In 2023 I visited Paris for the first (and hopefully not the last!) time and got to spend a week exploring the city and its museums. My favorite exhibit was “Mediumistic Women, Les Femmes Médiumniques, Art Brut” at the Center Pompidou, artwork created by women under the guidance of spirits!
The Spiritualism Movement of the mid to late 1800’s was the environment from which the first of these unusual works of art emerged. Along with the work of other self taught artists this kind of art was largely ignored until the 1940’s when the French artist Jean Dubuffet championed it as “Art Brut,” or raw art. 

At the entrance to the exhibition was this “Spirit Drawing” by the British visionary artist Georgiana Houghton. Georgiana Houghton (1814-1888) became a spiritual medium after attending a seance in 1859 and created over 150 drawings with the guidance of a spirit called “Lenny” as well as the spirits of master painters and 70 archangels. Houghton held a solo exhibition at the New British Gallery in 1871, and though it was not a financial or critical success, it was well attended and influential. 

Madge Gill (1882-1961) was another British artist, spiritual medium as well as a practicing astrologer. Gill’s drawings were made in collaboration with the spirit Myrninerest. She lead a life filled with tragic events, and one art critic attributed her artistic output as her way of dealing with her trauma. (Is this really any different from the familiar trope of the "tortured artist?") Gill was also a prodigious knitter, embroiderer and pianist, all practices that echo the patterned markings in her intricate ​drawings.

Czech artist Miloslava Ratsingerova (1904-1990) acquired the gift of clairvoyance following a chance encounter on the street. A complete stranger approached her and said, “I am passing the White Book to you.”  Soon after Ratsingerova began to create these portrait drawings of women as well as write poetry and philosophy. 

Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900- 1980) was an African American preacher, poet, painter and musician who first followed a call from the voice of God to become a street preacher. Several decades later the Lord instructed her to become a painter and she created artwork to illustrate her sermons. She was discovered by art dealer Larry Borenstein in the early 1960’s and found fans and collectors in the New York art world including Andy Warhol. In 1973, at the peak of her popularity, God instructed Sister Gertrude to give up painting and dedicate herself to preaching and poetry. 

 
In researching this post I encountered more than a few art critics who try to debunk the spiritual connections of the “Mediumistic Women” artists. The wall text in the exhibit proposed that the women claimed to be channeling spirits as a way to be artists in a world that didn’t accept women artists. That seems a bit far fetched. Another author I read suggested that the women were just misinterpreting the creative “zen” state. Really??
Why can’t we just let them speak for themselves?
“Believe Mediumistic Women!”

     When I bought this page of commemorative stamps in 2020, I didn't know anything about the featured artist. I just now finished Marilyn Chase's biography, "Everything She Touched: Life of Ruth Asawa," and am blown away by the story of the artist who created these fascinating sculptures.

     Ruth Asawa was born in 1926, the middle of seven children in a farming family in rural Los Angeles County. As citizens of Japanese ancestry, the young artist Ruth and her family were taken from their home and sent to internment camps for the duration of WWII. Even while being held for weeks in the old horse stalls at the Santa Anita Racetrack awaiting their final train ride to the camps, Ruth managed to take drawing lessons from several Disney artists who were also interned there!
     After spending her high school years in an Arkansas camp, Ruth's Quaker church sponsored her training in Wisconsin to be an art teacher. Sadly, even though she completed the coursework, she was unable to find employment in that state due to ongoing prejudice against Japanese Americans. Disappointed but never discouraged, Ruth accepted a friend's invitation to join her for summer art classes at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. It turned out to be another fortuitous turn that would change her life. Now legendary, Black Mountain College was a hotbed for artists and thinkers like Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Jacob Lawrence, Buckminster Fuller, John Cage and Merce Cunningham.  Ruth stayed at Black Mountain for 3 years, studying under the great Bauhaus artists Josef and Anni Albers, who had themselves fled the persecution of artists and intellectuals of Hitler's Germany. 

As I continue to listen to The Saucer Life podcast, I remembered this comic book I have held onto since I was a kid in the 60's. I believe it was purchased by my older brother, but it made a big impression on me: UFO FLYING SAUCERS! Where do they come from - What do they want?
​All valid questions.

