"After I was date-raped. I dated and slept with the guy that did it 3 more times. I hoped that if I could make it a "real"relationship I would not have to admit to myself that the rape was real."
Anonymous

Finding healing as a Subversive Stitcher-Women Armed with Needles, facebook online commuity for people with like interest to get connect from all over the world.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Subversive-Stitchers-Women-Armed-with-Needles/309080917039?ref=nf#!/pages/Subversive-Stitchers-Women-Armed-with-Needles/309080917039?ref=nf

For years as an art student when an artist made something that was particularly interesting or different, the battle cry from both professors and students was, " Make multiples, make a hundred of them." This never made sense to me as my work is about me, about something that is troubling to me, or about people I love.

Just as I gave birth to Barry 30 years ago and Kara 25 years ago, each child is unique. My art work is created, given birth, born out of my experience. The creative seed of a concept is planted, after a long gestation time where I love, doubt and hate the experience the concept grows. One day I get to the point where the concept has matured. "It is finished" Not only is the art object complete, I often find myself changed as a result of working through the process from conception to actually giving birth to my art.

Flowers of Secrets is a project that makes perfect, logical sense to create multiples. In fact, there may never be a cut off point when I say it is enough. The goal of my project Flowers of Secrets is to bring healing to a females heart one flower at a time. Slowly and lovingly, stitching helps to bring healing, replacing the feeling of being used, discarded trash into an art object of priceless value. Slowly through prayer and stitching I am creating a treasure. Trash to treasure is an unending process of healing. Unfortunately, there seems to be an unending plethora of secrets women carry in their hearts that allow them to view themselves as trash.

Carefully stitching the secret of another female, praying for her healing, then seeing the collections of completed healing garden of flowers grow can be cathartic relief from a deeply held-in painful traumatic experience. Of course in among the anonymous female secrets you can be sure I have included a few secrets that have been a burden for me to carry alone.

Last night as I was searching PostSecrets to begin a new flowers I discovered this sad secret. http://postsecretarchive.com/2007/12/past-secrets-3/

"After I was date-raped. I dated and slept with the guy that did it 3 more times. I hoped that if I could make it a "real"relationship I would not have to admit to myself that the rape was real."

The pain behind this secret is palpable. I am praying for this woman's healing and peace right now as I work one stitch at a time.

Art of Healing Show Impact Gallery Tri-Main Buffalo, NY month of February

Flowers of Secrets will be presented in the

Art of Healing and Mental Health Exhibiton 2010

Impact Artists' Gallery

#545 Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main St.,

Buffalo 14214 The exhibition may be viewed during regular gallery hours Wednesday –

Friday 11-4 and Saturdays 1-4.

Please call the gallery if there is inclement weather.

716-835-6817

http://impactartist.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/art-and-healing-show-in-february/01/08/art-and-healing-show-in-february/

Flowers of Secrets were conceived from the concept of people feeling like trash by something they are ashamed of, a secret that burdens their soul. Since secrets that bother us have the ability to make a person feel like trash; my new favorite art material, used coffee filters, offers an large supply of material for the cost of collecting and washing them loose of excess coffee ground. Like a wound, a sore filled with pus from an infection, the wound needs to be lanced. Once lanced, cut open, exposed to air and sun light, the pus will run out freely and the healing can begin. If the wound is not opened the infection will continue to grow. It will fester and increase in volume, size and pain until a person who was once active and healthy feels like a worthless, piece of trash.

Writing secrets I gather from PostSecrets, an online community where people make handmade postcards with the secret that is bothering them written on the back offers an endless supply of secrets. I decided to focus on secrets most likely written by a female since I understand how a woman may think more than I do a man.

The coffee filter is perfect because it is a circle (sacred hoop, ring): An ancient and universal symbol of unity, wholeness, infinity, the goddess, and female power. To earth-centered religions throughout history as well as to many contemporary pagans, it represents the feminine spirit or force, the cosmos or a spiritualized Mother Earth, and a sacred space.
Each coffee filter is coated with bees wax which served as a base for medicines to act as a healing balm. The wax also adds strength to the paper filter, a pleasant fragrance and a translucent, skin like quality.

Writing the secret on the circular, up cycled coffee filter did not seem like I gave enough time, respect and esteem to either the secret or the anonymous author. I decided it would be better to embroider with soft, speaking, neutral color floss the words I copied from PostSecret. While I stitch each secret I pray for peace in the heart and soul of the anonymous author. Piecing with the needle, a sort of acupuncture, tattooing ritual further adds to the healing process. As I work and pray for the healing of another woman I am feeling a cathartic healing within myself.

"Loaded with so much symbolism: round like breasts; slits like vaginas; soft like the female body; interiors like wombs, vaginas, mouths, and/or the psyche; and then subtly stitched with secrets, like clues that give insight into the person who secret they caress.” I envision this installation growing until I create a large, walk-in, space filled with healing Flowers of Secrets hanging suspended from above.

Carol Ann Rice Rafferty