Interview: Judy Tuwaltetstiwa ~ So Many Magical Stories!

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 Tewalitz 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 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.

How do you self-describe?

Interesting question.

Well sometimes by my different roles,

You know,

I'm a mother,

A grandmother,

An artist,

A writer,

A visual artist,

A writer and a teacher.

So I'm all of those different things in terms of roles but I'm also those as they're woven together and I'm also a person who cares deeply about the state of the world and how to do art that is and to teach in a way that helps heal.

I would say that's that's another layer.

If you go turtles all the way down then it's layer and layer and layer and layer and that would be turtle.

Definitely a major supporting turtle of the structure and of course healing oneself in this journey called life.

Such a fleeting journey that we have.

I remember I was interviewing my mother once.

She lived with us for six months in the last year of her life and she was looking,

She was putting some makeup on,

We were discussing some things and she says oh my god I've gotten so old.

I mean she was 94 at the time and it was like this surprise in her face.

It was absolutely wonderful.

It was like because I think she's still,

She retains so much curiosity about life right to the end.

Very curious.

I think when you're curious and you're constantly learning and constantly surprised that it's not even a role.

It's simply being in wonder what this life is.

And I know and she was surprised that she looks so old you know and she laughed and she spoke about that she was ready to leave this earth that she had and she felt very very lucky in this life.

Not that her life was a that easier one but but she was very fortunate in many ways.

And in some,

In many ways a role model.

In other ways not.

But in many ways a role model.

The last time I saw her she was at my brother David's house where she'd been for six months and then was to come back to us.

And she was so filled with light and it was magical.

And I said to my husband Philip when we left,

This is in California,

You know if I don't see mom again it's really okay.

She's been my mother.

I've been her baby.

And she has been,

I have been her mother and she has been my baby.

And it felt so complete to take care of her when she was in her mid 90s and completed something inside me.

So I'm a human being.

I love to have things completed.

Circles made.

Where where shadow has been explored and investigated and light has been brought to it.

Very important to me as part of healing.

So who I am as a human being is somebody who believes in a web that connects us all.

And that anything that happens whether it's on the Gaza Strip,

Whether it's in Ukraine,

That we're all connected to it.

And I love that the web has that,

Can do that.

It can also blur because of all the nonsense that people post.

As a human being I believe in the string that that you can tie knots on and remember something special,

Mark it.

I think I'm really glad to be a human being and have an opposable thumb.

It's one of the great things about and to use our opposable thumbs so well.

That's got to be one of the great things ever for us primates that we have these opposable thumbs.

I love to make things.

I love to get up in the morning,

Go into my studio and to come out in the evening and something is made that I had no idea was going to exist that day.

So that's some of what I am as a human being.

I love that and I really appreciate that you brought your mother's curiosity into play because I do,

And I've said this before on the podcast,

That I do believe that curiosity is a superpower.

And some people just possess it innately.

Other people have to learn to be curious and then some people just don't care.

They're not curious about things in the world.

But I do think for those who are willing to be curious or get curious,

It opens the entire world up to so much wonder and awe and beauty and learning.

And I think it makes this life more dynamic and richer,

So much richer.

So how wonderful to grow up with a mother who was so curious.

She was always curious,

Always.

My father was difficult in many ways,

But he was also a wonderful storyteller.

He was Southern.

And I've noticed that a lot of our great storytellers in American literature are Southern.

There's something about the language and the rhythm of the language and influenced probably by African storytelling.

One of the big influences,

I would think,

On it through the slave population.

You know,

In America,

We need to look at what we've all brought to this place and really value it.

Instead of looking at the scarcity of what we think should be,

Is to look at how abundant.

When I think of Southern storytelling,

I think of the medieval English literature,

Which I studied deeply.

Great storytelling and how that comes through English literature all the way and enters the South.

I also think about gospel music.

I think about African storytelling and all of these things meeting and out of them.

Just an abundance,

An incredible abundance of what story is.

And I was going to ask you now,

Did you grow up in the same area that your mother grew up in?

Or no.

Okay.

I'm because you know,

My second question always is,

Did you grow up in a religious household?

And so I'm curious.

Yeah,

Where exactly did you grow up?

And and how did that happen for you?

As far as growing up in a religious household?

I'm so curious.

It was an extremely religious household.

So I grew up in East Los Angeles.

Very,

Very multiculturally.

The religion that my parents followed was communism.

And they were completely involved in it for 20 years.

I mean,

Talk about an ideology and a dogma.

All the best and worst of religion.

The ideology was of the world at peace where everybody had a place.

That was the ideology.

The worst of it was a narrowness where if you read that Stalin had was committing genocide,

It was the same as right wing people today are extreme left wing people today saying,

Oh,

The newspapers are lying.

They're lying.

So it was it was a religion under attack within this country when I grew up.

J Edgar Hoover,

The FBI would the FBI would visit us all the time.

My father went into hiding.

You know,

It was if anyone's seeing Oppenheimer,

They have a sense of the harassment and the other things.

And it makes me laugh because I think in the 1930s,

The Communist Party was very helpful to the labor movement.

But then it became,

Like many religions,

Really rigidified and very dogmatic and very self protective.

And it was not particularly well organized.

I mean,

How how in the world people imagine they were going to overthrow that the communists would overthrow the government?

None of them had guns.

None of them.

And it was crazy.

It's crazy now.

I saw where Trump is showing about the communists.

There aren't any communists anymore.

The party disbanded in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution,

When my parents woke up and other people woke up from that dogmatic dream.

That they were going to change the world and that the ends justified the means.

And I think now there was another religion that went on next door because we lived in a duplex with my grandparents and they were from Eastern Europe.

My grandfather was a wonderful tailor,

Did very fine women's suits and made good,

Good maltids.

He loved making maltids for us.

So American and so wonderful.

My grandmother was a housekeeper.

She didn't write in any language.

I remember how thrilling it was to watch her sign her name to a document because she was so proud that she didn't have to put an X.

But every Friday night she lit the candles for Shabbat while my grandfather muttered about religion and how destructive it was.

I found the dogma of religion both from my parents,

Because there's so much anger involved in it and it's so much wanting everybody else to think the way you are.

That part of religion always bothered me.

But listening to Paul Robeson sing songs of freedom,

There's an album.

Now that's different.

That touches the heart and that opens you to inclusion.

I would go to church with my Mexican friends.

I'd go to High Mass.

It was in Latin back then.

And so beautiful.

I think of it as cadences of gold.

I'd go to temple with my Japanese friends.

With my black friends,

I'd go to,

And my parents never objected.

It was fine,

Even though they were atheists.

I certainly grew up atheist in a religion called communism.

But my Japanese friends,

I'd go to temple with them and there was such a sense of silence.

With my black friends,

It was singing at these little storefront churches.

And with my grandma,

I'd go to synagogue on the high holidays.

And again,

It was the singing.

Somehow the singing is not polluted.

It's so rich.

With communism songs like I Thought I Saw Joe Hill Last Night,

Alive is You and Me.

The four,

Los Cuatros Generales,

Songs that stay with you your whole life about the four generals from the Spanish Civil War.

Somehow music held religion for me in the purest way.

And I think when I do my art,

There's always a sense of music somewhere in it,

Even if there's no sound with it.

So I connected to what I consider the richest part.

My husband and I were talking about this question this morning and about religion.

He said,

Well,

Religion teaches you the difference between right and wrong.

And I think it can.

But it doesn't mean that it actually follows that.

I mean,

The crusades in the Middle Ages are still haunting us,

Really haunting us.

Because at some point,

Something becomes solidified.

And then it's I'm right,

And you're wrong,

Rather than the difference between right and wrong.

Not for everybody,

But for an awful lot of people.

So yep,

I grew up in quite a religion.

I think if people who are in a left wing,

Extreme left,

Extreme right now,

If I were talking to someone who's extreme right,

And they told me what they believe,

And I would probably say you sound just like my parents.

And they would smile and be happy.

And then I would just say they were communist.

And that would not solidify our bounds,

But it might open their minds.

And I think Kirsten growing up in that kind of very enclosed,

I mean,

I remember the meetings at the house.

They'd have hour long hours and hours,

Everybody smoking.

Back in that day,

The room filled with smoke.

And they'd have their meetings would be criticism sessions of each other,

That they weren't being good enough communists.

Now,

How do you build an organization that way?

It's amazing.

And so and then this whole country afraid that communists are going to take over the government.

What nonsense.

The idealism does still live in me.

I was the idealism lived out in a way when I would have a birthday and blow out the candles.

I never asked for anything for myself.

I always asked for world peace.

That was the idealistic part of it.

That was so rich.

But I couldn't understand the level of anger at wealthy people.

All these different things didn't make sense.

I think it's part of why I ended up becoming an artist.

Because as an artist,

I never start with the end in mind.

I always start wherever I am.

And the end comes out of everything that I do.

Out of the process itself.

It's not the ends justifying the means.

I mean,

That's what revolutions do.

They say we have to do this.

So we kill this many people.

Because of this ideal that we have.

So yes,

I did grow up in a very religious household.

That's actually so fascinating.

And you are the first person to say that they grew up under that religion.

And I love it.

I love that.

Because it's just such a fascinating answer.

And then your stories,

Of course,

Are just so interesting and glorious.

And one of the things I just wanted to touch on is you talked about rigidity,

Right?

And how some religions,

Even communism,

They tend towards becoming structured or having rules and,

You know,

Keeping some people out,

Welcoming other people and just they become codified and rigid.

And it just brings me back to the wonderful,

Wonderful class that I took with you and your painting that you showed us that you painted,

What was it over 100 years What was it over 100 times?

And I just thought to myself,

That that is the antithesis of what you were talking about,

About religion getting codified and rigid.

And it's like creating because I,

You know,

All those images,

I was watching them as they came across the screen.

And I just thought to myself,

Oh,

My goodness,

Beautiful,

Beautiful,

Beautiful,

But you would finish it,

And then you would paint it over.

And then you would start over from the beginning.

And I just think,

What a way to be in the world just open to the next adventure open to what is still possible on that canvas,

What can emerge from it,

That's different,

But also a gorgeous,

Gorgeous comment on the,

You know,

I think about the sand paintings done by the monks that are so ephemeral.

And once they're done,

They,

They're blown away.

Your work just reminds me of the ephemerality of life,

How everything is transitory,

And not really here to stay that,

Including our lives,

Right,

We're all just visitors here passing through.

And your that,

That series that you showed us,

Just really resonates with a beautiful way of being in the world,

Which is to understand and make friends with the idea that it's all transitory.

Unlike certain religions that try to lock everything down,

Become rigid,

And try to keep everything in inward facing sort of,

I just wanted to say that,

Because it just came to me while you were talking.

And I think it's what an utterly gorgeous way to be in the world,

Comfortable and okay with how transitory everything is.

The painting taught me so much.

It was really incredible.

What you're discussing is what a six by four foot canvas that I,

And here I did know the way it was going to end up.

It was going to be one color.

And everything underneath that color would be buried within it.

And it was a way to teach myself how to let go.

And I think different religions touch on this,

And we can find them in all religions.

It's when things become rigidified.

And that certainly happened with communism.

And there was so much fear.

And people,

I think what's hard is when we won't look at our own fear.

So when I did those paintings,

And I did one that ended up all white,

The next year,

1986,

I did a black one in 1987,

A red one.

And the red one,

I explored rage,

Particular Jewish rage that I had inherited.

And I did that for two weeks.

And there were 100 images,

I photographed all the images knowing they were going to disappear,

And wanting to get a sense of what the what the painting was teaching me.

I wish everybody could do that exercise.

It's an amazing exercise and teaches you so much.

What I was learning was how to let go.

I didn't know it at the time.

But I would do a painting that would be so beautiful,

So powerful.

And I had to paint over it.

I didn't have that was my contract with the canvas.

And it was it's amazing how to look at those and see what the flow was and how this theme came up.

I showed them to a therapist at one point,

She said I had caught the actual therapeutic process,

The way we return to themes,

Almost like a spiral that goes up rather than simply round like this.

But it moves up as you explore the themes.

I had to look at my own fears to do my art.

That has not been easy.

So much of the trouble in the world is people not looking at their own fear.

And that fear gets projected.

What did Jung say something about?

I've been going through an archive that I that I have in creating folders for the for the work there that are beautiful.

They aren't manila folders.

It's about what you don't deal with internally goes out into the world and creates chaos for you.

And I think that's true for individuals.

And I think it's true for for countries.

And right now,

There's an awful well,

There always has been.

I think we kid ourselves.

It's just much more obvious now.

I mean,

I was born in 1941.

That was right smack when the war started.

It had already started in Europe.

But by the time I was five,

Tens of millions of people had died.

So my childhood was spent with that going on around around the world.

Horrendous.

When you think about it.

And you would think when I asked my mother,

I said,

Do you have any regrets?

She thought for a minute and she said,

Only one.

She said,

I thought by now,

The world would have found more peace.

