Cameron Davis (Cami) is a painter, community environmental art activist and full time Lecturer with the University of Vermont’s Department of Art and Art History. Davis also teaches through UVM’s Environmental Program, Environmental Art and Greening Aiken: Art and Architecture Studio where students apply fine art’s aesthetic and metaphoric inquiry to ecological design solutions.

Davis’ own work includes painting, performance, installation and community art projects informed by her exploration of the relationship between the human and more-than-human world; with a particular interest in the numinous in nature and what she calls “the anxiety-promise of this Earth-time”. She considers her painting to be the intimate conversation from which the community projects evolve.

In 1999 Davis and artist Sally Linder created the community art Temenos Books Project and the event For Love of Earth, A Celebration of the Earth Charter as a way to introduce the international document which outlines principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society (www.earthcharter.org). Linder designed and painted the Ark of Hope as a holding place for the Temenos Books which has traveled to four continents, with over 22,000 participants, including Johannesburg South Africa as part of the World Summit on Sustainable development, Bangalore India for the 2005 International Women’s Conference and to the Netherlands where 8000 children and Queen Beatrix participated. (www.arkofhope.org).

Davis continues to collaborate with artists, filmmakers, poets, students and the public including the Quantum Community Project created with Metta Earth Institute Co-Director Gillian Kapteyn Comstock. Most recently Davis’ solo and community work addresses climate change: Waxwing Medicine 2006, Messages to Earth 2007, Let Ours Be a Time Remembered 2008, and the Dear World Project 2009, part of the Human=Landscape, Aesthetics for a Carbon Restrained Future exhibition at Burlington City Arts, Firehouse Gallery, Burlington, Vermont.

Davis lives in an intentional community in northern Vermont where she finds relief in an uncertain world in the one small act of raising organic food together as nourishment for body, community and soul.

To send an e-mail to Cameron click here

To visit Cami's website, please go to www.camidavis.com

Joan White-Hansen is an artist, dancer, storyteller, and singer and has been teaching and facilitating groups with emphasis on the artistic, creative process for more than twenty years. An energetic traveler, adventurer, and communitarian, she's journeyed to New Zealand, Africa, and South America, as well as an extended stay living at the Findhorn Community in Scotland. Gathering the richness and soul of these cultures in concert with the beauty of nature, Joan creates sanctuary spaces for ritual and creative collaboration weaving in the harmonies of song, the pulse of rhythm and movement, and the sourcing of spirit. She has participated and guided several choirs and singing circles in the U.S. and abroad. As an avid skier, hiker and runner, she finds her sacred connection to earth while breathing in the peace of natural landscapes. She is currently living at Ten Stones Community in Charlotte, VT, where she organizes artistic and service oriented projects, as well as raising her two young sons.

To send an e-mail to Joan click here

Ross Conrad learned his craft from the late Charles Mraz, world-renowned beekeeper, father of apitherapy, and founder of Champlain Valley Apiaries in Vermont. Former president of the Vermont Beekeepers Association, Conrad is the author of Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches To Modern Apiculture (Published by Chelsea Green, 2007), and has written numerous articles on organic farming, natural healing, and health issues. His 12-year-old small sideline beekeeping business, Dancing Bee Gardens, supplies his friends, neighbors, and local stores with honey and provides bees for Vermont apple pollination in the spring.

Anna Blackwell is a nationally certified massage therapist, specializing in deep tissue, swedish relaxation, and hot stone therapy. She is currently enrolled at the Vermont Center of Integrative Herbalism, and is in her third and final year of the clinical program. She delights in blending herbal and massage therapies to create nourishing spa treatments, using all natural and organic ingredients specialized for each individual. She joins the Metta Earth team for our Yoga Spa Days and is also available for massage therapy sessions during retreats.

To send an e-mail to Anna click here

Kate Hodges presently lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she and her partner, Ted Wade Springer, are purchasing 20 acres of high desert near the Mexican border, a beautiful quiet place that they hope to share with others in the future.  They call it, “The Land With No Name, Sanctuary for Homeless Sculpture”.  Their vision is to create an alternative art space that promotes not only a habitat for sculpture but also a place for people to gather and engage in various art experiences.  She also has started her own art school entitled, “The Little Lightning School of Art, Find Your Spark” a mobile art school that serves different populations (from elders to youth) in the Tucson community.  Kate lives in south Tucson, a predominately Latino community, as well as Native American neighborhood, including the Tohono O'odham and Pascua Yaqui tribe. She enjoys learning about the rich cultural roots of her neighborhood.  

Kate received her Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, and is certified K-12. She has taught art at orphanages in Brazil and Honduras, and exhibited her work in Bulgaria, Vancouver, British Columbia, Italy, and Alaska. “I am motivated to engage in the creative process and listen to others’ creative experience through our inherent connection to the natural world. In nature I find magic.”

