Hans Silvester and the People of the Omo Valley

I get a lot of information and inspiration from my friends on Facebook. A few months before I started creating my mother warrior headdresses, someone shared this video of the photography of Hans Silvester.

Silvester photographed the people of the lower valley of the Omo, at the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan, where the Surma and Mursi tribes use the materials at hand in nature to decorate their bodies.

The images are captivating and stunningly beautiful.

Taking inspiration from these images, I decided to make my headdresses of natural materials as much as possible. Two of the finished pieces are pictured below.

 Believe me - it is a hard act to follow after seeing the creations of the tribes of the Omo Valley!

Mother Warrior Dancer

Mother Warrior Nurturer

The model, my friend Gaea Yudron. Yes they can be worn!

My year as a mother warrior

In 2010 I became a mother warrior and began my tribal journey.

One of my children was in danger.

I pulled out all the stops. Every moment of my waking days and barely sleeping nights focused on this child. There was none of my usual second guessing and ambivalence. I knew what I had to do.

It was the first time in my life that I acted mostly from instinct. 

I was bold and fearless.

And I felt like I was waging war.

I was fortunate to be working at the time with a (more than) art teacher named Cathy Dorris. She wanted to do a Tribal art show featuring work inspired by African headdresses. My art work up until this time was mainly drawings on paper:

Metamorphosis Mandala IV

Cathy Dorris is both artist and healer. She listened, shared her own mother warrior stories and helped me make the move from flat to 3-D.

For inspiration we poured over images of actual North African tribal headdresses. These became burned into my brain, and my first headdress was a pretty accurate replica of an actual male warrior's headdress - mud color and all.

Before long Cathy's studio became my haven.

And during this most nightmarish time of my life I created one tribal headdress after another, until I had made six (with visions of many more in my head.) I called them the "Mother Warrior Headdresses." I made them so that they can actually be comfortably worn.

The images below are of the first one of the series:

The Mother Warrior I

When I think back – I barely remember making them. When I look at them now I know they represent the unfettered and fierce out-pouring of my pain, anger, passion and hope.

Creating them empowered and sustained me during this dark time.

Occasionally I asked myself, "What are you doing? You are a white middle-class middle-aged suburban mother. Why are you obsessively creating things from a way of life of which you know nothing?"

All I can say is that it felt so right.

And I came to the conclusion that the world is smaller and we are more like others than we think.

Fierce mother-ness, creativity, symbols, archetypes, instincts, love, and at times -- a need to wage war on behalf of our families -- runs through us all.

With respect and openness we can take inspiration from anywhere there are other human-beings . . . and especially from other mothers.