Dream, Dreams and Dreams – From Dreams Inspiration to Art, Story – to share and healing the World
- Della Burford
Reflecting on my Dream Wheels book AFTER a podcast interview with Steven Leavitt on the Language of Creativity AND before doing a workshop of Dreams with the Design Science Studio in a Fireside Chat introduction. No doubt dreams can be inspiration for art and should be included in what is the language of creativity. Its important to make dreams part of our being creative in the world and healing ourselves and contributing to the healing of the Planet Earth. It takes a bit of time and work but obviously worth it. As I finidhed the Fireside Chat with Steven Leavitt interviewing and the group went into Breakouts to share their dream reflecting on how my interest in dreams came about. During the Fireside Chat Steven asked a Dodoland kind of questions – “What mythical animal or animal would be like to be? this lead to the host of the chat Bliss to say Unicorn Pegaus. That night had a dream of her riding on a Unicorn Pegasus. Decided Dream Wheels style to manifest this dream by collaging and painting it . Took the month of March and for painting and awareness”. See the Unicorn Pegasus Collage in this post March 2024.
For me becoming more lucid and aware can pave the way to fantastic visionary art. The ship shows many artists who create, heal, and produce their dreams as art.
As Robert Moss says it is important to honor our dreams and then we have more dreams. He tells us we each have a Dream Producer and to listen .
This I have always tried to do. I will now reflect on the process of how I mad making dream a part of my life below:
Why not use dreams to fulfill our desire to be creative and share with others?
As I say in the Dream Wheels book in a poem and read in the podcast the Language of Creativity “We come together to dream”. In dreams we can find more about oneself and who we are, we find solutions to problems such as healing ourselves and the world, muses and power animals, find adventure travel to new places, find imaginary things, find the divine like cosmic ones, angel, guardianss, and spirit guides. In the interview I gave examples of different artist who have gotten creative juice to paint a painting when finding these qualities in their dream worlds. This included Andrew Gonzalez, Cynthia Re Robbins, Rolland Proulx, Jennifer Michelle McEuen, Irene Vincent, and Kuba Ambrose.
Artist Philip Rubinov Jacobsen – says of Dream Wheels – “an autobiographical account that bridges the beauty and wisdom of the collective unconscious with our waking life. A guide to delve deeper into Dreamland. It Bridges between divine unity and waking reality”.
As I go thorugh the Dream Wheel book I reflect on the seven themes of my seven seven year cycles shown on the Dream Wheels – Initiation, Birth , Medicine, Wonder, Third Eye, Miracle and Divine.
In my first Cycle which I call the Initiation Cycle 1967-73, the theme I found was “freedom in my dreams.”
In the podcast the poem was read – “In your dreams you find Initiation
A Divinely limited solitary room become creative incubation
You dream journey to the Dream Temple of Asclepius
Where you are given a Caduceus
Carrying the staff of Isis you find a purpose to live
You wear the Bird Helmet with power and possibilities
A Merbird is born and freedom is regained
Reminded that beyond the distant hills is a rainbow
In your Dreams you find with your Bird Helmet you can fly
BIG DREAM- THE BIRD HELMET
I think when you are put in confinement it brings on creative incubation. I had a couple of incidents where this happened to me and I found my dream world comforting. Not only comforting were they to me but came profusely and in full color. One incident was discovering I had cancer in my twenties. I felt totally alone and didn’t know what would happen next. But in my dreams I had company , not only company but travelling to other fantastic land. This time echoed back to me many times when I saw people go through the Covid isolation. Yes they had masks and restrictions on seeing others .. but if they could go to inside dream worlds sometimes night dreams, hypnogogic, or even places you go in meditation things seemed better. Part of the healing for me at the time when I had cancer was making the transformational decision to go to India and there had amazing dreams of the world being one. I wrote the book “Journey to a Lotus”
I dreamed during these times of the Bird Helmet and in travelling to new places created the beginnings of Dodoland.
BIG DREAM: THE BEGINNINGS OF DODOLAND
This kickstarted the second Birth Cycle from 1974-1980
In design Dodoland I discovered who I was and how important it was for other “to be what they want to be”. Guardian Power animals were encouraged and self discovery. I told the story in the interview of how I asked my friend what fantasy animal they would like to become and thus painted them on the Dragon Ship.
