ARTISTS IN MEXICO: MEDITATIONS IN MOTION

GEORGIA POWELL

December 27^th, 2022

Interview by: Michelle Stopher

“I just remember touching the clay, and tears just rolling.”

From secret floral operations to training under Amazonian masters, artist Georgia Powell channels stream of consciousness into elegantly hand-crafted ceramic pieces. Chain-link necklaces, tribal wall hangings, spine-like fruit baskets, shapely terracotta vases. Earthy. Bold. Ancestral. 

…

The sun was just beginning to melt into the Pacific as I approached Arte Vallarta. I briefly began to wonder if I was in the right place.

I knocked on the door, but there was no answer. I checked my email to verify the address and see if perhaps my class had been cancelled. Nothing. A few moments later, the front door flung open and standing in front of me was Georgia. Fiery red, curly hair, cascading down around her shoulders. An inviting smile.

‘Welcome!’ she said in her soft voice, as she beckoned me inside the colorful workshop. ‘You’re my only student tonight…’

…

Georgia Powell, 48 years old, born and raised in Melbourne, first left Australia when she was in her in early 30’s.

Coming to Mexico for the first time was under the guise of a job, in which she, along with 6 coworkers, were flown to Mexico by their employer. The ‘job’ however, did not exist… 

M: What kind of business were you in?

G: The business was an events florist. The company was quite prominent in Australia and we had done a lot of events in the past - a lot of high-profile events. We all just said that we had signed a non-disclosure agreement as to what the job was and couldn’t share any information. It turns out our boss had just wanted a secret getaway to Mexico, and we got to come along for the ride.

During that trip, I broke my ankle, badly. And because of my broken ankle, I decided to stay longer in Mexico to delay the long flight home. So, I hobbled around for another week or so, and I just remember feeling so happy here [Vallarta], despite having a painfully broken ankle.

”

M: How do you think your work as a florist has influenced how you work with the ceramics and the clay now?

G: You know in a lot of ways, floral installations are like sculpture, because they’re 3D forms that you’re creating. It made sense to me. You know, flowers are from the earth, clay is from the earth. I’m strongly connected to nature. So the fact that I combine these two things together, it still blows my mind. And even in my own way of working with floristry, I learned to listen to the flowers. They tell me which direction they want to go, or how short to cut them. And I find that it happens with the clay as well – it tells me it needs more water, it tells me it wants me to push harder. It’s a conversation.

M: And that conversation feels like, is it like, a tactile conversation or is it intuitive? Or how are you understanding what it wants?

G: It’s really interesting, isn’t it? I think it’s both, because when I talk about teaching ceramics – I say to my students – ‘you’re learning a new language, but you’re communicating with your hands, so you’re listening in with your hands.’ When it comes to what I create now, it’s definitely my intuition. I’ll draw what I want to make first, and then I’ll start making it and I’ll get – I don’t want to call it a voice – but it’s like ‘no, cut it off there, or go this way, or add this on there.’ I don’t know how to explain that.

M: So, is it like a thought that bubbles up?

G: It doesn’t come from my brain. It comes from [here] (touching her chest).

M: The heart?

G: Yea, the heart, the gut. And it’s driving my hands. My head is checked out. My head is not engaged at all, and when it is engaged, it’s over-thinking and destroying and making mistakes.

Yea, and the thoughts from the brain are the programming - it’s the wrong messages. That life should be hard. It’s the doubts. It’s the ‘who do you think you are?’ ‘Who are you kidding?’ It’s all of the self-doubt. ‘Art isn’t a career.’ I’ve learned to kick that out. 

M: Yea, it’s called the gut-brain axis, the enteric nervous system.

G: Yea, there’s no question or doubt about it. It’s a full body knowing that this is what I need to do, no matter the outcome. 

M: So with the clay, do you have a favourite part of the process?

G: My favourite part is playing with the clay, just doodling, I’m not even thinking about it – I’m just letting my hands make shapes. While I’m chatting with my friends or my son on the phone. 

I always was very tactile as a kid. I needed to touch and feel. Even now, I go barefoot in the studio, I need to connect with the ground. I’m fully part of it. Did I mention the reconnection therapy?

M: No…

G: This is really interesting. Another one of the synchronistic happenings. A friend I met – Jorge, he became like a family friend. He’s an architect. He had this beautiful house and he invited me to stay there while I looked for an apartment. He called it ‘El Refugio’ because he had different people coming to stay. Coming and going. It was just a gorgeous home. Jorge had a friend from Monterrey, Elsa, who came to stay and they called her ‘La Bruja’ (the witch), because she’s really into all the esoteric, spiritual stuff. She spoke zero English, and she was practicing this ‘reconnection therapy’. It’s originally outlined in a book by Eric Pearl.

And I thought, ‘oh I don’t know, this is really out there,’ but something in me, was like ‘I’ve got to do this.’

