Each moon cycle, we honour a soul who embodies the essence of Ritual.
She is someone who reminds us of what’s possible when we live in devotion to our inner rhythm.
This is our living altar of inspiration. A place to celebrate the muses who move us.
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This month we interviewed Rachel Anne, AKA Salt Palms a creative soul based in Tāmaki Makaurau, with a love for storytelling through many forms. She’s a weaver of stories, print and graphic design, digital artist, writer, and the hands behind the jewellery label SaltPalms.
What rituals or practises ground you in your creative process or bring you back to yourself?
I like to be by myself when I create - hermit-mode works the best for me. Being fully absorbed in the work I’m doing - there’s no other way. It takes over me and I have to let it happen - headphones on, a cup of tea and my brain off the leash and buzzing with ideas. To come back to myself always involves being outdoors. If I can get to the river or the beach that’s where I’ll go - but the park down the road works fine too.
How does your art reflect your inner world?
There are recurring themes and symbols I always see come through in my work - often dreamscapes, surrealist women and creatures are scattered throughout. Birds and horses and dogs. Always earth based. I often feel like I dance along the line between human and creature so this could be what’s being reflected in these symbols. I’ve never thought about it before! It’s always earth-based though. I like my work to look analog, because I love to work with my hands. In my inner world there is no such thing as technology or ai.
What elements of nature, tradition, or ancient wisdom influence your work?
All elements of nature! I don’t mean to be broad, but it’s true. I actually don’t know how to stop being influenced by the natural world. Maybe I’d be able to branch out a little if I did know. Nothing has ever inspired me as much as the human experience, as culture, as history, as the Earth. Wisdom is everywhere, it comes from learning - and the older I get, the more I absorb. It’s all there soaked up in in my work somewhere I suspect, the sum of it, if you look closely enough.
In what ways do you hope your art resonates with others?
I hope it inspires people to create. I hope it makes people curious. If neither of those things, then I hope at the very least there’s a reaction of some kind. A shift, that something happens within them when they see it. Any movement is good movement I think, for art. To make any part inside someone move is quite an endeavour, but when it does happen it’s everything.
What is your go to quote or poem?
What I didn’t know before by Ada Limon:
WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW BEFORE
was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but already
a four-legged beast hellbent on walking,
scrambling after the mother. A horse gives way
to another horse and then suddenly there are
two horses, just like that. That’s how I loved you.
You, off the long train from Red Bank carrying
a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two
computers swinging in it unwieldily at your
side. I remember we broke into laughter
when we saw each other. What was between
us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed
over. It came out fully formed, ready to run.
