Please check back for updates! Each of us is working on a creative bio, artist's statement, and/or adventure story that really reflects who we are. There are many Cowgirls working on projects who are a part of the larger dream team, and the ones below are the day in and day out worker bees.
SHILOH SOPHIA McCLOUD
CCI Handle: Chief Laughing Cloud
Founder of Cosmic Cowgirls Ink, LLC
Brief Bio (For detailed account, choose website button: Founder, Rev. Shiloh.)
Shiloh was born in California on June 1970 in the fair county of Marin. She is a visionary artist, writer, and minister who started SAM, the Sacred Arts Movement. She is a gifted teacher and writer whose work focuses on the transformational arts. Believing that we can experience healing by accessing our deepest knowledge of our desires and ourselves through our creativity, she has represented, marketed, and coached hundreds of women. She also works with women entrepreneurs to support them in accessing and implementing their vision. She has published five illustrated journals for women’s creative development, which are featured in 90% of the women’s bookstores in the United States. Over 15,000 copies have sold and her work is shown in over 350 stores and galleries throughout the United States and Canada. She has sold well over a million dollars of her own art and works with artists to create abundance through their work. Shiloh was raised in Northern California, and lives on the Mendocino Coast with her husband, the visionary musician Isaiah McCloud, where she has Wisdom House Gallery. She continues to work in her studio almost daily. She explains that it is her desire to bring healing that fuels her passion for making art and books. “ I feel that I work for the collective woman soul,” Shiloh says, “who informs me about what is needed.” www.wisdomhousecatalog.com
SHANNON McCLOUD
CCI Handle: The Cinnamon Cowgirl
Co-Creator and Member Owner
http://www.myspace.com/thecinnamoncowgirl
Adventure Statement
The following account of the "Great Adventure" of my life is the absolute truth embroidered with some soul glitter!
After searching and searching, my sister, Shiloh Sophia McCloud—a miraculous hero of mine—helped illuminate just what it is that I do for a living. I write fairy tales for grown ups who are recovering from being grown up. I support and counsel other recovering grown ups to write and publish their own personal true fairy tales as a part of their healing and life journey.
I am a co-founder of and leader in Cosmic Cowgirls, a publishing and production house that creates revolutionary media. One of my roles is working with women to transform their “lives into legends.” All of my life I have witnessed the stories within their lives and encouraged them to share their hidden world and now, through this work with the Cosmic Cowgirl team, I have a context in which these amazing stories can be told, painted, and published.
In addition to coaching women to shine and live in their light by practicing their creativity in writing and storytelling, I’m a consultant for people who are faced with adversities and challenges that require critical negotiation strategies and implementation for needs in both their personal and professional lives. If you need to move a mountain, get through a rough spot, ride in the rodeo of your soul, see the stars through the clouds AND make money, then I’m your Cowgirl!
I’m a primary Author and Chief Editor for our recently published book Heart of the Visionary. I have supported the creation of highly acclaimed documentaries, and am also working with other media including journal workbooks, workshops and retreats, film, art, and stories from women in prison, and women suffering from abuse, addiction, depression and darkness. Wow! Have you ever been there?
My career started as an eight year old Chicklet sales girl on the beach in Mexico when my family was challenged by unexpected circumstances (a forthcoming book!). I went on to become an expert negotiator and consultant throughout the world for Fortune 500 Companies.
For nearly two decades, I worked with a company in which I was responsible for supporting and training worldwide key business leaders in achieving their goals to “Build and Enhance their Company’s Corporate Vision, Improve Profitability and Shareholder Value.” After serving my corporate “time” I had to take a break to nurture and mend my wings. Now through answered prayers, instead of surrendering my wisdom into the corporate arena in which the ones with whom you share your wisdom are often not the ones sharing the hard earned and well deserved profit, I’m on my true life path. In the corporate world, I learned that some people have integrity but many don’t. However, I’m very grateful to apply the business skills acquired in the corporate sphere to enrich my work with clients while living life with an abundant and authentic heart. I celebrate and support myself and others to create transformational media that’s designed to bless themselves and others throughout the world. If you have a story to tell or a dance to dance, I hope you will join me.
In response to many people insisting that I “must” because my life has been such a “Great Adventure”, I’m also writing my personal biography. With my kitties and my mystical magic horse Destiny Miracle by my side, I tap away on my keyboard, and on my toes when I dance, to heal, take a break and keep breathing.