So I’m lying there with my eyes closed, and she’s doing her thing. But my hands started to throb. I thought they must’ve been like fat, purple and throbbing. And while this was happening, I had this thought to myself like ‘wow, my hands are turning on.’ This is amazing. Maybe I’m meant to be a reiki healer or something.

And afterwards, Elsa said to me ‘nothing may happen now, you know, this is something that will happen gradually.’ 

Then one day I imagined something in my mind and I just made it with the clay. And I thought to myself after, ‘how did I make that?’ And then I said to myself, ‘I can make anything.’ And I just started saying that to myself over and over, and I still feel like that - I can make anything. 

Almost a year a year later, I realized, that my hands had turned on to do this. This is what I was meant to do. And I had to message Elsa and say that my life had changed.

M: This synchronicity leads me to wonder what is the piece you are most proud of, or the piece that holds the most significance to you? 

G: Peruvian synchronicities. Escuela Nacional de Cerámicas. (National School of Ceramics). They had advertised workshops, and I had wanted to go for about a year or so. And I decided to sign up for one where the teacher was demonstrating ancestral ceramics. Lily Sandoval Panduro. She’s from the Shipibo-Konibo tribe– a group of people in Amazon, where they work with ayahuasca and do plant medicine ceremonies, and then the women create pots from their visions and their dreams. There’s a lot of messages and symbology. It’s really traditional pottery to their culture. I wasn’t so interested in the plant medicine part, I just wanted to make pots. 

Lily would lay out a bunch of photos of her work and she’d say, ‘pick one and make it.’ And I remember saying to the girls in the workshop, ‘I’m going to choose the hardest thing I can find; I need to challenge myself.’ And nobody had chosen the colibrí (hummingbird), so I started making it and Lily came over and stood beside me and she said it’s the ‘Espiritu de colibrí.

During the workshop, I had been battling with constant migraines, and I didn’t know that I was suffering from altitude sickness. I was in Tapalpa which is about 2,000 m above sea level. I was really nauseous and having hot flashes, but I was pretending I was fine. Until it became really apparent that I wasn’t fine, is when someone suggested to Lily that she come and give me a massage. Because Lily is healer, she’s like a shaman. And Lily took one look at me and said ‘yes I’m going to come to your room.’ 

So, Lily comes to my room. She lays me down, and she’s working on me. And she’s rough, you know? She knows what she’s doing. While she’s working on my head, she said something about having visions, and that the vision was about me. The vision was something about me representing the future, that her and I are doing work together. She said that whatever is happening with the world is a big shift and that it’s dying out - all of this ancestral stuff. And that I was representing some connection to this new world. And I thought ‘whoa, okay, cool. This is awesome.’ And then we went back the next days and I didn’t tell anyone. Because you know, how do you tell people that?

M: It sounds a bit, you know, like, ‘I’m the chosen one.’ 

G: Yea! So, I just kept it quiet. 

Once all of the work was done on the last day, it was the presentation of everyone’s work. The director and Lily were speaking about each person’s work and I was the last one to be spoken about.

Well, the director said all these lovely things, and then Lily spoke and she said ‘she sees my work as equal to hers,’ and I just started balling. I was like ‘I can’t believe I am even here and now, I know this is what I’m meant to be doing, I cannot be doing anything else.’ 

So Lily and I exchanged numbers and well, nothing’s happened yet. But that doesn’t mean anything, time is a funny thing.

M: What year was that? 

G: This was just in September 2022. Yea, it’s fast. All this learning, and what’s happening is fast.

M: The ‘rapid acceleration’, does it sometimes feel overwhelming?

G: Yea, totally. And that’s where I realized like I have to jump off. I spend a lot of time alone, and then getting into nature whenever I can, and just being alone. Just slow everything down. But art is beautiful for neutralizing that [anxiety]. It saved me. I wish I had done it back then, I could’ve saved so much suffering.

“I feel like I have a tap turned on in my brain of ideas, and it doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to run out”

INTENTIONAL PLAY

M: This ties into the art therapy, is that what you’re calling it?

G: Yea, but I find I don’t like to say ‘therapy’, as everyone seems to be a therapist nowadays. I’m studying subjects around art therapy, whether I call it that or not, I need to find another term. I would think about it more as ‘intentional play.’ Because you know, through playing you can work things out – you don’t even consciously realize sometimes what you’re working through in yourself – or transforming a mood or emotion within yourself. 

M: What would be the most idealistic situation for you and your career as an artist in Mexico, or anywhere, moving forward? 

G: I don’t know what’s going to happen next. But I like the idea of continuing to get better at my art, so I can keep doing workshops and learning.

M: Participating or teaching?

G: Participating, I need a teacher. I love to learn. In new ways and old ways. And then I also have an aspect of the business side that I want to create – décor – home décor – that I’ve designed and that I can train others to make the pieces. I want to create a brand.

