Conversations with Walter Berry

Today we’d like to introduce you to Walter Berry.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I began doing dreamwork about 20 years ago. It is a passion I fell into almost by mistake. I was in the habit of writing down my dreams because my therapist encouraged me to do so. It turned out one mundane dream I wrote down changed my entire life. Two weeks after I had the dream, my mother, who was the central focus of the mundane dream calls me up and starts saying the very words that I had written down. I was astounded. I actually stopped her mid-sentence and retrieved the journal and followed along as she continued to rant about a family matter. The exact words were there in front of me as she did so!

Well, this was so freaky, I had to find out more about dreams and I dove into the world of dreams headfirst, studying with Jeremy Taylor and others and becoming a certified dreamworker. It was a calling that swept me away into being my true self. Helping others with their dreams and their lives is now what I do. When I am in the thick of working dreams, I felt alive, vital, tuned, and in touch with my own emotions. I have done this continually for the past 20 years.

My unique approach to working with dreams involves drawing the dream. I have people make a simple sketch of their dream and then we use the drawing as the guidepost for discovering what the unconscious is trying to convey to us. You would be amazed what we can do with those simple stick figures and blobs of color. I now run dream groups, do both domestic and international workshops and guest lectures. My published book- Drawn into the Dream is the culmination of all this work and contains multiple examples of how I work with dreams.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There were two main obstacles that were difficult to overcome. The first was people’s trust. Most people dismiss their dreams as just nonsense and when they feel brave enough to share a dream, it is usually dismissively. When I start to probe into meanings and associations and feelings, people can freeze up. The ego is a powerful force that doesn’t like us to be weak or needy and sometimes dreams come to us to point out needs and weaknesses. I had to learn to handle each dream and each individual with care and respect, guiding them to discover for themselves whatever the dream is trying to talk to them about. The second obstacle is this horrible aversion that people have of drawing something. Children generally have absolutely no problem drawing their dreams. They don’t care that the mom in the picture looks like a garbage can with hair, but many adults have lost that childlike attitude and keep telling me over and over they can’t draw. I had to find ways to get past that screaming ego that doesn’t want to look dopey, and it wasn’t easy. I encourage people to just draw stick figures and blobs of color to represent things and also show them other crude drawings that have brought a dream to life. It usually works but there are some who just refuse to go there and that is when I work the dream in a more conventional way by talking it through.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am an artist working in encaustics (wax paint) and printmaking. Most of my works are powerfully inspired by my dreams. Both of these mediums lend themselves to inexactness and lots of spontaneity. My intentions change radically as the layers of hot encaustic shift and change dynamically in the sometimes messy process. The same is with monoprints and collagraphs that I produce. When I am creating art, I become lost in the process as the art talks back to me in a sense. It is a dance of spirit and creation. On a completely different realm, I am a lighting director in the Motion Picture business and one shining example of my artistic work can be seen on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. I designed and installed and programmed the lights and the lighting effects for Janet Echelman’s Dream Catcher sculpture that stretches between two buildings on the Sunset Strip and is about 85 feet high. I used my knowledge of different dream states during the night to program 16 unique hours of ever-changing lighting effects. It is magical.

Here is a link to an article about it:
https://www.soraa.com/learn/beautiful/janet-echelmans-dream-catcher-transforms-sunset-strip-color-light

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I came from a family of seven children in New Jersey, and one of my favorite childhood memories was something a bit odd. When it would rain, I would get away from everyone sometimes by climbing inside the tiny shed in the backyard and close the door. I would sit there on the gas mower, listening to the cacophony of the pounding rain as I would draw tiny crude pictures of cowboys and Indians and cars and birds with a pencil on the surface of the two-by-fours. My soul was so relaxed in those moments.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.drawnintothedream.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drawnintothedream/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEDvwTaKmhXidFdwHQpphng