I’ve been thinking about change, and the stories we tell ourselves about it. Dorothy gets launched into the spinning sky by a great storm and placed down in an enchanted land. Countless fairy tales have us walking through the dark woods--sometimes lost, sometimes cold, but eventually coming to a new and better place. Stories of change are endless because change is a fundamental principle of our lives. These stories teach us how to get from one place to another, how we emerge from one state into something new, how butterflies and spring arise from a barren earth.

​The thing about change is it comes, indifferent to the manner in which we meet it. With time and with luck, we develop or adopt tools to mark the path for ourselves as we go. This personal mapping is a way of acknowledging the place in which we find ourselves, a way of marking the moment. This simple act of marking initiates a cascade effect – we become self-aware, we see the arrow on the map that says, “You Are Here”, and we make choices about the next step.
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When we miss the chance to pause and take stock, we can get off course pretty easily. It might be a gradual drift, or it could be an abrupt U-turn. Either way, we breeze past the milepost that reminds us, “You Know Where You Are” or “Someone Has Been Here Before”.
When we do pause enough to reflect -- and if we have tools at hand like creative process, meditation, or a supportive connection with ourselves & community -- we find a way to name where we are, to give it shape. We give it a shape that is particular to this place at this time, and we create it from the resources at hand.

​Those materials are absolutely determined by the surrounding circumstances – on a path through the woods we might stack rocks; at the kitchen table we have a long heart-to-heart with a friend; in a Cairn workshop we shape clay. In meditation, this can be the simple act of noticing ‘thinking’ and returning to the breath; or the sudden clarity of presence that washes over you while standing at the sink. A guiding image or a searing insight can emerge from this attentive frame of mind.
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It’s these images and insights that become embedded in our consciousness as markers of where we’ve traveled & what we’ve learned. We can use those markers to evolve a sense of our personal narrative, giving it coherence and perspective. The terrain shifts as we continue into life. We give ourselves these moments to help us tell the story of where we are, how we got here, and what might be next. They are how we tell the story of our own changes--how
we make choices and what we learn from them.

​Last October in Portland, Oregon, The Next Cairn exhibition and workshops provided a special opportunity to mark the path--for me and, I would imagine, for all who participated. With the support of our community we carved out a moment in time to pause, reflect, and give a shape to the past, present and future. When we give expression to these moments, it’s like divining. We consult the creative intelligence within us as a means of navigating the changing inner and outer terrain. And that’s what we did, with deep thanks to Corinne Peterson for guiding the process and helping us to reveal our personal paths forward.

​Elizabeth Russell is the director of Be Space Integrative Arts in Portland Oregon. Last year, she joined forces with several other volunteers to share Corinne’s work in three public workshops and also a private offering to Outside In, which provides services to homeless youth. www.bespacepdx.com, www.lifeartbeing.org. 

I joined the Cairn Project in 2016 to talk with Corinne Peterson about the ways in which her work with the community could be archived. (1)
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Through Shaping Life, Shaping Clay workshops, Peterson has been building not only a cairn, but also an archive of experience from the individuals who participate. However, there is one problem with presenting this project this way: the stories are literally locked in stone. 

History becomes meaningful when we see ourselves in it, and archives play a big role in that. Making art with the community, as Peterson has done, creates an opportunity for individuals to publicly share components of their lives, an experience that many find to be empowering. By enabling an outlet for sharing, artists are helpful healers. Peterson has many moving and memorable experiences to recount from her role leading Shaping Life, Shaping Clay workshops, but few stories have been written down.
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In a discussion about how to highlight community members through archives, it is important to also recognize that some people prefer to process experience by looking inward, and not everyone cares to share publicly, particularly on the subject of trauma. Without the need for words, the stones shaped by thoughtful hands hold the memories of their maker. Anyone who has had the pleasure of exploring the cairn at past exhibitions can attest to the power embedded in each ceramic object.

Building an archive driven from the stones and stories shared at Shaping Clay, Shaping Life workshops will take a great deal of effort, but the steps to achieving that goal are not necessarily complex. Each stone has been photographed individually, and these photographs are waiting to be paired with records that connect them to individuals. To maintain sensitivity and privacy, the stones will be matched with participants by first name. Once each stone has been paired with its maker, the photographs can be shared digitally, and an invitation will be extended through individual contacts and workshop organizers to invite a recollection of experience: recounting the workshop itself, or the experience brought to the table that day.

