Today we’d like to introduce you to Vanessa Santos.
Hi Vanessa, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I suppose it all began with my first E.T. encounter in the late 1970s. I was a baby at the time and it was easily my most vivid formative memory. I remember looking over the top of my cream-colored crib rails at two slender Ocean Hued Beings whose skin seemed to glow bright blue from within them and was moved like actual fluid… They would visit me in the mornings, communicating without words. I recall every detail till this day because as soon as I could speak, I began asking my parents all about it. Hoping they had some sort of explanation, which of course, they didn’t. As a 5 y/o, a Blue Fairy would fly near me while I walked up the stairs for bedtime, on my way to go brush my teeth. It was fun, curious, challenging to reason and certainly enlightening. A definite perk of ‘seeing’ at such a young age was the wondrous feelings that would simultaneously concur. However, being extra-sensory to such a degree was also a learning curve. I had to acquire the coping tools, internal comprehension and resources to become equipped for the subsequent barrage of remote viewing dreams and drop-ins from deceased people I did not know because it became predominant throughout my childhood.
Back then, I wished I had an elder to guide me, at 15 my grandmother Florence passed and the floodgates of perception came crashing open! She became a definite sounding board as a spirit. Thus, I began to pursue my indigenous elder’s spiritual lineages… Hard because so much was hidden from me by my previous generations due to colonialism and complex generational trauma on both sides. A few of my predecessors had to change their names, so I really needed to dig deep and mentor myself. I devoured the teachings of my Indigenous bloodlines: Mexica (Aztec), Yaqui, Apache, Gabrielleno and Hopi and learned that my lineage was even more complex than I had previously gathered. My grandfather on my Mom’s side was a musician, expert swimmer, artist and writer – named Cuauhtémoc, he was a Black Mexica w/ an Apache background descended from Texas and during the ’60s after living and mostly growing up in LA, he started jumping trains and ended up eventually living on skid row. My Mom grew up in the projects called Estrada Courts, right near Roosevelt High in East LA between Echo Park and City Terrace. My mother’s Grandpa moved from Mexico during the Mexican revolution, leaving behind a successful bakery business to be near his brother and family who were established in El Sereno in Happy Valley as bee farmers.
My dad’s side comes from Baja/ CA, Arizona and Senora, Mexico, his grandmother was 100% Yaqui and my mom’s grandma was 100% Aztec. My dad’s family was musical and he grew up with nightly family jams. One observation I deduced was that my ancestors had at one time moved around a lot. Which contributes to who I am today, a very non-conforming fluid being. In my late teens, my Grandmother’s sisters on my dad’s side ended up divulging that they too could see dead family members, ghosts, fairies, elves, angels and land spirits. My Grandmother on my mother’s side healed herself of Tuberculosis during a real-life vision/ visitation she had from La Virgin de Guadalupe while in a sick camp quarantined by the state and temporarily away from her children. My mom had a vision when I was 21 (I’m 44 now) of the Niño De Atocha asking her to allow me to find my way, to be a good guardian of me. All of this brings me to my project ‘Ancient Pocket’ that I developed in 2009 after intentionally practicing magick and herbalism (since the year 1996). Initially, after doing some extensive gardening in the backyard of the little white house, I lived in at the time… I received a special transmission in a dream with the words written on a piece of pink paper I found in a dresser located inside a giant Thuja Tree, the words read the name of my practice “Ancient Pocket”.
At this point in 2009, I had two children and was a student of Steiner and Waldorf education. My children both inspired me to make art even more intensely – we created at least three things a day in a variety of mediums! Before this in 2003-2008, I was selling herbal concoctions, handmade candles, soap, hand-bound books and Dream Pillows under the name ‘Grandma Candle’. I wrote and drew each tag/ label and made a million xeroxes because I love printed matter/ printing. My Dad went to Cal State LA and grew up in Boyle Heights, he was a Justice Advocate in college and part of the original members of the Brown Berets (while they were protesting a Latinx Journalist was shot by the police) and also in the beginnings of MECHA as an activist. While I was growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, my Dad was in the Graphic Arts and Printing Industry, he would take me to all the print expos. As a child, my favorite thing to do was watch the large presses make the ink and then squee-gee out between two tight rollers a perfect poster print. I thought it was a dream come true! Till this day, I enjoy designing my own flyers, graphics and posters for Ancient Pocket. I had a brief stint at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco where I studied Video and Film Production because in the year 1997 I thought I wanted to be a Cinematographer, but I went back to Los Angeles in 99’.
