In this interview, Tara shares her artistic process and describes how her time at 天美视频 shaped her understanding of herself and her work.

What draws you to your art?聽

I am a collage artist using paper already saturated with color, pattern, and movement, to create beauty. I love color and pattern. I鈥檓 overwhelmed by beauty, the way it hits me. I find myself drawn to this idea of the encounter with beauty, the pursuit of beauty, as described by John O鈥橠onoghue, a fellow Irish mystic. I was born in Ireland, lived there for 20 years. and studied fashion design there as well.

The painter Gustav Klimt is one of your inspirations. Can you share more about your artistic process?

I find myself to be more undone and enraptured by Klimt鈥檚 pieces than by looking at flowers or a tree. I enjoy being inspired by other techniques and styles. There鈥檚 something about being immersed, looking at all the angles, getting to know something inside out. I know why Klimt put the yellow there. I鈥檓 exploring how deeply can I know this. I want to know this completely until it鈥檚 in my cells. I鈥檓 creating beauty because I鈥檓 trying to make myself: if I鈥檓 making beauty, I鈥檓 identifying myself with beauty.

I鈥檝e also created originals when inspiration comes to me, for example, my collection on Earned Attachment, collages that depict a father or mother holding a child. I didn鈥檛 have the language at the time to explain it. It took a few years later, when I was at this school and then I understood it: I was unconsciously trying to heal, trying to create attachment with the Godhead.

In my art, I connect to parts of myself, my unconscious, that need to be healed or processed. I have been surprised by what came out at the end in my art: God and I were co-creating. I鈥檓 coming to trust that there鈥檚 a purpose here, just go with it.

Often my art is an act of worship, to love, to beauty, to healing, to God. A way to extol. Some of the collage pieces are pieces of worship to someone I love, a moment in time that had a lot of meaning. Holding it up to the light and sharing it with others even though it鈥檚 not translatable. This was glory. That person was glory.

How did you evolve as an artist during graduate school?

Over the four years at 天美视频, it took me most of the time to own the name 鈥渁rtist鈥�. It didn鈥檛 sit in my body yet. That changed while I was in school.聽

I love how 天美视频 gave me words. I have a drive to express myself through poetry, art, and papers for school on topics I鈥檓 passionate about. Graduate school helped me find words for what I鈥檓 trying to express in my right brain and didn鈥檛 have words for. I feel like it did a lot of the work of integration. Getting the words and getting the awareness that came in school came together well with my art.聽

What drew you to the Master of Arts in Theology and Culture at 天美视频?

When I came to the school, I knew I had things to say to the world. It kept getting bigger and bigger. I wanted direction and guidance, to know what that was.聽

How did graduate school shape who you are today?

I鈥檓 now working as a program therapist in shelters with traumatized women. At 天美视频,聽 I took all the psychology classes I could. I loved the mix. It was perfect for me. I didn鈥檛 want the limitations of licensure. I love people and I want to be in trauma spaces with people. I want to live with people and heal together. I want to speak to people where they are at. It鈥檚 worth it if I can speak to their shame, a sentence, a look, a touch. I think everyone needs someone to look them in the eye. Before 天美视频, I would have amazing connections with people in 30 seconds. That impact matters to me. Now I know what鈥檚 happening, how significant it is, the neuropsychology, and I love all of it.聽

The post Art on our Walls: Tara Hubbard’s Collages appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Every other year, 天美视频 offers the course SFD (Spiritual Formation & Direction) 523 Spirituality & the Arts and with each offering, the instructor has focused on a particular form of art as a way to explore spiritual practices and how the arts can inform and sustain spiritual formation. Two years ago I centered the course on film. This year I wanted another medium of artistic engagement that students may already find meaningful and that I too have found spiritually and formatively significant. The Wizarding World created by author JK Rowling was an obvious choice. It encompasses not only literary traditions rooted in the work of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, but it also includes film, fandom, immersive theme parks, and creative digital media.

From January to April of 2019, 40 students read (or re-read) over 1,000 pages of Harry Potter texts, created immersive experiences for their classmates, wrote and analyzed fan fiction as a form of spiritual practice, and unpacked together the resonance, both theological and psychological, of these stories that have enchanted so many of us for over twenty years. I was humbled and awed each week by what students discovered and shared with one another, and am pleased to have some of them able to share their work with a wider community. Expecto Patronum.