History is constructed from the remnants of what is left behind. The problem with this is that the historical record is flawed and not everyone is represented. Archive collecting priorities are often driven by the power of individuals and institutions, and the responsibility for keeping a record of everyday experience falls to the individual.
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Peterson and I have mused over the Cairn Project archive’s potential as a way of making sure every single workshop participant, over 550 individuals, is represented by stone or by story. That is our dream for the archive, and bit by bit, we hope the community can help to create and maintain this history, and honor each individual’s experience in this way.

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​*Kara Jefts is a professional archivist. She received her Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory, & Criticism, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kara has been archivist for the Cairn Project since September, 2016. http://www.karajefts.com/biocontact.html 

Next Week’s Post:
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Guest Elizabeth Russell, of BeSpace Integrative Arts in Portland, Oregon, discusses Choice Points and The Next Cairn

​Very often, and particularly in times such as these, the suffering of people prompts us to want to turn away from seeing it. Yet, public and collective art works such as Cairn & Cloud offer us the opportunity to witness the depth of trauma in ordinary people and their courage in facing it. This courage enables them to be transformed into stronger, more beautiful human beings. We see their valor in facing it both alone and together.

I was privileged to participate in this work when I joined Corinne in leading workshops at El Circulo, a center for Mexican-American women in Brighton Park and at Sarah’s Inn, an Oak Park community organization dedicated to improving the lives of those affected by domestic violence. At each workshop, I saw women seated side by side reach for the clay to re-create their trauma and express their hope. As they shaped the clay, some talked about their experiences and hopes and others did not. But each of them witnessed the trauma and transformation of the others as they embraced their own. 

Today we all witness and are inspired by the courage of each and all who created this magnificent collective artwork by facing the truth of their own terrible and merciless experiences. The witness of this collective artwork is all the more powerful for its eloquent silence. 

 El Ojo Que Llora in Lima, Peru – Witness to victims of terrorism in Peru

Before they began to shape their clay at the workshops, the women viewed images of other collective art works. Among these was a labyrinth, a magnificent memorial to the very ordinary people of Peru—over 70,000—who were murdered during 20 years of terrorism that ended
​in 2000. 

The sculptor Lika Mutal, my dear friend, who died just over a week ago (November, 2016), created the labyrinth, El Ojo Que Llora or The Eye That Cries, in a city park in Lima. Yes, she put this memorial to victims of terrorism right in a city park so that as many people as possible could witness the importance of the lives of these very ordinary people---people who would otherwise be forgotten. The labyrinth stones commemorating each person were also made by very ordinary people who are relatives and friends of those who were killed.

​El Ojo Que Llora began with the vision of one woman who mobilized others to help her create that memorial. Cairn & Cloud also began with the vision of one woman, Corinne Peterson, whose dedication to this vision mobilized so many to support the transformation of those who have suffered trauma.  Without doubt, this commitment to honor and transform the suffering of ordinary people which came toward us from Peru is now joined with Cairn & Cloud. No doubt it will inspire those in other places, beginning with Portland, Oregon, to witness to and transform the trauma of ordinary people. 

​A Place to Sustain and Extend this Witness

As the mission of Cairn & Cloud spreads, its expression created first here in Chicago needs a home. We are seeking a public location that will welcome Cairn & Cloud for now and the future: an indoor space (since it is made of clay), where people will see it as they enter or walk through the place. We hope you will think about this and send us possible locations that may welcome Cairn & Cloud. Please send your ideas to cairnprojectchicago@gmail.com.

Coming Posts
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Reflections from The Next Cairn in Portland, an extension of The Cairn Project
Guest posts by Elizabeth Russell and Kara Jefts

