"Only she who listens can speak."

 ~ Dag Hammarskjold, Markings 

 

Speaking-with-Listening Sticks

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Binding devotional prayer, committment and intention with cords around a branch or stick is an ancient art that survives in many cultures.

It occurs spontaneously in art therapy when people relax and play - it provides self-soothing repetitive movement, exposure to nourishing colour and texture with combined with centering, intent emotion and clarity of focus.

 

Various 'Talking stick' traditions - using a beautiful, hand crafted artefact to conduct human relations - thrive worldwide and some of their wisdoms and rituals have inspired and been adapted by the therapeutic community. In the Celtic world of the Atlantic seabord cultures many forms of the empowered bound stick play roles in communication between humans and between humans and non-human beings.

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I accept commissions from individuals & organisations to make sticks from local or specially chosen woods with specifically chosen symbolic decoration.

 

Talismanic Objects: 

just as in my art therapy groups, I make objects that suggest and seem to embody some magic, some power of intention to connect directly with the forces of life and contrbute to transforming reality.

Talismanic art is an ancient form across cultures and religiious traditions, and can help us to combine expressive spontaneity with focused purpose and will, and can help us to stay with and learn more about our heart-felt wishes -  for recovery from disease, for success in a relationship or project, for any postive quality the person wishes to embody.

 

Other symbols of the body-mind, spirit and our passage in life and familiar from myth, fairy tale and poetry are ships - vessels that carry us over great waters, soul boats, and birds as messengers from the air of spirit world, from our intuition, our dreams. 

Some of these works can be found at beverleyacourt.wordpress.com

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"The purpose of craft is not so much to make beautiful things, as it is to become beautiful inside while you are making things."

Susan Gordon Lydon, The Knitting Sutra

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