The process of writing and enjoying can be understood as a form of escapism, however, this seems to be an over simplistic and dismissive belief. Escapism would suggest a dismission of reality in favor of a delusional or detached reality, whereas fantasy and fiction can be significant forms of exploring reality through imaginative processes. Instead of escaping reality, or maybe it would be more accurate to say a particular understanding of reality, fantasy and fiction allow us to view reality differently. Life can become enchanted, and
spirituality can be nurtured through fantasy and fiction, because it provides a different lens through which we can perceive reality. My own spirituality and theology has been formed through fantasy and fiction literature, because these genres often take themes of spirituality and reality to create an imaginative world where the two collide.

This belief in imagination from Rowling鈥檚 literature, as well as other fantasy writers such as Stephen King and C.S. Lewis, has influenced my own spiritual life and how I practice spirituality in reality. Imagination to me is a reflection of what children tend to nurture, where typically as an adult the dominant American culture desires conformity to particular norms and ways of thinking and believing. There is a beauty in the world that can often be missed when there is a lack of imagination or enchantment.

Practicing enchantment has changed my own ways of acting in the world and in relation to other people and the Earth.

A theme from Dr. Swanson鈥檚 course on Spiritual Formation and Development through the Harry Potter series that has influenced me in integrating theology, spirituality, and imagination is the idea of imagination and the ancient Hebrew tradition of Midrash. The process of Midrash is a process of creative and imaginative interpretation of the Torah. Literature functions in a similar way to Biblical writings in the sense that the authors tend to have an
intended meaning or purpose to their writings, however, the readers interpret through our own cultural and personal lens, which brings multiplicity and difference in meaning to the texts. What a creative re-imagination of the text does is bring a multiplicity of perspectives to Biblical interpretation, which challenges a positivist interpretation of the text that demands conformity to one particular belief system or absolute truth.

As readers of literature from the stories of Harry Potter to Hagar, it is important to think and see imaginatively so that we can transform ourselves in response to the stories. As story lovers, we may see the truths of our own stories in the lives of the characters and people we gravitate towards in literature. We may begin to ask important questions that cause us to develop a deeper sense of empathy for others and ourselves when reading and interpreting different texts.

We may ask having his unique talents as a wizard suppressed by his abusive Aunt and Uncle? How does my faith community view Hagar as an Egyptian slave who was used and abandoned by the apparent righteous religious folks in the Biblical text? How do we as people change in response to the stories and trauma of others and by and trauma?

Imagination is vital to the process of Biblical interpretation, and to understanding our own lives as spiritual and physical beings.

The process of growth as a person, and the process of healing from trauma require creativity and imagination. To grow and to heal it is important that we develop the ability to imagine how our lives could be different. This is something we can do through engaging with fantasy literature and other forms of creative expression. Not only is literature a creative art, it is a demonstration of how many people imaginatively express their own life stories. The process of reading and listening to the stories of others can inform us as we can engage with our own life stories and spiritual development alongside enchantment.

The post A Different Lens: Understanding Our Stories through Fantasy and Fiction appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Every other year, 天美视频 offers the course SFD (Spiritual Formation & Direction) 523 Spirituality & the Arts and with each offering, the instructor has focused on a particular form of art as a way to explore spiritual practices and how the arts can inform and sustain spiritual formation. Two years ago I centered the course on film. This year I wanted another medium of artistic engagement that students may already find meaningful and that I too have found spiritually and formatively significant. created by author JK Rowling was an obvious choice. It encompasses not only literary traditions rooted in the work of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, but it also includes film, fandom, immersive theme parks, and creative digital media.

From January to April of 2019, 40 students read (or re-read) over 1,000 pages of Harry Potter texts, created immersive experiences for their classmates, wrote and analyzed fan fiction as a form of spiritual practice, and unpacked together the resonance, both theological and psychological, of these stories that have enchanted so many of us for over twenty years. I was humbled and awed each week by what students discovered and shared with one another, and am pleased to have some of them able to share their work with a wider community. Expecto Patronum.

