Chain Reaction is the words I have when I met this amazing couple.
I decided to write about this couple for many reasons and emotions that have come to light in my life after meeting the two.
Real love, well here it is. In your face.
The amount of projects and accomplishments both as a team have committed themselves to doing is so vast, I would really have to write a book, and quite honestly I still have more research to add to this write up.
Erin and Solah met in Whistler where they started doing projects together such as facilitating a community drum circle and doing an artist in residency for a local elementary school. In this project they helped nearly 300 children create dream flags depicting their hopes, wishes and dreams for the future of planet Earth, and took them all to the World Peace Forum in Vancouver.
The couple moved to the ARC in East Vancouver. The Artist Resource Center is a building with 80 live/work art studios with shared facilities such as dance room, soundproof music rooms, kilns, darkroom and woodshop, and at the same time a housing unit that helps artists live and sustain creative outlet, all in one place. I have not been there myself however the work accomplished I have heard is amazing.
Solah has created many companies, one of her favorites being a little dreadlock creation and maintenance business called Blessed Locks.
Erin started a screenprinting business creating merchandise - shirts, stickers, posters, bags and art prints – for festivals, touring and recording musicians, and exhibiting artists. http://www.sagescreenprinting.com/
And together, Erin and Solah started a small sticker catalogue, based on erin's art, humour, positivity and social change. They sell these at festivals in the summerThe couple then purchased a travel home, The Dream Machine!
Dream Machine was actually created by someone else and they found it purchased the little home and did a little more to the inside and had a roof rack made from an old bed which we had put on the top. Erin and Solah bought the Dream Machine for the summer that Erin was throwing Towards Eden so that we could live out on the land where the festival was and float around for the summer.
The updated picture of the dream machine!
I have realised that I have had quite a blind eye to our world, even my own city, and what is happening for the last 3 years, I have been rushing and rushing to provide for people in my field and my own life, I have missed what is going on and most importantly I have not even stopped to take a breath. In the last two weeks I have been researching the world and my environment and my community and I understand..why persons feel so strongly in doing thing's differently.
Erin and Solah are the extreme example of living differently.
I have somewhere, just turned a blind eye to what is important, have you thought about how you want to be remembered? Are you worried about the issues that are almost unknown that we will face with our planet? Government? All I have ever thought about before, were the small stuff, such as;
I mean I recycle, I do community gardens, volunteer, massive charity work, help the less fortunate.
How am I helping myself? How am I helping the greater picture? I mean I don't even have a community to run to if the world ended, would I run? to a church? The point is how are we helping each other? and ourselves and living life to the fullest everyday. How are we protecting our nature our oceans?
Are our relationships with people Honorable? Are "we " with each other? Ask yourself. I did.
First-Simplify your life. This couple clearly spent real time talking about their dreams. Working together as a team. This makes me look at my picture. How could I possible connect with anyone doing what I am doing-
This is the start of a very long process. Sometimes you have to lose everything- to see the larger picture.
This couple brings people and ideas into the making.
One of the greatest memories that I had forgotten, until a few weeks ago, was when I lived in Bell 2, this is up by Alaska, I lived in a metal airstream moter home with my semi dreaded hair and my hippy boyfriend for 3 years off and on-I remember my kids playing with no shoes in the mud and woods, with a large group of french Canadians. I remember getting up at 3am as camp cook and screaming I was scared cause there was a bear outside..I remember tree planting, slashing staking..feeling like I wanted to die from being sore. I remember now how happy I was. I remember, I had nothing really. I had allot of love, a huge community.
So when I met Erin, well..it all came back. The amount of emotions I had..I could only take home. The way he spoke, his belief system. Like wow, I knew I needed to immediately change my coarse of action, and I think this started before I met Erin. I know this, because slowly I have been simplifying my life for 3 years.
Erin Sage now has larger projects, Sage Illustration and Towards Eden Project. These projects are huge.
The screen printing is Erin's baseline work, creating Shirts, stickers, bags basically anything with his art. Erin is also a musician and plays locally in various events. Towards Eden is a massive project. This project is basically, festivals and concerts that are completely powered by natural power, the natural sources, wind, solar, soil water. The only way I can describe this festival is from the writer himself written below:
The Towards Eden Festival was a fantastic Sustainability Festival, featuring live and electronic World Music and practical, hands-on sustainability workshops and more. It was truly unique as it was 100% powered by energies that are renewable, sustainable and regenerated right there on the land!! All solar, wind and pedal power. Find more about how they do this by visiting their website: http://www.towardseden.com/
http://www.towardseden.com/home
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We now have to get back to Solah! I recently recorded Solah at an event talking about what her passion is, and how she can help others in finding their passion and being in the place they want to be in, as a first time speaker to a large audience I was quite moved.
I decided to take Solah up on her almost free coaching session, in my mind I thought"Well she's not going to tell me anything I already don't know" I mean I counsel all the time, I'm in Mental Health...blah blah, well....
I was a crying fool by the end of the call. Maybe you have in the past, been to a shrink, or another life coach that was based on career. The coaching that Solah teaches, first deals with the immediate. In coaching like myself, this may be hard, the immediate block. I know my work, but taking accountability of my own words and having my words repeated back, and the message I am unwilling to hear to move forward-WOW.
Powerful point, we create our own lives and whatever or whoever we bring into our lives could be for a lesson, or a reason, or as I said in past, a season. Most times these are lessons. I then went to her website and I have to say, the website alone has so much information, you feel better just by looking at it.
I highly recommend a session or a group function, Solah is starting her own workshops- I will be attending one in late March. Check for updates on Solah's website below. I also hope to incorporate Solah at some of my workshops into the future and this can be a direct contact as well.
http://positivelypurposeful.com/
After my session, I really had a clear concise idea of what I needed to do- I know what has to happen in the next month, and I feel better. Sometimes we work and work and are thankful we have a job and are earning money, but are just not happy. The idea for some people, like myself , to just quit what they are doing and say, hey I'm just gonna..go paint..lol is crazy, people would think I am crazy.
As Solah said in a recent speech, "what if you were doing the things you love before and after your work, so that you could be present in your work". So saying the example is painting, you might think, ok..this is just painting I like to do, what if you had a schedule of say 6 paintings by end of summer and 10 artsy coffee shops you would try to hang your art? This is what I am talking about!! So now you are making a small step to work at something you love. This is very small example, I would also have to write a book on Solah to explain all that she does. I know Solah will have her own series of books in her workshops one day.
When I talk to Solah, I think of warm tea and her braiding my hair and the smell of sandalwood.
I have no idea if she makes tea and smells of sandalwood- but sometimes meeting people brings a memory-
a connection.
All the people I write about will have some type of connection. These two created a chain reaction for me, I now have 5 more people to write about. I do see Erin and Solah making community change whenever they are present.
This is important to me, and it should be important to Vancouver to know people are changing, this change is great.
"The Beat to your own drum"
To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer
is to have kept your soul alive
Robert Louis Stevenson
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