361 Lexa Walsh “Artist, Cultural Worker and Experience Maker”

It’s another installment of Spirituality and Politics with Marielena Ferrer. Joining us today is… Lexa Walsh an artist, cultural worker and experience maker.  Her upbringing as the only bad athlete in a family of fifteen in the Philadelphia suburbs, and coming of age in the Bay Area post punk cultural scene of the 1990’s informs her interest in alternative lifestyles, economies and communities. With a background in both sculpture and social practice, Walsh makes site specific projects, exhibitions, publications and objects, using an array of materials including ceramics and textiles, employing social engagement, institutional critique, and radical hospitality to question hierarchies, power and value.  She recently relocated from Oakland, CA to the Hudson Valley. 

The In Between: Tea Talks are series’ of intimate facilitated discussions over home cooked meals that bring together conflicting populations of artists, activists, workers, Veterans, civilians, and others in a hospitable environment so each may share their positions in a safe yet open and critical dialogue. The goals of the project are to: 

  • Complicate the current good vs, evil/us vs. them narrative while eliciting understanding and extracting nuances from all sides. 
  • Engage in local micro politics while placing these issues in the larger current political landscape.
  • Create a space for hospitable democracy.
  • Share understanding about issues affecting our communities to a broader audience.

Walsh founded the experimental music and performance venue the Heinz Afterworld Lounge, and co-founded and conceived of the all women, all toy instrument ensemble Toychestra.  Walsh worked for many years as a curator and administrator at CESTA, an international art center in Czech republic, whose team created radical curatorial projects to foster cross-cultural understanding. She founded Oakland Stock & Soup for Social & Racial Justice, and the Bay Area Contemporary Art Archive. She is a graduate of Portland State University’s Art & Social Practice MFA program and was Social Practice Artist in Residence in Portland Art Museum’s Education department. She was a recipient of Southern Exposure’s Alternative Exposure Award, the CEC Artslink Award, the Gunk Grant and was a de Young Artist Fellow. Walsh has participated in projects, exhibitions and performances at Apexart, di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, FOR-SITE, Grand Central Art Center, Kala Art Institute, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, NIAD, Oakland Museum of California, SFMOMA, Smack Mellon, Walker Art Center, Williams College Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and has done several international artist residencies, tours and projects in Europe and Asia.

Lexa and Marielena are co-hosting a Tea Talk at Unison Arts on Saturday, March 1st from 3-5pm. There’s also a Destroy to Create event happening at Unison this Saturday, February 15th. More info and to RSVP here!

Here are your Full Moon Vibes!

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radiokingston.org.

Our show music is from Shana Falana!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcast

ITUNES | SPOTIFY

ITUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-want-what-she-has/id1451648361?mt=2

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360 Shauna Cummins “Wishcraft”

Today I get to speak with Shauna Cummins, a certified Clinical Hypnosis Practitioner with a private practice in New York, author of Wishcraft (2021), holder of ceremonies, multi-disciplinary artist and founder of Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis and MindMassageHotline.

She is the resident event hypnotist at The Four Seasons Hotel New York Downton and regularly teaches workshops and conducts ceremonies in NYC and abroad. She also creates hypnotic sound art and installations and her work has been featured internationally at The National Gallery of Denmark, The Queens Museum of New York, The Center for Contemporary Art Glasgow, Borealis Music Festival, Obonjan Island and in publications such as The Independent, YAHOO News and The Numinous among others.

She’s also held residencies in hotels and wellbeing centres, such as ACE Hotel Mediums Residency, The James Hotel Downtown NYC, Nomade Hotel Tulum, Maha Rose Brooklyn, and Obonjan Island Croatia.

The method she developed and works with is called Wishcraft. Wishcraft is self-hypnosis that teaches the art of well-wishing as a practice for changing thought patterns and beliefs, turning wishes into action.

She received the board certification through the National Guild of Hypnotists in 2012 and started working as a Clinical Hypnosis Practitioner. She’s also worked as an artist and entrepreneur in NYC and abroad for over fifteen years.  Her life’s passion is helping people help themselves through the healing art of hypnosis.

Today we talk about her big pivot to hypnosis work from a previous unfulfilling career and how she stays in tuned with what makes her heart sing. Shauna walks us through the five pillars of Wishcraft and shares what her regular practices are to stay in touch with her inner knowing and desires. Personally, it was a very inspiring conversation that I hope you enjoy!

In honor of the weekend’s holidays, I pull a card to get us into the Imbolc mood… The Kiss from Kim Kran’s archetype deck. And here’s your New Moon musings too!

Today’s show was engineered by Ian Seda from Radiokingston.org.

Our show music is from Shana Falana!

Feel free to email me, say hello: she@iwantwhatshehas.org

** Please: SUBSCRIBE to the pod and leave a REVIEW wherever you are listening, it helps other users FIND IT

http://iwantwhatshehas.org/podcast

ITUNES | SPOTIFY

ITUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/i-want-what-she-has/id1451648361?mt=2

SPOTIFY:https://open.spotify.com/show/77pmJwS2q9vTywz7Uhiyff?si=G2eYCjLjT3KltgdfA6XXCA

Follow:

INSTAGRAM * https://www.instagram.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast/

FACEBOOK * https://www.facebook.com/iwantwhatshehaspodcast

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