Best Path

Your path in life is yours alone. For some it’s a formula; for others, a feeling. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Live authentically. Know your purpose. Care for yourself. Build relationships with intention. Your intuition is your compass- trust it!

Too many dreams have died under the weight of other people’s opinions. Stay the course through the inevitable twists, turns, doubts, and keep your hope.

Your best path always requires belief in what you cannot yet see. Hold onto your vision and trust God is working everything for your good. Your path unfolds as you move towards what you believe.

Artwork: “I Am On The Best Path For Myself”

2022

Assembled found images

You Are Your Best Thing

“You are your best thing…”

-Toni Morrison, Beloved

Our sense of value does not come from others, our jobs, or even our closest relationships. It comes from within - from our own inherent self worth.

So where do self-worth and creativity intersect? For me, creativity has always been a bridge between emotions and curiosity - a way to pour curiosity, joy, and pain on to paper or canvas. Over the decades, art making and writing have become forms of personal liberation, granting me the freedom to explore and make sense of my inner world and what I observe in the world around me.

Whether through figurative collages that affirm “Black is Beautiful” or abstract works that delve into dreamlike ambiguity, my creativity continues to evolve as a practice of expression and curiosity. Affirming myself does not diminish others; rather it honors my voice, my lived experiences, my value, my talents, my right to exist and take up space. I matter - and I have contributions to make where I can serve.

May we all come to recognize that we are our best thing. Create space for yourself. Listen to your intuition. Honor your inner voice. Cultivate your gifts. The world needs only what you can create!

“You Are Your Best Thing”

2020

Collaged my from found images.

Meditation is Realization

Your thoughts become your reality.

It requires intentionality to stay focused in today’s hyper distracting world. Disciplined action is required to achieve your goals.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Meditate on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Philippians‬ ‭4:8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Block out or distance yourself from that which does not serve your highest and best.

Meditate, create, & elevate.

Artwork:

Mediation Is Realization

2020

Give Her Flowers

Give her flowers.

Choose fragrant, colorful, and beautiful bouquets that stoke all of her senses.

Give them with a pure heart, with a desire to tug at her emotions, and affirm your commitment. May your bouquet whisper “I love you” with pretty petals and fragrance.

She is your flower. Nurture your garden and she will continually bloom.

Artwork:

“Give Her Flowers”

2019

Lost In The Waves

Belief.

Faith.

The substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.

Whatcha believin’ God for? Whatcha hopin’ to maintain a mustard seed size of faith for?

Don’t stop believing. Don’t get lost in the waves and movement of the world around you.

Don’t abandon your faith.

Look for your miracles everyday. Trust God to strengthen you, keep you encouraged and supply whatever is required to walk on that water.

God doesn’t need your help, just your faith. Keep walking, don’t stop, He has your back.

Artwork:

“Lost In The Waves”

2022

12in x 9in

Abstract collage on watercolor paper

What Are We Afraid Of?

What - (fill in the blank)

Are we (you, me, and/or everyone else)

Afraid (fearing, scared to contemplate)

Of (to be, to become, to do)

?

Take up space and go forward shedding your fear with every step. Develop the confidence as you play, act, do, dream, practice, and become. Becoming is a process…. They say you should enjoy the process. Enjoy becoming!

Artwork:

“Becoming”

2020

The Keeper

To Keep (verb):

to maintain (some action), especially in accordance with specific requirements, a promise, etc.:to keep watch; to keep step.

A reminder that we need to be the keepers of our truths, our families, our past, our communities, our institutions, and all that we value.

Keep your heirlooms, keep the family recipes, keep the telling the stories, keep your loved ones close, keep making memories, keep the strength, keep your courage, keep the same energy for doing the right thing.

Know what to keep.

Know what to let go.

Know your yourself.

Keep taking care of yourself.

Keep believing.

Keep trusting the process.

Keep holding to God’s unchanging hand.

Keep your cool.

Keep investing.

Keep living.

Keep succeeding.

Keep caring for one another.

We are each other’s keeper!

“My Sister’s Keeper”

2021

CURES

“CURES” is an acronym for Creativity Unleashed Rewards Every Soul.  I believe in the power of creative expression and started Art CURES All as a way of encouraging others to explore creative expression as a form of self-care and stress management.  Whether you are observing art, making art or working on some creative project, the stimulation to our senses and emotions from art and creativity usually lifts our spirits, tugs at our curiosity and brings us joy.  I’m partial to the potency of people creating with their own hands.  Creating with our hands is part power and part vulnerability; it’s important to see the power in being vulnerable.