Mark Kutolowski is an Oblate of Saint Benedict, a lay person committed to living monastic spirituality in daily life. Mark is a wilderness guide, and in 2007 founded the contemplative Christian wilderness spirituality ministry New Creation Wilderness Programs www.newcreationwilderness.org

A lifelong Christian, Mark discovered the Christian mystical tradition in his early 20s. He began teaching Christian meditation in 2003, and has received teacher training through both Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. and the World Community for Christian Meditation. Mark is also a frequent guest minister at churches in the Upper Connecticut River Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Kerstin Lipke has been trying to understand and walk the Christian path for most of her life. This has led her to volunteer and live with Mother Teresa’s sisters in the South Bronx, to work with people who are dying, and to spend three months in silence at a desert house of prayer.

Trained by Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. to lead Introduction to Centering Prayer workshops, she currently facilitates a weekly Centering Prayer group at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, VT. She also teaches volunteers how to sit vigil for the No One Dies Alone program at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, VT.

Brendan Kelly is an herbalist of 19 years with a Masters degree in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine from the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture in Gainesville, Florida and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.  He is past co-owner of Green Mountain Herbs, which sold herbal products nationally, and where he had extensive hands-on experience wildcrafting and growing over 110 medicinals prepared into medicine in various forms.  He is also past owner and primary instructor at the School of Experiential Herbalism in Putney, VT, which offered 1-3 years in depth, hands on training in identifying, harvesting, and preparing wild and cultivated medicinals and edibles. He is currently co-owner of Jade Mountain Wellness in Burlington, Vermont, where he treats a wide-variety of physical, mental, and emotional conditions with acupuncture and herbal medicine.  He continues to study with Jeffrey Yuen, an internallly recognized master of Chinese medicine and 88th generation Daoist priest. He recently finished a wide-reaching onocology training with Jeffrey, and has partially completed a very in depth 2 years study of Chinese herbs with him. Brendan is a long-time student of Tai Chi Ch'uan, having been authorized to teach by Wolfe Lowenthal, a direct student of Cheng Man-ching, originator of the Yang family short form tradition.

Julie Mitchell is a herbalist, gardener and teacher. Her formal education includes a BSc from the  College of Phytotherapy and MSc. degree in Herbal Medicine from the University of Wales. 
Her on-going education in herbal medicine occurs outside her door in Monkton, Vermont. She runs Eos Botanicals, an herbal apothecary providing plant medicines for over 20 years and has a consultation practice based in Bristol, VT.

Natalie Krueger is a Certified Permaculture Designer and Educator, community organizer, earth steward, wholistic herbalist healer, wild plant forager and activist. Natalie is guided by ongoing exploration within the nature of indigenous traditions and awareness of regenerative practices. Through her commitment to ethical patterns of land use, she founded the not for profit organization Greenvoices Collective Design. Greenvoices is a guild of ecological artisans that advocate for the unspoken voices of the wild through preservation, restoration, and land based culture building. They integrate creative responses to change by mimicking the wisdom of ecosystems and weaving vital rhythms to inspire healing for our collective future. Greenvoices is also cultivating relationships through permaculture education and consultation as well as engaging our community in nurturing nature's intelligence.

Natalie lives, breathes, and eats permaculture principles in her off grid cabin in the woods that she built by hand. Always integrating and pursuing sacred relationships she is dedicated to re-valuing her environment and creating new regenerative patterns for her lifestyle and those around her. From a young age Natalie developed a strong awareness in nature, her prime teachers in life have been the plant kin-dom, leading her to explore and deeply listen to patterns in many collaboratory structures as she embarks upon her earth pilgrimmage. Much like the oak tree, Natalie is a generalist rather than a specialist and looks to see the larger ecological vision, along with engaging the re-connecting questions that will lead us to a thriving future.

While establishing elemental rhythms, she has built plenty of practical experience in water harvesting, edible landscaping, herbal medicines, ayurveda, wild edibles, perennial polyculture, market gardens/farms, integrated pest management, cold climate greenhouses, vermiculture, composting, shitake mushrooms, urban agriculture, natural building design, sustainable nutrition preparation, emotional topography, transition towns, community gardens, the work that reconnects, group facilitation, the art of play and honouring the land.

Ari Rockland-Miller, co-founder of The Mushroom Forager, is an ardent mycophile who enjoys nothing more than the exhilarating feeling of the mushroom hunt. Over the past few years he has found hundreds of pounds of gourmet and medicinal wild mushrooms, and he loves sharing his knowledge with blog readers. Ari became an expert in shiitake cultivation after managing Cornell University’s Mushroom Research Project and the MacDaniels Nut Grove, Cornell’s forest farming demonstration site. He has a BA from Brown University, where he studied Buddhist philosophy as well as environmental policy and ethics. When he is not out in the woods filling baskets with mushrooms, Ari enjoys writing songs and playing music with friends.

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