Photo by Nikki Moon
Anita’s Story
My connection with nature began even before I can remember. According to my mother, as she walked to the market pushing me in a stroller, I insisted on stopping to smell every flower we passed. Nature continued to support me by providing solace through the vagaries of adolescence as I walked on the isolated winter beach in my hometown of Asbury Park, NJ.
My first artistic influence was learning to knit and sew from my mother and grandmother. But it was a home economics class in middle school that triggered my desire to express myself through textiles and fiber. I started knitting non-stop and designing and making all my clothes in high school.
As an American Studies major in college, I learned about traditional crafts and decided to try for myself. I spent a season at Peter’s Valley Crafts School in Layton, NJ studying spinning and weaving. Excited by my first experience of a rural environment and influenced by the culture of the time, the stage was set for my back-to-the-land move to Vermont. I lived in a tent until January while building a house with my partner, had my baby at home with no running water, thawed drain pipes under the house at 25 below with wet rags.
I learned about my new environment in friendlier ways as well. I ferreted out the farmers that had the best spinning fleeces for sale, walked the woods and fields gathering plants I was learning to use for dyeing, and growing an overly large organic garden. I developed innovative knitting techniques and the pieces I created were displayed in regional craft shows, ACC shows in Rhinebeck, NY and Baltimore, MD as well as on Newbury Street in Boston. During this time I also set forth on my path of personal and spiritual growth that continues to this day.
Single motherhood postponed the professional aspect of my work but never dampened my need to create. I traveled to Boston to participate in a group called Explorations in Color. I studied color with students of Suzanne Caygill, founder of the concept of personal color, and continued to co-create with nature by creating lush gardens for myself and others as well as making and using my own flower essences. And of course I continued to design and create clothing for myself and my daughter who went on to study costume design.
After a move to the sun and warmth of Sarasota, FL in 2003, I discovered clay. I dove in hands first taking classes locally and discovered that the pinching technique had the same immediacy for me as spinning yarn or digging in the dirt. Moving back to the mountains in 2010, this time near Asheville, NC, I have found a supportive environment for combining working with my hands in clay, connecting with nature on many different levels and for my spiritual journey. My greatest desire is to share these loves with others.
About Anita’s Art
Combining the most ancient of clay techniques, pinching, with the refinement of porcelain I create clay objects that hold an energy of aliveness, compassion and possibility.
Common threads in my art throughout my life have been:
- Expressing my connection with nature
- Setting something in motion to see what emerges (planting seeds, putting yarn in a dye bath, holding a ball of clay)
- Working directly with my hands with a minimum of tools
- Love of color and the spark created by the interaction of colors
- Being transported to the present moment by the process of creating
Each piece I create is completely individual. To form the vessel I use the pinching technique that I love for its directness and naturalistic, earthy quality. After much experimentation I found my “voice” using porcelain clay for its refinement. I find it the perfect medium for conveying my personal style and aesthetic which combines the organic and rustic with a delicacy and elegance.
Creating these pieces brings me great joy, a sense of who I am and a feeling of participating with the beauty of nature around me.
Anita’s Spiritual Journey
Unlike many who have remembered experiencing their guides or angels or seeing fairies or the like, I have grown into and deepened my sense of connection over years as I continue my personal growth.
Over the last 45 years I have read and worked with many practitioners and teachers, some embodied, some not. I have learned to ask: Does this information make me feel inspired? More loving? More joy? More freedom? More me? Where there is a yes, I embrace the teachings. Where there is a no, I let it go.
Mostly I’ve practiced, using my life as a classroom. I have grown through many belief systems, finding value in them all. I expect that to continue.
My awarenesses are subtle but nonetheless, powerful. From experience, I have learned to trust in a flash of inspiration, in what I sense and in the words that sometimes come from my pen but not exactly from my mind. And with using essences and kinesiology.
I am on the path of shifting my mind from the leader of my life to the follower of my heart. Transforming it from a frightened dictator to a master of discernment. I am learning to respond to the subtle internal nudges and to discern whether their motivation is from fear or love and to forgive myself if I get it “wrong”, knowing that with each awareness, I grow.
“I believe that we must become what we want to see in the world, and that as we do so, not only our experience will change but we will influence the collective as well. All my work is to help others as well as myself with that practice.”
Anita Walling