Victoria Rabinowe is a dreamer,
artist, educator, and mythmaker. She has explored the Art of Dreaming
in more than 200 workshops and dream sharing groups in her Santa Fe
studio and across the United States. In her original approach to dream
work, she has guided dreamers to reinvent their dreams using visual
arts and creative writing. She is a graduate of the Advanced
DreamTending Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute and has taught
& exhibited for many years at the Association for the Study of
Dreams. She is currently involved in a three-year series of Dream
Journal Drawings. In addition to being a dream artist, she is the
founder of the Santa Fe Weaving Gallery, and the program chair for The
Santa Fe Book Arts Group.
Artist's Statement
"Art is a wound turned to
light"
-- Georges Braque
My work in Dream Art is similar to the
practice of alchemy. I work in my studio as if I were in an ancient
laboratory of science. The dream is my Prima Materia.
Before I begin a drawing, I subject the
dream to a series of alchemical operations. I fragment the dream
through research. I hunt down symbols and myths. I play with the
language. I write my memories. Once I have collected as much
information as I can, I recombine the visual fragments into collages,
and I distill the writings into poems. After this lengthy process, I
revive the dream through drawing. Drawing provides the medicine with
which I can confront the issues that confront me. The image-making
process is the catalyst which releases the Anima Mundi from the
enigmatic dream story. Art becomes the bridge to the spiritual gold,
the philosopher's stone of the final work of art.
These pieces are representative images
from a three year series of Dream Journal Drawings that combine text
with image in transparent layers of inks, mineral colors, graphite and
pastels on paper.
"The Open Door"
In this dream Mr. Burns is leaving his home with the door open and
without the alarm turned on. In the drawing, I worked with the
incendiary name of "Burns." I became engaged by the notion
of what it would feel like to have no personal alarm system. This led
me to consider what it would be like to leave the door open to my own
emotions and memories -- to experience my inner demons without
protection.
"The Back Of Time"
In this dream, I've strung helium balloons together, but I can't make
the knots. I keep trying and trying. I feel stuck. In the picture, I
use the act of drawing the dream to confront this feeling of being
stuck. Making this image became the alchemical process in which I
transformed my inertness into action.
"The Cerro Grande Fire"
This dream came during the huge fire in the mountains near my home in
Santa Fe, New Mexico. I dreamed of a fire out of control. The drawing
is a meditation between the feeling of helplessness in the face of a
fire raging and my own rage at facing helplessness.