Aging through an Artist's Eyes

The modern American culture's valuing of woman is based on the youthful beauty of her appearance. By this measure, the older a woman becomes, the less she is valued. Helen Redman's artwork challenges our culture's devaluing of women and transforms our perceptions of the aging process altogether. In her Birthing the Crone series, Helen shares with the viewer an intimate journey of her own metamorphosis through menopause and calls forth a sacred trust in our body's wisdom to carry each of us through our own journey.

Lora: Helen, what do you think the reception of your "Birthing the Crone" series has been.

Helen: Almost forty million American women are over the age of fifty, and another ten million will reach that milestone in the next decade. This is the largest and healthiest population of mature women in history.

And as they begin their journey to old age, most of these women encounter predominately negative cultural images of age and the aging process.

I discovered when I began sharing this work in the early 1990s that the need for public discourse on this subject was tremendous. So much so, in fact, that my work has grown into an interactive community project that now includes exhibitions, workshops, slide lectures, and a website.

That's not to say that I haven't drawn my share of criticism with this series. Not everybody gets it and sees the depth of what is portrayed. But for me, having explored female experience in my art for close to forty years, it was inevitable that when menopause shook my body, mind and spirit, I would visually attempt to express it.

Lora: Can you talk about the choice to use the archetypal image of the Crone as you faced your own aging.

Helen: For me, the Crone represents the truth teller, the translator. She is the symbol of the synergy, the coming together of all of life's passages: maiden, mother, and elder. I truly see the Crone as phenomenally beautiful and powerful. There is sucn richness and depth to this time in our lives.

Those of us who choose to name ourselves Crones do so to raise consciousness around issues of aging. As we enter a new century, the ancient Crone archetype is emerging within women all over the world. We are beginning to realize that this third and crowning stage of female life, the one our culture throws away, is truly more authentic, creative, and outrageous than we ever imagined. Being a Crone is an astonishing place to be in life. And I want to be in that astonishing place!

Lora: Can you describe what you mean by "birthing the Crone"?

Helen: Birthing the Crone is a symbol of the final rite of passage. In our bodies, this rite of passage is the process we call menopause. The Crone exists in a sacred function of time, taking in the paradox of birth and death. I express these patterns in my artwork, and they are very real to me. They represent what is happening in my life and what I see in the lives of the women I work with.

We are alive right now, sharing the same dream. So many women have come to consciousness at a similar time and are writing and expressing this awakening. We read each other's stuff. We talk to each other. And in doing so, we enlarge our understanding of what is happening to the whole culture.

The mainstream culture wants to take this time away from us. If you look at all the drugs and the media out there, you will see that the mainstream scientists want to completely remake our biology. And in doing this, they are robbing us of our power. The birth of our Crone self, just like the birth of a child, has been made over into a medical procedure, instead of being the profound natural process that it is.

Women are coming into consciousness now and reclaiming this time, with the profundity of ancient feminine knowledge and the appreciation of the cycles of nature within our own lives.

We don't need to dominate or subdue this process. Instead, we can nurture ourselves and allow it to unfold.

Lora: Susun Weed refers to the process of menopause as the "journey into enlightenment." Having completed this process for yourself, would you agree with that?

Helen: Absolutely. In fact, that's what this series is all about. The full-scale exhibition of "Birthing the Crone" is a sacred journey.

It begins with the experience of chaos and undoing, the coming apart. Everything is out of control in your body, and it's fearful. If you understand it though, you realize that it is a process and you will emerge on the other side of it. My artwork expresses this journey into enlightenment, into harmony, though I didn't name it, understand it, or own it as such until it was complete.

Lora: In the Native American traditions, the elders would tell their stories. This storytelling was an important part of the elders' contribution to their community.

I was contemplating how you not only use your art to tell your story, but also teach other women how to do this in your workshops, how to tell their stories through art. Could you share your thoughts about these workshops?

Helen: It was my yoga teacher who inspired me to open my studio for these workshops. My own studio is a beautiful, nurturing, and creative space that sits in a beautiful garden in the back of my house.

The women who come to my workshops are choosing to come, so there is already a degree of consciousness. We form a connection based on the sacred feminine form of the circle. I share a theme based on my own experience, and then each woman shares briefly of themselves.

I feel very strongly that my role is simply one of facilitator. I'm not there to teach technique. Everybody is an artist naturally, and in my studio entering that persona is effortless. What I have to offer is that I can help bring each woman into connection with whatever is calling her — a color, a texture, a medium. . .

At the end of the day, we share our work and our process.

These workshops, this sharing, is part of my process, too. I need to come into community in this way. It's transcendent for all of us.

Lora: There is a cultural conditioning that tells us that at this point in our lives we are through, done. Yet, the archetype of the Wise Woman, the Crone, tells us instead that we are entering a stage of heightened creativity where we actually have more to give our community. I feel that your gift, your contribution nurtures that truth, draws that creativity out of women. I want to thank you personally for that.

Helen: It is a terrible tragedy that our culture makes us less able to give. Our elderly are marginalized and put aside. The women I work with all have so much to give, and they want to give at this stage in their lives.

Just as with the feminist movement, we have to empower ourselves and help each other through this so that we can shift the culture. Resisting the cultural phobias about growing older begins right at home — within our own bodies. How each of us sees our own aging process can in turn influence how the culture sees it.

When you look at the forces at work in the world today, it's very apparent that we need Crone energy. Every woman can heal herself, can bring this Crone energy forward. We each have a job to do in the world — even if it's just in our own inner lives.

Helen Redman, MFA, is a widely exhibited figurative painter, teacher, feminist commentator, and grandmother, who shares her art in the context of life issues.

Born in 1940, throughout her adult life Helen has followed the tradition of artist as shaman, healer, and educator, as she uses her art and teaching abilities to encourage women to claim "growing older" as a time of heightened creativity and spiritual growth.

She has taught at the University of Colorado and the University of Iowa, has lectured and exhibited her art across the United States, and has been an active force for gaining support and recognition for women in the arts. She co-founded Front Range Women in the Visual Arts in Boulder, Colorado, in the 1970s, and served as the first president of the San Diego Women's Caucus for the Arts in the 1990s.

She currently has a book in progress titled Birthing the Crone: Aging into Full Creativity. She can be found online at BirthingTheCrone.com. Her email address is RedCrone@aol.com.