that which we create.

This piece brings into discussion the idea that our participation and observation could create realty.

“Observer” will be revamped in more durable material and will show next at taBURNak! 9 in Montreal, Quebec.

“We Are All Stardust,” is my current installation that has been touring Canada during this year’s festival season. My first ever fully printed custom art dome, the purpose of this project is to recreate a sense of childlike wonder and world-building.

Participants are asked to enter the dome and pick a fabric star that speaks to them. They label it and pin it somewhere in the dome. In the dome are notebooks where they can make up information about the star that they have labeled.

They are asked to name a planet in their newly identified solar system, identify the type of lifeforms, languages, rituals, etc. There is space in the notebooks to draw and dream. Each new participant not only names and creates their own idea of a solar system, but is able to find the stars and read about the planets and worlds that other people have already created.

The intent of this project is to get people to think about the universe outside of our individual worlds. Instead of a project being introspective and self focused, it is getting people out of the “reality” of their lives to dream that anything is possible.

The response by individuals who have seen this on the circuit this year has been truly magical. Having a custom printed dome creates a space that completely envelops the viewer. Instead of the dome being the infrastructure that holds the art, the dome itself becomes the full art piece. The effect is enveloping and adds to the viewers capacity to sink in and experience the art.

Although I’ve wanted to do this for so long, and I find the final effect of the custom printed dome stunning, the process of creating this work was quite a bit more than I originally bargained for.

To start with, domes are compounding spaces, meaning that each time you make a dome bigger you exponentially increase the size of your panels. The sheer amount of material it takes to cover a dome is so much more than it would take to cover another structure.

When you count up the the number of individual “windows” in the dome that need to be covered in fabric, you’re talking about 18-20 openings. While that is a large amount of material, the interesting part becomes that each one of those spaces has to be treated as its own separate art panel. Rather than thinking about the interior of the dome being one full printed piece, you have to look at the orientation and connectedness of each panel individually. Each separate panel has to be photoshopped, orientated and sent to the printers and tested. This expounds the print, R&D and setup costs.

The file sizes of these pieces are also huge. Because you have to create an image that’s the size of the panel in order to have high print quality, it takes the tech or artist a large amount of time just to be processing the files. It took forever for my old little laptop to handle these pieces, making the time this work took so much more than I bargained for.

While the beauty of a fully printed dome is sometimes worth the price, the cost of all of these things put together was almost prohibitively expensive. While I loved the look of having a custom printed art dome, It will probably be a while before I take on a print job at this scale again.

One thing that was really amazing about it though, is that, contrary to so many sculptures, once this piece was printed it was an absolute breeze of an art piece to install! Because the dome itself was the art, I didn’t have to worry about little parts of pieces, or building something extra on site. It was great!

The feedback from participants was great too. It was such a simple project, but people really expressed good experiences inside of the dome. A couple people expressed to me that it was one of their favourite festival activities, and that the world building activity real helped them think most consciously about the world around them.

Even when art making is sometimes really difficult, it’s all worth it when it’s meaningful to the participants.

When I got into the van to head to Solstice I wasn’t even feeling super excited. I had just been at L’OssidBurn, the Quebec Regional Burn, where I had an amazing time. L’OsstidBurn (which I will blog about later) had been really fun. Full of joy, good connections and good art. I left that festival feeling satiated and happy. 

Part of my theme camp team and I had decided to do the two festivals back to back. We literally left the van packed with all our art and gear, crashed in Montreal for a couple hours and then drove straight to Solstice. While I was in the van during our nine hour drive I kept thinking to myself that if I were to skip Solstice this year, I probably wouldn’t be missing much. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Now, here I am at the end of this experience, my being so tender that I feel that if someone touched me their hand would go straight through my permeable skin into to blood and bone. I am knocked off my feet, I feel shaken to my core, nourished to the depths of my being, ripped open and put back together again. 

Solstice is one of those festivals that is non-negotiable for me. I haven’t missed one since I discovered it eight years ago and I have made a commitment to myself to attend every year regardless of where in the world I am. The fact that this festival is a committed pilgrimage site for many of its participants is part of what makes this festival so special. One of my best friends there has not missed a Solstice in 20 years and others have similar stories. There are dozens of my favourite people from around the world that I know I will see there every Solstice. This is a festival where people show up, heart open, year after year. 

I have often found that when you truly commit to something the world will rise up to meet you and give you exactly what you need, even if it’s not what you want. This space is a vortex of people committing to engage with true experience and the result blows me apart every single time. 