Being from Michigan, I was especially interested in the story about the UFO sightings in Dexter and Hillsdale in 1966. Below is the comic book version.
The Saucer Life's Aaron Gulyas tells the tale on a live episode of the podcast. His slides  contain some of the sketches done by the Hillsdale college students describing the "quilted surface" of the saucers.

Note the mention of "swamp" (which is a basic description of just about anywhere in Michigan.)

That's right, it's heading for the SWAMP!

OK- it was swamp gas all along. Sure, sure...

On my reading list is a book entitled "Swamp Gas, My Ass" by ex-Patterson-Wright Air Force Base employee Raymond Szymanski which covers "the extraordinary true story of two highly decorated U. S. Air Force fighter-interceptor pilots, fully enmeshed in America’s hidden military history. Together they intercepted the world famous “1966 Michigan Swamp Gas UFO” in supersonic F-106 jets – a history changing story, denied by the government, told here for the very first time."  
Patterson-Wright AFB looms large in UFO legend, as it supposedly contains the remains from the Roswell crash in secret "Hanger 18." I was actually at the National Air Force Museum at Patt-Wright AFB last summer, before I knew any of this. If only I had known we might have been able to do some hands on research.

 Paul K, at the National Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson, perhaps heading out to look for the aliens?

Is the truth still out there???

Also, what part of "do not touch the suit" do you not understand? (Once a museum guard, unfortunately, always a museum guard!)

My ears have been abducted by Aaron Gulyas' podcast "The Saucer Life" ever since I discovered it last week. I never really looked at the UFO phenomenon through the lens of cold war anxiety, but indeed modern saucer sighting reports began in the late 1940's just a few years after the US dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan. The aliens in most of the stories  have come to earth with the message that we need to abandon nuclear weapons and learn to live together in peace. Interestingly several of these early modern encounters were reported here in Washington state - private pilot Kenneth A Arnold's sighting of saucers by Mt Rainier in 1947 and the Maury Island Incident with the first mention of The Men in Black, those threatening people who show up after the sighting and tell you to never talk about it! Of course there are those who consider UFOs to be secret military aircrafts and it's not like Boeing wasn't Seattle's biggest industry, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence. 

Yeah, it's been a minute since I wrote a blog entry, but, wait, I didn't even have a blog on here 'til just now, but you know what I mean. 😄 

Intro and update:
Who am I? 
A lifelong artist, they say I started drawing on the walls at the age of 1. Late to the cave art game or early to the graffiti game, you decide. I am from Muskegon, Michigan, base of the little finger for all you gander landers. 
Where am I? 
The Fern Forest Studio, a garage converted into an art studio, since 1998 ~ woah, that's 25 years- in Seattle Washington.
What am I doing?? 
This summer's to do list includes cleaning out a bunch of stuff from the studio. Do you ever save things because you "might do something with them someday" ? Yeah, me too, x 25 years.
I'm also developing more materials to accompany my Fern Forest Tarot Deck. A lot of people have requested more information on how to use the cards, and I'm happy to share what I know. 
I'm also thrilled to report that a children's picture book that I illustrated will be published this fall- more details to come on that.

I hope that this finds you having a good day.
Take care,
Rebecca

In early September I was fortunate to go on an artists retreat to a friend's wilderness cabin on the east side of Mount Rainier. Here's the cabin, itself, recently declared a historic landmark. ​

I stayed in the room named "Bear" which is fitting as it was my fathers childhood nickname for me, as well as being the home of a painting that I'd created on an earlier visit. ​

Here's two of the paintings I created this year, hung out to dry on the side of the hammock. They are oil paint on unstretched canvas. ​

It was a good year for collecting mushrooms. Unfortunately our hostess could not ID this bunch, but we found more than enough boletes and chanterelles to enjoy every evening. ​

Did I mention there was a lake? Here it is, Bumping Lake on a quiet warm morning, with the American Range peaks reflecting in its mirror like surface. So long for another year, Bumping Lake, and thanks for letting us visit. ​