Biography: Photographer Marcelina Martin

Wild Hearts & Sacred Arts website was created by Marcelina Martin in 1995 to promote her photography and book. Within that first year online Marcelina began promoting the work of other artists.

My roots were put down deep in the richness of the Georgia Coastal Plains. My parents told me I could be anything I wanted, and I believed them. Their strength of character and intense individualism required me to find my truest self.

Marcelina Martin grew up in the South. She was blessed by having a strong connection to the land. Her matriarchal line included a grandmother who talked to plants, wrote poetry, played music by ear and healed the sick.  Marcelina learned to ride horses, shoot guns and "see" the light on her grandmother's tobacco and cotton farm in the coastal plains of Georgia. When she came of age, she began writing poetry in Memory Hill Cemetery where Flannery O'Connor was buried on Marcelina's fourteenth birthday. A deep interest in art, particularly photography, led her to Atlanta to study with John McWilliams. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Georgia State University in 1974. Her plans for graduate school at University of New Mexico changed as the force and delight of the times led her to other explorations. After studying Buddhism at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Coloradofor a few years, Marcelina moved to San Francisco to become an alcohol and drug counsellor. From 1979 until 1991, she lived in the San Francisco Bay Area including Berkeley and Pt. Reyes in Marin County . Marcelina immersed herself in the Women's Spirituality Movement and meditation. She sat for ten years with the San Francisco Zen Center, Green Gulch Zen Center, and Hartford Street Zen Center. In 1981, she began leading women's spirituality groups with Hallie Iglehart Austen author of WomanSpirit: A Guide to Women's Wisdom and Heart of the Goddess. During this time Marcelina  crafted a process she named "Photomythology" from a synthesis of her understanding of mythology in Neolithic cultures , of Dreamwork in the Malaysian Senoi Tribe and Jungian psychology. Her photo sessions combined  spiritual wisdom with the power of visual imagery.

In 1981 Marcelina met Elsa Gidlow. Daily contact with Elsa was an ongoing conversation about love, philosophy, art and community. This friendship changed the course of Marcelina's life for it changed her dreams. Elsa had shared generously her wisdom from eight decades of an amazing life. The connecting thread was a fierce passion for the artist's life. When Elsa died in 1986, Marcelina served as co-executor of Elsa's estate and with a handful of friends created Druid Heights Artists Retreat. During the years as Executive Director of the artists' retreat, Marcelina's passion for artists' community grew deeper and eventually led to her creating Wild Hearts Ranch retreat in Taos, New Mexico after Druid Heights stopped existing as an organization.

Marcelina  Martinand Elsa Gidlow in 1984

Marcelina speaks of her art this way:

My art evolved from the observation that America is primarily a visually oriented culture. The way we perceive reality is influenced by a complex range of imagery. Heroes and myths are intricately woven into our psyches. Our ideas of individual identity, social place, and interrelatedness coalesce from this matrix of images. Some of the most adverse effects of this visual information are submerged in the unconscious, leaving many of us adrift, unaware that we are in its undertow. Particularly I looked at how women are specially vulnerable to manipulation through imagery due to the degree of sexism in our culture. Over thousands of years, our experiences of authentic womanhood have been erased from the public domain and replaced by fabrications designed for exploitation. Even if we consciously reject negative images, their power can influence us subconsciously unless we change them at a deep level. If not brought to light and examined, our images evolve into private and eventually public myths and standards. Images we hold are the foundation for the content and action of our lives. Through inquiry into our inner imagery, we can expose outdated myths, produce life-affirming images, and cultivate a dynamic vision of wholeness. In consciously creating our imagery and mythologies, we affect our political, economic, and social attitudes which inspire change first in our inner world then eventually our outer world. From this philosophical base, I created Photomythology, creating images from the myths of our lives with an intention of integrating the fragments into a whole, dynamic vision of ourselves.

The roots of art are in shamanism. The shaman was a healer in her/his community that worked with the individual and collective psyche through art. Today we see the horror, violence, conflict and negativity all around us.  Many artists work directly with this knowledge of the power of imagery. This is the focus and drive behind my art.  My journey  is to create life-affirming, positive images, to create beauty and harmony , to focus on transformation into wholeness .

My dear friend poet Elsa Gidlow believed that we are all artists, and definitely there are cultures like Bali where most people express themselves through art. I do not believe that we are all artists. I do believe we can all live life through our creativity; however,  I believe the artist  is called to art with a compelling force that draws her/his creativity into existence. There is no choice but to create.

I passionately believe in art as a healing force and that art arises from well-being or from the innate force within all life to move towards wholeness.


Ms.Martin's photography has been published in numerous periodicals such as The Great Speckled Bird, Frontiers, Heresies, Southern Exposure, Woman of Power, Sage Woman, The Advocate, On Our Backs, Motive Magazine, Calyx. Her work has been included in such books as: Southern Ethic, Women See Woman, Our Right To Love, Womanspirit: A Guide to Women's Wisdom, Women & Aging, Elsa: I Come With My Songs, Blue Calendar, The Womanspirit Sourcebook, The Once and Future Goddess, The Heart of the Goddess, Dear Sappho: Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters, Rebels, Rubyfruit  and Rhinestones, The Box: Remembering the Gift , Women Artists of the American West and The Lesbian Sex Book. Her most recent project has been a book Literary Guide to Flannery O'Connor's South with Dr. Sarah Gordon for University of Georgia Press to be published in 2007. Her prints have been exhibited in Australia, Germany, Denmark, and throughout the United States. Ms. Martin's work is included in the Women's History Archives Collection at Harvard University and Brown University. Her images are also being used in courses at Columbia University, University of New Mexico, California Institute of Integral Studies,  and Purdue University. From 1991-2001 she resided in the Southwest and New England. In 2001 Marcelina moved back to Milledgeville, Georgia to be close to her family.
 

 A Multimedia Show of the book," Lesbian Sacred Sexuality" has been completed and is for sale in the store. Marcelina is also working on a  second book  "In The Blaze of Love". For more information on Marcelina's photography or her tutorials, go to Photography or E-mail her at taoscowgirls@yahoo.com .
 

A note on Women, Art and the Internet:
In 1995, I developed my website Wild Hearts & Sacred Arts. In the beginning only 8, yes, eight , visitors came a day. As traffic to this site climbed to 2,500 visitors a month, I shifted my focus on exposure in books and exhibitions to the Internet. I  added other women artists on my site in 1996. Today 12,000 people visit a month. The website has provided the artists on this site a much larger audience and more feedback than being in a gallery or bookstore. I passionately believe in art as a healing force and that art arises from well-being.  I encourage you to buy art from individual artists and NOT corporations. There are thousands of women artists on the Internet, in local galleries, studios, stores, and crafts fairs. Grace your homes with a woman's love.