Gender – Flower City Arts Center

This Is All For Me

Today is the first day of a New Year on the Gregorian Calendar. A societally ordained freshness slated for beginning new patterns of self.

I am focused on two things:

1) Boundaries

2) Imperfection

My word for the year 2019 is “Boundaries.”

As a caretaking, creative, femme, empath, socialized by family and society to disregard my own needs, wants and desires, BOUNDARIES become a sanctuary in which I can rage, create and divine myself without apology.

My Boundaries are Sovereign. My Boundaries are my Sovereignty.

There is a program. It’s called “Being Nice.” “Being Pleasant.” “Being Helpful.”

All these programs are about feminine socialization. “Be Nice,” teaches women to put men’s sexual needs, preferences, desires and feelings before there own. Not universally and not only men and not only women who date men. But for me personally and for many women I have spoken to, concern for hurting a man’s feelings during a sexual encounter has kept us silent to our own boundaries simply because we did not want to “hurt his feelings.” Literally, put our own bodies boundaries and desires second to the feelings of the other. This. Infuriates. Me.

“Be Pleasant” keeps us silent in the face of injustice ON A DAILY BASIS.

“Be Helpful” conditions us to prioritize the needs of others and the domestic duties, primarily unpaid in a capitalist industry that eats away at our time and our sovereignty. I get it, we need to feed and bath and clean up after ourselves. But who made us believe we had to feed and bathe and clean up after the patriarchy. I’m angry and I’m already cutting off my own tongue not to speak against it. Internalized Sexism.

The primary Boundaries I am focusing on our my internal Boundaries.

Listening to, honoring and enforcing these Boundaries will lead to healthy external Boundaries. I am reclaiming my time, my energy and my daily ritual habits to give my life force over to my Purpose which is to Teach, to Write, To Heal and To Create Art.

This will bring us to IMPERFECTION.

Every. Creative. Impulse. Has fallen victim to an internal bottleneck.

(I speak for myself)

PERFECTION stifles creative expression. So, I invite myself, in light of this new day, to be messy, imperfect, undone, and unfinished and allow that to be what is present. I surrender to the chaos of the eternal divine beginning. She is a master of becoming.

It becomes less important to me if you understand this or find it appropriate or interesting. I trust it is for those who need it and who will it and for them, it will be as sweet an adaptogen as can be distilled from thought.

When you are looking at my images in April. When you are wondering where the ideas and meaning come from, know they are threaded here in these words, on this day of liberation.

I will be imperfect and impolite. I will be bloody and clear and direct. I will not apologize.

What Does Femininity Mean to You? Part 2

Something incredible is happening for me.

As I continue to explore and research feminine expression through a larger cultural context, the idea of femininity is starting to break free of gender.

Femininity does not belong to any of us, but it belongs to all of us. It is there as an opportunity to be expressed, enjoyed and embodied.

She is the primordial energy of creation and is for each of us

I was listening to a panel discussion held by my teacher and friend, Guru Jagat with Shaman Durek and actress Kelly Rutherford. At one point Shaman Durek calls for “The Liberation of the Feminine,” and that struck a truth cord for me.

You can watch the discussion titled, “Alchemy of the Empowered Woman,” here.

The cross-cultural and expansive reclamation of powerful feminine expression is driving our cultural shift right now. There is no doubt in me about that.

For me, it will continue to be a playful and critical analysis and expression of my own feminine alter egos and how my identity as a cis-gender woman has been informed by positive, toxic and co-opted expressions of feminine virtue.

She is an infinity expressed by each of us @meganjoymay

Where to Begin?

When beginning to look at something as dynamic as identity, it can be challenging to know where to begin.

Who am I?

What am I?

Why am I?

These sort of questions have always been of interest to me. I’ve studied Buddhism to Vedic Theology, Philosophy, Christianity, History, Society and Psychology, Critical Feminist Theory, Human Sexuality, Neuropathology.

I’m a seeker and a life-long learner.

Ultimately, I think I am interested in answers of harmony, expression, creativity, connection, personal accountability, wisdom, justice, and mystery.

For me, the use of the Archetype acts as a container for capturing an ongoing evolution into multidimensional awareness of being and becoming. I seek to encounter a wholeness of self/ Self-understanding.

I like this concept of self because it has two layers. You are a ‘self’ with a small ‘s’: this is your ego, your personality, your human identity. Then, without fail you are also a Self with a capital ‘S’: an exalted, pure and ever-connected Self that is Source or Consciousness seeking awareness of itself through your individual process. This concept of self as an individual and collective polarity seeking harmony through recognition is foundational to the works of C.G. Jung, Kashmir Shaivism, Yoga, and countless other teachings.

In Short: I am a self seeking Self.

This is both an internal as well as an external experience. And these facets influence one another constantly. We are porous to our surroundings and our surroundings porous to us.

The body of work and teachings that will develop during this residency will focus directly on this personal relationship with my self/Self-development as I nurture it with awareness.