I immediately enrolled in photography, screenprinting, 16 mm/ super 8 film production, video production and planting for wildlife courses at three different Colleges. I became really well versed at building backyard wildlife habitats and native planting for wildlife while studying nursery and plant production. I discovered that once I had my kids… All my ‘interests’ such as studying Anthroposophy, Theosophy, Bio-Dynamic Farming, Indigenous Herbalism, Eco-Arts and all things earth/ cosmic related gave me an extreme sense of inner peace, which children seemed to highly gravitate towards. My kids are the reason I make artwork. Ancient Pocket is about earth being the art and I hold space for all ages. I developed Terra Heaven Eco-Arts School in 2011, so I could reach children and adults in the rural and urban communities with a curriculum through Ecology, Eco-Justice and Avant-Garde Arts. I realize that at any given breath… alchemy and love can be attained. The union of opposites. It goes into every Micro-Farm I have ever put in the ground, any Reiki I teach (as a certified Reiki Master) or whatever hand-work is being explored when I provide service as a facilitator for others. Special attention is given to my ancestral practices. I have been guided to find new ceremony, new ritual and experimental spirit technologies, channeling them into unconventional ways of being. The existence of these ways of life never grows stagnant, children and adults alike from all backgrounds must work together to preserve our living library – earth.
In 2019, I collaborated as Co-Curator with Sasha Zamani and it was an Outdoor Art Show project we launched called ‘Seraphim Dream’. We wanted to incorporate healing the participants through Arts and Sound and relation to space altogether. We have had a few Outdoor Shows/ Outside of the White Cube and online shows which hopefully brought light to community issues I find important as a Disabled Indigenous Artist but also to give a platform to all the amazing QTBIPOC+ Creators out there… While my past bears some meaning on how I choose to express myself as an individual, I do my best to retain the mysterious and child-like parts of my consciousness. I live with an invisible illness and I truly feel that my regenerative practices have helped to keep me moving forward — that, and being a mother to three inspiring beings. I use my experiences to draw from when I write or make anything. I have been fortunate to collaborate w/ some amazing people.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
The road has definitely not been smooth. In my late teens and early 20s, I dealt with severe Agoraphobia and learned how to manage it on my own with Herbal Allies but it was a hermit-esque time frame. I felt extremely isolated with my supernatural experiences and no one to talk to about it. I also had my first Out Of Body experience at age 20, I completely left my body and kept going into the stars. It was the 90s and not too many people in my Artistic and Music circles wanted to discuss Alternative Medicines and the Occult. I really had to dig deep and trust my calling. Once I hit my 30s, I started teaching Arts and Magical Practices to all ages. I found community support. Taught ‘Wild Weed Walks’ and Plein Air Workshops at the Nature Center and Homeschoolers in NorthWest Central Iowa where I lived for ten years building gardens and working alongside the local Farmers. I learned so much about Food Justice and Agricultural Justice.
It was around 2015/16 that I was working tons and making zines and workshops – I was even a 4-H Teacher. However, my Chronic Illness soon began to take hold of my life and I nearly died. I lost 20 lbs in 1 month. No one would diagnose me. Till finally, I found a wonderful Practitioner in Dubuque, Iowa who traced the Mystery Illness to a tick bite I had gotten on the back of my head in 2014. I have Stage 4 Lyme and Early MS. It has been a wild ride, my kids and I had to move and sell our home of 6 years due to regular basement mold toxicity and Round-Up Pesticide exposures (we lived near Du-Pont and Monsanto Crops) that I just could not be near on any level. My children are the strongest, most mysterious people I have ever met. We had to keep moving due to my health and mold exposure. They live with their Dad in New Mexico and I live in CA where I learned how to work with Kambo (a medicine from Phyllomedusa bicolor, an Amazonian tree frog) in order to save my life so that I could continue on as a Mother and help others thru my practice.
