Byte: Judy Tuwaletstiwa ~ So Many Magical Stories!

What a gift and a blessing it was to sit by Judy's side, (at least that what it felt like during our Zoom interview) and have a conversation with this grace-filled creative! To say that she is a storyteller would be the understatement of the century... And there was so much goodness in our conversation that this byte-sized episode is longer than most I figure you won't mind because the sweetness and coziness that Judy brings is worth every second of your day! (and mine, obvs).

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Bite-Sized Blessings podcast.

This episode I need to introduce you and I want to introduce you to a wonderfully brilliant brilliant human being who I desperately wanted on the podcast but it wasn't until another person,

Barbara Groth,

Urged me to ask her that I summoned up the courage to ask Judy to Wallace Tiwa to be a guest on my podcast.

Now I was introduced to this gloriously sublime human being through the nomadic school of wonder here in Santa Fe,

New Mexico and it was Barbara Groth who urged me to reach out to Judy after I'd taken the class and was kind of in awe and a little scared of the brilliance of this artist and creative woman.

Our conversation did not disappoint and indeed completely thrilled me because Judy is not only an incredible artist she's also a born storyteller and she comes from a family of storytellers and you all know how much I love storytellers on this podcast.

Judy shares multiple stories of magic,

Multiple stories of miracles and all in her gorgeous voice which is just for me so soothing and nurturing.

I kind of feel like I've just spent an hour with someone who deeply loves me and I hope you feel the same way and every time I talk with Judy or I'm in Judy's presence I feel like I've just spent an hour with someone who's deeply invested in my well-being and deeply invested in who I am.

It's just like I've gotten the world's biggest hug.

You also should know that Judy the entire time during our conversation was working on a piece of art that was comprised of lots of different knots so not only was she telling her stories and sharing stories about her life she was creating art while we were talking.

That should tell you a little bit about this woman and what she's bringing to the world.

I would say it's a whole lot of grace,

A whole lot of beauty and a whole lot of urging us to find new ways of reinventing ourselves and creating gorgeousness in the world.

So without further ado here's the very next episode of Bite-sized Blessings.

My first husband Michael was in a car accident with the boys and one of my boys there almost died,

Had severe injuries.

He was four.

He was at the Edinburgh,

At the hospital there.

Great surgeon,

Pediatric surgeon.

Eight-hour surgery.

Friends gathered me and my older boy Robert,

My son David was still in the hospital.

And we sat at their house in Edinburgh and twice during the night I left my body.

Now I didn't know anything about shamanic,

Anything about anything.

All that I knew is that my son was dying and I needed to save him.

And I grabbed his soul that was flying out of his body and I pulled him back in.

And the next day the doctor told me that Aram had died twice.

That's a miracle.

Doesn't mean I could save him in middle age,

But as a mother with a baby and it doesn't mean that every mother can do it.

Who knows why?

But I was stunned when the doctor told me that.

And about seven years later I felt myself come back into my body.

Part of me had still,

Was still out and I wasn't aware of it.

That to me is,

Is quite,

Quite miraculous.

Another kind of miracle,

When I was in seventh grade,

I stayed up all night doing a painting and I took it in and my art teacher said I was no good at art.

Very bad teacher.

So I stopped doing art and instead I became very involved socially.

I became student body president of the schools and very collaborative in creating good things within our community.

And I look back on those kinds of incidents that happen in our life that are so harsh.

If I had stayed in touch with the unconscious that my work comes out of in my household with all the confusion and my father disappearing and the FBI and just all of that,

It would not have been good for me to do art.

It was far too vulnerable that way.

So flash forward,

I'm 29 years old.

I'm at the San Francisco,

At the D.

Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.

And there's a huge traveling exhibit of Van Gogh's work.

And I still don't have my daughter yet,

But I have the three boys.

Aaron was this is before even a car accident.

He was a baby.

I was exhausted.

I go through the exhibit.

And when I reach Wheatfield with Crows,

I start crying so hard.

It's so powerful what I've experienced.

I mean,

The man painted all the paintings within eight years from age 29 to 37.

And I went home and I did my first drawing since seventh grade.

And there was no turning back after that.

None.

And he had opened my heart.

In a sense,

That's a miracle.

I mean,

Van Gogh,

Who died,

Thinking he was a failure in terms of the art world.

A hundred years later in San Francisco.

He couldn't even imagine.

So to me,

The miracles in life are how these things come together.

In such in ways that we can never fully understand.

It's like we're part of a web that is so much larger than we are.

And it's like from the everyday.

Because there are miracles every day.

As you live.

I connect miracles with beauty,

With wonder.