She said,

It makes me very,

Very sad that I've lived for 95 years.

And that hasn't happened.

That was her only regret.

I do think it's really interesting.

I mean,

I appreciate also that you said both of your parents are storytellers.

And it's so essential,

The stories we tell ourselves or the stories that are being told to us.

What do we consider valuable?

What do we throw away?

How do we,

You know,

Accept the story or wrestle with it or work with it,

Like the clay that you had us working on.

And so I think it's,

It's so powerful that both your parents are storytellers.

And how I mean,

What a legacy to give you as a storyteller yourself.

I do think that's one of the,

Being a storyteller and giving that legacy to your children is one of the biggest gifts you can ever,

Ever do,

Because then you are free to create the world that you want to live in,

Or at least try to.

That's interesting.

And you,

Where did you get your storytelling ability?

Oh,

Gosh.

You know,

I always say,

Because my mother is not a storyteller,

And neither is my father,

Who knows at this point,

I always say the gods gave it to me.

And it's,

You know,

And I always say,

I joke and say the gods are more like nags.

I am like,

They're like nags that sit on my shoulder and poke me and tell me I'm not working fast enough,

Or hey,

Get on this.

But yeah,

It's that is not something that actually runs in my family.

It's not a trait.

So,

You know,

I think that's why it resonates for me that it's almost like this benediction that your parents gave you or bestowed upon you as a child,

Because you got to witness their storytelling,

Their behavior around the storytelling,

Their engagement with the storytelling.

And that kind of opens the gates for you to become a storyteller as well.

Yes,

I think I think it did.

The other storyteller was my grandma Rosie.

And she would tell,

I'd come home from school.

I love my grandma dearly.

And I'd sit beside her bed.

She had severe diabetes and other problems.

And she had the most wonderful laugh.

And grandma Rosie would tell me stories about her village outside of Lodz or Łódź in Poland.

And it wasn't it was a shuttle.

And of course,

I knew that all the people she was telling me the stories about were murdered.

So there was a poignancy to her storytelling.

But she'd laugh,

You know,

And she tell me a story about somebody who did this with a horse and doing a trade and someone else just these wonderful,

Wonderful stories,

Very cinematographic,

Just like my medieval English literature.

It's it's an astounding English medieval literature.

It's it's an astounding body of work.

It's such great.

And I had a great storyteller for that who influenced me deeply,

Alain Renoir,

Who as a boy watched his grandpa paint.

And then as a young young man did cinematography for his father,

Jean Renoir.

And so when he would talk about Chaucer,

Or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,

Those stories were so utterly alive.

And story is God,

It's so it's so important.

And,

And we can't believe all of our stories.

I mean,

We have to question them.

But somehow we make connection.

And in the book,

I think it's finally done with the help of my grandson,

Caleb,

In frog dreaming that I've worked on since Caleb was 12.

And he's now 27.

And he helped me edit it these last two years.

There's a little frog who dreams and tell stories from his dreams.

There's a storyteller,

A figure based on my grandma Rosie,

Who then tells him a dream where he has to give death a heart.

But first,

The little frog has to find his own heart song to give him the strength to do that.

And as I was working on this,

And it's written by a character,

A fictitious character in the novel my husband and I are working on.

Vern Green is her name,

Because one of the characters in the novel reads it and it influences her life.

As I was working on this,

I thought,

What's going to happen when frog finally gives death a heart,

Puts a heart in death?

I didn't know.

I had no idea.

And what does happen is a storyteller becomes millions of storytellers.

And,

You know,

I think it's a fairy tale for our time.

I think we need new archetypes.

I think we need new pietas.

I think we need new fairy tales,

Not punishing fairy tales,

Because so many fairy tales are punishing.

If you don't do this,

If you don't do that,

We need fairy tales that open our hearts.

I was looking at a photograph of an ant holding a dead niece.

I don't know if you saw it or went through the papers.

I think it was in Gaza.

And the child is wrapped in a white sheet.

And the ant is wearing the full Arabic hijab.

And her head is down and she's holding the body of this child.

And I think these are the pietas for our time.

Ordinary people,

Not people who are teachers,

Are the son of a particular god.

That's a powerful story,

The story of Jesus,

The story of Mohammed.

There are many,

Many powerful stories.

This is an ordinary person.

Ordinary person.

This is a child.

She's been killed by a bomb.

I think of images from the Second World War,

Very famous photographs from the Warsaw Ghetto.

