Story 1

What Led Up to AJL?

by Saleena Kí aka Joan Ov’Art

Perhaps the following story may be of assistance…

When did my Art of JuiceyLiving (AJL) start?

maybe at my birth…

maybe before that; in the swing between the worlds?

or maybe it had always been the spark that is my essence!

Someday maybe I will fully remember…

During this life the sparks of it were ignited near the ocean

in an area that some say is strong with the energies of Atlantis…

From 1990-1995 I had a rather “wonderful” life in a loving creative relationship, becoming well established as an artist living in the oldest ongoing American city of St. Augustine, Florida. I was painting murals and gorgeous windows for local businesses and learning Trompe-l’œil & the Faux Finishing from another local artist.

I was living half a block from the beach on St. Augustine Island and had lots of time to play in the waves and sand with my children and express my creativity. Stephan was a local shop owner on the historic St. George Street called Nature Has It. He commissioned me to paint a mural for his shop and since he was an artist, too, we painted together and grew in love and appreciation of each other.

We had so much fun together and had so much in common we grew into a very beautiful relationship.

He made THE BEST Native American style flutes and made our own drums. Due to the humidity, they went rather dull sounding so we found some imported drums for his shop that held their tautness and tone. We loved to play the flutes and drums while we danced together under the Full Moon on the beach. Even my Mom and Dad came to visit once and Dad danced with us, it was amazing!

Stephan loved my art and encouraged me to paint these new hoop drums. It was this project where I made a breakthrough as an artist when I began to paint them with my own Shamanic designs in mind, instead of painting commissioned art expressing others ideas. I called them the 4 Element Drums for I was fascinated with expressing the Earth’s Elements and Mother Nature through my paintings. We both loved Nature and the Shamanic and Native American traditions. I painted many drums and then one day I painted one for myself, a FIRE DRUM. It was accompanied by a kind of ignition inside of something that began to unfold me.

In the meantime I was hired by Ripley’s Believe it or Not, who had seen my art around town and said something like, “We trust you, we’ve seen your art; you can have 4 bathroom doors to paint whatever you want on them. Just make sure it is within our theme of the unbelievable.” They took off their doors and sent them home with me.

I laid out the doors, each  represented and showed a quarter of an Earth Element mandala including the 4 directions and 4 elements. Each door became a wild image expressing a wild idea that seemed to be some part of myself inviting myself to open myself, to free myself to something more…

AIR element hissed:

“…with UNFOLDING WINGS WE TRANSCEND OUR OWN LIMITS…”

FIRE element crackled:

“…with WILDFIRE WE DANCE to SET OURSELVES FREE…”

EARTH element crooned:

“…with CELEBRATION WE HONOR the CIRCLE OF LIFE…”

WATER element surged,

“…with PASSION WE PLUNGE INTO the CURRENT OF LIFE…”

The designs astonished and satisfied me in a whole new way and they loved it! I now can see as I look back, that their messages were prophetic; a sort of credo expressing something deeper in me that helped my open to more of my purpose for being here on Earth. To this day I still include the Earth Elements in my art.

My sister, Lauri, had moved to St. Augustine and we both loved dance. We began practicing expressive dancing as taught by Gabrielle Roth. We also had studied Rebirthing with the breath and combined it into a kind of dance-movement-breathing sort of transformational practice we had fun offering to groups of people. One day we came up with the idea of a Wild Woman Wedding. She created a ceremony for me and served as the facilitator-minister, since she had her license. I wore a white bikini under her old wedding dress and we shredded it as a symbol of freeing ourselves from our past marriages and old identities. I wanted to let go off the leftover name I carried. I had enjoyed the name of Joan of Art for my business and decided to officially and legally apply for a new name for myself so I created the name Ov’Art. Joan Ov’Art. I loved it! The Wild Woman wedding was so much fun. I made vows to myself and married myself! It was so empowering! I danced all over the beach and threw my white Spider Lilies into the ocean and them myself, dress and all in a sort of baptism into my new identity.

It wasn’t all that long before I knew I had to leave my life there and go on a spiritual journey of discovery. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my life and partner and the ocean there, it was some current that ran deeper and stronger calling me somewhere else… Stephan understood and loved me until the day I left. We still love each other at a soul level and I always will. It was just that he belonged there and I had some pretty wild adventures of discovery ahead of me. I left in November 1995 with $7000, a Dodge van, everything I owned and my bird companion, Taco Bell and drove west… I knew there was something in the 4 corners area drawing me there. My sister, Lauri, had moved to Boulder, Co. to enroll in a progressive alternative school, Naropa, so that was where I was heading.

It was there in Boulder that my youngest 11 year old son came back into my life unexpectedly and I learned Contact Improvisation!  Stephan and I had experienced a young couple visiting our shop one day and dancing that way and I had never forgot it. I found a new exciting love of dance and movement and began to fervently watch everyone and practice at the Barefoot Booggie. The winter was so cold and Lauri was coming so unraveled by the techniques of the school, she announced one day she had to move or die and would I watch her kids while she went exploring for the right place? I did and she found her new place and promptly moved to Sedona, Arizona.

