Mary MacDonald gives new meaning to the word versatile. For the past 30 years she has boldly gone forth in the not for profit, artistic, educational and for profit worlds where she has used her extraordinary relationship building skills to achieve success for her clients in marketing, fundraising, public relations, communications, training and development, and writing.

Mary is passionate about innovative education and business through the lens of a feminine paradigm that incorporates creativity, story telling and conversation. As a Consultant for the past five years in Canada and the United States, Mary is an expert at supporting individuals and organizations in achieving your goals in a way that is uniquely you. Mary is also a member/owner of the Cosmic Cowgirls tribe where she gleefully applauds the reverent and the irreverent existing side by side. She is proud to count herself among the revolutionaries creating opportunities for women and girls to transform their lives through publishing healing journals and transformational teaching at Cosmic Cowgirls University.

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JENAFER LINDH
CCI Handle: Jumpin Joy
  Director of Cosmic Cowgirls University
and "Starbase Wrangler"

Known in the straight-faced world as Jenafer Lindh LAc., Jenafer Joy began her Art Career with dualing backgrounds in Alchemical Acupuncture & Chaos Transformation (otherwise known as Accounting). She is now convinced that Artista is the “A” career she was always looking for.

Jena is sole proprietress of Allaya Arts, a healing and creative arts business, and has created & taught Inspired Inquiry courses on accessing your creative spirit since 2003. She believes passionately in individual genius, in the innate wisdom of the body, and in the transformative power of mythic context. Jenafer Joy is delighted to have joined the Cosmic Cowgirl Dream team in 2010 and became the Director of the Cosmic Cowgirls University in 2010.

Away from the Cosmic Starbases, when she isn’t covered from head to toe in paint, strumming guitar, or filling the cookie jar for those she loves, Jena is currently enjoying completing her most recent Inspired Inquiry:  “Riding the Cycle of Creation” and launching a dynamic community of women creatives dedicated to altering reality through art and magic:  www.realityaltarista.com Jenafer Joy lives and teaches in Mendocino County.

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ELIZABETH GIBBONS

CCI Handle: Bejewelled Baroness

  

  Since childhood I have been surrounded by art and influenced by art history. My early and constant exposure to art through travels with my family and my father’s struggle with manic-depressive illness set the stage for what later became my fascination with Surrealism, Symbolism and the use of decorative and reflective materials in my own art. After attaining a master’s degree in psychology, I went on to pursue a career in art. My artistic development included courses in faux finishing, color theory, gilding and trompe l’oeil.  While running my own business doing faux finishing I also worked as an apprentice for Tony Duquette, world renowned artist and set designer for the San Francisco Opera.  Through my work with him I learned much about incorporating found objects, shells, fabric and reflective materials such as jewelry, beads and mosaics.

Although I have taken numerous courses in art, I consider myself to be primarily self-taught and have developed my own unique style by combining a variety of methods and techniques.  As an artist I am both creator and alchemist.  I begin with the lead of my everyday existence and transform it into the gold of spiritual enlightenment through the process of creating my art. Art is how I make sense of it all, how I illumine my life.  Creating art, for me, has become the container that helps me to integrate the whole human experience, the beauty and the ugliness, the light and the shadows, the coexistence of opposites.  Like the Symbolists I mine mythology and dream imagery for a visual language of the soul. My focus is on the magical, the mystical and the mysterious. When I begin a painting or work of art, I rarely do a preliminary sketch.  I allow myself to be drawn to objects, colors or symbols and it is often these that inspire the direction I take.  The use of reflective materials holds fascination for me because it represents the constant change and motion that are symbolic of life’s transience. I love to explore the way light plays across the surfaces of glitter, beads and glass.  My art captures shifting essences and is sensitive, like myself, to external variations of light and environment.  When I paint it is usually with spray bottle in hand and I let the images emerge from the colors and drips blending into each other.  I travel through my creations, snippets of memory emerge in an altered form, the different selves that I have become throughout my life, combined with universal archetypes that I allow to surface from my unconscious. Thus my art is both personal and universal.  I am drawn to themes of transfiguration out of this world, to transformation and metamorphosis.  The longing for transcendence from spiritual imprisonment is a subject matter that permeates my art.

      In addition to being a visual artist, I am also a poet. The combination of text and image helps me to plunge more deeply into my own psychic underground and thus gives me access to “otherworldly” realms.

 www.enchantedeye.net

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ISABELLA VICKERS
CCI Handle: Bella Ruby
  Managing Editor for Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine

 

Isabella is a Dreamer - - she is Passion turning toward Darkness with fire in her eyes. She weaves together gentleness and boldness, bravery and vulnerability, groundedness and inspiration. She believes in Outrageous Possibility without compromise, turning fears into curiosities. Her own curiosity knows no boundaries, especially when it comes to feelings, experiences, patterns, and The Invitation to cultivate something greater than what is initially apparent. She welcomes the mysteries of the Unknown, abandoning herself to that Love between apparent contradictions, embracing the tension of opposites until it gives birth to undiscovered Living. This unflinching bravery has earned her the reputation of She Who Lives Her Life Fully - - an expression of the Feminine that has become legendary, fascinating those who seek her wisdom and who say that her inspiration is magnificently authentic.  

Isabella is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. www.LivingAirDialogue.com

Isabella is a proud graduate of many of the spectacular CCU courses, including Living a Legendary Life and Mama's Medicine Wheel. She is especially delighted to be a member of the first Color of Woman course. You can read more about her journey as an artist at www.IsabellaVickers.com

 

 

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 SUE  HOYA  SELLARS
CCI Handle - Bayou Star Butch
Co-Creator and Member Owner

Sue Hoya Sellars was born in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where she was mentored while in her early teens by renowned sculptor, Lenore Thomas Straus, and studied biological illustrating with Jan Roemhild. She attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC. and the San Francisco Art Institute under the instruction with Wayne Tiebaugh. At age nineteen, she became the youngest person to hold the position of head illustrator for the George Vanderbilt Foundation at Stanford University. She studied anatomy at the San Francisco School of Physicians and Surgeons while illustrating with Dr. Forbes and biological engineer, Hugh Hinchcliff, and had private anatomy studies with Dr. Deborah Karish. She was an illustrator for Janet Bollow and Associates for three decades, illustrating college text books covering Anthropology, Biology, Geology, Psychology, and Sociology. She attended the School of Electronic Art in San Francisco. Sue opened Gaia Wood studio, now Blue Heron Studio, producing illustrations and  Object D'art in porcelain and stone ware. Her work was handled by a number of galleries throughout the country, and has been showing with Color of Woman/Wisdom House Gallery since 1999. Sue defines her inspiration in terms of questions. She says: After illustrating biological structures for over 45 years, my questions shifted from “What does life do in these structures, to how did life get into these structures?”, and “Who is this consciousness that lives in here? Who is it that is even doing this wondering?”

suehoyasellars.com 

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