Giving Side Eye

Currently side-eyeing…

Anything that resembles:

• hatred

• people being unkind

• discrimination

• bias

• shadiness

• erasing history

• attempting to soften atrocities

• alternative facts

• discriminatory practices

• anyone feeling superior to another person

• unbridled arrogance

• feelings not rooted in facts

• meanness

• threats

• manipulation

• bullies posing as saviors

• religious manipulation

• lack of critical thinking

• laziness

• dream killing (stop hating on another person)

• pessimism

• ignorance (searching for facts is too easy)

• lukewarm anything (let the passion come alive)

• fearful mindsets

• anything that doesn’t resemble love/loving nature

• self-hatred

Believing is Doing

She walked on water

because she BELIEVED

she could…

He walked on water.

They walked on water.

The community walked on water.

The family walked on water.

We can walk on water

if we BELIEVE.

Walk, when the water gets deep don’t stop. When you get out on the deep end of the water DO NOT let fear take you down. Keep walking in faith! Whatever the journey and wherever the journey is taking you, may God keep you and bless you.

_________________________________

“She Walked On Water Because She Believed She Could”

2022

20 x 16

Found pieces assembled on Arches watercolor paper

Just As I Am

Happy Black History Month!

“…You have to know how great you are…”

“The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. Nobody would bother to beat you down if you were not a threat.”

#Cicely Tyson

_____________________________________

“Just As I Am”

2021

Found images on Arches watercolor paper

16x12

I Am Evolving

To evolve is to develop gradually, to come into being.

January 2025 marks 14 years since I moved to Chicago from Atlanta. In January 2014 I gave birth to my son. Moving to Chicago and becoming a mother are two of the most significant adult life changes that have molded into the woman I am today.

The process and journey of evolving has been frustrating, exciting, confusing, thought provoking, enriching, and it has been positively life changing. Leaving a circle of comfort forces you to build new networks personally and professionally. These networks have helped me form new and lasting friendships. I have formed friendships have given me the confidence to cultivate an art practice and led to numerous opportunities to share my creativity.

Giving birth was like stepping behind a veil. There are things you can’t comprehend until you personally experience carrying a child for 9 months, delivering a baby (for me via c-section), and raising a young man. My son reflects both the good in me and sometimes the parts of me that still need to evolve. I’m grateful he is healthy physically and emotionally. I’m thankful he is intelligent, curious, thinks critically, and questions people and the world he has been thrust into. He is creative and competitive. I know he is going to be an amazing talent in whatever he chooses to pursue.

Evolving doesn’t always mean you stray far away. This year I will celebrate 25 years of working in the pharmaceutical/healthcare industry. A job promotion 14 years ago brought me to Chicago. I look forward to many more productive years in servitude to patients who are on life saving and life sustaining therapies. I started in the industry as an individual contributor and have grown to lead national teams. I have had the privilege of working for multinational, multibillion dollar corporations and small, innovative startup organizations. I love serving patients and have done so in numerous functions.

My creative endeavors have always started with me playing it safe and then boldly evolving or pivoting. I was a jewelry artist for years and still hear from many customers who are still rocking those designs. After taking a metal smithing class in early 2014 soon after giving birth, I reluctantly accepted jewelry was going to have a take a back seat. For a while all art making took a back seat. It felt like there was only time to take care of a family, work, and enjoy art by taking advantage of Chicago’s wonderful art culture.

In 2017 I started journaling about what I wanted Art CURES All to be. The journey has not been about executing what i wrote on paper, but something more amazing than I imagined. I never intended to become an artist, but I realize I have always been an artist. I resisted becoming an artist for years because of my own limiting beliefs, particularly what I artists to be. After overwhelming encouragement from friends and aspiring collectors in 2019, I decided to create an online storefront. Simultaneously, I began to grow my social media presence for Art CURES All.

While mothering and working full-time, I have had the privilege of selling hundreds of prints, participating in numerous exhibitions, cultivating relationships with galleries, amassing a social media following, and appearing in two books. I am still evolving artistically. There are more stories to tell and explore through collage and abstraction.

