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Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy 1/20/23 Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy 1/20/23

The Birth Collection

The Birth Collection was begun in 2018, and the final piece finally came off of the loom in 2021.

The Birth Story series of mini tapestries debuted this month (January 2023) at my First Friday show and will be in the Imbolc shop update, so I thought that now is the perfect time to share about this collection

Birth is a threshold. Giving birth, the body becomes a portal, inviting life from one side of the veil into the other. Baby moves from darkness of womb like a seed in soil into the light of this world. We become the doorway for spirit. There is a special energy that emerges when we stand between two worlds. It is an energy that we share with sprouting plants, with hatching eggs, with algae blooms and flower buds, with animal mamas everywhere.

We can prepare. We can dream. We can plan. And yet when the birth field opens around us, we can only surrender to the process. Sometimes it exactly as we imagined, and sometimes it is very very different. Whether a surgical birth or a vaginal one, a natural birth or a medically assisted one; we cannot control the energy of birth. We can harness ourselves to it, we can be the vessel for it, we can fight it, we can ride it, but we cannot control it. The body opens and baby crosses the threshold. It is a sacred thing this opening, a thing of blood and bone and flesh and pain and breath and sometimes excrement too, that brings a sweet new unfolding into the world.

I did much of the prep work for this warp -including spinning the supplemental yarn for Unfolding - in my last trimester of pregnancy, at the same time as I was doing my own personal spiritual preparations for birth, calling in my guides and allies and working with my ancestral spirits to provide a safe and protected birth space for my daughter and an easy labor for myself. The talisman shown in some of the photos below features the goddess Frigg and was a focal point for much of my personal work.

The warp is of longstaple cotton/hemp from Saltwater Rose Threads and is dyed in soft earth tones and florals.

Birth: Unfolding

This piece is named Unfolding and is a meditation on the journey of labor. There are 10 supplementary warp threads of the handspun rose viscose. One tail (and its fringe) starts with three supplements and the other seven are added in staggered along the length of the wrap so that the opposite tail (and its fringe) have 10 supplements. This is meant to represent dilation. 3 cm dilation is (very broadly speaking) a benchmark for when you may admitted to hospital or when a midwife will tell you to head to the birth center. It (again very broadly speaking) marks the entrance into the active phase of labor. 10 cm, of course, is full dilation.

The weft is rose viscose from Saltwater Rose Threads and I dyed it in shades of soft pinks and taupes. The dilation symbology is also embedded in the weft. I dyed ten concentric circles into the blank canvas of the weft, along with three runes: laguz for the waves of labor, flowing birth, and amniotic fluid; berkana for birth and new life and the goddess tree, and jera for fruitful harvest and the childbearing year. I use the symbology of runes in my fiber practice as a way of (re)connecting to the spiritual paths of my ancestors.

The handspun supplementary yarn is made of rose viscose which I dyed in the same floral tones as appear in the warp. I spun it and then chain plied it which allows for a color grad along its length (in this instance it is multiple smaller color grads throughout the skein). This means that the supplementary warp threads change color along the length of the warp and the weft inlays do likewise, fading through colors in a single inlay.

There are handspun weft inlays throughout the piece. For the most part, they are worked in themes of three and ten. Three for the three phases of labor, the three aspects of the goddess, the three visible phases of the moon, the triad of baby-mother-grandmother (for the baby is present in the uterus of the fetal mother in the womb of the grandmother). Ten again for the 10 cm dilation and for the way that ten signifies completion and change in our decimal number system.

Others are meandering inlays that trace different paths with single or multiple inlays going at once that felt very much like storytelling as I did them.

Near one tail, there is a twined inlay of the Berkana rune (the same as is dyed into the weft.) Berkana is an ancient word for the birch tree, and the runes symbolically represents growth and rebirth. It is a rune of new beginnings. It indicates good news, birth, fertility and times of family rejoicing.

Birth: Surrender

Birth Surrender was woven as a semi custom, so its design was in collaboration with the customer to whom the wrap went home. These collaborations are deeply personal to the person for whom I am working and involves intimate and often private visual symbology.

This piece features a hand dyed weft of silk/nettle and a double heart inlay on one tail that I spun from hand dyed superwash targhee.

Birth Healing

Birth Healing was woven as a semi custom, so its design was in collaboration with the customer to whom the wrap went home. These collaborations are deeply personal to the person for whom I am working and involves intimate and often private visual symbology.

This piece was an incredible honor to work on. It involves inlays and weft yarn changes with color blocking patterned intuitively and based on numerical symbology. It includes inlays of mohair locks and a variety of handspun and commercial yarns, hemstitching and faux lace inlays, and a large ogham inlay. I’m utterly in love with this piece and deeply grateful for the chance to create it.

Birth Story

This mixed media wall art piece has a blog post all of its own: check it out!

Birth Stories Series

The Birth Stories mini tapestry series that debuted at Just the Tips during my January 2022 First Friday exhibition grew directly out of this collection. This is an ongoing series that you are sure to hear more about in future! Stay tuned.

Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy 11/2/21 Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy 11/2/21

Birth Story

Birth Story weaves together the hand written birth stories of nearly a dozen women, using their words on paper as weft with textural handspun and handdyed yarns. Tapestry techniques combine with a loom controlled multishaft weave pattern, and are accented by braided plaits and twisted fringe to tell a multi-voiced story of bringing new life into the world - combining experiences of joy and of trauma - that pulls from a rich history of “women’s work” including weaving, midwifery, and parenthood while it looks looks towards a future where birthing bodies are honored and supported in their most vulnerable and sacred moments.

Birth Story physically represents the collective wisdom and life experience found in sharing stories of the birth experience. At times joyful and empowering or even orgasmic, at times traumatic and disempowering, and at times everything in between; birth is often a pivotal moment in the life of the bearer. This piece represents these experiences by literally using the handwritten accounts of over a dozen firsthand birth experiences of women across the USA and Europe as weft. Weaving ink-and-emotion-on -paper into this piece was a profound experience and I’m so honored and humbled that my collaborators were willing to share their experiences in this way.

Birth Story was woven in 2019 as part of the Birth collection. It was exhibited in the 2019 64th Parallel, Fairbanks Arts Association’s annual juried art show featuring Interior Alaskan works. It currently resides in a private collection.

Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy 10/13/15 Jasmine Johnson-Kennedy 10/13/15

Taking Leave

I make a living holding space for people to take time for themselves, guiding people –women especially – to listen to and to honor their own deep inner wisdom. I advocate for self care. “May you give not from an empty well, but from a well that is overflowing” is my tagline as a teacher and a healer. It is what I remind my students of, what I encourage my clients to realize in their lives.

Sometimes I forget that it also applies to me.

When I got pregnant and started setting money aside for “maternity leave,” I gave lip service to the idea that I would stop teaching if and when baby needed me to. But really, I planned to keep teaching until baby arrived. I mean, I teach gentle yoga. And prenatal yoga. And women have been working and having babies for millennia. There’s no reason I can’t continue – mindfully and gently, but pretty much as normal – until this baby arrives, right? Wrong.

For the most part, this pregnancy has been a beautiful experience. Emotionally, spiritually, energetically, creatively. Pregnancy looks beautiful on me. It feels beautiful on me. Except for one thing. One at times excruciating thing. I’ve had the *ahem* opportunity to experience pubic symphisis pain for the last several months. (For those of you unfamiliar with what this is… basically: The pubic bone is actually a joint. Pregnancy floods the body with relaxin hormone to help pelvis open for birth and body to be able to grow with baby. One of the places where pelvic opening happens is at the pubis. Sometimes the two bones get out of whack with one another and it hurts a whole lot.) I made it a priority to take good physical care of myself through this pregnancy: regular chiropractic, massage, Arvigo Mayan abdominal massage, acupuncture. But none of it helped the pubic pain for more than a few hours.

I powered through. Taught class. 8 of them a week. I had a commitment to my students, right?
But I found myself dreading the next class, sitting in my car outside the yoga studio unwilling to go in. Finally one class I shifted position while guiding a meditation and literally started crying – in the middle of class! On the teacher’s mat! – from the pain in my hips. I realized that I had to stop teaching. I needed rest and space more than I needed the money or the extra month of connection with my students. I’m so grateful to my fellow yoga teachers, to the owners of the studio where I teach for swooping in and supporting me in this decision.

It was really really difficult to give myself the permission to take the time and the space and the rest that my body, and this baby, were demanding. I felt guilty. I felt selfish. It’s amazing how pernicious the ego can be. Expecting and demanding I live up to some standard that I’d not fully consciously set for myself. When I made the choice to start my babymoon nearly a month earlier than I’d planned? Full-body sigh of relief.

And let me tell you, it has been the right choice. It has been a couple of weeks now since I taught my last class. My energy is better. I’m able to take things at my own, slow, baby-induced pace. I’ve been spending so much time at home. Making things in the studio. Rearranging the downstairs living space. Sorting baby clothes. Nesting. I needed this time. This space. This rest. And you know what? My hips hurt less. Because I’m no longer tempted by all the inappropriate-for-me yoga poses I was teaching my students. No longer running across town to get to the next class. No longer requiring that the deep inner rhythms of pregnancy modulate themselves to those of the external world.

I’m a huge advocate for parental leave policies that support the realities of life, pregnancy and birth. Scandinavia is on the right track, y’all. So is Italy. Minimum 6 months paid leave for moms? Should be standard. Current US practices? Ridiculous.

And yet, somehow, I felt guilty giving myself the same time and space I advocate for others to have. Felt guilty for my privilege of having a supportive working spouse and just enough money set aside that we won’t default on our mortgage for me to take a few months off. Because I know there are women who work up to the day they give birth and are back at work 2 weeks later. My heart bleeds for them, and for their children. I cringe at the reality of the toll that takes on their bodies, on their physical and mental health for the rest of their lives. And so I felt guilty for giving myself time off not only after the birth, but during this last month of pregnancy. I’m endlessly thankful for good friends who call me out on unreasonable guilt. Who remind me, if not in so many words, to be the change I want to see in the world. How is it helpful to the cause of reasonable maternity leave to push through my own need for leave? And you know, I am a teacher. I’m a teacher of prenatal yoga, and as such a model for how to use yoga to support the journey of pregnancy… what am I saying to my students if I deny myself the space and depth of connection I hope to guide them towards finding?