Print, Illustration, & Design

Limited edition block print. Text to accompany the piece:

Close your eyes and picture everyone you have ever loved in a room with you-- looking at you adoringly, taking turns coming up to you to touch you on the hand, to kiss your forehead like when you were a child. Think of all the people who came decades and centuries before your birth, who couldn’t have possibly dreamt you up. Somehow they are still here, their bone dust a part of every living leaf, their souls in sunbeams, murmurations, dew on a spider’s web. “And let me ask you this: the dead, where aren't they?” Franz Wright writes. All of the beings who came before are with us still, conspiring that we may be loved and provided for through the great mystery that is life. The resilience, tenacity, hope, and love they cultivated in their lives is evidenced by our very existence! And all of that is braided into each one of us. Now think of your descendants ahead, who stretch out far into the expansive future. Somehow they are already here too, like latent seeds. And when we are feeling weak or lost, we can turn to all of them- our ancestors and our descendants- like stars, to help navigate us through. My friends, what an epic love story we are a part of.

Ancient is the bond between humans and ruminants, companions who have traversed the centuries in a sacred agreement of symbiotic mutualism. Modern day factory farms are evidence that we humans have veered off course, violating our side of the agreement and replacing it with an extractive, impoverished, non-feeling, mechanistic arrangement. In this arrangement we give nothing in return but abuse and suffering. The story is all too familiar, and is built atop a modern worldview that allows for the great illusion of insentience.

My entire extended family in Chile do not eat meat because they believe that the suffering experienced by an animal during a life of distress at a factory farm is transferred to us through the meat of the animals. What a powerful idea- that there is a spiritual and emotional side to food, that it is not just made up of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, as we are taught to believe. If this is true, then wouldn’t it also follow that a beautiful, peaceful life on grassy pastures, would flow through the animal’s body to us as well, upon giving their life for our nourishment?

I am not making the case to forgo eating meat, though I respect that choice. I am making the case for a return to the kind of symbiotic mutualism that has kept the world alive for millennia, and that has the potential to continue to do so should we decide to return to it. When we choose to uphold our side of the sacred agreement, I believe that everything will change.

Autumn teaches us RELEASE. As the trees prepare to let go of their leaves, we too are reminded to enter a season of transformation. Like a snake shedding its skin, the time simply comes to let go of all one is gripping onto. This includes our ego’s belief in separateness- our encultured understanding of ourselves as separate beings in a universe that exists outside our bodies. The quaking Aspen and abundant fungi (both magnificent beings who “shine” at the autumnal time of year) depicted in this print are teachers of this lesson: that which on the surface seems separate, is actually the same, beneath our perception. Above ground, mushrooms in the forest give the illusion of being separate beings, when in truth they are the fruiting bodies of a larger organism, one that is in a state of deep entanglement with the rest of the forest, beyond even our comprehension. And a grove of Aspens looks like a hundred separate trees, but is actually the same creature. So, though we too may be walking this Earth as seemingly separate individuals, there is an imperceivable connection/sameness with all others. We are fruits of the same larger being/body that is our Earth. And our souls are connected in the deep, beneath the visible realm.

11” x 14” fine art gicleé print by Nina Montenegro.

In this illustration depicting a colorful group of wild horses running free, we are reminded that all of our freedoms are connected: no one of us is free until all of us are free. (True words spoken by brilliant activists Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King Jr., Emma Lazarus and more).

All of our struggles are intimately interwoven, and each of us plays an important role in dismantling systems of domination and oppression. The horses all moving in one direction in this illustration signify our desire to work together toward our common goal: to create a more beautiful, compassionate, liberated world.

In Eastern woodlands, the trout lilies emerge just before the trees leaf out in Spring. When the looming giants of the overstory steal the sunlight, the tender flowers and dappled leaves wither into nothingness, disappearing until next year. Spring ephemerals, they’re called. Ephemeral because they only last for a moment, and you have to drop everything you are doing to see them, to experience them. Like the fruiting of morel mushrooms, like the magnolia’s bloom, like the visitation of chimney swifts, like childhood, like life itself-- all of it momentary and fleeting. You have to be present for it. You have to make time for it. All of it, like a Spring ephemeral, slipping through our fingers, impossible to grasp, but available to us right now, when we get off our screens, put on our boots, step out into the crisp Spring air, and look.

Limited Edition Screenprint for Rivian

“The Quiet Place Below” fine art archival giclee print, by Nina Montenegro

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When swimming in the ocean or a lake on a very wavy day, the best way to successfully swim out is by going under the waves, not trying to fight them at the surface. Resisting them at the surface is hard to do and quickly zaps our energy. Underneath the tumultuous surface, the waters are calmer and there is less stirring, allowing one to move more easily, with less resistance.

