WILD PRAYER - Featured Artist at Sebastopol Gallery August 13-September 30
The paintings I’ll show as featured artist are those created with the sensation of nature’s own longing for integrity & abundance. These pieces emphasize communication among species, sacred relationship, & non-visible guidance. My reception is Saturday, August 25, 5-7 pm. Deb Grant will play mysterious improvisations on a magical metal instrument called a halo. Friday, September 7, 6:30 pm is my artist talk, Painting for All Our Relations. I invite you to bring your questions & ideas about how—or whether—art can save us, as I share how my intention to create healing art has evolved. 150 North Main, open daily 11-6, www.sebastopol-gallery.com.

Salmon Sonnet, acrylic, 16 x 20“, $800

GATHERING THE PRAYER OF THE WILD
Recently I & my daughter Anaar, visiting briefly from Chicago, attended a Wounded Water Ceremony organized by Diane Monroe. Gathered by the Laguna, we shared our longing for clean water & abundant fish, birds, elk, antelope. We listened to beautiful music by Deb Grant & created a collaborative art offering on the seasonal bridge. Several of us met again at Ragle, shared encounters with plants & animals, pondered attuning ourselves & our communities, & sang to the land—a rich morning in a blessed place. Let me know if you’d like to join us for our next gathering.

SEBASTOPOL GALLERY
Our current featured artist is pastel & mixed media painter Teri Sloat. Long a successful children’s book illustrator, she began in recent years to paint plein air landscapes. Her landscapes carry the mythic quality of primal stories, & stand beautifully beside her magical illustrations of new & traditional tales. Her reception is Saturday, July 14, 5-7 pm, with Carolyn Thornton playing traditional Swedish fiddle. Teri’s show continues through August 12. 150 North Main, open daily 11-6, www.sebastopol-gallery.com.

SOFT POLITICS
In honor of the 4th of July, I selected for this rotation at Sebastopol Gallery, works that celebrate & criticize our country. These include flags linking patriotism to land, compassionate leaders, inspirational activists, animals, plants, weather & ordinary gentlefolk. There are also an impression of Pomo elder Essie Parrish & a visual prayer for containing the danger at Fukushima. On the latter, I urge you all to attend the film Fukushima, Never Again on July 18, at 7 pm at the Sebastopol Grange, 6000 Sebastopol Rd, with guest Chieko Shiina from Japan.
 
MEDEA BENJAMIN & RECLAIMING THE FLAG
When peace activist Medea Benjamin came to Copperfield’s Books last month, I presented her with a giclee of a flag painting honoring Americans—including her— who’ve done good things in the Middle East. Please read about this & Medea’s new book at www.native-peace.blogspot.com. She thanked me for helping her reclaim the flag. More about the idea of flag as symbol at http://www.sandyeastoak.com/flags.html.

BLOGS & FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE
You can support my new effort to keep my blogs current by posting comments & electing to Follow them: Spirits, cycles & waters, www.sandyeastoak.blogspot.com & Native Peace, www.native-peace.blogspot.com. You can also encourage my public reach by Liking my Facebook business page & visiting regularly: Sandy Eastoak: Painting spirits, cycles & waters, http://www.facebook.com/SandyEastoak?ref=ts. I welcome your comments & suggestions about how to make these pages valuable. Thank you.

GODDESS PRESENTATION
Over the years I’ve made many goddess images expressing an ongoing exploration. Sometime this fall I plan to use a number these to anchor a workshop on goddess experience & practice. Elements include reading from my book-in-progress; sharing encounters with Goddess energy/communication; exploring how images support spiritual practice; encouraging each other in living a sacred life. As soon as I secure time & place, I’ll let you know.