One of my goals in life is to be a testimony to the fact that there is light, and you can find it even if you have lost it from time to time. It’s my pleasure to ride in the rodeo of my soul and support others to jump in and jump on and turn their lives into legends! Doing what’s important to us can’t be under estimated. Not to mention finding a life work that makes us feel nourished, passionate, and be able to have fun doing it. After all, what’s it all for if we can’t have a good time?
Having traveled the world for many centuries, I currently live in the Bay Area. With my kitties, Ralphie and Cisco, I can be found lounging in the sunshine and moonlight at our Shanita Ranchita, and at our computer, spinning out hairy tails (oops, fairy tales). Hair they go again – but that’s another story and book to come with the working title The Kitty Chronicles.
P.S. I used to work on sail boats and sail the mighty seas and ride a black Harley Davidson I'd tricked out with lots glitter and starry diamonds. But for now, those stories are currently being written in the stars and celestial heavens…
Thanks for listening! Now it’s your turn!
MARY MacDONALD
CCI Handle: StellaMac
Co-Creator and Vice President
www.stellamacproductions.com
DORI ETTER
CCI Handle: Wyota Hummingbird
Member Owner and Vice President
Dori holds an Honors degree in Economics and Business from Indiana University. She started her career as a computer specialist in the US Navy, has owned a restaurant, worked for city governments, and most recently was an international business consultant to Fortune 50 companies. She also paints, quilts, and teaches. Right now, she is traveling Around the World with her partner, Alan, and will be settling in California's wine country upon her return. Dori is 37 years old, grew up in Indianapolis, IN with her older brother and two younger sisters.
Dori is excited to join the Cosmic Cowgirls leadership team and is committed to bringing the message of the value of women's legends to all women of all socio-economic classes, and to truly transforming the value society places on the `work of women.`
BRIDGET C. McBRIDE
CCI Handle: Phoenix Rose
Member Owner and Youth Network Chair
Bridget earned her degree at World College West, which placed immense faith in the power of conscious change through learning experiences. All World College West students were required to live, study and work in a developing country. She attended Shanghai University and taught English at a village elementary school. Upon her return Bridget pursued Montessori training and received her diploma from the Association Montessori International in 1992.
“I have strong educational beliefs that have grown with my personal and professional experiences. Education is the realm in which we evolve and change. It is our primary responsibility as teachers to guide and provide children with the educational environments and experiences that they need to thrive and develop. These should be multidimensional and interdisciplinary, meeting the physical, emotional, social and intellectual needs of the whole child. The task of educating the child requires careful and constant observation of the individual and mindful adjustment of our practices and approach to meet the individual’s unique potential. I value the child’s process over product and believe that a child’s self-esteem and curiosity must be protected. Compassion, tolerance, and recognition of the interconnectedness of all living beings and our responsibility to each other is crucial.”
Bridget went on to found Mountain Song School which served up to 18 children aged 3-12. Mountain Song was her opus major. It was a wide canvas on which she could explore the dynamic possibilities of her own educational philosophy and practices. In addition to deepening her personal understanding and experience of the the Montessori method it enriched her teaching practice by developing a program that fully integrated art and music, environmental education, and ceremony and ritual. A lesson on chemical reactions would include milking the goats and making cheese on the wood stove. Thanksgiving feast included harvesting and classifying vegetables from the garden, cooking stone soup, writing poems and songs of gratitude, and making apple prints. The work was layered, deep, and exhilarating.
Bridget is presently in pursuit of a Masters of Arts in Education while working with Cosmic Cowgirls Ink as Communications Director. She is extremely excited to be involvement as she believes Cosmic Cowgirls Ink aligns with her personal and professional philosophies that education, creativity and spirituality enriches the lives of women and girls and supports them in achieving success in all areas of their lives.
ALISA FRANZONE-DAVIS
CCI Handle: TBD
Member Owner and Wellness Chair
Bio: Alisa Franzone-Davis, Esq. She was born and raised in New York.
She is a lawyer, teacher, co-author, raw food chef and
advocate, daughter, sister, wife and mother. She currently lives
in Northern California with her loving husband Michael and her
amazingly magical son, Ian.
She teaches workshops for the Cosmic Cowgirls on wellness and empowerment!