BIG DREAM: DRAGON SHIP
The third Medicine Cycle from 1981-87 was full of wisdom dreams. I was very concerned about the destruction of the environment and from a dream wrote a poem called “Rubbish dolls”
I woke up soon after frorm a dream with a ring of rainbow light on my finger and wrote the first draft of Magical Earth Secrets.
How dreams can manifest into art and be shared with the world is embedded into the story of Dodoland. Dodoland came from dreams and imagination. I painted and wrote about it. It became a storybook. A producer from New York Tedrian Chizik saw it and lo and behold Dodoland was performed in New York for seven years and the story got out to major museums like the Natural History Museum, Smithsonian, Brooklyn Academy of Music and to a large conference in Guatemala called the Magic in Me. We were very concerned about the people that were disadvantaged and had disabilities so performed and storytold in unique places .. like in hospitals, schools like Sunnyview school and the Hearing Impaired Schools in Ontario and even in prison. The story of Dodoland was embraced and the city of New York next sponsored in the Project Opportunidad in Harlem and The ‘Magical Earth Secret’s was performed in all the schools in East Harlem. It was a fantastic development for this story and before it was a book. Tedrian Chizik was the amazing producer that made this possible. At the end of this cycle I was privileged to study with the renowned clown teacher Richard Pochinko in Toronto.
The Fourth Cycle from 1988 – 1994 I called Wonder. My synchronistical things happened including “finding muses and using the imagination”. Because I was part of the group Inner City Angels that initially worked with inner city children to storytell and teach them art I was asked by an environmental group called Globetree in Sweden to come to an environmental conference in Sweden where the children were saying what they wanted in the future. Children performed the ‘Magical Earth Secrets’ story and the words not only to love but take care of the earth were born. Marijke Sluitjer was at the conference from Holland and we worked on getting it to the Dutch people by her translation of the book which in 1990 was published by the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. We were also invited to Korea to the World Island Festival where Dodoland and Magical Earth Secrets were storytold.
BIG DREAM: TO TAKE CARE OF THE EARTH
The fifth Third Eye Cycle came next from 1995-2001 and the theme was “you can find your cosmic one.”
I was very concerned with manifesting art to beauty and told to do this in a dream. One synchronistical thing that happened to advance this idea was I was asked to use Dodoland to launch a government project in Canada called Swiftsure led by David Godfrey by using Dodoland for a website In 1995. My husband Dale Bertrand and I were given the website to maintain and over the 26 years it has had millions of visitors. We have had it free to the world and an act of love. It still exists today. We were able to travel and share art .. creating in projects in Mexico, Korea and we did travels to Wales and Cornwall when working In England.
When problems arise I like to go the positive route. I found I had cancer again ( not related) and with Dr. Roger Rogers encouragement wrote the qualities needed to survive a crisis in the story Miracle Galaxy.
To my surprise just nine months after surgery I had a mystical experience at our home in the Kootenay.
I felt like the Divine entered my life. I was visited by many spiritual being and told there was a bigger picture in my life and my path was moving towards to divine.
BIG DREAM: MANY SPIRITUAL BEINGS
The next sixth cycle from 2002-2009 I called Miracle and the theme was “you can heal yourself.” In this cycle the Miracle Galaxy story was created. In the development of the story of eight Angels of Healing we visited many sacred sites in the world which was also tied to Dale’s Celtic/Cymrik project called Druidical Quest. I placed the Angels in these Sacred Places as their earth homes . They also lived in the Miracle Galaxy in which I was shown in a dream what it looked like.
BIG DREAM: ANGELS OF HEALING & MIRACLE GALAXY
In the seventh Divine Cycle from 2009- 2015 the theme was “co- creating with the divine”. I worked with Aaron Zerah on painting for his book “Spirit storybook’ I painted many of the painting with guidance from dreams. The mystical experience I had in the Kootenay previously seemed to be the beginning.
I went to study the ‘mische’ technique in Vienna with Philip Rubinov Jacobsen after a dream with Ernst Fuchs led me in this direction. I was writing Dream Wheels and had various artists I met there include a painting in the book inspired by a dream.