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When it feels like things are really bad, we can dive under the tumultuous waters of the world around us to access a similar deep reserve of inner calm and peace within ourselves. This inner calm is ever-present beneath the storms of the perceived world around us. This is The Quiet Place Below, the place of equanimity, the root of our resilience. Instead of experiencing the exhaustion of thrashing about and getting tossed to and fro, we can learn to return again and again to The Quiet Place Below, each time it becoming easier to reside there, connecting deeply to the wellspring of equanimity.

While the literal and metaphorical fires rage this summer, we have practiced meditating on the spectacularly adapted plants that actually NEED fire to germinate. Some time ago we had learned that Redwood and Lodgepole Pine cones have a thick coating of resin that needs the extreme heat of a fire to melt and "unlock" the seeds, allowing the next generation of trees to surge forth. But as we dug deeper into researching Pyrophile plants, we came across the stunning Baker's Wild Hollyhock, a lavender purple goddess that blankets the ground after a wildfire. The seeds can lay dormant for over 100 years as they wait for conditions to be just right in order to germinate. What a beautiful and fitting analogy for ideas laying dormant, waiting for the conditions (conditions which may appear disastrous) to be just right for their sprouting, blossoming, flourishing. May the fires of this past year bring about conditions just right for regenerative and healing seeds to burst forth.

On a cultural level it seems we are finally beginning to widely acknowledge and accept what nature has been demonstrating all along—that while our minds search for absolutes, there are none, categorizations always break down upon closer look, and there is SO much beauty in diversity— the glorious spectrum of genders, sexualities, skin colors, abilities, gifts, cultures, etc.

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“Be fluid, be flexible” is a mantra I’ve called to mind a lot in the unfoldings of 2020 and 2021. I am learning that during crisis or change, rigidity and tension cause brittleness. When a cat is falling, it must RELAX its body in order to survive the fall.

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So this image, of a tree in the wind is a celebratory depiction of fluidity and flexibility.

A call to awakening….Joy is available! At any given moment, we have a choice about where to focus our attention and energy. In every moment, there are tiny or enormous joys to be found. A riotous laugh overheard in the grocery store, buttery sunlight streaming in the window, a child’s squeal at the playground, the way steam curls from a hot cup of tea in the sunshine, a close encounter with an eagle, the chirp of frogs at dusk, an ambrosial pomegranate…. Finding what is joyful in each moment tunes our senses to the immediate physical world and naturally dissolves anxiety and fear.

Can you see yourself in her? The child brushing her cheek with the feather she gathered from the forest floor to test its softness. The child dragging moss and sticks inside the house, hiding geodes under her pillow. The child so enveloped in play she is oblivious to wind and rain. The child delighting in the discovery of skinks and turtles, katydids and walking sticks. The acorn collector, the sand sifter. The child gazing at the sky through a mirrored puddle. The child open, receptive, enchanted, enamored with the world. Many of us remember the feeling of playing in a bush for hours, sweeping the dirt floor…. running on soggy sod, mud oozing in between toes. This spirit of connection is our birthright, available to each of us, even we adults who find it more difficult to access. Still, we can nurture this connection through our senses and through deliberate and intoxicating, attention to the moment. In this way, we keep the line of communication open between ourselves and the natural world, ourselves and the Cosmos. The next time you find a feather (which is nothing less than a gift from a bird, directly into your hands), pick it up and hold it to your cheek, like a child.

In support of a peaceful, Earth-centric, egalitarian culture, this piece is titled "Matriarchy.”

The image of a braid well-representative of the concept of matriarchy which braids together tenderness, care, compassion, peace, and community. A reverent culture of reciprocity, in which the needs of every living creature are considered and braided together. A prayer for a future in service to life and health and flourishing.

I have been doing a powerful practice of calling to mind three things I feel grateful for before my feet hit the ground in the morning. I designed this print as a visual reminder to recall those gratitudes throughout the day.

Navigate Together, 2015.  Three color screenprint on 140 lb cover stock, available for purchase here.

People's Coop Tee Design, 2017.  Collaboration with Sonya Montenegro.

Lunar Calendar by Nina and Sonya Montenegro with night blooming flowers

Freedom, 2013

Linocut

Look and See, 2017.

All Things Merge Into One: Rivers of the US, 2015

I made this piece to show how the rivers of a place are like the veins of a vast body.  There are over 75,000 dams clogging these veins in the US, impounding over 600,000 miles of water.  This print is available to buy here.

This design gently nudges us to remember to let go of our assumptions and quick judgments about others, to learn to ask “what is it like to be you?” and fully listen to their answer, to know that everywhere there are good people, helpers, and that strangers are friends we just haven’t met yet….