Part of all of this stuff ‘turning on’ – you know – the reconnection stuff - I feel like I have a tap turned on in my brain of ideas, and it doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to run out. 

I love the teaching so much. I love that I have a gift to bring out the creativity in someone. That I’m able to draw that out of another person. Getting someone to feel – and this is why I don’t want to call it therapy.

M: Exactly – and you wouldn’t want to advertise something as ‘therapy’ because people don’t want to sign up for ‘therapy.’

G: Exactly – because that’s a state of resistance, or people think they don’t need therapy. But when it’s treated as play, or accessing your creativity – we all want and need that – especially if we haven’t done it before. 

M: Beautiful. So that is multi-faceted, there’s a lot going on – because the tap has been turned on and you can’t turn it off.

G: There’s a dark side to this – and it’s that with all that beautiful fullness and light and direction and purpose – it’s almost like, it’s all or nothing. Having relationships has become really difficult and friends as well. I isolate myself more. Because it’s all I want to be doing – I find it difficult to just sit and just talk rubbish, or small talk, because I don’t want to waste a minute – I just want to keep creating. 

M: People who want to have a relationship with you basically need to be in the studio with you, if they want to create and have your attention at the same time.

G: And I love that! And that would be one of my goals for the next few months – to create a studio where people are comfortable enough to come, just sit and hang out, have a drink, have a chat and have a cup of tea. And then, if you want to pick of the clay - even better. Start creating something with me.

M: Because even the presence of another feels fulfilling even if you haven’t spoken. And so, Mexico – what do you think is so special about Mexico, as a country, or Puerto Vallarta specifically, that facilitates this creativity? There is something special here – I think we can all acknowledge that.

G: So, Mexico in general, I fell in love with it. I had some weird connection with it even when I was younger, I would buy handicrafts from a market and then find out later they were Mexican – in Australia. And I had quite a few things I collected as a teenager, they all turned out to be Mexican. And then even with the paper mâché, when the internet first came about, the first thing I typed in the search engine, was ‘paper mâché’, the very first result was a page in Mexico. And I thought, wow, I need to go to Mexico. So it was always a bit of a running thing. 

And then when I first came and discovered the richness and depth of the handicrafts and the folk art, I was just overcome. These families, the traditions – the fact that you can live and work your whole life making beautiful things to just use in the home. You’re just using your art around you. I just found that incredible. You didn’t have to have shitty old plastic things. You could have really beautiful handmade painted pieces that you cooked in and drank out of out. And I just thought ‘wow, I want this life.’ And so, Mexico is so special for all of that. There is so much beauty, just layers and layers of beauty.  And then coming to Puerto Vallarta – it didn’t hit me at first – I didn’t think it was the prettiest place and I’d think ‘awh yea it’s a good place to start.’ But then as I got to be here longer and feel it, for me it’s really about the nature – it’s the mountains, the river, the jungle and the ocean. All in really close proximity. I just love it. It’s a funny, diverse place. I guess the ley lines would come into as well. It’s a healing place. A transitory kind of place where people come to heal their stuff, and then either hang around for a bit, or move on, or keep coming back.

M: So the ley lines, is this as well about the quartz, minerals and rocks found here as well?

G: There are vortexes here, energy vortexes around here and in this state. I think all of Mexico is really, really deep spiritually, and rich with energetic stuff going on. And then all of the synchronicities, the magic stuff.

M: It is pretty magic, hey? It’s exciting.

G: Have you had it too? The synchronicities?

M: Oh yea, it’s been non-stop since I’ve been here. I’ve started to be turned on – like we spoke about the rapid acceleration – I feel overwhelmed. The ideas are flowing so steadily, that I’m constantly writing them down here [in my notebook], in my phone, I’m waking up in the middle of the night – I can’t stop. I’m starting to think – when am I going to have the time to do all this? I’m feeling like it’s overflowing and I’m trying to figure out what to focus on first. 

“Time is a funny thing…”

G: On the ‘time thing’ - I just want to say this, because I had the same feeling, that it’s going to happen at the time it happens, you need to let the ‘time’ go. 

M: So just don’t force anything?

G: Right. None of this is about forcing anything. This is just flow. Full flow. Don’t force anything.

M: Any final thoughts, closing statements, quotes, sentiment you want to share?

G: Yes, pay attention to the signs. It takes a lot of courage to change hemispheres, to change your life completely. And so, you know, I just had this sense of deep trust. I had faith in whatever it is, and that if it wasn’t going to work, I could just go back. I see signs everywhere. I see the numbers. 

My son was born at 4:44 a.m. He’s an angel, really. He was the one who triggered all of this change for me. Really. Before I left for Mexico, I was driving and the number plate right in front of me was 444. And then I looked over at the car next to that one, and it too, was 444. And I was just like ‘this is saying to me, you go, and you’re going to have great fortune and it will be fully aligned.’ Trust it. So, when you learn to read the signs, it’s all there for you.