I have an upcoming group exhibition where the piece pictured in this post (“I Am Evolving” 2022) will be shown. Stay tuned I also have a new collaboration launching in February. The Art CURES All storefront will feature different prints, larger sized prints, and later this year some original pieces. I look forward to sharing new works with the galleries I’m represented by and new collectors emerging.

As I continue to evolve personally and professionally one of the most important things I understand more clearly is to appreciate each day for what it is and what it brings. Evolutions are not always BIG things, but a collection of small habits, events, and activities that we gradually allow to manifest. Over time we get to celebrate the significance and the culmination of what we have allowed.

Happy New Year! Cheers to your evolutions this year, may they be positive, productive, and prosperous. 🥂

Heather

What Art Offers Me

Art offers me freedom and joy.
There is joy in creating. There is joy in the solitude of creating. There is joy in making room for my voice to be heard/seen in the art that I make. There is joy in creating with others at times, especially when my son asks to join me (I rarely invite him, I never want to seem as if I’m pushing art on him). There is joy in doing my thing by myself.

In a world so quick to silence and diminish people, it’s important that we all find a place of refuge. A place of refuge where we can comfortably express ourselves, minimize interruptions, and listen to what’s in the depths of our hearts and souls. Art is my place of refuge. In my art practice I have found freedom and joy. My soul is rewarded when I create.

I wish for many others to find joy, freedom, and that thing that rewards their soul.

Send with echo

Her name will always be an echo until justice fills the void! 🔊Sound On 🔊

In Lieu Of Flowers, #1

One of the things that has bothered me the most about quarantining at home during the Covid-19 pandemic is families NOT being able to properly memorialize their loved ones. I’ve been saddened by numerous stories of people losing loved ones to Covid or other health battles that they ultimately succumbed to during the pandemic. I have been quietly curious about how families feel about the experience of losing someone and having to quarantine and honor someone virtually. It’s so unnatural not to gather and console family and friends when our loved ones transition.

The service commemorating the lives of our loved ones is often referred to as a “celebration of life” or “home-going service” - these memorials are lively, yet solemn remembrances. We hug and kiss each other on the cheeks. We sit face to face and catch up because all too often these services are impromptu family reunions. We get dressed up and we gather in halls for the repast. We pass plates of homemade or catered foods. We sip red punch from little clear plastic cups. We watch our elders move slower and reflect on the days of their prime. We hold the hands of the weak and get them to their seats. This is a time of intimacy. The hugs are welcomed and sought after. The goodbyes are hard, but we are grateful that we did get up to see another day.

So how does one carry out a celebration of life or a home-going service virtually on Facebook Live or through Zoom? The virtual ceremony is completely void of the warmth we crave in the presence of family and friends. I’m curious about so much surrounding the mourning of loved ones virtually.

Sheltering in place in front of a screen, honoring the deceased with a million thoughts running through your mind. Death as a result of coronavirus is forcing the nation to reconcile itself to the sobering statistics on how African-Americans are disproportionately dying from Covid-19. Health disparities are not new and the attempts to narrow the gap in health outcomes are not new. What’s glaringly apparent is that our efforts are not working well enough. The social determinants known to impact health outcomes have to become a priority. The nation’s healthcare ecosystem must move swiftly to bring parity to the health outcomes of all Americans, especially African Americans.

I’m curious to see how the Covid-19 pandemic data is analyzed, crunched, summarized and ultimately stuffed in between plastic glossy folders. How many hands will these reports pass through and whose eyes will get to review the data? Who will have a seat the table and get to decide what’s next for Black folks dying all across the nation unnecessarily? Black people need to have a seat at the table. Black people need to be heard from and need to be listened to without bias clouding anyone’s judgement.

In lieu of flowers, please give everyone one that has died as a result of Covid-19, the good faith effort that health disparities will be tackled with more fervor, resources and commitment than ever before. In lieu of flowers, send more young blacks to medical school so when Black people go see a doctor they are more likely to see someone that looks like them. In lieu of flowers, please make investments in Black communities equitably so we don’t live in food deserts, have better access to high quality healthcare and ensure access to capital to own our homes. In lieu of flowers, someone, everyone, please make a good faith effort to ensure “we gon be alright.”

In lieu of flowers, please keep your gestures, Black Americans are more concerned with the discontinuation of antagonism against our lives.