Adapted from my final course reflections, this piece responds to a prompt concerning the Spirituality of Enchantment. In it, I hope to offer you a glimpse into my journeys both within the imaginative worlds and words of fantasy, as well as within this, my first year at 天美视频. Both adventures have been ones of story, calling to narratives within me long forgotten, cherished, and too, endured. And through both, I have experienced an awakening of childhood delight, and an invitation to life abundant and life creative.

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, 鈥淪tay awhile.鈥�
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, 鈥淚t鈥檚 simple,鈥�
they say, 鈥渁nd you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy,
to be filled with light, and to shine.鈥�

鈥� “When I Am Among the Trees,” by Mary Oliver

A tulip bulb graced my palm one day recently. The paper-thin film of skin crackled beneath my fingers, and I studied its subtle earthy coloring, admiring the pea-green shoot already sprouting from beneath its layers. There was something beautiful and delicate, and yet resilient and defiant about this bulb. I am not a tulip aficionado but gifted with this little form of life, I am learning quickly about their care. They must, I am told, be buried deep within the soil. A keen gardener knows to send them 鈥� inches and inches, many times their own immature height 鈥� down into the cold, wet, rich earth. Out of this, their nature and needed nurture, tulip bulbs weather harsh winters, ever maintaining their promise of life in the coming spring. As I hold this bulb, inches wide, and almost weightless in my hand, ever quietly and consistently it calls to me 鈥� “and you, too.”

In coming to 天美视频, I brought along a graveyard of bits of me that I had long since buried. Shameful bits, broken bits, seemingly unwanted bits cut off and then shoved, suffocated, and silenced underground. In their absence, I was growing and pruning myself (or, being pruned by others) into the right shape and size. It was a painful, pretentious, and precarious form of being. Working within this graveyard over this past year of school has been muddy work. Crouched down on bended knee, my hands have been covered in the soil of years and fears past. Getting to know, and willing to see those buried bits of me has been and will be the task, I believe.

However, in this kneeling work, this muddy work, this grounded work, I have discovered that those buried bits from long ago are seeds, alive like tulip bulbs, both delicate and defiant underneath the mounds of soil.

Here at 天美视频, I am beginning to see that my graveyard was all along a garden, yearning and journeying towards spring. Despite this in-breaking of freedom and life, I am not sure that I was entirely ready for the changing of the seasons. Perhaps I thought that I was, but no鈥� true spring in its bursting, breaking and melting鈥� that I was not ready for. Allowing those seeds of the broken bits of me to have space and grace to blossom and grow felt and continues to feel risky, for as spring reminds us all too clearly, shoots are uncontrolled. Coming from the dark underneath, they are joyous and naive, random and dainty, and I was surely not ready or willing for that type of precious life to emerge from my darkest places. Yet in these semesters, my longing for a life that flourishes in all my particularities 鈥� beauty and brokenness, above ground and below 鈥� has screamed louder than the desire to restrict in and for protection.

In many ways, my exploration within this course of fantasy has been like a plant nursery: offering just the right amount of nourishing food, water, and light to my little starved seeds. Surely, I have experienced an awakening of childhood joy, laughter, and enchantment that had, I now see, been darkened and asleep for too long. I have felt myself fall, diving into the waters of delight and longing held both within and also because of the gifted world of story. Such has been this course鈥檚 wake up call (the rooster is joyfully crowing and the sun is rising!) upon my creative seeds and I cannot help but sigh. Perhaps this, surrounded by the seedlings of my own garden, echoes hint of gladness.

The post The Spirituality of Enchantment: A Life that Flourishes appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Every other year the 天美视频 offers the course SFD (Spiritual Formation & Direction) 523 Spirituality & the Arts and with each offering, the instructor has focused on a particular form of art as a way to explore spiritual practices and how the arts can inform and sustain spiritual formation. Two years ago I centered the course on film. This year I wanted another medium of artistic engagement that students may already find meaningful and that I too have found spiritually and formatively significant. The Wizarding World created by author JK Rowling was an obvious choice. It encompasses not only literary traditions rooted in the work of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, but it also includes film, fandom, immersive theme parks, and creative digital media.

