Vera Long: Surrendering to the new & wild ! Inner landscapes come alive and free us in their expression
- 9femme
- Jul 1
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 4
Independence day…what a loaded yet thrilling potential. To live is to change and grow, often in challenging ways. I’ve found the most exquisitely nourishing treasures in the simplest things…gardening, cooking, drawing, friends, the coffee shop, talking about ideas with new friends. In this current time of bracing flux and social turmoil, I find myself no longer able to tolerate isolation…
So I reach out! It’s time to express and connect and co-create a better place for us all in this morass of beauty, rage, quietness and reckoning. Forward together!
I’ve been inspired to try something new…something I never thought I would and have long told people so! ~ Acting. I’d never do that…but here I am, I couldn’t resist the invitation….
I’ve joined a the small and mighty local theater : “Veritas” to study under Rosie Gordon. It is a bit terrifying and a thrilling adventure because of it! I’ve found that acting is yet another way to venture under other peoples’ skins…their stories, their struggle and laughter and to embody it all in motion. Best of it all, (and scariest to me) acting requires surrender…and trust in others when you are not in complete control.
I can feel it alchemizing me and showing up in my art practice and real-life relations!
Visual art is typically a solo endeavor. There are collaborations, of course, but the “old chestnut” mythos of the painter is that of the lone wolf…always striving for utter uniqueness in style, a singular voice and vision…but who does what’s expected? No card-carrying revolutionary would stand for even a shred of complacency!
Trying something creatively new is a sure way to wake up all your cells. I’m adoring being in a setting where I barely understand the bigger picture but I am swept along in play….That is what it is to come alive and feel! We all need to be open to change, because like it or not, Change has found us. We are in the woods now..misty and twisty, and sometimes quite dark and there’s plenty of howling going on……We need to meet each other and ourselves just exactly where we are…and head for the light together.
In the spirit of surrender to exciting live collaboration, I am inviting other local makers, musicians and craftspeople to show/perorm at my studio with me this Saturday, July 12th. The Meiner’s Oaks and Arbolada group are a gang of gorgeous and fine hooligans to me, some of my favorite artists and people! I encourage you to visit us all and hear the stories and revel in the new art.
Let’s co-create in style! ~ with love & communal courage, Vera
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