In 2012, I was exploring ancient rock carvings in Tanumshede, Bohuslän(1), Sweden and was surprised to come across a huge 5000 year old burial cairn. Later it inspired me to start the Cairn Project, in which hundreds of clay rock forms were piled together to create a cairn. But in our case, what was “buried” were the personal experiences of trauma and pain of the people who shaped them.
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If you tour Robben Island in South Africa(2), the guide will likely point out a cairn in the rock quarry, where 1300 political prisoners of apartheid were forced to work. Nelson Mandela spent 17 of his 28 years of imprisonment on Robben Island. In a 1995 reunion of ex-political prisoners, Mandela spontaneously put down a stone in the middle of the quarry. As each former prisoner followed suit, a cairn was formed, an impromptu memorial of their history on Robben Island.
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​Inuksuk, a type of Arctic cairn, has its roots in Inuit culture. Hundreds of these cairns are scattered through the Arctic region from Alaska to Greenland, where the landscape is predominantly the tundra biome and there are few natural landmarks. Built stone on stone (or boulder on boulder), Inuksuk most commonly take the shape of a person. Wikipedia suggests “they may have been used for navigation, as a point of reference, a marker for travel routes, fishing places, camps, hunting grounds, places of veneration, drift fences used in hunting or to mark a food cache.” Enukso Point on Baffin Island, designated a National Historic Site of Canada, has more than a hundred Inuksuk.(3)

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​Devotional Cairns

Look along paths, roadsides and rivers in regions where Tibetan Buddhism is practiced in Tibet and Nepal, and you will find mani stones.(4) You will come across mounds and walls of rocks inscribed with a mantra, a form of prayer. Most often the mantra is “Om mani padme hum” which translates to "Hail to the jewel in the lotus." In the Cairn Project, we often thought of this expression when we created forms to represent our basic inner light and beauty. 
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If you’ve hiked in rocky terrain, you may have seen rock piles created to help you stay on the path. Psychologist Gretchen Schmelzer(5) writes in a blog post, Finding a way forward when the path isn’t clear, about how important such guides can be for travelers in life, as well as on a foggy forest path. Schmelzer’s words inspired Marcy Setniker’s choice to attend a Cairn Project workshop in Chicago and her decision to bring the project to Portland, Oregon (more about the Cairn Project in Portland in a different post).
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Take a walk into Cornell University’s Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary and you will find Sapsucker Cairn, created by Andy Goldsworthy in 2008 at the end of eight years as a professor at Cornell. In an article marking that occasion, Goldsworthy said his work “is an ongoing effort to come to grips with impermanence and the relentless force of time.” Goldsworthy is a sculptor, photographer and environmentalist renowned world-wide for his site-specific sculpture and land art placed in natural and urban settings. 
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I see that my niece’s family felt the same way when they vacationed on Minnesota’s north shore. At the edge of Lake Superior, they couldn’t resist trying their hand at cairn-building.

Have you made a cairn? Or seen one? Or heard about a cairn you would like to see? I would like to know about it. Please add your comment to this blog post. 

Coming Blog Posts
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Reflections from The Next Cairn in Portland, an extension of The Cairn Project
Guest posts by Carroll Cradock, Kara Jefts, and Elizabeth Russell

Babies tell stories through their bodies. They grab with their eyes and hands. They reach with their mouths. They move toward excitement and away from danger.  All of this, when things go well, happen in the “circle of security”(1) provided by the caregivers who love and watch over them.

​Babies enter the world seeking a secure and protective relationship

It is a basic tenet of attachment theory that babies enter the world seeking a secure and protective relationship with an adult. Children can most fully explore their worlds when they can get supportive, nurturing encouragement and reassurance from their main caregiver.
When someone has experienced trauma in their own past, parenting a vulnerable and dependent infant may trigger unexpected worries, fears and intense reactions. Often the work of an Infant Mental Health specialist is to help parents reflect on their own pasts in the context of seeing the world through their baby’s eyes in order to provide that secure base and nurturing joy. Because the awful truth is that trauma is everywhere. And the hopeful truth is that relationships can be repaired – but repairing relationships takes a lot of educated support.
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Rules to develop a safe place

In a past post, I mentioned a parent/child drop-in group that was developed to address the effects of multi-layered trauma on parents and young children living in the Little Village community.  See article about it. The group met weekly, and after every group meeting facilitators met to reflect and plan.  We developed a set of “rules,” some of which were highly relevant for the development of the Cairn Project. The essentials were:

• Provide physically and emotionally safe places to meet in the community. We generally met in spaces provided by sponsoring agencies.
• Provide lovely snacks that feed the soul and are available throughout the group meeting.
• Provide nice materials for writing – good pen/paper. These details are important as they endow respect and worth.
• Provide consistent facilitators who have a background in mental health. (Before becoming a clay artist, Corinne was a social worker and I am an infant mental health specialist.)
• Provide a consistent and nurturing structure in which participants are welcomed when they arrive and have time to reflect at the end. 
• Provide an introduction that frames the project and gives permission to be creative.
• Hold a positive, open and non-judgmental stance throughout.

