It is like a whisper coming out of Catherine Howard’s mouth.
“I live riveted to this idea of tenderness,” she says.
We are well into our telephone interview. I think I gasp.
“If we can find new ways to have tenderness toward each other it can change the world,” she says. “We’re taught ‘get ahead,’ but I don’t see it as a way to live happy lives.”
Almost radical, yes?
I dig into this idea of tenderness. Such a gentle, beautiful word. When did it come to the forefront for her?
“Over two years ago, in Zimbabwe,” Howard says.
She spent over three weeks there, living in an outer slum with a family. There was a group of sculptors in their 90s. They hadn’t made any money in 20 years.
“They are still getting up every day, sculpting granite,” she says. “There are gardens of work. Gardens.”
Howard bought a few pieces, but what was more important to the artists was being seen.
“Money is secondary,” Howard says. “They want somebody to be attentive.”
She was. And happily so. She began to wonder what it would be like when she left. In one moment, a young girl put her chin on Howard’s belly.
“I had this realization I so deeply loved these people,” she says. “I had the ability to leave this situation and they didn’t. It broke my heart. I realized the only thing I could do was be more loving to the people who were there. That was my turning point.”
Loving. Tender. There was its genesis.
“We only receive and give that if we’re in touch with our own creativity,” she says.
Howard is in touch with hers, to put it mildly.
Her trip was part of her project called the 13/13/13 Sketchbook Project. The concept as stated on the website was “Creating 13 sketchbooks in 11 artist collectives in 2013 -- Exploring how art revitalizes communities.” Howard, a resident of North Carolina, went from Tampere, Finland to Berlin, Germany and then successively – Johannesburg, South Africa; Harare, Zimbabwe; Moca, Dominican Republic; Toronto, Canada; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Beijing, China; Hong Kong; Durham, N.C. and Raleigh, N.C.
“As I traveled, I realized how art can be revolutionary,” Howard says. “It allows us to engage with each other.”
After earning a degree in Contemporary African Art History and securing a job in arts administration that would pay the bills after college, Howard had a sound foundation for these life-transforming experiences.
“I learned a lot of great skills [in arts administration],” she says. “I helped people get their visions out into the world. But it was difficult to keep up my own practice. I’m all in or I’m not doing it at all. I was all in as an arts administrator.”
Once she left that job and moved to South Africa for several months, she realized she had a gift for supporting and connecting people. That’s what was missing in arts administration. The 13/13/13 Sketchbook Project was born from that discovery. And from there she founded Conversing Fire, which, according to its website, “teaches creative beings like you how to connect to your body and from that innate wisdom, create art that changes the world.”
It is here that Howard says, also on the site, that she melds her college degree with “intense research into behavioral economics, anatomy, art-activism, yoga therapy, and community organizing.” She designs classes and workshops that blend yoga, art, journaling and yoga therapy elements, helping to unblock artists and connect them powerfully to others.
At one point, upon seeing the words “Fire Founder” emblazoned over a dominant image of a flame on her site, I ask Howard about it before realizing it is “Conversing Fire Founder.” Still, she doesn’t skip a beat.
“I am the founder for some sort of fire for people,” she says.
And then, “Conversing is a word we use so rarely. It’s a lovely word.”
Kind of like tenderness.
One of the areas we are perhaps not so tender with each other is in the creative realm. There are the hobbyists, who sing or paint in their non-work time. And then there are those who opt for being creative full time.
“Being creative is admired,” Howard says. “Living a life doing it is not admired.”
We talk about the systems in place, systems she calls big and bulky, and how most people think the only way to change things is through those established systems. Howard notes that one of the benefits of social media is that people are beginning to see other options for their lives.
“You don’t have to live the life your parents lived,” she says.
Further, she gives a nod to people who choose to live. Emphasis on the last word. To her, that means getting out of the miserable 9-to-5 loop because that’s how she was feeling as an arts administrator. Now she has found her groove.
“A lot of people in my life think I’m lazy because I didn’t want to work in arts administration anymore,” she says. “What I’m doing now is exhausting, but when I wake up I want to do what I’m doing. Sometimes it means eating beans and rice. But right now this is what I need.”
This is how she knows what other artists need. It’s more than an inkling. Somewhere along the way she realized that rather than advocate for other people, it was about teaching artists to advocate for themselves.
“What if we just supported artists to be innately creative?” she says.
What if?
By Nancy Colasurdo
