Clara Grace James

Clara Grace James, Monarch Butterfly

In 1996 I spent the summer working with Dr. Martin Luther King’s Movement to End the Slums in Chicago. I was a small town kid, extremely naïve and idealistic, anxious to save the world. After the Movement moved on to other cities I stayed on and continued to work in the slums as a teacher, and then a social worker. But the big city was violent and chaotic back then, and I was the victim of violence. It shattered me, and I moved to Minneapolis.

What followed were years of social work in which I tried to find a new way to help the world with its problems. My view was you just keep going. But the violence and its inevitable aftermath of pain, depression, guilt, shame, fear and rage overtook me. The first of many therapists introduced me to art in several forms as a healing path. It made no sense to me since social action in the world was all I understood.

Healing is like peeling an onion, you peel one layer and you find another, and yet another. Thankfully each new layer has rich and glorious gifts for you. I have learned that there is a magic power in forgiveness of both ourselves and others. The more I forgave, the more I opened up to love and beauty. I was drawn to the beauty of nature, and began to preserve it through my photographs. I began to experience a powerful and growing intuition, along with deepening compassion. I realized more and more that all living things are connected, that there is a oneness which unite us all with the Creator. I learned that we cannot hurt other animals, trees, and people without also hurting ourselves. But by the same token when we put out love and compassion to all things it begins to manifest itself in ways of which we could never have dreamed. I believed that as each of us raises our consciousness of the spirit within, we actually raise that of many others simultaneously.

Clara Grace James, Dragonfly	Clara Grace James, Blue Water Lily

I was amazed the first time someone said they could feel my compassion in my photos. That’s when I began to see that my art is not only critical to my unfolding as a spiritual being, but it can communicate and touch the hearts and souls of others. Words are not the only way to touch people.

John Keats said, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…” At this layer of the onion I am excited,
and energized to reach out through my creative art to know more and more of the truth. Through my photos I can convey it to others, and they will see things I have not seen. I feel as though I am emerging from a long process in a cocoon with a gift I never knew I had which provides me with great joy and peace, which I can then share with others.

Clara Grace James, Luna Moth	Clara Grace James, Owl Butterfly