Barbara Bickel

Trans Canada # 1 road stop winds. Photo by R. Michael Fisher Elbow River lookout near Sandy Beach Park, Calgary AB. Photo by Barbara Bickel Saskatoon berry picking. Photo By Barbara Bickel Sasktoon berries. Photo by Barbara Bickel Saskatoon berry stained finger around Alder tree trunk. Photo by Barbara Bickel

Motel Art on the wall Inside Mark Twain Cave. Hannibal, Missouir. Photo By Barbara Bickel Bike ride outside of Elk Point S. Dakota. Photo by Barbara Bickel S. Dakota cornfielf. Photo by Barbara Bickel cafe brochure Tall Prairie grasses S. Dakota Traverse Indian reservation. S. Dakota Sisseton Watpeton College in S. Dakota. Photo by Barbara Bickel double rainbow outsdie of Fargo N. Dakota. Photo Barbara Bickel Outside of Estevan Saskatchewan. Just past the Portal N.D border crossing. Photo Barbara Bickel

Front yard oak tree in Carbondale. Photo credit r. Michael Fisher cyprus tree at Campus Lake in Carbondale. Photo credit r. Michael Fisher Mystery tree at the Oakland St. Cemetary in Carbondale. Photo credit R. Michael Fisher Mother tree at the small downtown cemetery in Carbondale. Photo Credit Megan Sims Megan and Barbara in double trunk tree pose. Photo Credit Holly Courmier Barbara and Holly in mother tree hug. Phot credit Megan Sims Fallen Tree - mixed media drawing on wood, 36 x 24 inches, by Barbara Bickel, 2008

Mandala Gardens, sandstone & rock labyrinth. Releasing the dreams from the Diversity Dream Scroll gathering of students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Mandala Gardens, sandstone & rock labyrinth. Releasing the dreams from the Diversity Dream Scroll with students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Reading the dreams from the Diversity Dream Scroll with students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Reading the dreams from the Diversity Dream Scroll with students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Mandala Gardens, sandstone & rock labyrinth. Releasing the dreams from the Diversity Dream Scroll with students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Chelesea holding up the Diversity Dream Scroll during the performance ritual. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Mandala Gardens, Releasing the dreams performance ritual with the Diversity Dream Scroll with students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Throuhg the Moon Gate. Releasing the dreams performance ritual with the Diversity Dream Scroll with students, faculty and friends. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Margaret holding the Diversity Dream Scroll wiht the rising moon above the Moon Gate. Mandala Gardens. Photo credit Gregory Wendt Diana Tigerlily & Barbara rolling up Diversity Dream Scroll .Photo credit Gregory Wendt

Appalachia Artist Residency

Afterglow is the descriptor word that emerges as I reflect on the week Michael and I just spent as Visiting Artists at Appalachia State University in Boone, North Carolina where we inhabited the HOW Space downtown. This residency comes at the start of a juncture in our life where we are leaving my stable University position and stepping into a time of integration of the last 9 years of life experiences in the USA. Transitioning to a less stable and more fully co-creative life in Canada, this residency was transformative at multiple levels and a spiritual re-grounding for us as a creative couple. The following blogs will be mostly photos depicting moments of the residency; the Dream Scroll installation, the three Nap-ins that I facilitated with Education students, Montessori school children, and community members; the performative releasing of dreams; the labyrinth walking rituals in Katrina Plato’s grass labyrinth, a visit to Penland School of Crafts, artist talks, film screenings, and the Blue Ridge Parkway hikes and vistas that Michael and I sunk our beings into. We loved Appalachia and the people there who made our visit so rich; Art Educator Brooke Hofsess, Expressive Arts Therapist Katrina Plato in particular, and all the many students, faculty and people we met. I want to thank Shawna Caldwell for her documentation of the Nap-Ins. Such beautiful energy in these ancient mountains and in the people we met who call this place home. An extra thanks to Shawna for the new profile photo that I cropped from one of her photos.

