Sure! I suppose I’d like to start by saying that an important question guiding my practice has been: What is the function of art, particularly in a time such as ours? If you ask me, art plays a critical role in helping an individual, a community, or a culture, divise meaning in their lives. Art is a vehicle of expression, repair, collaboration, and world-building. I have always been passionate about meaning-making, on personal and collective scales. In addition to 15+ years of making and teaching art, I have spent time studying social theory, medicinal herbalism, somatic healing, and collective storytelling. These practices have become increasingly critical to the evolving orientation of my art practice. Over the last couple of years I have piloted many projects within this intersection, but here is one example:

Over the last year and half, I gather with four women once a month from Cleveland to read a chapter from Women Who Run with Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Reading these folk stories from around the world in a group setting has consistently supported our creative, emotional, phycological, and spiritual well-being, as we continue to deepen in friendship with each other. Additionally, last Spring I initiated a “Creative Storytelling Collective” to meet monthly in my studio space. Friends, local storytellers, and the general public are invited to explore creative approaches to storytelling. As a result of these endeavors, I am now in the process of collectively divising an epic that will eventually be told through a place-based storytelling collective that I plan to start in a year or two. You can see some of the works generating for the Epic in development here: https://www.annachapmanart.com/terra_minor