I was trying to quantify why exactly this festival so consistently shakes my being. The fact that everyone is willing to let that happen is part of it. The combined energy of so many open souls is a powerful force. But for me there’s a little bit more to it. 

I am someone who has to carefully hold my life together all of the time. As an artist, an entrepreneur and community leader I am juggling plates constantly. I travel often, and if I work less than 60 hours a week it’s a slow week. The buck stops with me on dozens of projects and if I let something slide just once I’m the one that has to do damage control to fix it. On top of that I’m still healing from a massive injury I sustained three years ago. The result means that I don’t relax very often and taking the time to play and be myself happens even less frequently. 

But at Solstice this week I was able to actually let go. This supportive and beautiful space allowed me the freedom to relax. And the result in myself was shocking. 

As I was doing my spiritual practice yesterday, I came across this passage that defined it really well for me- 

“Have you ever felt like you were a ‘different person’ when you were on holidays or travelling? This is because you were free of the astral gravity that you normally live in on a day to day basis. The astral plane is like glue. When we put enough energy into thoughts, emotions, beliefs and stories form our past that condition how we interpret current life experiences, we can get stuck in astral gravity, unable to let go of ways of thinking and reacting even if we really wish to do so. We can create sticky astral thoughts that attach to houses, places and people.When we are in a different environment we often have a chance to create fresh habits and beliefs, which is why a holiday can be so refreshing and inspiring.” -Alana Fairchild

Light collaboration on the Glow Dome with Aziz Light Crew

This past week felt like someone had pulled me off of a glue trap. Suddenly my limbs and spirit were free. I felt more energy and joy than I have in ages. I was laughing constantly. I felt like I had a grin that could split my face in two. I felt sexy and funny and open and present. Just for a moment, this space gave me the full understanding of being in flow and relaxing into what was, instead of what I was trying to make it. 

The difference in how people responded to me when I was in this state was so apparent. Normally when I’m on a festival site I’m working. I’m running teams and dealing with equipment, handling stages, or working med or fire staff. I’m focused and serious. The only people I tend to talk to are people who are also working. I don’t tend to be open to chatting with festival participants and strangers don’t often approach me because I’m so obviously closed. This is a state that is sometimes useful as well, but sometimes it makes me forget that I can be fun, that people want to connect wth me. 

As well I often feel quite isolated in my life. Because I live such an alternative lifestyle I am not always sure where relationships can fit, especially romantic ones. There are times when I’m certain that in order to be committed to this life as an artist, I will just have to come to terms with being alone forever. When I do make space to connect with others, I find I often come to it with the assumption that people could’t want me just the way I am, that I would have to change or project something different in order for people to love me. 

But suddenly at Solstice this week none of that was on the radar. I was free of my astral field. I just let go and was myself and was willing to play or be goofy or sad or anything else I needed to feel at any given time. And the lesson that is smacking me in the face is that I couldn’t believe how attractive I became to other people when I let go. 

People wanted to spend time with me, to meet me, to connect with me deeply. When I stopped thinking about controlling my experience or trying to be something, I was suddenly just myself. And myself turned out to be someone who’s pretty awesome. I like that person. I would like to see her more often.

But now I’m back home and I’m struggling with how to implement that lesson. It’s really easy to be open and in flow at a festival, where you don’t have to deal with any of the realities of the default world. To show up in joy and play is so easy in that environment, how do we bring it home? How do we connect, meet people heart open, not get our spirits dampened by all the responsibilities and stresses of every day life? Already I can feel the clamping down, the attachment of trying to hold onto that feeling and those connections. 

So today I’m going to start small. Instead of rushing towards all the work I need to do I’m going to make a cozy spot on the floor or my living room. Do my spiritual practice. Sit in feelings of gratefulness. Try to tap into the core of that inside woman I would love to see more often. See what she wants to do with her morning instead of doing all the things I should do. I will practice letting it drop. I will practice giving myself space. I will practice play. And maybe one day that woman inside will be the woman who’s outside all of the time.

“Trust”  45"x52" Glass, stone, biological matter2016

One of the most incredible and divine things that human beings have access to is the physical creation of new life. The concept of where and how life is created is still one that boggles the mind.

No matter your religious or spiritual beliefs, all people agree that the creation of new life is a mysterious process. The act of two individuals finding each other and combining their genetic material to create an entirely new person is nothing short of a miracle.

This large scale light box is based on a real life event of a couple coming together to conceive a child. The portrait began as a discussion of the divine aspect of two individuals creating life. As the sculpture was being made as the child was born, but life had other plans.

The birthing process involved serious complications and the couple was unsure if their child would survive. Without the work and persistence of modern medicine, the divine entry of a new soul may have ended before it began.