That's another pieta.

That we need pietas that truly speak to us of the human condition.

Not necessarily promising salvation,

But of innocence truly murdered.

Because we are not dealing with our fears and our hatreds.

When I think of how my parents,

Grandparents came here from Ukraine,

Lithuania,

Poland,

I picture them with a bundle of fear and a bundle of hope.

And my grandmother would always say,

You must get an education.

Now,

This is my grandma who was illiterate in any language,

Not just English,

Any language.

And I did.

I lived out her dream.

I lived out the bundle of hope dream.

I got a great education.

And then that freed me to work with the fear,

With the bundle of fear that was also brought.

Thank you.

That's,

It's,

That's very,

Such a potent reminder that we do have these legacies,

Like them or not,

That are trailing us,

Following us,

Bestowed upon us,

Bequeathed.

And no matter,

You know,

I always use the term hungry ghosts.

So what hungry ghost is,

Is feasting on you,

Unbeknownst to you,

Unbeknownst to you,

What's that little hungry ghost feasting on?

And it's,

It's a good reminder that we all have them.

We all have these,

These little hungry ghosts that are,

However,

We attained them or got them,

They're there.

And you really do need to be educated in lots of different ways.

Before I think you can feel,

I always think that trying to engage or work with a hungry ghost is hungry ghost is like,

It's another hero's journey,

Right?

You're gonna go on this adventure and see if you can reconcile or heal that hungry ghost so that it relinquishes and lets go.

And I,

Your story is,

It's just such a good reminder that we all have them,

Despite our best efforts.

And just like the,

The,

The burden bundle of all the fears,

Terrible fears.

I was watching Fiddler on the Roof with,

I have a number of grandchildren,

But Caleb and I are most involved in creating together.

And Caleb was here and he'd never seen it.

Norman Jewison had just died.

And I said,

This man was a wonderful director.

Let's watch Fiddler.

And we watched it.

And suddenly it dawned on me.

I said,

You know,

Caleb,

You have the life that you have.

Because back at that time,

That was the 1900 is when my grandparents came here.

And these people were leaving,

Anatevka is around 1900.

I said,

Because your great,

Great grandparents was part of this kind of group.

And I said,

And what a life we've been fortunate to create in this country.

They came here penniless.

They came here not knowing the language.

And it was beautiful to be able to tell my grandchild about his great,

Great grandparents and their,

And their journey here.

But they did bring hungry ghosts with them,

As well as incredible hopes.

And they aren't,

You can't just say they just brought hope.

No,

They brought hungry ghosts too.

They had suffered.

Supposedly my grandma Fanny sneaked out of Belarus in the bottom of a hay cart.

There are many stories like that.

And her fear stayed with her her whole life.

My job was to work with it and to work with it in my art.

And I've been so lucky.

I don't try to work.

I do have work where I work directly with the fear,

But I've never shown that publicly.

And I think when I do my next book,

Where does art come from?

Or one of my next books,

Because I'm doing quite a number right now.

I will show that work.

This is the very troubled,

Difficult,

Difficult work.

But I felt when I was doing it,

It was important to do it in the dark with myself and not to stick it out onto other people and ask them to make it okay.

This was my work.

And I'm far enough away from it now.

I can see what I had to go through,

That I can in fact make it public and it could be helpful to other people.

It's how do we help each other be more of who we really are?

We're back to the question about being a human being.

How do we help each other be more of who we really are,

The best of who we are?

Well,

Thank you for that.

I could talk to you forever and also kind of want you to adopt me,

But we can do that another time.

But I wanted to get to the main question of the podcast,

Which is I would love to hear a story or stories if you want to share more than one,

Where you feel like you've witnessed or experienced something that you consider to be magical or miraculous.

I'd love to hear whatever you'd like to share.

You know,

I think miracles are everywhere around us all the time.

I looked up the word miracle.

I looked up its etymology.

The original Proto-Indo-European word that it was born out of,

Do you know what it means?

To smile.

Isn't that incredible?

It's like the word Genesis.

If you go back to the original Proto-Indo-European,

It means produced by worms.

It takes it right where it needs to be.

I'm almost stunned by that.

And the word miracle goes back.

Eventually it became wonder,

And then it became related to God and wonder.

But it started out to smile,

To laugh.

I know,

I just love it,

Kirsten.

And I think,

I mean,

Miracles are everywhere.

I've never understood people.

And then there are things we don't understand.

