In the Imaginal Realm Before She Could Read: A Healing A/r/tographic Inquiry

Authors

Barbara Bickel, Southern Illinois University CarbondaleFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6714-0575

Abstract

This healing a/r/tographic inquiry ritually cycles through ancestral time to the present inspired by a recently found small grey book above the author’s dad’s desk—10 years after his death. This article shines light and memory onto spirit infused matrixial borderspace(s) through the co-mingling of text and image; returning to a site where text first met image in the early years of the author’s life. She is both the young dreaming artist-child and the responsible artist/researcher/teacher seeking embodied relational imaginal knowledge through the light of both image and word.

Author Biography

Barbara Bickel is a writing artist, researcher, teacher and Emerita Faculty of Art Education, Southern Illinois University. A multi-media and performance ritual artist, she practices socially-engaged art with the human and more-than-human world. She lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia on Vancouver Island where she serves as co-artistic director of Studio M*: A Collaborative Research Creation Lab Intersecting Arts, Culture & Healing. She is author of the Palgrave Macmillan book Art, Ritual and Trance Inquiry: Arational Learning in an Irrational World, and co-author of the Routledge book Art-Care Practices for Restoring the Communal: Education, Co-Inquiry and Healing. To see more of her art and writing go to: http://www.studiom.space and http://www.barbarabickel.ca

Recommended Citation

Bickel, Barbara (2022) "In the Imaginal Realm Before She Could Read: A Healing A/r/tographic Inquiry," Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 7.
Available at: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/vol7/iss1/7