Through an intensive process of medicine, perseverance and faith, the child pulled through and is now healthy and strong. Trust became a portrait not only of the divine nature of life, but of just how fragile life can be.

Trust was shown in March 2016 in My body is a battlefeild, SUB Gallery, Montreal.

For in process about this piece, go

here

,

here

and

here

. 

Building domes began because at the core of our identity we are festival-goers. We didn’t come up with a design and then decide to market it on the festival circuit. We designed these domes because we were already on the festival circuit and needed infrastructure that offered better solutions to create space and shelter. The business began because we wanted to offer what we had created to other people who needed better solutions. One of the solutions we found was a way to offer more comfortable personal camping.

Before I started doing the festival circuit professionally I had no problem attending a festival with the minimum comfort required. Years ago I used to sleep in a tiny tent on the ground without so much asa sleeping mat. But there’s something that comes from being on the road and sleeping outside for almost 5 months of the year. Suddenly having creature comforts is a matter of self care and mental health. 

The wonderful thing about these domes is that they make an incredible space so very quickly. With standard V3 dome installation, it would be unthinkable to build yourself a personal dome just for a week or weekend. You would have to be onsite the week before and the week after just to build and deconstruct your shelter. But with our dome design, you can put up your own 13-foot diameter dome in under 20 minutes. With domes this easy, why would we ever sleep in a tent? 

We spend so much time in these domes that our standards of living in them are quite like at home. We no longer shirk at bringing out real blankets, good queen-sized sleeping mats, beautiful lighting and art. When you live on the road personal space is where you can go to be calm and happy amidst the sometimes chaotic world around you.

Last fall Toby and Michael put the shelter capacity of the domes to the test and decided to spend a good part of the fall and winter living in a dome. Although we normally just tour in them, they were working at Werewolf Ranch for a few months and needed something more permanent. It was a great test to see just how long these domes could be useful as housing.

Because the weather was going to start to get colder they needed a good solution for keeping the dome cozy into the winter months. Packing blankets were a great cheap solution for insulating the space. Cut to the shape of hexs and pents, the packing blankets went on the outside of their personal scout-sized tent. When left just like this the packing blankets had the extra benefit of being slightly rain-proofing. Because the seams of the packing blankets pointed outwards there were no drip points going into the dome. In light rain the blankets wicked the moisture down to the ground instead of soaking through into the space.  

As the weather got colder they decided to build onto the dome to protect it even more. To add warmth they set up a Nomad sized dome around the Scout. The two domes inside each other added an extra layer of air between the Scout and the outside world. The result was a space that stayed cozy and warm even into the winter, and they lived quite happily in it.

My own favourite personal space of this year was at this years Solstice festival. I was out at the festival grounds early to help build one of the stages. After several festivals in a row I knew we wanted to be as comfortable as possible for the few weeks we were there. I also knew that it was projected to be extremely rainy and I weren’t interested in living in a small damp tent in the middle of a rainstorm.

Because I knew it was supposed to rain so much the installation of our dome centred around the weather. Normally when we set up a scout we just install the tent and shade stars, and then we pull over our rain fly only when it starts to rain. But because the rain was supposed to be continuous I decided to set this scout up backwards.

First I set up the frame and then covered it entirely with sheets of painters plastic. The tent then went on the outside of the plastic instead of being clipped to the inside of the frame like we normally do. Generally when we have plastic covering the frame so tightly like this we have a slight problem with water pooling on top of the ceiling. But having the tent on the outside had the effect of wicking all of the moisture down to the ground. Although the amount of rain, lighting and tornado warnings we got during the two weeks was insane, the dome was eternally a dry little shelter I could go back to. Any time I needed a break I could go back to this dome, peel off my wet clothes and crawl into a warm bed between dry bedding. It was heavenly.

The addition of a bug net was also useful at this festival. Being in a forest meant the bugs were prolific, but having a net over the sleeping area meant I were never bothered.

But besides the practically of the dome as a shelter, I also wanted the dome to be a home. For me my spiritual practice is a pretty big part of my grounding. I generally practice meditation in front of a little altar with incense and stones, and I like to set one up wherever I rest my head. I added a little bit of art from my Figment installation and we bought some fresh flowers from the local town. Every time I entered this space I could feel the difficulty of the weather and installation stress slipping away. This space was a haven in the midst of a literal storm.

We know that not everyone needs a personal-sized dome for their festival participation. But trust us, once you get used to this small piece of home wherever you happen to need it, we know that you’ll never want to go back to tent camping. We know we sure don’t.

