Pamela Underwood

In the Shadow of the Witch Creek Fire

At the end of World War I, a young French mother packed all she owned, including a crock full of long-handled oil paint brushes in a steamer trunk. She was starting a new life in America with her infant and husband, who was an American sailor. Sadly, the young mother became ill and perished on the journey. She never made it to America, but her small family and the crock full of paint brushes did.

That baby girl was my Aunt Lillian and the young woman’s husband was my grandfather. Years later, when I became an artist, my aunt entrusted me with these heirlooms for safekeeping. For decades those brushes had held the essence of my aunt’s mother and her story; they served as a bookmark in time. It could be said that “things” hold the loved one themselves- their smell, their touch, and in the case of my brushes, wood blessed with the marks of a teething infant. In my home the antique brushes were displayed in a place of honor.

In 1998 our family’s Poway home suffered a devastating interior fire that destroyed two-thirds of it and much of the “stuff ” we had acquired as part of our lives. When a home is lost in a fire, the survivors often hear from well-meaning friends, “oh well, it was just stuff.” But often the “stuff ” we hold onto is the keeper of someone’s life story.

In a larger way, the home itself holds the lives of its people and its character takes on the patterns of the inhabitants. And over time, we naturally develop relationships with our homes.

Our first fire was difficult, but there was no question that we would rebuild. Four years later, in the 2003 Cedar Wildfires, the same home was burned to the ground and this time the fire took everything, including the heirloom oil paint brushes.

I was bitter. We had been through devastation by fire once already. In good faith, we had picked ourselves up and rebuilt. To have our house burn down a second time was against the odds. I felt double crossed by Mother Nature. We lost beloved pets and our newly rebuilt home. Selfishly, I was most bitter about having to rewrite my master’s thesis on Expressive Arts Therapy. Yes, I had “back up” discs. They had been in the house right next to my laptop.

This time my husband and I weighed the emotional and financial consequences of rebuilding. We waded through the confusion and inconsistencies of our insurance company, the Fire Department and the City of Poway. Each organization’s “policy” seemed to alter daily in the midst of such a widespread calamity. In 2005, we finally moved into our new home. It was bittersweet at best, but we were back.

Then a year and a half later, the dreaded reverse 911 call came with orders of mandatory evacuation; the Witch Creek Fire was approaching. Luckily, we found our home had been spared this time. As the firemen labored to contain the fires, I felt a deep compassion and empathy for what I knew the survivors of the 2007 Wildfires would have to face in the year to come.

Within a week after our evacuation, art therapist Kat Kirby, artist Jane LaFazio, and I knew we wanted to do something to help the women who lost their homes in these fires. We developed a free “Women’s Fire Survivor Support Group,” using expressive arts as the portal for healing the emotional trauma that is held in the body.

In this kind of situation, traditional therapy can fall short. The expressive arts such as drumming, painting, movement, sand tray therapy, collage, and poetry are especially effective in giving form and expression to the thoughts, feelings, and body sensations that trauma holds. When given shape through the arts, these feelings can then be seen outside of the body and therefore, become more approachable.

While feeling deeply displaced, it is crucial for fire survivors to find a neutral zone in which to feel safe. Through art-making, they step over the threshold of harsh every-day reality into creativity and play. When the art-making is complete, the group reflects on what happened. They find that their initial feelings, often full of restrictions and road blocks, have opened to new possibilities, options or insight.

This free “Women’s Fire Survivor Group” has been a safe place to create a network with others who are going through the same grief and loss; it is a place that gives space and time for participants to realize and voice their true feelings, which have often been set aside or unacknowledged as they stay strong for their families or face the insurance companies.

In the gentle but powerful ways of expressive arts, these amazing women have been able to slowly re-member their lives and find resources that are helpful. The healing found in walking through grief in a conscious way is life-changing. In doing so, trust in Mother Nature is mended. Old oak trees, loved gardens, wildlife, and pets that perished are mourned. Through time, meaningful “stuff ” like handmade Christmas ornaments, baby pictures, wedding albums, Grandmother’s rocker, family recipes or even a crock of heirloom paint brushes are acknowledged and released; only then can a new life fully begin.

Students learn about themselves through using visual imagery.