And then there are these big moments that shift our lives.

I mean,

Giving birth,

Adopting.

These are all,

It's all if you think of it,

It's all magical in many ways.

So I don't think,

I think of miracles both as big events.

But also as knots in a web that just keep the web growing.

And that they happen all the time if we just not coming into the studio and creating something I had no idea that I'm going to be able to create.

That's a miracle every day.

It's wondrous.

I look back on a series that I did in 1989 that called Chaco,

Which is where I met my second husband,

Philip.

And I look back on that series because I pulled out of showing for 15 years because it was too hard to be raising kids showing.

It was just it was too much,

But I kept doing my work.

And live very simply.

I didn't have a ton of money coming in and became very good at teaching.

And I look back at this series that I did in 1989 called Chaco.

And how lucky I was that I wasn't showing because the series is still intact.

And it was in storage for since 1989 to just a few years ago.

And now it's part of a wonderful collection,

The entire 10 part series of 70 by 42 inch paintings that are completely interwoven.

And there's a book being done about it.

And it will be loaned for exhibits.

And it's just,

I mean,

That's amazing to me.

And part of pulling out of showing was that I had rushed to peace and it bothered me.

The other part was one of my gallery dealers from LA had seen a show of mine in San Francisco and hated it.

Just like that teacher.

Years later,

He told me that he was going through terrible psychological things at that time and took it out on me.

And I said,

It's okay.

I pulled out of showing and I needed to pull out.

So I had 15 I still have complete series that I would have sold because I need the money one piece from and then then the series would not be complete.

So to me,

That is a miracle.

This 10 part series.

And I looked at the series now,

And I don't even know how I was able to paint it.

It's very figurative.

It's story within story within story within story,

Connecting,

It's all about how the land holds story for us.

And it's,

It comes out of a dream,

Part of a dream that I had at Chaco Canyon.

And so recently,

We discovered that my husband's DNA on his Hopi side,

Goes back to Chaco Canyon.

We met at Chaco Canyon,

We're writing a novel that has to do with Chaco Canyon.

Those to me are all miraculous.

If anyone asked me to paint that series today,

There's no way,

No way I could paint it.

To me,

All of that is truly,

Do you understand what I'm saying about a miracle?

I mean,

You have to smile.

Because like,

All the little curves and movements that we make,

As we're walking on our path,

And we bump into a tree,

And we have to go around something,

And then there's a wall and yeah.

Wow.

Wow,

That that all of those stories are so beautiful and powerful.

And I just think I'm so first of all,

You know,

I'm a storyteller,

But I'm just enraptured listening to you tell your stories,

All the stories over this last hour.

But what I'm also caught by,

What just really caught me was,

You've been you've had this string during the course of the interview,

And you've been tying these knots in it.

And it takes me to,

I'm sure you know about this,

The kipu.

Are you familiar with the kipu in South America?

Well,

The kipu,

A whole,

A whole civilization was built on it.

Yeah.

And,

And,

You know,

They're still trying to decipher the ones that they found.

But basically,

For my listeners,

Who don't know what it is,

Are linen,

Cloth,

String,

Basically,

That South American civilizations would tie knots in.

And those knots were messages and basically stories.

And talking about all sorts of different things.

Now,

We're still trying to decipher them.

But this is the way they kept certain information out of quote,

Unquote,

Enemy hands.

It was a very fascinating and,

I guess you could say secretive way of communication across the landscape.

These fascinating,

But I was thinking,

Oh,

My goodness,

You know,

We're talking,

We're having this conversation.

And there is Judy creating her own kipu with her knots and her stories.

She's doing it with her hands while she's also talking.

And I think it just is so indicative of the fact that storytelling just lives inside you.

And that it's going to come out.

And it doesn't in all of us,

I think it does in all of us.

And I think it's so interesting,

You're noticing the knots.

The other thing about the kipus,

One of the things that they think they were,

They were also bookkeeping.

They were bookkeeping,

They would,

It had to do with taxation with the Incas.

And they're so beautiful,

The kipu.

And I think about rosaries as,

As knots.

I gave a workshop a couple of weeks ago.

And we started out with doing a timeline.

It's a very interesting exercise,

Kirsten.

Like,

It was a timeline having to do with your experiences with art,

Either doing it or seeing it.

And to tie a knot for that.

And then another knot and people started using different color strings to add to the main,

I mean,

They were powerful,

Powerful images of a timeline of knots.

And then we talked about,

Over the next year,

Tying knots for each for important events that happened,

Especially related to art,

Because we were discussing art.

And I think of the knot on the Talat Catan,

Which is an undergarment that an Orthodox Jews wear,

There are knots,

Sits it on the,

On the fringe.

