Rest + Retreat with Wellspring
In Episode 81 of the Exhale Podcast we are exploring the role of rest and retreat as a necessary ingredient for creative work, especially for mothers. While hustle culture and a fear of missing out create a familiar psychological landscape for us on social media, we want to acknowledge that rest, also, has come to mean a number of things to our modern minds. Our hope is that this conversation with Wellspring founders Mia Eckes and Jess Sweeny, mothers and writers in their own right, will help us to find the necessary ingredients to the rest we are most longing for. Not only in order to replenish our capacity to create, but because our own finitude and limitations can tempt us to strive harder instead of releasing more fully into the rest we were designed for.
Mia Eckes is a fiber artist and Kaizen Muse creativity coach currently exploring themes of prayer, mystery, and playful narratives of the imagination in her art. She delights in texture, vibrant colors, and free-style stitching on cloth surfaces to develop abstract and expressive imagery. Mia holds a BFA from Minnesota State University-Mankato and an MA in Human Development from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota-Minneapolis. She has exhibited her art in group exhibitions locally and nationally while mothering six wildly creative children. Mia embraces the nuances of being an artist parent, valuing creative impulse, mess making, and taking the long view. Her simple joys: coffee, neon, vintage clip earrings and asymmetrical hair cuts. Mia creates from her home studio in Coon Rapids, MN where she resides with her children and husband Joe.
Jess Sweeney is a wife, a mother of three, and an artist exploring the in-between spaces of everyday life. In her paintings of people and objects, as well as her writing, she seeks that wonderful “shine on things” that philosopher William Desmond talks about; to uncover what is often unseen. She is the founder and curator of Commonplace Living and Director of the Collegium Institute’s Ars Vivendi Arts Initiative, and most recently the co-founder of Wellspring: A Mother Artist Project. Her work has been featured in Dappled Things, Genealogies of Modernity, Everyday Mamas, The Curator Magazine, Humanum Review, and this Fall in Plough Quarterly. She lives in a cozy rowhouse nestled among the lovely Victorians of West Philadelphia with her philosopher husband and children.
Find more info on the Wellspring community and retreats on their website: https://www.wellspringmotherartproject.org/
Follow The Wellspring: Mother-Artist Project on Instagram @wellspringmotherart
Follow Jess @commonplaceliving and Mia @cloudwalkerstudio
Seven Types of Rest: physical, emotional, spiritual, creative, social, sensory, and mental
Learn more about Jess’s mother-artist heroine: Karen Larson
Learn more about Mia’s mother-artist artist heroine: Hildegard of Bingen and Sheila Hicks
Connect with Mia for Creative Coaching
Mia’s Questions for Reflection:
Where am I getting rest right now? What’s working? Where do I have a deficit? What are the most sustainable ways to address this need? What do I need to change in order to be more intentional about the rest I need?
Take stock of your needs
Make space
Show up
Acknowledge the effort you made
Books Mentioned
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeleine L’Engle
// How to Listen to the Exhale Podcast //
IOS instructions:
From your Apple podcasts app, go to library. Click edit at the top. Click “add a podcast by URL” and then enter: https://exhalecreativity.com/podcast?format=rss
iTunes Desktop:
Go to file, click subscribe to podcast, enter the URL: https://exhalecreativity.com/podcast?format=rss
Other options:
Click here to read instructions for other apps / Android users.