Iris Awareness - a story behind the cover art...
For me, art starts with a feeling, a message, then words weaving into visuals. formations, symbols & sensory images.
For me, art starts with a feeling, a message, then words weaving into visuals. formations, symbols & sensory images.
There's always an incubation process before formation.
Do you want to hear the story behind Cycles Journal's cover art for 2024?
Each year it comes forth in springtime. This time it bloomed around the time I went home to visit my grandmother in the hospital before she passed. A time of sadness but also of celebration and gratitude.
In between our visits, I rested at my first home. I felt stuck, yet my mother helped me recognize a theme in the part covers of Cycles Journal. She reminded me that flowers are the centerpiece of it always.
Flowers are more than meets the eye.
Flowers are the sex organs of the plant, which feels relevant to cycle-tracking, reproductive autonomy and embodied sensuality. This is where flowers attract pollinators to help them share & humans to create a cycle of 'supply/demand' as we garden, tend and eat plants. Yet they are also so much more than their appearance - each with an integral energetic signature and ecological purpose (just like us!.
To some flowers represent the feminine, to others allergens, and primordially they are often nourishment and medicine.
This year I was called to Iris. Iris means rainbow in Greek, and she is a messenger to the gods. Iris is the rain and clouds that are part of the whole cycle. She uses the rainbow as a bridge between the spirit and earthly realms, a light in the dark after the storm. The goddess and her archetypal energy represents a spectrum, a sphere of inclusive potential.
Iris is also the name of the part of an eye that regulates the amount of light which enters our eyes. Our ocular system takes in light and transforms it into sight, alongside our brain which registers insights as well beyond the seen.
Iris shows up in the tarot card temperance - a card of adjustment, balancing, and alchemical autonomy. Temperance, ruled by the sign Sagittarius, teaches us about the balance of intuition and action, of learning and procreating. It makes sense that iris flowers are shown in this card where archangel michael tempers the elements of water and fire into transformative healing.
Since these flowers often grow on the margins - within wetland edges and shorelines, they represent transition, integration and allowing the in-betweens to be a place of importance and growth.
Iris is a perennial flower that returns annually in spring from its rooted bulb, up through leaves like open arms, into an unfurling star.
I've had a special connection to iris since my childhood, because there is a photo of me from back then next to my abuelos in their beautifully tended jardín outside their sky blue house. It's one of my favorite memories from before my abuelito passed away when I was only 3 – I remember him through the irises he cared for alongside my abuela. I think gardening kept them grounded in place. I keep this memory framed next to my desk in the art-making corner of my studio.
It is said that the essence of Iris links us to our creativity, expression and inspiration.
The flower itself is a work of art within its structure, painted veins, and color variations.
They are seasonal symbols and pollinator allies. Iris emerges organically without much need for intervention, like our insights can if we trust. Iris is a web weaver and cycle tender.
Of course, the moon and often its phases is always on the cover because it is one of our greatest anchors and reminders of our cyclic impermanence - a duality to be present with in this existence that just is. It represents how we can follow and learn from our ever-changing cycles even if we cannot fully control them.
I truly enjoyed creating this piece with the support of all this energy. If you'd like, click here to see a timelapse of me drawing it.
Ways to Receive and Redistribute This Earth Week...
🌟 FREE GIVEAWAY: like, follow, share & tag a friend on this post who may be open to redistribute & receive - and you'll be entered to win a box of merch from our shop worth over $100! (Such as the Cycles Journal, notebook, altar cloth, prints, earrings, etc.)
🌟 DONATE & RECEIVE: donate as little as $5 to our Pay It Forward Fund to help us give Cycles Journals to folks in need of financial support, and receive a Cycles Journal and/or Notebook for yourself! (If you already have one, gift it! 🎁)
Add both the Pay it Forward Donation of your choice AND the Cycles Journal or Notebook to cart & use code:
donations of $5-10 get a free Cyclical Notebook with CODE: REDISTRIBUTE&RECEIVE1
donations of $20-30 get a free Cycles Journal with CODE: REDISTRIBUTE&RECEIVE2
donations of $40-80 get a free Cycles Journal + Notebook with CODE: REDISTRIBUTE&RECEIVE3
Through the Pay It Forward Fund, we have helped over 74 folks receive assistance to get a Cycles Journal. Thank you for helping us make this possible!
🌟 EQUAL EXCHANGE: Buy a Cycles Journal from our shop, and receive a 2nd free to give to someone you love or donate to a clinic, little free library, etc.! {Must add both to cart}
🌟APPLY AND RECEIVE: The Pay It Forward Fund
In an effort to do our part in dismantling unjust systems & hierarchies of capitalism & white supremacy, we created a fund dedicated to awarding journals to financially-affected folks with a prioritization to those who self-identify as BIPOC &/or are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community.
We believe in equitable access to offline cycle tracking tools. We recognize there are often barriers from receiving the education and care we all deserve – and so wanted to find a way to create connections and opportunity instead.
This is why we started the Pay It Forward Program.
Our goal is to pave paths for Cycles Journal to support as many cyclical beings as possible.
Read more about how it works or apply for assistance here!
Thank you for honoring Earth Week with us. 🌏
Grateful for every moment, and grateful to create for all of us.
xoxo,
Rachael Amber
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