From January to April of 2019, 40 students read (or re-read) over 1,000 pages of Harry Potter
texts, created immersive experiences for their classmates, wrote and analyzed fan fiction as a
form of spiritual practice, and unpacked together the resonance, both theological and
psychological, of these stories that have enchanted so many of us for over twenty years. I was
humbled and awed each week by what students discovered and shared with one another, and
am pleased to have some of them able to share their work with a wider community. Expecto
Patronum.

When I was a kid, my two best friends and I loved to make movies. Dressed in robes we stole from the church choir and armed with a cheap camcorder, we would run around the neighborhood making cheesy knockoffs of our favorite fantasy films. Given that we lived in the not-so-primeval city of Saginaw, Michigan, an important part of our process was scouting fantastical and enchanting-looking locations. It wasn鈥檛 always easy, but we steadily became adept at finding anything that even remotely resembled Narnia, Middle-Earth, or the Hogwarts grounds. An eerie section of trees, a wooden and ancient-looking church door, a shadowy path; all of these places became something more to us.

During one of the first weeks of Spirituality and the Arts class, I was struck by a quote from C. S. Lewis about the enriching power of fantasy. Arguing against critics鈥� objections that fantasy creates an unhealthy and unrealistic desire in children, Lewis writes: 鈥淸A child] does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.鈥�

Looking back at our filmmaking adventures, I remember feeling a rush of joy and electricity in finding something otherworldly in a seemingly ordinary place. The stories we loved didn鈥檛 make us despise our city because of its lack of magic; the stories we loved made our city more magical. The woods, the old church door, the shadowy path; they became magical because in them we discovered beauty and detail that we never saw before.

Lewis鈥� quote stuck with me throughout Kj Swanson鈥檚 Harry Potter class. Week after week we would walk into a 天美视频 Classroom for a 鈥淧ensieve Presentation,鈥� a peer-led immersion into the Wizarding World, and feel like we were somewhere else. We were at the 天美视频, but we were also at the Yule Ball, or in Potions Class, or traveling through time, or competing in the Triwizard
Tournament. Whether it was through a guided reflection or through engaging our senses with lighting and taste and sound (actual bubbling cauldrons, butterbeer, candles, strobe lights!), these projects (and the stories that inspired them) enriched the space we inhabited.

Now, even though the class is over, I can鈥檛 help but walk around through the 天美视频 feeling that things are a little more magical than they were before.

I left that class with an unshakable sense of magic, and鈥攇iven my childhood habit of finding magic in ordinary places鈥攊t鈥檚 no surprise that a month or so later I decided to dress up as Harry Potter, take a picture in front of Stadium High School, and create an Instagram account called: The mission: Finding magic in the #cityofdestiny.

When I moved to Tacoma in 2015, I immediately began to notice the rich and timeless architecture. It all began with Stadium High School鈥攁 French chateau- inspired building infamously compared to Hogwarts鈥攂ut I then branched out to other places: an old street bridge on my running route, the ivy-covered brick buildings on the University of Puget Sound Campus. I began to see the fantastic everywhere, and once I started, I couldn鈥檛 stop.

What started out as an impulsive and tongue-in-cheek photoshoot has now transformed into a project that is helping me fall more and more in love with my community and my home. Expecto Tacoma has allowed me to meet new people, inspired others to visit places they鈥檝e never been to in their city, made people homesick for Tacoma, and overall highlighted the incredible pride Tacomans have for their city.

I keep coming back to Lewis鈥� quote because I think it describes my experience so well. Harry Potter has not made me despise the real world because of its lack of wizards, dragons, and magic wands. Harry Potter has helped me find magic everywhere: in Saginaw, Michigan, in Tacoma, Washington, and at 天美视频. It鈥檚 not that these places weren鈥檛 magical before鈥攐n the contrary, they always have been鈥攊t鈥檚 just that Harry Potter (a text) has allowed me to see things in these places that I never would have noticed before.

And, if I鈥檝e learned anything, it鈥檚 that magic is possibility: The possibility of noticing something you didn鈥檛 see before, the possibility of meeting new people and appreciating old friends, the possibility of seeing how the past touches the present, and the possibility of envisioning a beautiful future.

Following the creation of his Instagram account Expecto Tacoma!, Mike Thomas developed quite a following and was featured on King 5.

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