Meet Golda | Eco-Somatic Artist, Ceramic Sculptor, Analog Photographer, Painter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Golda and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Golda, how do you think about risk?
.When I decided to move to a tiny off the grid homesteading community deep in the mountains, far away from every familiar thing and person just after graduating from art school, I was, as one could imagine, full of fear for the unknown environment I would soon steep myself in for months. I spoke with a close friend about my woes. She wisely and sensitively shared a quote that essentially said that the degree to which you go toward your fear is the degree to which your life will open. This struck me, because I knew behind the fear was a deep calling and excitement for the journey I was about to embark on. I see risk-taking in the same way. We must take risks in order for our lives to open. And surely it did, these words could not have been more true. I see myself as still riding that wave I caught years ago and the cycle continues. I take a little risk so the world expands, inch by inch.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Through my work I often think about entanglements and impermanence through the relational structures of the earth. With concern for the survival of the planet and many earthly beings, I seek to honor cycles of death, loss, flourishing and birth, cultivate regeneration and provoke alternative ways of being through the act of intuitive making and attention to our own embodiment, movement, and transformation of materials. I am captivated by the interconnection of mysticism, psychology, somatics, earth sciences, dreamscapes, emotional expressions manifested through body language, the human form, internal and external realities and the separation or overlap between the two. I frequently ask myself these questions: How can we nourish the soul? How can we tend to the wholesome? How can I elevate the value of creativity, the creative process or creative action?

Hand-building with clay is my long standing fascination. I make sculptures ranging in texture, and style: abstract and angular, to organic and figurative, to functional and mythical. Another source of enchantment for me is analogue photography, particularly experimenting with film manipulation. These are practices I pick up and put down as they are available to me in my frequent movements of the last several years. I feel at home with my hands in clay or playing with film. More recently I’ve dived deep into the form of contact improvisation dance which speaks to a deep calling within my cells. From this study and practice, new life and a deep excitement is born within me to continue in this powerful form and to explore how it may inform my studio-based work. Part of the under-structure of all of this is a regular writing practice I have continued for many years: stream of consciousness, journaling and occasional poetry.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
As I mostly live nomadically in this period of my life, I always collect along the way. One of the many things I collect is notes and recommendations for special places that have touched me, opened me, or spoken to me on some level. Here’s a list of some of the places that have shaped and homed me, collected in the US: the dunes, forests and lakes of Northern Michigan, John King’s Used & Rare Books, Eastern Market, all the street art and murals around Detroit, Michigan, Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, Superstition Mountains of Arizona, mid-coast to the Northern coasts of Maine, Emerald Lake, Vermont and the surrounding Green Mountains and of course, Crystal Lake & Walden Pond in Massachusetts.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My family, friends, teachers, and authors of many books I’ve read have all given me nourishing waters and soils in different forms, from which I sprout my seeds today.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/golda0003, https://www.instagram.com/zehava0003/