Warrior

It was in January, in Santa Fe, that this kachina caught my eye. I'd run for shelter under a turquoise portal, trying to get out of the snow. She was right there in the window. There were others but she was the one I was drawn to. The lady inside told me the kachina was a Hopi warrior maiden. The story went that she was sitting on the edge of the river, doing her hair in traditional Hopi style, called squash blossom or butterfly whorls, when a Ute raiding party attacked her village. The men were away on a hunt so she rose to action and chopped the invaders to bits.

Her swift focus and determination is seen in her hair, one coil is up and the other she didn't have time to finish. She thought she was going to enjoy a leisurely afternoon of doing her hair by the riverside, but something very unexpected came up. Sometimes it's like that, isn't it?

This has been an especially difficult year, on so many levels, one with a lot of beauty and pain, and a whole ton of stress. I've been looking at my comfort zone from a far distance for a while now. I put this drawing on the front of my school binder in January, in the beginning of my final semester. I wanted a reminder that no matter what might come my way, I would have the power to move over it, around it, or chop it to bits. Though I often discovered that it was sitting with the obstacle, or dancing with it, that brought the most success.

Tomorrow I am graduating. FINALLY. I'll be doing some traveling and internships next, and have to move again, so I still don't see daily posts for a while, but I do see art again. I've been gathering my art supplies back together, bit by bit. Some have dried up, but others have simply been waiting.