“The seeds of creativity lie within every living human being……”
Mining The Unconscious Project Partners
Mining the Unconscious: A Creative Path to Self Knowledge, is a Summer 2011 program birthed by four Santa Fe, New Mexico artists, Belinda Edwards, Michele Altenberg, Harriett Tsosie and Laura Langdon beginning in Spring of 2010. Inspired by the stunning and visionary magnum opus of the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl G. Jung, The Red Book, the women approached the Santa Fe Art Commission with a formal proposal to create an exhibit of artwork that referenced archetypal images, symbols, dreams, myths, prophecies, alchemy, spirituality and shamanism…all themes explored by Jung during his seminal journey that began almost 100 years ago into what he described as his “confrontation with the Unconscious”.
Partnering with a number of local non-profit organizations including the New Mexico Committee for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the New Mexico Art Therapy Association and the Encaustic Art Institute, the ambitious program scheduled for the Summer of 2011 grew from an exhibit sourced from the spirit of The Red Book to include a full schedule of symposia, lectures and workshops designed to explore the ways in which images from the unconscious feed the creative process.
This extraordinary community based event stirred the collective imagination of the community of Santa Fe such that the call for artists yielded 150 portfolios for consideration for the art show to be hung at the Santa Fe Community Gallery, an unprecedented number and more than ever received for a gallery exhibit. The level of enthusiasm generated by this exhibit compelled the organizers to create 2 more exhibit opportunities in gallery spaces in Santa Fe, resulting in 3 exhibits of dynamic expressions of art seeded by mining the unconscious.
It is the vision of the founders and sponsors of Mining the Unconscious: A Creative Path to Self Knowledge that all exhibitors, professional and novices; and participants in the array of lectures, symposia and workshops will “pursue the inner images”, honoring the spirit of Jung’s Red Book and awakening the deep creator within, bringing forth a brilliant array of visual images, written expression and performance art to an eager New Mexico and national community.
