Bright Power by Emily Tareila

For the duration of 2017,  artist and educator, Emily Tareila will be contributing artwork to our monthly Full Moon Blessings.

Read on for more about Bright Power, Emily's other moon focused ongoing project for 2017.

Tell us a bit about your current project, Bright Power:

Well, it’s a year-long, participatory project for all of 2017 that uses the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse, August 21st, as a catalyst for thinking about our relationships to ourselves, one another and the planet. After the election, I was seeking a framework to think through how to contribute positively to a future world I hope to see and help co-create.

So what is the framework for the project?

Every New and Full Moon are dedicated days that I (and about 75 other people in cahoots with the project) are spending slowing down, looking, listening, talking, cooking, reflecting.

I’m sending out a bi-monthly newsletter of sorts sharing reflections, questions, prompts, resources, and more, with contributions from participants. This project aims to connect people together far and wide while also giving importance to what’s happening at home (and in the heart and body).

The New Moons are for inward rejuvenation: spending time alone, reflecting, being quiet, writing, drawing, reading, cooking nourishing food, etc. Full Moons are spent with others and focus on communal meals with small groups of people having conversation and sharing together on a monthly basis.

The framework is flexible in nature and meant to fold into people’s lives as it allows, as it feels right. I myself am also doing a Words of Encouragement postcard correspondence series on New and Full Moons as a part of the project and cooking from Jessica Prentice’s Full Moon Feast.

Can you talk more about the use of the New and Full Moons?

I'm interested in re-evaluating my relationship to time: how can we warm time, make it more compassionate? Many Western folks' relationships to time are based on hours in a day, mostly related to labor or getting away from labor (ie capitalism and imperialism). Using these days to reconnect with the lunar cycle that dictates our tides, the growing cycles of plants, fertility and more feels like a small, positive act of resistance in and of itself: a claiming of power within our bodies.  

Is there anything that you’re doing for the eclipse specifically?

Yes! The shape that the eclipse is making across the continent is called The Path of Totality (very cool). I’m going to be driving the shape, which makes its way from South Carolina to Oregon, this spring, to document the land. During the eclipse, this band of earth will be blocked from our life force, the sun. I’m also gathering a group of people in Idaho for the eclipse itself.