Bio
Mary MacDonald, born in Niagara Falls, Canada, has worked in the corporate, non-profit, and retail business worlds as a communications, marketing, public relations, editing and fundraising professional for the past 25 years. One of Mary’s passions is to support women and young girls to be cognizant of their innate value and how their contributions make a difference in the world. "I feel strongly in the power of storytelling as a way to affect positive change and the need to preserve these stories in order to grow, heal and understand the world." Mary is presently working as a consultant, coach, editor and workshop facilitator in California. Mary is one of the contributing authors of Heart of the Visionary and is presently working on a fiction book titled "The Bad Boy Blues". She feels proud and blessed to be the step-mother of three, the sister of three, aunt of two and is eternally grateful for her “community of women who hold her up with their love, laughter and wisdom.
CARON McCLOUD
CCI Handle - Mama Cloud
Co-Creator, Member Owner and Editor
http://www.caronmccloud.com
The McCloud Claim
I was born into a very creative family on April 25, 1937 in Oakland, California. My earliest memories are of being caught in the spell of some creative process— reading and writing, singing and dancing, drawing, coloring, painting, sewing, crocheting, knitting, carpentry—making things, the feel of a tool in my hand. Even when I was a little kid, I knew there was not going to be time enough.
My love of poetry and drawing came from spells cast by my father, Gene Grant— poet, musician, carpenter, fisherman, who used to sign his gifts and letters to me: "Love, Trust, Dare." I added "Create" and "Pray" and made it my slogan. I remember him peeling the wood with exquisite precision from a yellow #2 pencil with his pocket knife, the smell of tiny shavings and lead scrapings drifting from the emerging, long, shining point; my ecstatic anticipation while waiting to feel the pencil between my fingers, and the excitement of the exact moment when that point would make contact with my clean, white, 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, and then—getting to watch where that little trail it laid down would lead me. It led to writing and performing poetry. Besides getting published in various venues and winning a few awards, I have written over a dozen chap books.
Sitting by the fireside with my step-mother Lillian Grant—also a poet—I fell in love with the Bible. Her romantic approach to everything in life cast a spell over the scriptures that brought the people and their message alive. I continue to want to know all about them. What tribes were they from? Who did they love, hate, go to war with? Who were their children, their children's children? How did the Creator use them? Where did they go? I feel like a detective, my excitement growing as, following clues and making notes, I relentlessly track them through scripture and history and into the world. This led to examining the scriptures in the light of Qabalah and the writing of my recently published book Rachel's Bag, In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers.
My love of fabric started with the delightfully printed cotton sacks in which feed companies used to package grain for farm animals. As a child, I watched my mother, Eden McCloud—also an artist, poet and story teller—empty these sacks to feed our chickens, and then transform them into beautiful little dresses for me. This cast a spell informed by the feel of warm powdered dust between bare toes on a path leading to a chicken yard, the sound of soft cluck-clucking, the smell of scattering barley, sunlight in Mama's hair. Thinking of her, I see that gesture with which she became identified—rubbing a piece of fabric between her fingers, "testing the goods." And finally that magic she made whirring away on her Singer sewing machine. Whatever I could draw, she could cut and sew, from doll clothes to prom dresses to wedding gowns. This led to a career in the fashion industry for both of us. We founded a women's clothing design and manufacturing company in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In 2002 Mom, with her Landscapes in Thread was on the Art Port Townsend Studio Tour, and in 2006 at age 95, she won a Northwind Art Center award in the Earth, Air, Fire and Water exhibit. She continues to amaze and inspire us, and the McCloud Clan legacy in the arts continues. I had art galleries in Sausalito and in Sonoma, California, and my youngest daughter Shiloh McCloud has had galleries, starting in Port Townsend, followed by Sonoma, Sausalito, and San Francisco, and currently has Wisdom House Gallery in Mendocino, California. Along with my oldest daughter, Shannon Johnson McCloud, I am involved in Shiloh's art and business projects such as Color of Woman and Cosmic Cowgirls, working in whatever capacity I am most needed, which is currently to help develop and expand the businesses and the wholesale line, writing and editing material, and maintaining the websites.
While my main focus is the Bible, Qabalah, and writing, I remain involved in the visual arts, painting, stained glass, and working with fabric—the one thing crossing over and informing the other, as all skills do. Some of my poems are inspired by my tapestries and some of my tapestries arise from my writing. Materials from former businesses have provided me with a vast collection of fabrics, remnants, trims, buttons, beads, lace. Because Mom raised us—as evidenced by my little feed sack dresses—on axioms such as, "Necessity is the mother of invention," and "Waste not, want not," I take great satisfaction and pleasure in putting together the pieces to create what I call McCloud Covers: Coverings for Body, Bed, and Wall. I even think of my poems as coverings: "Thought covers" to warm—or sometimes to warn—the soul. I also design using themes and color schemes customized for my clients, trying to include their totems and spells. I love the feel of "the goods" of my palette of textiles, my tools, and working with my hands provides me with a much needed balance and reprieve from the intense concentration and involuted process of writing.