I was told in a dream to have artist working together. I found a spiritual home in Bali and led 6 different retreats there having artist working together – big thanks to Norah Burford, Karja and Dale Bertrand . Because of the earthquake in Japan and what they felt was an urgent need to love and protect the earth in 2011 Kazuko Asaba and clothes designer Ruu Ruu produced Magical Earth Secrets as a play. It performed for seven years and then Ruu Ruu made a play of the book Miracle Galaxy. It is now performing in various venues.
In seeing the play in Japan of Miracle Galaxy I realized it was not only a story to heal oneself and but also to heal the planet. I wrote Star Galaxy for the World which encourages people to take gratitude, kindness, peace and creative action for the world. This was created when going thru the crisis of a broken femur and soon after was the world trauma of dealing with Covid. It became an even more important time to share my story of self healing for oneself and the world. I mentioned in the interview that Star Galaxy for the World has now been added as one of the feature stories in the Dodoland website. Sharing the story with the world was helped by being part of the Design Science Studio of the Buckminster Fuller Institute in 2021/22 and working with an animator Julian Ramirez and creating the Topia Worlds of Dodoland and Star Galaxy for the World. In 2023 I joined the Space Camp and edited the Earth Action book which is an activity book including the Magical Earth Secrets story. I want to give a shout out to the Non Stop Vision Train visioned by Amanda Sage with Alecia Sacred Heart who have kept a on stop zoom session going since covid ( and is still going) to help artists to have someone to guide them and share doing art together . A phenomental creative hub which now also is connected to the workshops offered by the Vitra Academy for artists.
In seeing the play in Japan of Miracle Galaxy I realized it was not only a story to heal oneself and but also to heal the planet. I wrote Star Galaxy for the World which encourages people to take gratitude, kindness, peace and creative action for the world. This was created when going thru the crisis of a broken femur and soon after was the world trauma of dealing with Covid. It became an even more important time to share my story of self healing for oneself and the world. Sharing the story with the world was helped by being part of the Design Science Studio of the Buckminster Fuller Institute in 2021/22 and working with an animator Julian Ramirez and creating the Topia Worlds of Dodoland and Star Galaxy for the World. In 2023 I joined the Space Camp and edited the Earth Action book which is an activity book including the Magical Earth Secrets story. I mentioned in the interview that Star Galaxy for the World has now been added as one of the feature stories in the Dodoland website. Star Galaxy for the World has recently been done as an improv with the Paripurna Dance School in Bali as Star Galaxy for the World Bali.
BIG DREAM:THE STAR GALAXY STORYTELLERS
There is ideas in the Dream Wheels book on applying your dreams to your life and art and stories. It tells into how you can create your own Dream Wheel and Inner Life Mandala. In the interview I mentioned creating your Inner Dream Mandala with a transformational map, birth symbols, medicine dreams for example with power animals, imaginative characters, healing times and moment when you have felt a connection to the source or co creating with the divine. Dreams have made my art more meaningful for me and for the world. You too can go into Dreamland and find stories and images and music to creatively share with the world.
Robert Moss often spoke of the part of ourselves that produces dreams as being a Dream Producer . So let us use our Dream Producer to bring healing to ourselves and the Planet Earth.. This will be a theme of a Fireside Chat with Steven Leavitt at Design Science Studio in February of 2024.
Thanks and love Della Burford
P.S. Art Board by Rosemary E. Scherba on ‘Paint Your Dream’
In the interview I thanked my husband Dale Bertrand who has been by my side in all of the years of manifesting dreams. I also thanked Vern Harper and Pauline Shirt on reflecting on the experience of doing workshops at Wandering Spirit. Tedrian Chizik the producer of the New York production for seven years Dodoland and Magical Earth Secrets with so many artist including Merian Soto and musician Julie Lieberman. The producers in Japan Kazuko Asaba and Ruu Ruu who produced Magical Earth Secrets for seven years. I Made Sidia in Bali at Paripurna and the collabortions. Thanks to Steven Leavitt who did the interview on his blog Spaceship Earth Mission and also thanks to Steven Leavitt who has taken the time and had the interest to share the Dream Wheels book in the podcast The Language of Creativity. I thank the Design Science Studio for choosing me to be being part of Coheart 3. There are so many collaborators and people to thank .. a few more are mentioned in the link below.
Create a Dream, with Della Burford 