Psyche & Imagination - Online Abstract
The Art

Amy Sova Jessen

Earth-based Inquiry: Exploring Dreams, Active Imaginations, and Spontaneous Images via Nature Assemblage

This exhibit features a series of photographs documenting internal images created in the earth, using a form of Earth-based inquiry titled Nature Assemblage. Earth-based inquiry is defined as a process where one enters nature with an intention, typically a question, using the experience in nature as a symbolic text to explore and answer the question. It is a process that can be understood as a form of symbolic conversation between the image created in the earth and ones psyche.

This form of inquiry may be viewed as being similar to sandplay therapy, a symbolic modality where patients create three dimensional images in sand using various objects. According to Weinrib (2004), sandplay is a modality that allows patients to set-up a world that corresponds to his or her inner state. The theory follows that via free, creative play, unconscious processes are made visible in three-dimensional form. The exhibit invites viewers to witness several assemblages created over the course of fourteen months in various locations throughout California , U.S.A.

The photographs document the process of the artist, who uses immersion in nature as her primary methodology to openly investigate a dream image, active imagination or spontaneous image. All images were created using natural objects from nature, such as leaves, rocks, and flowers.

The exhibit briefly reviews the methodology employed, including amplifications and insights gleaned by the artist throughout her process. Each work is titled, dated, and includes a list of natural objects used, along with the name of the physical location where the assemblage was created. Primary findings implicate nature assemblage as a process that provides an opportunity for creative expression of unconscious contents, with the earth acting as a symbolic container. An overarching theme is the rediscovery of the artists own connection to the earth, and thus to the feminine. The artist experienced a reclaiming of self-experience, of the mother, and of the earth as both a container and facilitator of numinous experience.

Amy Sova Jessen has a Masters degree in Depth Psychology from Sonoma State University . Her work focuses on the interplay between the individual psyche and nature. She synthesizes a number of depth inquiry techniques in her use of earth-based inquiry and nature assemblage, and uses the art forms of photography, poetry, and song in her work.