Soul Food Gallery

BIOLUMINESCENT:

creating meaningful art together to honor the hands of young artists

who learned and were born in pandemic times

The pandemic had a massive impact on all school aged children. Yet, research has shown that 2025’s Fifth Graders, whose kindergarten was interrupted, have had to work harder than any other group to stabilize emotionally and academically to rise above it. This broke my heart. I also noticed most kindergartners were born in 2020 or just before. There was so much asked of them at such a young age in ways the world had never seen.

Sometimes what breaks your heart is a compass to do something. Artistically, I wanted to deeply honor these resilient students at that moment in time.

My heart also realized, maybe this group of students also got something else. The value of taking care of emotional energy and mental health was no longer a debate in public school, it was just there. And they were learning how to breathe to center and calm.  I’m 47and I was 29 before I learned how to breathe to center and calm.

They learned that technology is very helpful, but not a substitute for real life and real people. They learned school is not a given. They were shown the power of stillness and what it looks like to care or not care about humanity at large. I do believe this unconventional education will create some of the most incredible, compassionate soul-centered leaders of tomorrow we’ve ever seen, one of them being our daughter.

As a Lane Arts Council teaching artist in residence https://lanearts.org/creative-link/, I secured funding to honor an entire school of these resilient students with an art experience they’d help create, based on a piece I wrote called Bioluminescent. 

Using the shape of their own hand, all Edison Elementary students in Eugene, Oregon created a light-catching, fabric sculpture of a bioluminescent jellyfish that notes the silver lining they harvested from remote learning during the pandemic. This complemented the asked for Ocean Week redesign. The library became an ocean and my classroom a wonderland. The Mayor of Eugene, the incredible Kaarin Knudson, was so impressed, she spent the day installing the final project with us.

These words rang true.

BIOLUMINESCENT

by Arianne (Air) Taylor

CONSIDER THE OCEAN AND ITS SEA LIFE.

EACH BODY BUILT FOR WHERE IT DWELLS AND HOW IT SURVIVES.

THE SEA CREATURES THAT TRAVERSE THE DEEPEST, DARKEST DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN WERE BORN BIOLUMINESCENT.

NOT BECAUSE THEY’RE SPECIAL, BUT BECAUSE THEY NEED TO BE.

YOU ARE BIOLUMINESCENT.

THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE.

YOU’RE RIGHT ON TIME.

TRUST YOU CAME EQUIPPED WITH ALL YOU NEED TO DO WHAT YOU CAME HERE TO DO. AND TRUST THE TIMING OF HOW THAT WILL UNFOLD.

FOR WHEN YOU HAVE A SOUL CONTRACT WITH HUMANITY, THE TIMING IS AND IS NOT UP TO YOU.

BE PATIENT.

YOU’VE NOT BEEN PUNISHED.

YOU’VE BEEN PREPARED.

YOUR LIGHT CAME HERE FOR A REASON.

AND IT’S NEEDED HERE NOW MORE THAN EVER.

DO ALL YOU CAN TO NURTURE, STABILIZE AND RESTORE IT.

AND WHEN IT GOES OUT, AS IT OFTEN DOES HERE,

REMEMBER YOU CAN REIGNITE YOURSELF.

AND IF YOU FORGET HOW, WARM YOURSELF BY THE BY THE LIGHT OF YOUR SOUL TRIBE.

YOU’LL RECOGNIZE THEM.

THEY’LL BE GLOWING.