(Written in mid May 2020, published June 2020)

“Thrive”, handcrafted collage by Heather Polk, 2020

American Justice (Just Us)

Keep your fists up! ✊🏾

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” ~Assata Shakur

"We were just human beings who saw a need to bring attention to the inequality in our country," Tommie Smith said years later, in a documentary on the 1968 Mexico City games produced for HBO. "I don't like the idea of people looking at it as negative. There was nothing but a raised fist in the air and a bowed head, acknowledging the American flag—not symbolizing a hatred for it." 

“American Just-Us” - print available for purchase

Handcrafted collage by Heather Polk 2019

Rest Is Underrated

Rest (noun/it’s a real thing): inactivity, break, breather, breathing space, calm, calmness, cessation, coffee, break, comfort, composure, cutoff, downtime, doze, dreaminess, ease, forty winks, halt, holiday, hush, idleness, interlude, intermission, interval, leisure, letup, lull, motionlessness, nap, pause, peace, quiescence, quiet, quietude, recess, recreation, refreshment, relaxation, relief, repose, respite, siesta, silence, sleep, slumber, somnolence, standstill, stay, stillness, stop, time off, tranquillity, vacation

“Restoration”

Handcrafted collage by Heather Polk 2020

Gather Your Own Bouquet

Plant your own gardens.

Go get your own flowers.

Stop waiting for others.

The time is now.

Plant your own gardens.

Go get your own flowers.

Dig up the soil.

Pull out the weeds.

Plant your own gardens.

Go get your own flowers.

You will grow more than you could ever imagine.

Plant your own garden.

There are so many flowers for you!

“Gather Your Own Bouquet”

Handcrafted collage by Heather Polk 2020

Ease My Mind

Meditation has been a blessing during this quarantine. I have been part of a small group meditating on abundance. I have mediated with my son somewhat regularly. And I have maintained my 3 pm mediation which is breath work and expressing gratitude.

I’m getting into a writing rhythm with my journal. I have three times more blog posts for 2020 thus far, than I had for all of 2019. Writing and blogging definitely serve as forms of meditation. Meditation is extended thought, contemplation or spiritual reflection. I use my mediation for focused thought and spiritual reflection.

Mediation, Saturday devotion with friends and journaling have brought much ease to my mind. I’m thankful for the peace that I’m cultivating through my meditation practice and prayers. I selectively read news articles. I listen to specific news channels and hardly watch any television news. I’m staying informed, however if your not careful, some of the news will disrupt all the positive work you’re doing in meditation.

Ease your mind and explore the power of meditation. Quieting our minds, listening to our souls and the Spirit within is indeed a blessing. Be sure to guard your minds from all that would to seek to disrupt what you’re gaining from meditation.

“Ease My Mind” handcrafted collage by Heather Polk. 2019

The Seasons of Life

There are cycles of life. We keep track of these cycles sometimes with the passing of the seasons. Bears hibernate in the Winter. Birds fly back north in the Spring. It’s Spring 2020 and Covid 19 is ushering a new cycle of life many of us around the globe are unfamiliar with. We are quarantined in our homes with loved ones, working and acting as substitute teachers to our children. We are on Zoom, Google Chat and FaceTime calls all day, everyday. This will be a moment in history that will we reflect on for decades to come, perhaps centuries.

This is the time of the year when we are typically excited as the temperatures are rising, buds are forming on trees, birds are chirping loudly in the morning, bulbs are popping up from the ground and we are shedding extra layers of clothing. Much of this is still going on, as we watch from our windows.

The energy, the warmth and the renewal of spring is always welcomed here in Chicago, especially after a long and cold winter season. When we have a warm Spring, it’s a beautiful prelude to #SummerTimeChi. Many are anxious and nervous about so much this Spring. In this cycle, I have challenged myself to stay focused on what I can control, breathe deeply several times a day and enjoy numerous cups of hot tea per day from the comfort of home.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I see so much for us to work on together when we fellowship again in the near future. I look forward to hugging my family and friends. I look forward to vacationing at the beach. I look forward to shopping and dining locally. I look forward to returning to work and moving about more freely. I look forward to all the seeds I’m planting coming to bloom. We will bloom this Spring at the perfect time!

“A Season In Life”

Handcrafted collage by Heather Polk 2020 @artcuresall