The winding road has brought me to Bee Venom and Frog medicine and I am forever changed. I do what I can to offer my insights gained through my extraordinarily difficult life experiences to my clients and people within my community. I love connecting and spreading the webs of kinship. Our stories build the future.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m an Interdisciplinary Artist who has been working in the field of Esoteric Arts since 1999. My works are in the medium of Painting, Drawing, Clay, Textiles, Printing, Digital Art, Video, Photography, Writing, Earth Justice Activism, Reiki Master, Auto-Immune Herbalist, Disability Advocacy, Bio-Dynamic Farming and Bio-Dynamic Bee-Keeping.
Additionally, I have been reading the Tarot for over 20 yrs and have been serving the community hosting events with sound, ritual and altar spaces.
My path was chosen for me in a way. I never got to say, ‘no I don’t want this’. The work I do is the same thing I essentially have always done even as a child and will continue to do. It’s basically all I know.
I wrote a short story as part of a Disability Anthology for Painwise Press which is run by the talented Olivia Dreisinger. Called Earthbound and Companions. In this body of stories by multiple Chronically Ill Artists, I have a 10 Chapter Auto-Fiction entitled ‘The Mayan A.I.’ I have had the wonderful opportunity to contribute poems and stories to Neuro Fuzzy Press and Able Zine. I feel lucky to collaborate with loving, aware beings. I was asked by Ifiaar (Institute for Interspecies Art and Relations) in early Summer to take part in their Artist Bookmark series, and Aidan Koch is a miraculous Artist and all-around wonderful human that runs and created the project. The bookmark is about more recent Alien Abductions that transpired in my life when I moved to Joshua Tree in 2020, I lived there for 6mos before leaving for NM where my kids and I eventually were off grid in Abiquiu facing the great Pedernal Mountain. Although, now I am back in CA again. Life is funny.
Anyhow, this past Spring, I also collaborated with Abbey Lee Sarver (Mirror Manager) that we worked really hard on, to create an Ancient Ocean Mirror Funhouse. Bringing my drawings into 3-d mirror form was a delightful sight. That installation was at HDTS/ High Desert Test Sites Sky Village Swap Headquarters.
I would say though, that my favorite thing to do is hold Public Altar Space Ceremony. I have done LA River Blessings and Ley-Line, Earth Grid work w/ large groups and Sound Healings / Public Flower Essence / Dosings and it is always a very big treat. Again, I wouldn’t be anywhere without community.
What are your plans for the future?
My Land Project finally has a test bed here in 29 Palms. While I don’t own the land, I have the privilege of caretaking it for 2 years. From here, we will do some Indigenous Reclamation Land Research. I will be opening the space up for events and workshops this Fall. We’re already brainstorming with collaborators. In September, I will also have some workshops coming out. A Plein Air Painting (Acrylic) Class will happen @ Joshua Tree Retreat Center. Some special surprises are in store and I am working on new offerings.
Contact Info:
- Website: ancientpocket.com, seraphimdream.com
- Instagram: @ancientpocket
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCGdk4dX9OxT87FGTWKaWhUA
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ancientpocket/sets/terra-heaven-eco-arts-unschool?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=1&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
- Other: terraheavenecoarts.com https://gofund.me/ca14db6a
Image Credits
Photo by Corinna Rosella/ Rise Up Goodwitch of Ancient Pocket during Beltane in Joshua Tree w/ Double Exposed Poppies.
Photo by Mansi Shah of Ancient Pocket ‘Dark Void Ener-G’ Banner
Photo by Sunsong of Ancient Pocket collab w/ Sunsong for Green Tara Commercial: Earthsong Sanctuary Essence.
Photo by Ron Regé Jr. ‘Square 1 Temple’ @ Flower Head Gallery / Ancient Pocket Installation Photo by Marcella Kroll- ‘Love Temple’ Ceremony and install by Ancient Pocket @ Flower Head in El Sereno.
Photo w/ holographic tablecloth (candid) @ HDTS Swap Headquarters by Abbey Lee Sarver http://abbeyleesarver.art
Photo w/ Vanessa Santos, Szabo and Maddy in front of HDTS HQ (candid shot) by Abbey Lee Sarver