Well, that was enough for me to high-tail it out of the cold and follow her to warmer grounds. As soon as I could arrange to close out the house we had rented together, I packed up my van, which now included my bird and my youngest son, David, and we drove to Sedona. By the time we got to the Sedona area it was dark and we arrived late at night and parked. Lauri’s new home was a mobile home tucked in a canyon, with a front porch literally overhanging a river. The next morning I woke and walked outside to see what it looked like. The sun was shining, there were these glorious red rock cliff walls towering up on both sides of me with a stark blue sky above. I took a deep breath and broke into tears. I heard myself say, “I am HOME! I never want to leave again.” And that is how I began my magical life adventure in red rocks and vortices of Sedona.

I had lived my previous life for 30 years in a religion and culture that told me what to do, how to think, what was right and what was wrong, and I had been married or in relationships from the time I was 17 years old. I had 4 amazing children, all of whom were on their own or with the other parent when I decided to go on this Hijeira. I had decided that I wasn’t going to enter into a committed relationship for awhile and was going to release all my ideas and rules about life and truly open to explore until I knew better my own truths and my own path. It was like going to the college that I never had a chance to attend in my youth, except this was the College of My Life. The return of my son, David, was unexpected and he was a very very angry and hurt young boy when he returned to me in Boulder.

When I was in St. Augustine, I had my first psychic reading and she had seen a man in an old farmers hat standing by a wagon without the oxen. He was standing in Nevada. She said there was a chain running from his Solar Plexus to mine and he was dropping the links out one by one and pulling me toward him. She asked if I was feeling like moving and I was. Earlier I had been looking at a map of the US and my attentions were drawn to the 4 Corners area, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico touch. That was the first time I heard about James Eddy this life. The first time I saw him I was at a Grateful Dead sort of dance in Jerome, AZ. I was still so new I didn’t know anyone and was alone. Sister Lauri had actually moved back to Utah where we were born and grew up. A friend had insisted that I MUST go to this dance for some important reason.

Being curious, and having nothing else to do, I decided to go. The music wasn’t to my liking and I was wondering why I had come, when I noticed a very handsome man dancing wild and energetic with another older couple. He was obviously older than most of the kids and with his long white beard, reminded me of Merlin, the Wizard. He was bare chested wearing the most amazingly beautiful skirt I had ever seen! The combination of all of this certainly caught my attention and made me curious what kind of man could wear a skirt like that. At the break, I was heading out the door and saw him coming in. He caught my eye with his startlingly blue eyes and I blurted out, “I know you!” He smiled and said “Okay” and held out his hand. We walked outside and talked for awhile. He was living in his high top camper van and I was still living and camping in my Dodge Van, so we found a camp together that night and quickly became best friends and soon lovers.

When it was obvious we wanted to spend more and more time together, I explained to him my quest and said that I wasn’t going to be monogamous and I needed to be free to explore wherever and whenever I wanted. He agreed and that began our time together co-creating many amazing adventures. I learned that he was born and raised in Nevada and lived there many years. That he was the first organic farmer in Sedona and he and his wife had co-created that for 25 years. He had broken away from his marriage and business when he realized that a part of him was dying instead of thriving. He had now been on the road with the Grateful Dead tour for 4 years learning how to play and really live!

The visual expression of The Art of JuiceyLiving started officially on a fall evening 1996. I had been studying life in a whole new way & James, who was now going by Merlin, had suggested to me that he would love to have me do a painting with my menstrual blood. This was the second time someone close to me had suggested this. I resisted, thinking it was too strange & just wouldn’t be okay to do such a thing. At the time I did not know that there were past life implications & fears that were rattling their cages at me & pointing their bony old fingers at me saying….”Danger…this could be your life you are taking into your own hands if you do!”

Well, that was exactly what I wanted to do, to take back my own life and live it genuinely from my own soul’s perspective. When I was born, I was sculpted by a family,  religion, and society that didn’t very often ask me what I wanted. Mostly I was told what to do, what not to do, how to behave, what I should believe, what was acceptable behavior to conform, and what I should do with my life. I am a strong soul, and spent a good part of my life in rebellion against it. I spent so much time miserably fight it, knowing somehow it wasn’t who I was. I really didn’t know who I was, what I wanted, what I would like to do. Frankly, at 43 years old, I was severely exhausted, radically out of balance at many levels and hated being a woman, especially when that “time of the month” came about. I spent the majority of my month out of whack and rather crazy with permanent PMS (pre-Menstrual Syndrome). One day I decided to start keeping a calendar of my emotional tones and physical symptoms and found that I was lucky to squeeze one week out of a month where I felt good and sane.

Continue to Story 2 Red Moon Magic

Menses Gallery 1

Since this website is a works in progress I am going to share a few links to Art of JuiceyLiving pieces scattered around in other Galleries. Eventually I will have a whole series of Galleries from this “period” of time. Here is one AJL piece that represents to me that it is time to resurrect and heal the Divine Feminine Goddess inside each of us from all the harsh ways she has been “crucified” and de-powered over centuries.

Resurrect the Goddess

Sea Eagles

Sea Eagles reversed

Marriage of Heaven & Earth

Read more about how my ART & I evolved:

Artistic Evolution