​Transition from Drop-In Group to Cairn Project Workshop
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From our cumbersome beginnings (we would drag tons of materials and stress with technology), Corinne and I created a template for workshops that provided our own “Circle of Security” for participants. The workshop encouraged creativity, exploration and reflection and provided a place to celebrate and contain powerful emotions that were generated. 

The transition from Parent/Infant Drop-In group to Cairn Project workshop was fluid. While both populations and activities were distinct, the overarching goals were similar - developing capacities, creating community, promoting emotional safety. A key difference was that workshops were a one-time event, and the meaning that participants derived from participating lay in their own stories, sometimes shared and sometimes not. This is why the installation of ALL of the rocks and tokens of light became so important. And this is why recording people’s stories began to take on a significance that we did not understand at the beginning of the project. Stay tuned!

In ancient times, knowing when winter’s dark days would begin to lengthen was important news. Any people trying to make their food supplies last until plants would grow again followed the astronomical signs. Evidence of this day’s significance is seen in structures of stone aligned with the rising or setting sun on the solstice. Examples: Stonehenge in England. The passage tomb at Newgrange in Ireland. In Sicily, Italian archaeologists found a 5000 year old rock formation with a 3.2-foot diameter hole, aligned with the winter solstice sun.

From ancient times to today, people have celebrated the shift towards light in this time of darkness, whether specifically speaking of the solstice or not. Among contemporary celebrations are Hannakuh, Christmas, Kwanzaa and Eid Al-Fitr.

Respect for Rhythm
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Scientific studies on the rhythms of both animals and humans have shown how tied our bodies are to nature’s cycles, whether we think about and respect them, or not. Richard Heinberg wrote in his book, Celebrate the Solstice:
         “Today….we human beings have created a situation unique in nature, as well as in the history
           of our own species. We have gradually but decisively cut ourselves off from many of the cycles
           of the cosmos and of the biosphere and substituted arbitrary, economically determined temporal
           patterns. We have overridden the natural daily rhythms of light and dark with the artificial illumination
           of cities; the rhythms of the seasons with greenhouses and supermarkets, jet travel and central
           heating. Electromagnetic fields from power lines, house wiring, and appliances drown out subtle
           geomagnetic signals from the Earth. Clock times has replaced Sun and Moon times; nanosecond
           computer time makes heartbeat time imprecise and irrelevant.” (1)
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Heinberg’s book offers information about solstice festivals ancient and current and guidance for people interested in creating solstice rituals of their own. 

For many of us, the ability to celebrate during this dark time of year may be difficult. If we have suffered trauma, we may find it hard to open our hearts to the dark we experience inside ourselves. The challenge is to find safe and meaningful ways to consider our lives and to turn towards the light. This week, I chanced on Jeff Brown’s summary of the situation in our culture in his article, Praises For The Trauma Speakers – Let Them Whisper Your Heart Back To Life.
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          “We are only just beginning to understand the nature of trauma on this planet. We are only just
           beginning to understand that we are all trauma-survivors, to one degree or another. We are only just
           beginning to listen to the real story of our lives, after generations of denial, victim-bashing, ungrounded
           attempts to ‘rise above’ it.” (2) 
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​The challenge for each of us to create safe places where we can be still and listen deeply to ourselves.

(1) Cairns are used to mark important or sacred places and as markers along a path.​

My heart sang when I saw these sunlit Chinese Lantern seedpods in front of my son’s home. I paused to take them in—for longer than 20 seconds. I had learned from Rick Hanson’s fascinating book, Buddha’s Brain ​(1), that at least 20 seconds concentrating on something that sparks joy can increase a person’s happiness. The extended time strengthens associated neural pathways, which over time can change the balance between happiness and painful emotions in a person’s experience. From Buddha’s Brain, I learned science about the malleability of the brain, and ways to help heal the brain damaged by trauma. In designing the workshop, I thought about how to incorporate activities to increase participants’ feelings of compassion and hope, even though they were addressing their suffering.

Now, some info about three books from a list Lori Walsh sent me in 2014, when she heard I was beginning the Cairn Project. Earlier she had made the list for herself in response to the National Academy of Pediatrics' new emphasis on childhood trauma. The National Academy of Pediatrics noted the huge negative effects of unresolved trauma on both mental and physical health of children continues throughout their lives.