I have one from my five year old uncle who died.

He died at five.

And I have his childhood Talat that my grandpa Nathan carried in his prayer bag for 27 years after his son died.

Objects have such deep stories in them.

It's amazing.

You know,

This,

This little Talat that you wear underneath,

You've probably seen Orthodox Jews,

Where there's some fringes that seem to be sticking out.

Yeah,

Those are the tzitzit.

And I ended up with that,

You know,

I ended up with that garment.

And I thought,

Why would my grandpa have such a tiny Talat?

I never knew this grandpa.

He died before I was born.

Why would he have such a tiny,

Small one.

And when I had this show,

The Dream Life of Objects,

A rabbi said to me,

That's a child's Talat.

It hadn't even occurred to me.

And then I realized that was his son Isaiah's Talat,

And he carried it in his prayer bag all those years.

I mean,

Story is all around us.

It's everywhere.

And it is the way we give death a heart.

It's death is rough stuff.

Story helps us with it,

Whether they're stories of redemption,

Whatever the story is,

It helps.

But I find the stories that I most love is where you suddenly have an insight into a person that you didn't have before,

Or into an event that happened.

I know that when I read stories from survivors,

With the dropping of the atomic bombs,

There's always a different viewpoint.

When I read stories of Holocaust survivors,

They're always different from others.

You think,

How can there be another different one?

Even when we lived at Hopi for 12 years,

Philip and I,

And he was setting up a mapping office for the tribe.

And we lived in his father's,

His late father's house in the village of Kikosmovi.

That's where his father had died in an accident in front of that house.

And different because Hopi is a place where people can have lived for 1000 years or longer.

I mean,

Old Uraibi is the most continually living village in the country that's been occupied.

People would tell me,

Oh,

I was there that day,

I was five years old,

I saw this.

Someone else would tell me,

Oh,

I was there that day,

Because there was going to be a dance.

So when I said I was going to be I was using the laundromat next door.

And this is what I saw.

And suddenly,

I was seeing Frisco's death from so many different points of view.

It was very powerful to be seeing that.

It's a place of incredible story because people have been there so long.

And I was very,

Very aware that because I had no history at Hopi,

And I had no children with Philip,

So I had no future.

I have a wonderful stepson,

But I didn't have children with Philip,

That I was there only in the present.

And so I could listen to the stories in a different kind of way.

Thank you for bringing in.

I know our time is getting short,

But thank you for bringing in the additional reminder of time.

And how story can take us back to the distant past,

Show us a different future,

Even change our present,

Our relationship to any of those times.

Yeah,

It's kind of alchemical like that.

It's an ultimate alchemy,

I guess you could call it because that's why the stories that we tell ourselves are so important,

Right?

Because stories have the power to change worlds,

Or dream bigger visions for what we're currently going through.

They can also keep us,

If we keep repeating the same stories to ourselves,

We can get stuck in them too.

Yeah,

I think when you said alchemy,

That's beautiful.

What a beautiful way to think of story.

I have to really think about that,

Because I love that story as alchemy,

Because it is.

I'm sure you have read books in your life that have changed how you see the world.

Oh,

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yes.

They just,

They kind of shatter your soul.

And you can never be the same again.

And,

And,

And it takes a very long time to kind of understand what you've just read or heard.

Yes.

Everyone,

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with yet another magical human being.

I did want to let you know that she's a visual artist,

Writer and teacher.

And I met her originally,

When she taught me in a class.

But she's also prolific.

She works in a lot of different modalities.

And her work is in private and in-person.

And she's a great teacher.

She's a great writer.

She's a great teacher.

Her work is in private and museum collections,

Nationally and internationally.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast.

And thank you for all your ratings,

And all the reviews you've given me.

Please do consider if you haven't yet,

I do always appreciate another rating,

Or another review.

Those help other people find this work that I'm doing in this world.

I'm also grateful to everyone who recommends guests to me.

You've never steered me wrong once.

And so thank you to Barbara Groth,

For getting me to summon the courage to reach out to Judy and ask her to be a guest on the podcast.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Judy.

Be a natural born storyteller.

We all have stories to tell in this world.

And there are so many ways to tell them.

Not only through going up on stage and doing an open mic,

Not only through writing a poem or creating a work of nonfiction,

But also in the visual arts through sculpture,

Through paint,

Through paper mache.

There are so many different ways to tell our stories.

So be like Judy and utilize every single kind of storytelling medium there is to bring more beauty and more grace into this world.

You could always use a little more beauty and grace,

Don't you think?

So go ahead,

Do it.

I dare you.