We recently connected with Georgia Reash and have shared our conversation below.
Georgia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
At the end of 2019, I was inspired to create a unique and inviting healing-arts project that would bring support to women who have experienced sexual assault, abuse or harassment. #53 Vaginas and Vulvas© is a tasteful presentation of 53 colorful and contemporary acrylic paintings of women’s genitalia. Each piece has savory meaning with intriguing titles and subtitles.
The paintings are depicted in an amusing food motif, creating a delectable event that invites smiles, laughter, and learning. The ‘edible’ vagina-art is intended to raise awareness around the largest and longest standing public health pandemic in the world – the sexual assault of women and girls. The installation serves as an honorarium to the 53 U.S. million (plus) women who have experienced sexual assault or rape (between 2001 and 2021).
Feast on the flavorful beauty of every delicate morsel and bring honor to those who have survived! As a community impact event, #53 Vaginas and Vulvas© my goal is to bring together visual art, the spoken word and education to create an experience that inspires on many levels. Building on the tide of justice making for survivors, my goal as an artist and poet is to provide a one-of-a-kind “healing-arts placemaking event” that harnesses the power of creativity to effect change.
“Vagina art” has always been an iconic niche in the art world, but few projects are intended for healing trauma. The sheer collection of 53 vaginas all depicted as tasty food items also has never been done before. While being surrounded by whimsical vaginas is a sensational and sensual experience, it can also teach and inform. The biggest challenge to social change is our inability to talk about difficult topics; this setting offers a safe space to do so while honoring the experience of those who have suffered. On the continuum of bringing justice to survivors – #53 Vaginas and Vulvas© offers a nurturing and distinguished space for reparation.
The exhibit – in full or in part – can be offered as a short-stay art installation, a larger scale event, or even at home-based gatherings. Our team of volunteers is looking for collaborators and investors who want to help bring the #53VV vision to locations throughout the world. Through this effort, we will raise awareness around the longest standing public health pandemic in the world – the sexual assault of women and girls, the resulting trail of impact in our communities.
Georgia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My evolution as a creative began at the early age of eight, when poetry and short story writing became one of my first practices of self-expression. This interest in writing, and the arts overall, was something I took with me into adulthood. In 2000, however, at the age of 40, I experienced a mental health crisis due to my own unresolved past trauma issues that I had put on the ‘back burner’. This crisis opened my range as a writer and visual artist, and creativity became a primary tool in my healing and recovery process.
Over the past 23 years, my work as a poet, playwright, artist, author and lecturer has focused on the journey to wholeness and wellness through a wide range of projects, programs and resources. As a transformational multi-artist, I love to help all survivors of violence reclaim self-love and sovereignty. I also love to leverage the voice of the community through projects that raise awareness about trauma and build common ground.
In addition to #53 Vaginas and Vulvas©, my launch art exhibit, Metamorphosis©, was finalized in 2006 and includes a 16-piece collection with poetry; depicting the unfolding of mental health decline and the subsequent phoenix-rising story. In 2009, my first healing-arts play was also produced, Journey of the Hummingbird Minister© followed later by several poetry and memoir publications including the latest in 2022, Finding the Home Within©. In the Fall of 2023, my first (eagerly anticipated) nonfiction book will be released, called I Want Good Sex: Reclaiming the Power of Your Sensuality After Living with Abuse, Assault or Stupid Meanies©, offering a creative self-help roadmap for reclaiming sensual depth after violence and the authentic self.
Over the past five years, I’ve had the honor to have my work featured in several publications and project including Ohio Beacon Arts, Equity Literature, The Healing Arts Project, Women Who Roar, Hessler Street Fair and The Scheherazade Project. I also am the co-creator of I am Woman and This is My Story©, a creative arts movement supporting women on their mental health journey. I am also honored to sit on the board of directors for The Scheherazade Project, an international Artivism organization.
In addition to my arts career, I serve as President of BrightSpot Communities LLC, and organization committed to developing affordable, sustainable and equitable neighborhoods and communities. Within that space, healing the impact of trauma in individuals and families plays and long-term role in improving environmental and economic vitality.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My work as a transformative artist is driven by a mission to help others heal; namely, to bring healing resources to women, and all individuals, who have experience sexual or physical assault and inspire them forward on their journey to wellbeing. Added to that goal is to provide therapists, educators, and counselors insight into sexual and sensual health after assault.
Embedded in this hope is to simply help individuals understand how traumas – both big and small – impact our lives, and the world around us. In the past twenty years alone, women and girls worldwide, number in the hundreds of millions, are living with the trail of trauma and the toll it takes on mental, physical, spiritual and financial health. Brain research also shows that trauma literally reshapes its ability to experience pleasure, trust, and self-control; and in the medical community, emerging research suggests the direct relationship between trauma and auto-immune disorders, with some physicians citing 99% of their chronic pain patients have experienced sexual or physical trauma.
What the public doesn’t understand, however, is that the cost of abuse is far deeper than the individual or family story. It is estimated that, in the United States, the economic burden of sexual abuse is approximated at $127 billion dollars per year when including the trickle-down effect of trauma. This includes the collective price of treating chronic mental and physical health problems, addiction, workforce disability, housing transition, criminal activity, divorce, lack of productivity, divorce, and family challenges. That means rape has cost the U.S. $2 trillion five hundred forty billion dollars over twenty years (2001 to 2021).
While there is a lot of work to be done, raising awareness through community-based trauma education serves an important role in getting resources to those in need, as well as helping the general public understand the insidious and destructive impact of violence, in any form. Through the power of creative arts and community dialogue, I am hoping to create opportunities for healing and change.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
In a nutshell, both society and government need to understand the influencing power of creative arts and culture on the prosperity and vitality of people and cities. This appreciation leads to the opening of financial resources for artists and creatives, as well as employment and enterprise building opportunities.
According the National Endowment for the Arts, the country of Finland spends the highest amount per capita on the public arts. Is it no wonder, then, that Finland has also been voted the U.N.’s happiest country in the world for six years in a row? While the causal relationship in not yet proven, it does not take a research scientist to demonstrate how creative experiences change lives and communities.
As a developer of sustainable communities at BrightSpot Communities, I am also attuned to the role creatives play in spurring peacemaking and building common ground among neighbors. Equally important is the dynamic impact of growing the creative class economy and opening up work opportunities for creatives. In more simply terms, artists are an essential pulse in the heartbeat of both economic and community life.
Community leaders, organizations, companies and educational institutions can go much much farther in integrating the arts in both the workplace and broader community. Through intentionally developed events, workshops, project and cross-sector collaborations the ideas are most certainly endless. Artists and creatives are the heartbeat of creative class economic development; not only does the resulting culture enrich daily life in the neighborhood and community – the ripple effect of the arts enhances attraction to an entire region.
It is my hope that all of the healing creative projects that I create and collaborate with contribute to the powerful momentum of strengthening society through the arts.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://georgiareash.wixsite.com/wealthiswithin
- Instagram: zesty_goddess
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/georgia.reash
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgia-m-reash-0043a64/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wealthiswithin8888/about