Molecules of Emotion: why you feel the way you feel (3) is Dr. Candace Pert’s memoir of her life as a researcher. She records the challenges of working as a woman in a male dominated research world, and she reports how she eventually overcame obstacles to her ability to formally test her intuitions. We benefit today from her discovery that emotions are stored in the body’s receptors and determining that emotional expression is key to integrating mind and body. You can link to a site (http://candacepert.com) featuring her life and contributions to the field of Mind-Body Medicine, the dawn of Psychopharmacology, and the drugs, like Peptide T, which she was testing for HIV, Alzheimer’s, Autism, and brain injury.   

Mended by the Muse: Creative Transformations of Trauma (4) is a memoir by psychoanalyst, painter, and holocaust survivor Sophia Richmond. This book was not cheap and the longer reviews I wanted to read had to be purchased. But I’m so glad I bought it. Sophia Richmond helped me articulate why I believe clay saved me and why I believe in the value of using clay to help others. When workshop participants dismissed their experiences of stress and loss as insignificant, I would say: “Your suffering is worthy of compassion.” I would quote Sophia Richmond, who describes trauma as falling on a continuum “ranging from the inevitable losses that we experience in our daily lives due to the human condition to exposure to extremely violent and catastrophic events outside of common human experience.”  She adds  “…creative action is one of the most effective ways of coping with trauma and its aftereffects.” (5) She continues throughout the book to show how she came to this conclusion, and she gives specific examples of how mending happens. You may listen to an evocative interview of the author following the book's 2014 publication on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBJTVq_62A). I highly recommend this book for art therapists and others using the arts to help people deal with trauma.

Here are more books I’d love to talk about, but there’s no more room in this blog!

You’re “crossing paths” with our new blog, the Cairn & Cloud Chronicle!

In the Cairn Project, we experienced the power of the creative arts to help us mend from the effects of trauma. The chronicle will be a place where those involved in the Cairn Project can continue to share their stories and where others will be inspired to tell theirs as well. Here people can learn of and share resources for continuing creative healing work. We will share news of the Cairn Project and other happenings that address healing from trauma.

​​In this first post, you can learn:

• What the Cairn project is
• How an unexpected meeting sparked the idea of the Cairn Project
• How another such meeting led to a recent extension of the project 

Hundreds have crossed paths with the Cairn Project

Here’s a brief summary of the Cairn Project with a link to more. Between 2014 and 2016, I, with many people assisting, developed and led the Cairn Project. First, in Shaping Clay, Shaping Life workshops, participants formed “rocks” of stoneware clay to hold their experiences of trauma. They also created small porcelain tokens of light to represent their inner light and hope. In public gallery spaces, the rocks were piled to form a memorial cairn with the tokens of light hovering like a cloud above it. The light over dark became a collective expression of trauma and hope. Read more on the Cairn Project Online Archive.

How “crossing paths” with a 750,000-volt proton atom splitter led to the Cairn Project

I saw a real, but no longer used, atom splitter in
the Elmhurst College Accelerator Art Space, while viewing the exhibit of my friend, Rebecca Wolfram. It was February, 2014, and that is when I conceived of the Cairn Project. The atom splitter reminded me that a primary motivation for my artwork is to explore and give voice to my inner experience of “splitting” due to traumatic childhood experiences. At the time I was also reading books and articles on brain research into how trauma causes people to split off from a part of themselves, and what can contribute to healing such brain splits. I asked myself, “If I were to make a new sculpture about this, what might it be?” Several thoughts hit me:

• a flash-back to a huge 25,000-year-old burial cairn I came across during a trip to Sweden
• the recent feeling of creating small black clay rocks to face into personal experiences of pain
• the memory of myself, as a psychotherapist, helping clients work with their suffering

These thoughts combined to spark the idea of holding clay workshops, where people would join with me to build such a cairn to represent the painful parts of our lives.

What happened when Marcy Setniker crossed paths with the Cairn Project

A year and a half ago, Marcy Setniker of Portland, Oregon, happened to hear about the Cairn Project from my son Tim, a co-worker. Her heart was so drawn to it that she spearheaded an extension of the project, The Next Cairn, in her city. She wanted to experience it herself, and have others experience it, too. Just this month Marcy and I co-led four Shaping Clay, Shaping Life workshops, including one at Outside In, an agency that serves Portland’s homeless youth. I was moved deeply, as I witnessed many people work with clay to express their experiences of trauma.