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,

breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists

and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,

imagine grief

as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.

Celebrate today.

-Judyth Hill

It was an unbelievably rainy Solstice Gathering this year in Singhampton, Ontario. Tornado warnings, thunderstorms, lightning, and rain and rain and rain. It was the type of festival you wouldn't be able to survive without a good pair of rubber boots and a committed spirit.

Most years at this festival are warm and sunny. The most active pastime of the event is laying in a field or by the pond sunning yourself. But this year deemed to be quite different.

I think most people who arrived into the space were quite unprepared for the weather. It was well outside what a normal, even seasoned camper would be used to experiencing. It was mucky and a very common story to wake up floating in the lake that had sprung up in your tent during the nighttime rainstorms.

The gracious farmer who brought his tractor to the land to help pull out stuck vehicles told me that by Friday night, he had already pulled out 77 vehicles. It was that kind of festival.

A lot of people who arrived ended up not staying through the whole week. But the people who stuck it out did their best to keep their spirits high and engage with the community. By the weekend we were rewarded for our commitment with almost a full 24 hours of no rain. The stages were able to hit full swing and everyone was able to come out of their tents and dance away the wet clothes and stresses of the week.

Because of the rain it made for a very different kind of festival. People needed to hibernate a lot more because it wasn't quite warm enough to be soaking wet all the time.

The dome was pretty ideal in these circumstances, and our team was blessed with a cozy and dry place to congregate during the rain storms.

Many a cozy colourful thing was brought into the dome. Boots were left at the door. Lots of cuddling to ward off the wet and cold.

It was just a bunch of friends and often strangers (soon to become new friends), enjoying each others company, hid away from some of the outdoor elements.

Festivals like this are often challenging. But it really helps to have at least one place you can go which gives you some rest for a while.

The Embodiment Temple is a sculpture by artist Jodi Sharp.

It is a series of transparent portraits of community activists that creates an enclosed space the viewer can walk into.

The portraits, while housing powerful individuals who are making change in the world, are also representative of the potential for all bodies to come together in community.

The interior of each portrait is made up of a hand-cut stain glass piece, which represents the spiritual centre of each individual.

Each spirit is unique and evolving, and yet all the images of spirit have a similar base that links all the people together.

As you enter into the sculpture you are able to engage with the warmth and containment of the community space and visualize what your own spiritual centre might look like.

The Embodiment Temple will be heading to Solstice Gathering in Ontario, Canada this next week. If you're in that area you should pop by!

The “Free-dome” was an art installation that went up at this year’s Figment Toronto.

It was a walking labyrinth placed inside two domes that sat in a fractal pattern.

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path.

The Labyrinth mimics the circulation in our bodies and represents a journey to our own centre and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools.

In the labyrinth, as in life, there is no single right way to follow the path, only the continued practice of trying to bring into wholeness all parts of your being.

This labyrinth was focused on the practice of letting go of fear.

On the table were several different coloured rocks labeled with different areas people often feel fear around.

People chose the coloured rock of their choice, and carried it with them as they walked the path.

As they entered the labyrinth, they were invited to focus their thoughts on a question or concern.

At the centre of the labyrinth they were invited to leave the rock as a symbol of letting go of their fear in that area.

Throughout the labyrinth there were the words from an excerpt of the poem “I Give You Back,” by Joy Harjo.

I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear.

I release you, fear, so you can no longer keep me naked and frozen in the winter, or smothered under blankets in the summer.

I am not afraid to be angry. I am not afraid to rejoice.

I am not afraid to be hated. I am not afraid to be loved.

You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.

You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

More pictures of Figment to come!

The Figment festival is upon us once again. That wonderful time of year where dozens of Toronto artists come out and fill the park with participatory art projects.

In the years previous we had always built large shade complexes in the middle of the parade grounds to provide shade for the participants. But this year I decided to do something a little different.

This year I decided to do a couple of smaller domes in the midst of the beautiful trees of the park.

One thing I’ve been wanting to try for a while was “fractal domes,” where we place a dome within a dome.

Figment was a great space to try this out for the first time.

It couldn’t have looked better. We just loved the look of a tiny little Scout inside of the Lodge.

We left the side panels off so you could get a wonderful view of the little dome and the people that would be inside.

The participatory installation was then set up inside the domes.

Final touches are done, like rocks that need to be sorted by colour for the use of the participants.

The second dome is set up within view of the space.

The fibre and glass panels carefully hung. I couldn’t have been happier with the look of the sun shining through the glass.

All set up and ready to go for the participants of Figment!

More images of Figment to come!