There are great mysteries,

That kind of miracle.

But just looking out at the trees with their green leaves now that were barren a month ago,

That to me is a miracle.

And we do smile at those things.

It's really funny how that word just stayed with smiling.

But then they're like,

There's so many different miracles.

I mean,

I lived in Edinburgh,

Scotland for about a year and a half.

And I had three boys.

I didn't have my daughter yet.

But 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 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 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 school.

I became a teacher.

I became a teacher of the school.

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,

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 a,

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.

And 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 every day,

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 and as small events.

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 know.

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 lived 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.

It's 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 a piece 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 the series would not be complete.

So to me,

That is a miracle.

This 10-part series.

And I look 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 comes out of a dream,

Part of a dream that I had at Charcoal Canyon.

And so recently we discovered that my husband's DNA on his Hopi side goes back to Charcoal Canyon.

We met at Charcoal Canyon.

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

Those to me are all miraculous.

If anyone asked me to paint that series today,

There is 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 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?

Love 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 fast.

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 have 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 colored 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 Katan,

Which is an undergarment that an Orthodox Jews wear.

There are knots,

Sits it 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 little Talat that you wear underneath,

You've probably seen in 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 Kikosmobi.

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

And different because Hopi is a place where people have lived for a thousand 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.

Someone else said,

Oh,

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.

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.

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.

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

Yes,

I agree.

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 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 different 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 non-fiction,

But also in the visual arts,

Through sculpture,

Through paint,

Through papier-mâché.

There are so many different ways to tell our stories,

To tell 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.

We could always use a little more beauty and grace,

Don't you think?

So go ahead,

Do it.

I dare you.

So Judy,

Thank you so much.

This has been so lovely and powerful for my heart and soul,

And I needed this conversation today.

So thank you so much,

And I want to make sure that I say your last name correctly.

So it's two wallets,

Like two wallets.

Okay,

Two wallets.

Two wallets,

T-Wa.

Okay.

So actually at Hopi,

The accent's on the second syllable,

And it means,

So two wallets,

T-Wa.

And Philip was going to give a talk once,

And he said,

The person who was going to introduce him said,

Now tell me how to pronounce your last name.

He said,

Two empty wallets,

T-Wa.

And so he got introduced to two empty wallets,

T-Wa.

He was using,

It was very,

Very funny,

But it's basically,

And it means the wind making ripples in the sand.

It was Philip's grandfather's name.

The wind making ripple,

It's the act,

It's the verb,

And the act of the wind making ripples in the sand.

That last name is a story in itself.

Yes,

It is a story.

Hopi names are very powerful in that they feel,

You're right,

They feel like they hold story.

Oh my gosh,

Thank you.

So it actually means the changing,

It's about the changing ripples in the sand.

So it's,

The last name is kind of a movement,

It's eternally moving.

Yes.

Wow.

So that means they're like,

It's eternal in time.

It doesn't really have a past or a future,

Like eternal.

Oh my God.

Changing,

Always changing.

And when I met,

I'll quickly mention when I met Philip,

His last name was Johnson.

Because when KT,

When Two Wallet Steel was sent to the board,

To the government school,

They couldn't pronounce his last name.

And they gave him an English name,

Johnson.

Two Wallet Steel,

Johnson,

You can see how similar they are.

And Philip,

When we decided to get married,

He said,

You know,

I've never been comfortable with the name Johnson.

This was my grandfather's name.

I'm going to take it back.

And would you like to share it with me?

And I said,

Yes.

And so we became Two Wallet Steel.

But he felt it was so important to retrieve that,

That name.

There's a whole,

Again,

Just a story and a name.

If everybody just sat down and wrote a story about where their name comes from,

What a world.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

What a world.

I mean,

My last name is Redberg and it's,

My dad is Norwegian and Swedish.

And it means my family came from this land where there was red clay or red mountain.

But I dress it up a little bit.

And I say,

You know,

Because my father's really into the fact that we had Viking ancestors.

So I just say,

Oh,

It's,

It's,

We came from the land where we drenched the land in the blood of our enemies.

It makes it so much more exciting.

So that's really,

I have to send you this essay by Ursula K.

Le Guin about,

About storytelling.

I'll send it to you.

You'll,

You'll laugh at it because it's about the difference between drenching the land in the blood of your ancestors and the red clay.

I love that.

I love her too.

She's,

She's amazing.

Incredible woman.

Incredible.