Spiritual practice & art-making
Dani: I'm Dani and I'm here with Kat. Hi, Kat.
Kat: Hey, I'm Kat. I'm a spiritual director of Reclaiming Spirituality based in Athens, Georgia.
Dani: Amazing. I'm so glad that you're here and we're talking today because you're going to be joining us at Conspire in Asheville in a few weeks for this residency. And I would love to hear a little bit about how you're approaching that, how you're thinking about that. And so my first question for you is, how does art making fit into your spiritual practice right now?
Kat: I am not a person who does art every day. My ADHD will not accommodate a regular practice. But art is really a place I turn to when I have a big question or I feel stuck. That's like the first place to take it when I'm like in a conflict with someone and trying to figure it out, or feeling like I need something more and can't quite figure out what it is. Those are places I really take it to art and art kind of holds that way in which I connect, both to my own inner knowing, but also feels in some ways very much like a divination process where something outside of me is just being brought down to meet where I need to be met. And it's not always magical, but sometimes it is.
Dani: Thanks for sharing that. I love that. Do you ever bring art into your spiritual direction practice?
Kat: So I'm trained in the same modality that Conspire Studio uses, and I use it with clients one-on-one when they're holding a spiritual question. We'll both make art to support their inquiry. And I also am preparing to run groups here locally, kind of helping people hold the questions of spiritual life. A lot of work I do is with people who are rebuilding their spiritual sense from childhood frameworks they were raised with.
So I'm going to be running a series called “What Even Is…?”, and it'll be a fill in-the-blank, like “What even is spirituality? What even is prayer?” An access point for people to explore ideas, like ways to approach different spiritual concepts and also find their own insights and ways and answers to that.
Dani: That's beautiful. That sounds so fun and meaningful. What do you think about the theme of home and belonging, which is the theme that has arisen as we put this residency together? How do you think about that and the importance of it during this time in the world, during the high holidays? It's a really big question, but...
Kat: Yes, why home and belonging during the high holidays? Some of it because it's already up for everyone, right? High holidays and Passover often are the two Jewish holidays where people go and spend time with their family. So, like... Belonging and the notb-elonging that happen in people's families, it's all right there. And many people find themselves who maybe aren't regular shul goers, figuring out where they feel belonging and what spiritual community. So belonging is like happening, whether it's front of mind or not. I think there's also other layers that I'm looking to explore in this residency.
I'm a person with a lot of different identities. And there's always this question of going into a space and being like, “All of me, what part of me will I have to park outside?” And what is it to have holistic belonging where every part of me gets to be here? And what places do I... keep myself from belonging and how much is that done to me and how much of that do I create? So there's like all these layers of belonging and I'm really excited to explore what home-making looks like both within myself and in like the ways that I am connected to place.
As I've shared with you, Dani, I've moved 15 times in my life and made a real commitment to Athens and all of its imperfections. And I'm continuing to harvest the learnings of what it is to be a place-based person committed to a particular home.
There's a way in which like all of those themes come up at this time of year.
Dani: Yes, thanks for sharing that. I really feel the way you said that. I'm curious if there's anything else that you're thinking about, feeling about in relation to any of the things that you just talked about or didn't get to say, or if anything has sparked that you want to share?
Kat: We're in a period of time where politically it's rough out here. We're in a pretty hostile political environment. And in this like, you know, after the initiation of COVID in our lives, like a deeply online space where people feel really isolated. And I've met a lot and a lot of people are grappling with what it is to build real deep relationships and how to find community. And I think that's like some of the work that I hope to be doing in my work, but also themes that I think will be kind of like caught on the wind of the art making that I'm going to be doing the week that I'm with y'all at Conspire.
Dani: Amazing. I'm also wondering, so at the end of this residency, you'll be sharing your art along with other artists in a witness party. Is there an invitation or an excitement around getting to be, to share your work and then like have it be engaged with back? I'm just curious, I'm really excited about that part and I'm curious how you're thinking about it as one of the artists.
Kat: There's a way in which I'm offering myself as a mirror to other people's experiences. I know you (person watching this) are thinking about belonging and home. And there's a way that I'm hoping to spend a lot of time being in that conversation and those questions and invite you all to participate in observing and being a part of what I've created and have that be a mirror back to whatever your experience is. So I'm hoping to share the nuggets that are still that I've figured out or insights, but also the places that still feel tangled and have people be in their own exploration of these things in conversation with me and my work.
There's a way in which I'm like a functional vessel for everyone's feelings about home and belonging during this residency.
Dani: I really love that. And it's making me think of what I heard you say earlier about how art making is like a divinatory practice. and like channeling and being a vessel, and thinking and feeling and being with it. And then your spiritual practice, as I've heard you recently say about like, the way of connecting to yourself, each other in the world. And so the way, when we can mirror each other, there's that happening, those like different layers of connection to self other and something larger.
Kat: Yes. And there's a way in which I hope that by me spending a week on these themes, other people can tap into that depth of experience when their busy lives maybe don't accommodate a week of art making, but are still grappling with those feelings. So I'm hoping that there's a way that my depth opens up insights that otherwise can't occur in a two-hour program.
Dani: I love that. Well, beautiful. Thank you for chatting with me.
Kat. Yes, I'm looking forward to it.
The thing that I want to say is that... I looked like when I was thinking about how I want to spend my holidays, when I was thinking about when I was going to start that over, when I was thinking about how I wanted to spend my holidays, I knew I had these questions I was holding. And the first place I actually reached out to was Conspire because I knew that it was a place that could hold the depth of question in an open-ended format. Like Conspire doesn't do art classes where like we're all going to make the same pretty picture at the end, but really holds a container in a really solid way. And I trust Kim and Dani’s ability to hold space in a way that would create the container where I could do that depth of exploration. So that's why I'm really excited about my time at Conspire.