The San Diego Union-Tribune
While Pamela Underwood was pursuing her master’s degree in expressive arts therapy, she discovered a language in the symbols and colors that attracted people… read complete article

The Bodywriting™ Story

First aired on Channel 4 San Diego/Cox Communications
September 2003

Body Painting

“A body print is more connected with the body than any other form of representation: drawing, painting, or photography, simply because it is the actual energy of the body that is laid on the canvas.”
Says Pamela

Sunday night

Dear Diary, What an amazing weekend! I’ve got traces of vaseline in my hair and orange paint between my toes, I’m pleasantly tired, well-fed, and simmering with inspiration, information and a lust for color. It’s funny- the main reason I signed up for this workshop was to get to know Pamela better, spend some time in her very cool artist’s home and have someone else feed me. I didn’t think a whole lot about what we’d actually be doing… until Pamela mailed me the materials list.: “spray bottle, shower cap, object for altar, mortar & pestle, CD’s you love, walking shoes, bathing suit (or not), bits of stone & bones, fabric, ribbons, pictures…” Hmmm….just what was I getting into?

I left home with my bag of odd & meaningful treasures and returned two days later with a real presence, on canvas, of a spirit who’s been trying to get through for a long time. Yes, Flaming Woman lives. She’s supported by, or growing out of, the Green Woman, who was created out of my own back. Before I did anything else, I had to hang her on the wall across from my bed. I couldn’t just plop her down somewhere. She wouldn’t allow it. How did she emerge? It wasn’t quite as simple as coating myself with paint and lying down on a piece of canvas. Pamela led us through a range of spiritual and artistic processes to get to that point. We started with a tour of the house, including much of Pamela’s art. Each piece holds a story, and as Pamela talked, her reverence for the Mysterious Source became clear. For Pamela, everything is alive- even her house, which she says is always happy after a bodywriting retreat.

We lit candles of different colors to understand the chakra energies and placed objects on the altar that represented our bodies, which helped us get to know each other, where our sore spots and deep longings were. I’ve been into orange lately without knowing why- even compulsively painted a wide swath of it across my studio wall recently- so was glad to find out that orange is about creativity, sexuality and money.
Amidst all the great food, great hot-tubbing and lots of story-swapping, Pamela kept us working. She’s got a strange & delightful mix going of taskmaster and party-girl- I don’t know how she does it, but it works. And the thing is, we wanted to work. The more we worked, the more we didn’t want to stop. By the end of the first night we’d already collaged a journal, developed a list of personal attractions to images, shapes & colors, and slathered up with vaseline to make a series of sample prints. I loved the camraderie and matter-of-factness of women working together, naked. Sure, if we were walking across a beach we’d be all weird and self-conscious, but we had a job to do. Each body, regardless of, -no-, because of its particular shape, weight and history, was loaded with tender information, which spilled out, like grandma’s jewelry, while we worked.

The magic happened on Sunday, after a visit to the nearby Yoni Rock. Its natural shape enhanced by local Indians, it continues to be a sacred source of feminine energy and appears in several of Pamela’s pieces. Back at the studio, we worked with one of our prints, doing that art-dance of going forward with a certain idea or intention, then standing back in awe to see what it had in mind. Kathryn was amazed to see her print take the form of a mermaid. An earlier print from the other side of the paper bled through to suggest a rock for the mermaid to sit on and Kathryn graced the mermaid’s scales with colored lace. Mary took the plunge into color, bemused at all the pink that was going down on the canvas. “Pink!? But I don’t even like pink!” Now she does, and the painting hangs in the center of her house. As for me, I had to gasp when I saw that the drips streaming from “my” knees, shoulder, thighs, and yoni, were actually flames.
Of course it wasn’t all light and beauty. There was plenty of room for the constructive dark; times of stuckness and dislike, deep tears of old sorrow, the usual ragged gang of fears. We cranked up Janis and kept going. The energy got intense as we worked to finish our paintings, until at last we could all stand back, in some kind of peace. We managed to settle down enough to do a closing ritual of writing three things we wanted to release, then watching each paper slowly burn. I was startled by a “typo” that happened on the last of my three strips- I’d written, “I release my refusal to let right action flow through me,” but when I unfolded it, “action” had turned into “anger!” Oh my.

