Hi, I'm Crystal Marie!

ARTIST | WRITER | WAY POINTER


I’m not here to teach you to make art. I’m here to teach you to use your voice!


My passion in teaching comes from discovering that my intuitive voice is simply the core, most authentic expression, of my own dang voice. Learning to tune in to listen to it has led me to create art, and a life, that is beyond what I ever believed possible.

 

+ Everything I ever wanted was on the other side of fear +

For the first 37 years of my life, I let fear determine my path. It was a true crash and burn experience, lovingly referred to as my long slow unraveling, that led me back to myself as an artist and a human being. Finally sitting down at the studio table after ignoring my creative yearnings for so long, marked the beginning of my healing journey, allowing me to fully own and integrate my stories as integral part of the woman I am, rather than hiding them from others in shame. 

Fear is a monster of a dream killer. Facing that thing can feel a bit like a game of Davy and Goliath. But not facing that thing is a guaranteed ticket to a life filled with more of the same. Standing up to it will stir up every single core lie that binds you. 

Is that where you are today? What an exciting place to be! Feel that fear and step off the cliff anyway.

 

Canaries were meant to fly!

Crystal Marie, Deeper now on Substack

Many an artist’s bio begins with a similar tale of knowing they were an artist from the time they were old enough to hold a crayon. The truth for me was that I had always been a writer.

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It is rising up my spine with a tingling sensation, this resolve I feel. Like an injection of cortisol, suddenly I can stand up straight and look that old constant companion fear right in the eye and thank it for its service in all of its failed attempts to keep me safe over the years. 

Misguided as it was, it wrapped me in the safety of its cocoon. Always watching out for the shoe that would drop. The repercussion for my imperfection to come. Always mindful of the curve in the road just ahead, lest I miss it in my carelessness and go careening over the side of the canyon. It locked me in and threw away the key knowing, like the silkworm, that I did not have what it takes to break myself free. 

But what it did not know about the silkworm and me, is that the darkness was not a place of hiding, it was a place of transformation. It was a place where very real and necessary changes were occurring away from the scrutiny of the ever present "They". As in "What would They think?" A place that silkworm, and my own being, were forming wings at the very same time that our insides were learning the truth that created the opening through which we would emerge. 

It's funny what can be accomplished in the dark. Where fear and awful lies sought to bury me, the truth was doing its work to set me free. I didn't need to run myself ragged trying to find it. It was always there. 

Always had been a part of me. 


~ Crystal Marie, Blog excerpt, 9/20/2020”

Workshop Gallery

Nushu: The Secret Language of Women

Literally interpreted as "Women's writing", Nushu is a language of sisterhood, sorrow, and dreams, created and used exclusively by women.

Nushu women shared their most intimate longings in written form and song. Born of a time of oppression, the calligraphy like stroke of each syllable created an indelible record of their most intimate emotions and laments on such items as scrolls, books, quilts, and fans. 

In this course, participants will create their own visual secret language through intuitive mark-making, staining, rusting,  deconstruction, stitching, and repair. Final project will bind individual compositions together into a beautiful scroll or altered book.

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