V i c t o r i a   R a b i n o w e

 

Victoria Rabinowe is a dreamer, artist, educator, and mythmaker. She has explored the Art of Dreaming in more than 200 workshops and dream sharing groups in her Santa Fe studio and across the United States. In her original approach to dream work, she has guided dreamers to reinvent their dreams using visual arts and creative writing. She is a graduate of the Advanced DreamTending Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute and has taught & exhibited for many years at the Association for the Study of Dreams. She is currently involved in a three-year series of Dream Journal Drawings. In addition to being a dream artist, she is the founder of the Santa Fe Weaving Gallery, and the program chair for The Santa Fe Book Arts Group.

Artist's Statement

"Art is a wound turned to light"
-- Georges Braque

My work in Dream Art is similar to the practice of alchemy. I work in my studio as if I were in an ancient laboratory of science. The dream is my Prima Materia.

Before I begin a drawing, I subject the dream to a series of alchemical operations. I fragment the dream through research. I hunt down symbols and myths. I play with the language. I write my memories. Once I have collected as much information as I can, I recombine the visual fragments into collages, and I distill the writings into poems. After this lengthy process, I revive the dream through drawing. Drawing provides the medicine with which I can confront the issues that confront me. The image-making process is the catalyst which releases the Anima Mundi from the enigmatic dream story. Art becomes the bridge to the spiritual gold, the philosopher's stone of the final work of art.

These pieces are representative images from a three year series of Dream Journal Drawings that combine text with image in transparent layers of inks, mineral colors, graphite and pastels on paper.

"The Open Door"
In this dream Mr. Burns is leaving his home with the door open and without the alarm turned on. In the drawing, I worked with the incendiary name of "Burns." I became engaged by the notion of what it would feel like to have no personal alarm system. This led me to consider what it would be like to leave the door open to my own emotions and memories -- to experience my inner demons without protection.

"The Back Of Time"
In this dream, I've strung helium balloons together, but I can't make the knots. I keep trying and trying. I feel stuck. In the picture, I use the act of drawing the dream to confront this feeling of being stuck. Making this image became the alchemical process in which I transformed my inertness into action.

"The Cerro Grande Fire"
This dream came during the huge fire in the mountains near my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I dreamed of a fire out of control. The drawing is a meditation between the feeling of helplessness in the face of a fire raging and my own rage at facing helplessness.

 

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2002 ASD Dream Art Exhibition

19th Annual International Conference for the Association for the Study of Dreams
June 15 - 19, 2002
at Tufts University, Medford, Boston, Massachusetts

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