3 months later

The Flaming Woman is fully with me. (One friend calls her “Flamer.”) Several friends have come over to meet her and their impressions keep the energy and the information rolling. One said she didn’t see flames, but wounds. Mom’s only comment was, “ah, the burning bush!” One said the flames look “restrained” and got out the thesaurus and read to me, “hindered, hobbled, limited, repressed, shackled, fettered, boxed up, bottled up, corked up,….” until I had to yell, “enough already!” Geez. Nothing worse than hobbled flames. But I gotta tell ya, I’m less repressed every day. The Flamer has awakened me more than once in the wee hours, disturbed over something I’d adapted to during the day, to let me know, “this will not do…” She is wild, triumphant and sorrowful. She knows what I need, and protects me by becoming, well… enflamed, at any attempts, by self or others, to distract me from my true desires.

You don’t have to be an artist to attend Pamela’s Bodywriting© retreat but you will be one when you leave. It’s true. That’s not really what it’s about though. It’s about that saying I saw recently on a t-shirt: “Start a Revolution- Stop Hating Your Body.” It’s about getting tired of despairing over what we don’t have or wish we didn’t have, and instead, using, and even glorying in, what we have been given.

“When we shift our understanding of our personal history, we are successful at perceiving our body with new eyes.”

The Publication
710 13th St., Suite 207
San Diego, CA 92101-7349
E-Mail: pblication@aol.com

Article by Donna Sewitch Otter (760)789-9936, SewitchArt@aol.com

Artist Profile

The beauty and strength of the female form is central to the work of artist, Pamela Underwood. For Underwood, the body represents the signature and symbol of every human being. Significantly, she incorporates representations of her own anatomy in many of her pieces.

Underwood, an active painter, print maker and mixed media artist, captures her unique persona through ‘Bodywriting.’ This is a process, which enables the artist to document her own anatomy through the creation of negative signatures which outline her own physical structure. She uses materials such as gesso, natural pigments, paint, Vaseline and wax to capture elements of her physique such as her torso and head. These elements often become the central focus of her artistic expression.

Much of Underwood’s work also relates to the healing process. She has expressed her individual suffering as a victim of childhood incest, not only through ‘Bodywriting’, but through evocative and visceral performance pieces and documentaries. She is probably most noted for her moving presentation done at Sushi in 1991 called, ‘Dear Granddaddy.’ In this performance, Underwood confronts her grandfather about his violations of her through a letter. Originally, this therapeutic piece was presented at a workshop held by the acclaimed performance artist, Karen Finley at SDSU in 1990.

In all of her art, Underwood reveals the beauty and sorrow of a rural, Southern childhood. These regional experiences began for the artist in the mid-fifties, first in Louisiana and continued in Texas. Many of her early memories provide a rich source from which to begin her creative process.

Pamela Underwood is a tall, striking woman who still speaks with the unique drawl of a southemer. Like her hometown of Fort Worth, the artist is a fascinating dicotomy of both a ‘homespun rural gal’ and a sophisticated artist who has traveled extensively. She even describes Fort Worth, where she spent most of her youth as a ,/cow town with culture.’ Although the city is noted for its sea of stockyards, it is also known as a place that supports the arts. Underwood is proud of the fact that Fort Worth is home to both the Kimball Art Museum as well as a renowned symphony.

Currently, the inspiration for much of Underwood’s artwork derives from nature. She lives and works in a rustic area of North county on several acres. Sadly, Underwood and her family were displaced by a fire which engulfed a large portion of their home more than a year ago. The Underwood family is now finally able to resume life in their rural setting. Throughout this ordeal, the artist maintained an admirable stoicism and continued on with her work.

Perhaps the natural elements closest to Underwood are the large boulders or rock formations that are scattered throughout her property. Not only do they have a unique presence, but to the artist they are reminiscent of the human body. Their smooth forms provide a great deal of inspiration to her.

Today, Underwood continues with her art making and “Bodywriting” workshops, which she has held for the past five years. These are done periodically for small groups of women in a converted barn. This structure functions

As her studio and the nexus of her creative activity. Underwood is also frequently busy with the work she does bringing art to San Diego elementary schools. She has been a founding member of the Grossmont College Art Council for over three years, We are truly fortunate to have such a creative and talented individual committed to Hyde Gallery and our Art Council Board.