Appalachia - Blue Ridge Parkway - rhododendrum forest Applachia Blue Ridge Parkway - mountain stream Appalachia - Blue Ridge Parkway summit ridge view Appalachia - Blue Ridge Parkway - rideg summit view Grandfather Mountain - Appalachia Blue Ridge Parkway - feet in the stream. Photo credit R. Michael Fisher

Montessori School children walking and sharing their dreams from their new Dream Scroll in their school garden. Photo Credit Shawn Caldwell Montessor student hanging their Dream Scroll in the cherry tree. The center of their school commnity. Photo Credit Shawna Caldwell Montessor Dream Scroll hung in the school cherry tree. Photo credit Shawna Caldwell

Barbara & Michael at HOW Space. Boone, North Carolina Katrina, Vicky and Shelby adding their dreams to the Dream Scroll. Photo credit Shawna Caldwell Dream Scroll Installation with blue tape labyrinth in HOW Space, Boone NC. Reading the Dreams at close of the Nap-In. Photo credit Shawna Caldwell Releasing the Dreams - journey down to the creek behind HOW Space NC. Releasing the Dreams over the flowing creek Vicky Grube clothed in and dancing the dreams of the Dream Scroll

Reality and Recovery

Accepting reality is the first step in recovery. Last night I chose to go to bed before the final election results were known. Awakening this morning at 5am my thought was “Trump has attained the Presidency of the United States of American. This is a reality.” Immediately I moved into thoughts of what I would share in my weekly newsletter to the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies community in which I am the Director of at Southern Illinois University. I realized what I do know is that a number of disenfranchised groups in America have risen and won over other disenfranchised groups in this current political system. The familiar win-lose binary that keeps racism, sexism, homophobia and every other oppression in place is alive and well. The backlash for the losers is excruciating, full of pain and horror. I feel overwhelmed and ill-prepared for what is to come. I wake my partner up in bed as I weep and shake and ask him for attention. Attention is what we can give each other as we do the conscious work needed to release the collective trauma that has surfaced so blatantly in this 2016 election. It is a trauma that invokes with its worst side the use of intimidation to silence us and keep us isolated and in fear. On its better side is asks us to keep moving from crying to singing. I know from my experience that it is crucial to not silence the voice even when words feel impossible and/or inadequate. As I sing, thoughts of how oppressed groups utilize singing in times of political, cultural and religious oppressions arise in my memory, both in mind and body.

I begin to ask myself questions:

How can I step out of this rampant political binary and step into what can be clearly seen as fearism now that all political correct hiding strategies have been blown up? How can I model something else more unifying with diversity for those who are part of my professional and personal life? The WGSS conference that I am in the midst of planning with students and faculty is entitled “Allies Across Differences.” We have been preparing to address the binary of win vs. lose, us vs. them. We have an opportunity to offer a hospitable space on campus for the collective trauma that this political election has brought to the world’s attention. The fall out from the election results calls for attention and healing. We have the opportunity to keep teaching truth to power in hospitable ways, and yet, not be cooperative with oppression.

I am grateful for my wise colleague Cade Bursell’s FB post in the hours prior to the final election results. Reminding us/me to continue the work; to not return hate that we feel directed at us as women, people of color and diverse sexual and diverse gender identities. Instead let us stay connected, give attention to each other’s fear but do not succumb to projecting it back out as attacks. Stand up for each other. Gather allies, strategize and continue to use your voice and gifts to build allyships across differences. I grieve for and with the young especially as they have been born into this legacy of fear. I begin this day with a simple commitment to remind people to sing. To keep walking the path with allies and those not yet allies with love and compassion. From chaos and destruction eventually comes new order. Keep teaching and speaking truth to power in your classes. And remember that the formal political realm is one of at least three realms that make up our world. The others being equally important, the natural and the spiritual realms. Take time for recovery. Spend some time outside today and remember the unconditional life giving forces that sustain us as humans on this planet.