THE POMO PROJECT
October, Sebastopol’s Third Annual Pomo Honoring Month, is approaching rapidly. While I & other committee members know how important it is, we are slow to meet & organize. We could benefit from new energy & ideas. We’re thinking of a Native garden in the Laguna park, an informative water bill insert, a permaculture lecture by a Pomo water expert at the Laguna Foundation’s new Heron Hall, & a tour of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria’s social services program. If you’d like to make these or other ideas a reality, please contact me!

NON-PROFIT PROFILE: Code Pink
This is Medea Benjamin’s group, co-founded with Jodie Evans, another long-time environmental & peace activist. This women-initiated grassroots movement works to end U.S. funded wars & occupations, challenge militarism globally, & redirect our resources into health care, education, green jobs & other life-affirming activities. “The name CODEPINK plays on the former Bush Administration's color-coded homeland security alerts—yellow, orange, red—that signaled terrorist threats. While Bush's color-coded alerts were based on fear and were used to justify violence, the CODEPINK alert is a feisty call for people to ‘wage peace.’" http://www.codepink4peace.org/

COLLECTOR PROFILE: Jaydean & Russ Franco
Jaydean Franco is one of the dancers in Clare Najarian’s miraculous Wednesday morning class. Hearing of my show at Quercia Gallery in May, she went out with her husband Russ & bought a painting. This is what she says: “We moved to Bodega about six years ago. We live on an acre by Salmon Creek with a small apple grove and a nice garden. We love it here. Living in the country is an amazing experience. Living by Salmon Creek, we were drawn to Sandy Eastoak's Ghost Sculpin 2. This piece is an acrylic and pastel painting which evokes an ephemeral coolness and light.  We love the colors, the mystery, and the questions this piece evokes.” Jaydean & Russ also have a giclee of Blue Coyote & Yellow Moose, as well as a copy of Corona Gaia.
                     
WILD FACTS
When Derrick Jensen kept bee hives, he learned that young bees have more hair on their backs, grasshoppers gathered in front of the hive to scavenge carcasses of bees that died just outside, beehives have their own rhythms & personalities, guards pace back & forth in front of the hive & check every returning bee to make sure she belongs, & most of all, a somatic understanding of cooperation: “work against bees, they sting; work with them as they work with themselves & they reward you....” His book, A Language Older Than Words, is beautiful & disturbing, weaving together personal communication with other species, childhood abuse, & a massive litany of human destruction. His unique & profound analysis doesn’t shy from questioning whether the compassion of good people enables exploitive people to destroy life. What are the necessary actions to prevent global disaster? “If we wish to stop the atrocities, we need merely step away from the isolation. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home. It has missed us as sorely as we have missed it.”

GRATITUDE
I love this response from Yosha Borgea: I'm feeling the gratitude, too.  I had a moment yesterday with Josephine, who's four, where she asked me how I was feeling, and when I laid it out she really listened to it.  Some new concepts, like: this is the only place in the universe that we know of where anything is alive, and we get to be in it and be alive.  And in this speck of dust where life is, many people are in pain -- hurting, hungry, lonely, afraid -- and we, I, you, Josephine, live in a house on a quiet street where we have food to eat all the time, where we're warm and safe and everyone loves each other.  That makes me feel something bigger than happy.  I saw her hear that, and get it, and that moment was something more to be grateful for.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
Listening to the land, animals, plants, rivers, stones is probably the most important step toward preventing ecological collapse. Not fixing things, not organizing, but just listening. Returning to reciprocal relationship with all beings, learning what they perceive & need. By that contact, becoming healthy so we stop doing harm.

Next Issue...
Alliances for Paradigm Shift
Coyote Voice

Contact
I welcome your comments & studio visits. Please phone 707 824-8189 or e-mail sandoak@sonic.net. Please pass this newsletter to others. If it was forwarded or came by post, please send your e-address.

Summer Actions
Come to my reception & talk at Sebastopol Gallery, follow my blogs, see Fukushima Never Again, listen to nature.

By hearing plants, animals, stones, and rivers, I am at peace.
Painting Spirits, Cycles & Waters www.sandyeastoak.com