The Rowdy Goddess

Whole Cloth, Holy Cloth

On Friday night, Mike and I went to see the film, Creating Buddhas, a one hour film that explores the intersections of sacred intention, creation, mastery, and divinity– in textiles. The filmmaker, Isadora Gabrielle Leidenfrost, is a Ph.D student and textile scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

See me jump up and down excitedly because I know her. I was in one of her early films on storytelling when she was an undergraduate. She is a very special woman, creatrix, and visionary, as well as an expert and scholar. She has her own production company, Soulful Media and has already made ten films, some short and some longer, like Creating Buddhas. She mentioned she made one about church hats. I’ll bet that is very cool. Her vision of bringing the soul together with fabric, textiles, thread, color and the act of creation is amazing and unique. Her vision is an art, a vehicle for understanding and reflection, and a pathway to spiritual awareness. Her energy gives this vision presence and voice.

Creating Buddhas tells us about fabric thangkas, the Buddhist tradition and craft of creating divine beings using fabric, cord, thread, and embellishments. It’s a sacred act of creating a vehicle for the Divine to inhabit. It’s an amazing process. This film also talks with the only Thangka master residing in the West, Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo and it follows over several months as she creates as Green Tara fabric thangka. The film brings together experts, practitioners, and others to talk about Rinchen-Wongmo’s process of becoming a master as well as her present-day creation.

So absorbing is the story and the process, I forgot to look at this as a film to critique or review, but rather it is another view of Universe, the soul, and the way of creation. Through her films, the pathway is open for us to explore, experience, and be changed.