New Things

Today, I am proud to say I have an etsy shop, I can be found on twitter and I have a facebook fan page. Today I have a small arts label and am beginning to work hard to promote it in different ways including with this blog. I live now with my husband a physicist in Vienna Austria, far from where I originated in Boston MA. I study archaeology part time and live not just with my husband but with our cat Sisu the homicidal maniac and Yoda the Dodo dog.

This blog is about my life and work. Morgaine's Well is the small arts label I have created. I needed a creative outlet, while striving for a deeper understanding of nature and human nature. I find my answers and the markers that mark out my path for me, in ancient myths and legends of a wide variety of cultures. I work in many different mediums lately however my focus has been jewelry art. But, that can change at any moment.... With the changing of the moon phase, the wind direction or the ocean tide.

I suppose even before Morgaine's Well existed in name it existed in spirit. From the time I was around 11. I became fascinated with ancient myths and stories from all over. It was a short hop from there to becoming fascinated by the cultures from which these stories came. By the time I hit highschool, I had a track record of truancy that would blow your mind. But Iwasn't off smoking dope just off school property. I wasn't off doing bad deeds in the neighborhood. I was at the library. Reading everything I could get my grubby little pubesant hands on related to the subjects of mythology and ancient cultures that interested me. That was the beginning... Who knew truancy could lead to life long ambitions of reviving and understanding long dead and magical arts?

The more I studied these ancient cultures the more I became fascinated by their religions and religious practices and the meaning and the practical significance of the practices they employed in their long past long buried ancient time periods. I began practicing the occult, largely a revival of the ancient druidic beliefs from what most call the celts. It was actually a roman emperor who first gave the people of ireland and england and the so called celtic isles the title of 'celt.' These tribal peoples would have and did consider each tribe to have a different name. The word celt as I learned while cutting a useless PE class one lovely friday, was actually the name of an art style not of a people until that roman emperor came along. That art style also didn't even originate in what we today call the celtic isles. It appears to have started in portugal, where the oldest forms of celtic art are found. I was fascinated! So I started reading a little too on what archaeology was telling us.

From there, I began to get older, the music I had been doing and the crafts I had first begun doing when I was a young child began taking on a new significance as I started to look to these ancient cultures and their stories for my inspirations.

The nexrt factor that filtered in I guess, was being born and raised in a buddhist zen center. I was encouraged to ask deep meaningful questions about everything from the day I was able to verbalize a question. That would be at 9 months old.

Finally, I read The Mists Of Avalon, and something began to click into place, the story of Morgaine and creating the sword excaliber down in the well of Avalon. Something started to become clear.... Here I was with so many craft and art interests and no way to unify them. Which would I pursue? I had to pretty much choose one but how can you choose between so many things you love equally, I couldn't and decided I wouldn't.... I had other concerns too that were taking their toll on my life and had been for a long time. Concerns rather large for a young woman to have to take on.

I am dyslexic. I also alledgedly have ADHD. I don't know if it is true or false as far as ADHD goes. I am very interested in reading what I can about it to understand myself better but so far it seems evidence of an organic nature is lacking. That doesn't change the fact that part of why I play in so many different mediums is because I have trouble focusing too long on any one medium. So I needed to create a way, find a solution to my dilemna of having to choose what I would focus on. So, finally the idea for Morgaine's Well became clear, one banner that encompassed my creative freedom. This heading would unify everything creative I do unifying them. I had found my solution.

I never would have been able to think so creativelyh and abstractly without my childhood. It was really hard being a kid with such labels as Dyslexic and ADHD. I couldn't write my own first name until I was nine. No one can imagine the kind of pain these terrible labels and the treatment that goes with them inflicts on children. Much of my creativity came to exist because of my disabilities. They made me strong. They forced me to be creative and to think outside the box. Without them, my life would have gone a very different direction than it has. Oh there are days I wake up and I wonder what it all might have been like if I didn't have to develop such creative thinking at such a young age.... But the truth is, I wouldn't trade my creative mind for anything. I love what I do with it. It enriches my life and the lives of the people I have surrounded myself with. So, I suppose I don't consider myself disabled by them at all. They have enabled me to become who I am.

The reason I chose out of all the celtic myths and legends and goddesses associated with wells, to use Morgaine, the half sister of Arthur Pendragon also known as King Arthur of Camelot, is because like me, she was just grossly misunderstood. Her story became tangled and twisted by those profiting off of the coversion of the heathens. Painting a demonic witch over the outlines of a mythical woman, a healer and a creative being. Much like the way those over analyzing my every breath to make up labels to call me as a reason an excuse to treat me differently and cruely did when i was a young child. Oh yes those so called experts in LD, all of them using subjective evidence to declare me other than human to give society someone to mistreat. It was a childhood full of such persecution. Similar i think in many respects to that suffered by the image of Morgaine Le Fay.

So I used my creativity to give myself creative freedom, adopted a mythical figure I identify with, and then I began asking where it all comes from? Where do I go when I create? Down the rabbit hole? No that isn't quite right, down the well! The well all artists know about. The one we find our creative inspirations in. The well, Morgaine tended to on Avalon.... Morgaine's Well.


Between Reality and Anwen, Land of Fairy, floats the enchanted isle of Avalon.

There, Morgaine, priestess of the moon and half-sister of King Arthur Pendragon, tends a sacred wishing well.

It is the well of inspiration, enchantment, and wisdom from which all creativity and magic are drawn.