I pray to bring some form of expression to the spells cast by all those I love—lovers past, but still casting, and my precious friends, my brother Bob and my sister Janet, their amazing offspring, all those I think of as McCloud Clan, especially my Jim.
I am so blessed and grateful to be doing this work under the spell of my artist's dream of a perfect studio in the Baker Block Building, in the poet's dream of a perfect town, Port Townsend, Washington, where I have resided with my partner Jim Wilson since 1996. Besides my daughters, I have my son and hero, Brent; three granddaughters, Kirsten, Morgan, and Haley; and four darling great- grandsons with good Cosmic Cowboy handles, Dylan, Cole, Cody, and Austin. I am especially blessed in the way that the light loves the cheekbones of all of my beautiful children and continues to inspire me to
SUE HOYA SELLARS
CCI Handle - Bayou Star Butch
Co-Creator and Member Owner
suehoyasellars.com
Bio
Sue Hoya Sellars was born in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where she was mentored while in her early teens by renowned sculptor, Lenore Thomas Straus, and studied biological illustrating with Jan Roemhild. She attended the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC. and the San Francisco Art Institute under the instruction with Wayne Tiebaugh. At age nineteen, she became the youngest person to hold the position of head illustrator for the George Vanderbilt Foundation at Stanford University. She studied anatomy at the San Francisco School of Physicians and Surgeons while illustrating with Dr. Forbes and biological engineer, Hugh Hinchcliff, and had private anatomy studies with Dr. Deborah Karish. She was an illustrator for Janet Bollow and Associates for three decades, illustrating college text books covering Anthropology, Biology, Geology, Psychology, and Sociology. She attended the School of Electronic Art in San Francisco. Sue opened Gaia Wood studio, now Blue Heron Studio, producing illustrations and Object D'art in porcelain and stone ware. Her work was handled by a number of galleries throughout the country, and has been showing with Color of Woman/Wisdom House Gallery since 1999. Sue defines her inspiration in terms of questions. She says: After illustrating biological structures for over 45 years, my questions shifted from “What does life do in these structures, to how did life get into these structures?”, and “Who is this consciousness that lives in here? Who is it that is even doing this wondering?”
GENNIFER MOUNTAIN WEAVER
CCI Handle: Diva G
Member Owner and Membership Diva
Chief Laughing Cloud welcomes Diva G
Gennifer is our new on staff Membership Diva! She manages the conference calls, as well as creating the membership communication database for our organization, calls all new Cosmic Cowgirl sign ups and co-facilitates events and more....we are so excited about Gennifer joining us!
I first met Gennifer about three years ago at one of my painting workshops and immediately loved her - her open heart - her wild spirit - her wisdom and willingness to play - a bit of the 'bad girl' mixed with the appropriate "good girl" - the perfect combo for a cosmic cowgirl who wants to help save the world and do it with style! Gennifer has worked with many non-profits (Girls Inc. and Challenge Day) serving youth and women from all walks of life. She has worked with the Peace Corps and Crisis Corps in Honduras and Ecuador creating systems for HIV/AIDS Education and helping women access services. Although well traveled, Gennifer says she has yet to find a place more serene than her mom's house in the mountains.
Welcome Gennifer and thanks for joining the rodeo!
Greetings Cowgirls!
It is with excitement and enthusiasm that I send out a big howdy hello to ya’ll! My name is Gennifer Mountain, “Diva G”, and I am creating my next legend in service to Cosmic Cowgirls as the Membership Diva. I will be assisting new members with the information they need to be empowered and start playing with the projects and opportunities that are in progress. It is a pleasure to be a part of such an amazing collaboration of women! I am full of bliss when I dream about what we will become and are already creating! I have always been filled by sharing resources and passing on information to other women, so that they can make better informed choices in their lives.
I have worked with many non-profits, serving youth and women from all walks of life. I have lived outside the country for three years of my life serving in both the Peace Corps Honduras and Crisis Corps Ecuador, working on creating systems for HIV/AIDS Education and helping women access services and knowledge to reproductive health information. I have many travels under my belt, and yet have never found a place more serene as a trip to Mom’s house in the mountains.
I am passionate about using creativity as a therapeutic outlet, and love being with my family and friends, meeting more Cosmic Cowgirls, and drinking coffee in the sun!
With glee!
Diva G