I want to take a moment to discuss the significance of the term Archetype as well, as it is a foundational concept that will be guiding much of my creative research.

There once were two Western Psychoanalyst, their names were Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. In the beginning, these men were cohorts, collaborating on the emerging field of Psychology and Psychoanalysis or the study of human mind and emotion. Their paths ultimately diverged at the topic of what Jung termed “The Collective Unconscious.” Freud dismissed the work of dreams, symbols and automatic writings as junk or excess of the conscious mind. Carl, on the other hand, sought deeper understanding. He studied mysticism, eastern philosophy, cultural mythology and kept a brilliant journal of his own dreams and symbols. The general understanding of the Archetype as we know it today comes from C.G. Jung’s preliminary work in this field.

An Archetype is a recurring expression of human virtue found in cultural mythology and literature. An Archetype is a quintessence of a particular set of character traits which are inherently subject to flaw and scrutiny.

What’s important about Archetypes is they can shape our understanding of ourselves without our conscious knowledge or consent and/or they can serve as a map for personal growth and self-knowledge. Idealized Archetypes might cause us to fragment ourselves into specific categories of social acceptability without questioning the validity or reality of the Ideal.

For example, a contemporary Archetype dichotomy is the virgin/whore. The virgin is sort of like the girl next door type: pious, virtuous, loyal and good wife material. The whore is a woman who enjoys sex for the sake of pleasure, dresses sensually, maybe uses lewd language. Up until recently it goes without saying which of these categories is idealized in a patriarchy and such idealism gives rise to slut shaming, victim blaming and rape culture. Women that dress and act a certain way are in some way asking for violence.

As a woman, this sort of cultural mythology has played itself out in my personal choices about how to act, dress and behave to remain safe, even if simply in terms of social harassment and exploitation. This has also affected the way I have categorized other people and their worth and how or whether I interact with them.

The influence of a cultural Archetype thus has far-reaching effects on the habits and emotions of human society.

Some Archetypes I will be engaging are collected from Traditional Jungian Psychology, Goddess Mythology, and Current Cultural Milieu. The Queen, the Mother, the Lover, the Old Woman, The Creator, The Destroyer, Drag, Mother Earth, the Witch, the Martyr, the Wolf Woman, the Shamaness, The Spiritual White Woman and the Cyborg.
If you’re interested in learning more or if you want to add to the conversation consider attending one of my courses at Flower City Arts. The first one, Superheroes, Archetypes and Idols, starts next Thursday, July 12 and runs for 6 weeks. We’ll talk further about reclaiming feminine archetypes and femininity through Archetype work and self-portraiture.

**Pictured: She Blooms in the Desert, 2016 a collaborative piece addressing symbols, connection, and ritual in everyday objects. The Art of Ritual.

AIR Introduction: Megan Joy May

Let me just start off by saying how much I truly love Rochester so far. The first night in town (after a harrowing 4-day drive across the United States in my 2002 Camry with all my possessions stuffed inside) I was greeted by the most beautiful site, lightning bugs!!! I know, I know, a common sight in this part of the world, but coming from Southern California I am more accustomed to the sight and sound of coyotes, crickets, and tumbleweeds. I was touched by the little glowing bugs as I enjoyed a perfect burger and summer pilsner at The Owl House.

The people, food, beer, music and natural surroundings of Rochester New York have me feeling very excited about my decision to move across the country.

I am writing this first post from inside the exposed brick walls of the Flower City Arts Center’s Photographic Library on the second floor of the building. There is a coffee pot used solely for heating water for film development in the winter, and shelves of dusty books with titles like “Celebrating the Negative” and “The Photography Cookbook.”

There is the sweet, musty smell of paper sewn together for decades all around me.

Swoon.

But why am I here? Why, besides good beer and lightning bugs would I move to Rochester from Sunny California?!? Great question. (I always love a great question).

I am fortunate to have received a position as the new Photography Artist in Residence here at the Center!

For the next 10 months, I will be developing a body of work based on a personal and cultural inquiry of the dynamics of female and feminine identity. My current project uses mythology, archetypes, and the gender binary to expose a multi-dimensional understanding of gender performance and personal mythology relevant to the exploding culture of identity politics and gender outliers.

I am interested in complicating currently accepted perceptions of femaleness and femininity for the sake of nuance and socio-cultural progress, and ultimately looking at the question: What is the New Feminine Archetype Beyond the Patriarchy?

My project is a reclamation of parts lost and a reimagining of a whole self.

Interested in knowing more or have something to add to the conversation???

Then please join me for Superheroes, Archetypes, and Idols: Reimagining Feminine Roles Models Through Self-Portraiture Thursdays 6:30-8:30 pm from July 12th- August 16th.

We will be exploring and discussing these topics together, while working on the creation of personal feminine archetypes, giving vision to something powerful inside you. Our work together will culminate in a self-portrait of you adorned as your avatar.

Looking forward to meeting more of the Rochester Community and discovering where this wild and honest idea will take me over the course of the residency!