Creative Journeying: Art as Healing for Self, Kapwa, Earth

This gathering will center creative expression as a tool to cultivate healing for ourselves, kapwa and earth. In circle we will journey inward together, making art to process and share our lived experiences and reflections in the time of COVID-19. We will address the ‘inner critic’ that challenges creative expression, practice guided meditation for shifting mindset, relaxation and cultivating self-awareness, and use art and creativity as practices to heal and vision sustainability.   No prior art experience is necessary to join. We recommend bringing any of your favorite or available tools for creative expression (i.e. pens, paper, pencils, crayons, paint, wood, clay, etc.) and a journal. 

About Samantha “Sami See” Javier Curl

"Samantha “Sami See” Javier Curl is the daughter of Jo Ann Javier by way of Pasig City, Philippines and Jonathan David Curl with ancestry in Wales and Ireland. She is an interdisciplinary artist/healer born and raised in unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Territory and Saklan Bay Miwok Territory, currently sheltering-in-place in the ancestral lands of the Chochenyo Ohlone People.   Sami’s artwork centers the ways that our lived experiences are layered and interconnected, shaped by environment, culture, and hxstories. Through a lens that is formed by hybridity and liminality, she creates large scale visual stories that activate public spaces, nudging viewers to experience their environments with fresh eyes. As a second generation, bi-racial, Filipinx-American, her artwork often explores elements of cultural identity and shared experiences of reconnecting and re-membering intergenerational wisdom.    

Sami offers art making as a tool to build relationships, deepen understanding of our experiences of the world, trust our voice and legitimize our existence as resistance. Her journey in creative healing is informed by both her western allopathic teachers that center psychobiosocial imprints on our personal, interpersonal, and intergenerational wellbeing, as well as her teachers of holistic and intuitive systems of medicine based in indigenous knowledge systems. She views her art as a purposeful regenerative practice to heal self, kapwa, community and the earth.   

Her murals can be found throughout the SF Bay area spanning from hospitals to playgrounds and business store fronts to unexpected walls in hidden alleyways. Whether she is designing and painting walls solo or working with small groups or communities to create collaborative healing art, she holds an inner knowing that our art making is a sacred practice, rooted in revolutionary minded action. Sami is the Executive Director at the UCSF Center for Health and Community where she co-creates wellness and stress reduction programming and is the creator of Sami See Art. "     

IG/Twitter: @samiseeart

Facebook: @samiseeart

Web: www.samisee.com

Email: samisee2020@gmail.com