JP Morrison Lans decided to grow up to be an artist while visiting the Carole Laroche Gallery in Santa Fe New Mexico when she was eleven years old. Five years later the Tulsa Artist Coalition supported this dream for her when she was accepted for her first solo exhibition. Since then she has earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, co-owner a gallery, had her work purchased for the permanent collection of the Bundaberg Regional Gallery in Queensland Australia where she lived for two years and created immersive art installations for AHHA Tulsa, the Living Arts New Genre Festival, and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. Morrison Lans has shows her work with M.A. Doran Gallery, Tulsa; Heron Arts, San Francisco; Keep Contemporary, Santa Fe; and 19 Karen, Gold Coast, Australia. She has been a resident artist at SVA, NY., Truro Art Center, MA., Rockland Woods, WA., the Vermont Studio Center and Quarantine in Menorca, Spain. Morrison Lans is a member of the international artist collective Teleportal.Gallery and is an inaugural member of the NYC Crit Club’s Canopy Program. She and her child can typically be found experimenting with encaustic and lego, respectively, from their home studio in Tulsa, Oklahoma.




Statement:

I explore the relationship of body and psyche by combining figurative realism, symbolic objects and intuitive abstraction. These collected elements are metaphors for my experience of womanhood, motherhood, love, loss, self-preservation, panic, desire, and knowing. Through layers of color pencil I create translucent skin. The addition of gouache and encaustic allows me to comb sheens and dimensional shapes around my drawing, forming membranes and isolated objects which express the subject's emotional escapades. Often I use orientation dissonance –the inversion of the figure– to symbolize circumspection, surrender, gestation, and metamorphosis. I render hands frequently, they represent intention and action, also the mouth, tongue and teeth as gateways between the inner self and outer world. Through taste and touch, we experience intimacy and desire. This anatomy creates boundaries while also being an entry point. My work invites you to experience this same push pull of entering and observing from a distance.

Akasha J. Smith, PhD is the founder of School of Awakening which offers The Professional Intuitive Healer Certification Program and Transformational Retreats in Bali and Costa Rica. She’s been Teaching, facilitating Intuitive Healing sessions, Transpersonal Counseling and Past Life Regressions for people around the world for more than 20 years. She also offers Akashic Records Readings and Channeled Awakening Transmissions.

One of her favorite parts about the work is watching people’s hearts, bodies, minds and souls open to the connection and lives they’ve been so deeply longing for. When someone is ready and really shows up, true healing simply happens. With that can come a freedom unlike anything else that is absolutely beautiful to witness…another human shining.

Akasha’s Soul Purpose is to Help People Remember and Be Who they Truly Are. She does this through teaching, healing and creative expression. She is Deeply Passionate about Teaching Intuitive People, even if they Doubt their Abilities, how to Become Professional Healers, Heal Themselves and Awaken. Akasha has taught everything from Human Development Psychology to Creativity Enhancement and Dance to How to Connect with your Spirit Guides.

She taught Mindfulness Meditation in Naropa University’s Graduate Transpersonal and Contemplative Psychology Counseling Programs. Akasha researched Passionate Engagement for her Doctorate in East West Psychology at The California Institute of Integral Studies. She has a Masters Degree in Psychology from The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology with specializations in Teaching, Education & Research and Creative Expression. Akasha graduated from Naropa University with a Bachelor’s degree in Contemplative Psychology and minors in Traditional Eastern and Healing Arts and Improvisational Dance.

She also trained in The Clairvoyant Program at Psychic Horizons Institute and The Colorado School of Transpersonal Counseling and Hypnotherapy where she became an internationally certified hypnotherapist. She completed her yoga teacher training in Rishikesh, India and has studied traditional dance in Bali, Thailand, Hawaii and Spain.

Akasha is a best-selling contributing author of Activate Your Life and just finished contributing to a 2nd book on Awakening Experiences and their impact on daily life. She was the co-author of a Transformation from Trauma study which was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, The International Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

When Akasha isn’t helping people Become Counselors and Healers and Leading Retreats, she’s Creating Lightcode Art, Writing Poetry or Traveling the World Solo studying Dance, Healing and Yoga.

https://www.schoolofawakenedliving.com/