Please contact me if you would like to set up spaces for dialogue. WGSS will do what it can to support initiatives and gatherings for recovering and generating creative and critical ideas and initiatives future.

I spent the day yesterday on an art and political ecology field trip organized by Sarah Lewison with artists Claire Pentecost, Brian Holmes and Alejandro Meitin from two different artist collectives Compass and Ala Plastica.  We ended our day of road tripping and listening to local activists at the Ohio River at Fort Massac National Park in Metropolis, Illinois, an hour from where I currently live in Carbondale. This fort was originally built in 1542 to defend settlers from the indians. It is said to have been the site of a native massacre, although this has not officially made it into western history books. 

The day prior I had a former student visit me at the university sharing she had to visit the university to talk with people in the US who were other than the people she lives and works with in Metropolis. She is terrified by her neighbours and co-workers belief in Trump making American great again. She tells me with astonishment “they really believe him!” I found an interesting article that addresses this Trump entranced town which was officially designated the home of Superman in the early 70s. In the article the author wrote that uranium is to Metropolis Illinois what kryptonite is to Superman. It is an example of what can happen when a people are in poverty, angry and desperate and entranced by media messages and not critically literate. A phenomenon that has become glaringly visible in the painfully long and drawn out US election process for the 2016 election/media season. The systematic demise of public education in the US is clearly visible and crises continue to build.

The education I obtained on this field trip is that I live one hour from a privately owned uranium processing plant where one third of all uranium mined in the world is stored. This uranium has been sent around the world to nuclear reactors. The plant is currently in the slow transition of being cleaned up after years of unsafe practices. The clean up employment rates are not equivalent to the full operational plant employment and the area suffers from poverty. The beautiful Ohio River with people fishing and cargo ships passing by, transporting mostly coal, has been contaminated by radioactive uranium. The amount of coal required to fuel these plants is extremely high. Cancer rates are also high with the result of large cancer hospitals built in this area to accommodate the number of cancer illnesses. 

All very disturbing information to take in and see in the short span of a day. As we travelled through the beauty of the natural environment we simultaneously  became entranced by the deeply disturbing activist information being shared. A devastating reality of what has been created through industry in the name of development. I was very aware of the younger students on the trip and how they might be dealing with the contradiction of being surrounded by natural beauty and taking in the information of on-going industrial devastation throughout the day. What do they think about their elders who have created this ecological/political devastation? 

I left the day wondering how art as an inquiry practice can help us integrate the knowledge of the severity of industrial damage in our world with transformative awakenings and new understandings that can assist us to change our destructively entranced state as a human species. How can art take what can be overwhelming knowledge, of the destructive capitalist industrial complex and transform it into aesthetic, ethical, politically activist trance-based learning experiences that are healthy, restorative and change inducing for life rather than death? 

MA Pose Prayer

I had the opportunity to enter sacred play with Nané Ariadne Jordan when I visited her in Vancouver this past May. To hear the results of our spontaneous art making together go to https://soundcloud.com/barbara-bickel/ma-pose-prayer

May 2, 2016 Teach-In at Southern Illinois University Demonstration for pulling the silk screen print at the Teach-In

Robert Irwin - Squaring the Circle at the Hirshhorn Performative response to the Irwin and Meyers exhibitions Linn Meyers in process at the Hirshhorn

FD Roosevelt Memorial, Washington DC. Eleanor Roosevelt - first USA delgate to the united nations in the FDR Roosevelt Memorial, Washington DC FDR Roosevelt Memorial, Washington DC

White House Martin Luther King Jr. memorial wall

Exquisite Uterus Project of Resistance installation process with students at Southen Illinois Univeristy Exquisite Uterus Project of Resistance artist Helen Klebesadel speaking with SIU students as they help in the installation Pinnin Pieces for a Cause read the student newspaper Daily Egytpian caption for the Exquisit Uterus Project. Artist Helen Kelbesadel being interviewed by the student TV station during her visit to SIU with the Exquisite Uterus Project.