(image © Helen Hardin Estate)
Paradox, precision, and passion are woven into the life, paintings, and etching plates of Helen Hardin. A Southwest Native American artist, Hardin strove to imbue each creation with her passion and spirit. As a contemporary artist, her work was a bridge between the paradox of her warring internal worlds. Her precision was a compensatory function balancing her unpredictable chaotic childhood and led her into a numinous state in which she danced with her Tewa spirits. This workshop will explore these three themes through a Jungian analysis of her work. The session will culminate in a discussion of her most significant work, her Feminine Trinity – Changing Woman, Medicine Woman, and Listening Woman, her representation of the sacred feminine.
Explore the healing powers of the imagination, the creative process, and the transcendent function.
Explore the theme of the motherline; the feminine legacy, culturally (Tewa), and personally, and universally.
Explore, via Jungian analysis, the healing, transformative powers of Helen Hardin’s work: compensatory function; not animus driven perfection, but a new aspect of the feminine.
Explore the spirit that Helen Hardin passed on to her descendants and admirers in collective images.
Learning Objectives
Using a Jungian lens, participants will learn about Helen Hardin’s individuation process (striving for wholeness) as a creative personality an exploration of her transcendent function in art making that served to heal her paradoxes.
Participants will learn how Hardin healed her motherline personally and culturally by connecting to her personal Tewa spirituality and the collective unconscious.
Participants will explore the Tewa collective and universal themes of the mother and women in her Feminine Trinity, her opening to the sacred feminine.
Participants will also explore her creation of androgynous Tewa thinking feminine that permitted her to birth a new image of the Self, the ultimate culmination of the transcendent function.
